Welcome to Rock Harbor Church's channel on Sermon Audio. We hope that this message is a blessing to you and it helps you in your daily walk with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So please settle in and grab your Bibles. Here's our guest speaker with this message. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come into your presence tonight. We ask for a blessing, Lord, and we thank you for the nourishment. We want to pray for our team overseas, for Pastor Brandon and the rest of the gang. and ask that you would take care of them and make them a great blessing to all those they meet. And Lord, bless the ones we know over there. Also, Yuri, the IDF soldier, Micah Carlson, another IDF soldier, and all of the IDF, we pray for your protection over them, Lord. And we pray for wisdom for Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, for wisdom, for insight, for courage, and we pray for the Mossad as well, Lord, and ask that you will bless them as well. And take care of Israel and protect your people there, we pray. And we thank you for gathering us this evening. Instruct us, Lord, challenge us, Lord, and use us for your glory in the week in between. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. My wife likes to play YouTubes, and the YouTube algorithm has decided that she likes topics about Israel. So, 24 hours a day at our house, YouTube is playing presentations about Israel, okay? And I catch parts of them. And usually my reaction is, oh my goodness, that's so interesting. I wanna learn about that, I gotta sit down. And then I waste, well, waste. I use up half an hour doing that instead of doing what I came into the room to do, okay? And you know, I get behind then and stuff. And I was watching something this afternoon and they said that, and this was very unusual, I thought that they would actually announce this publicly and I totally ended, there must be some reason, they must have some thinking, some cunning behind this. The Israeli government announced that it's going to ask Mossad to hunt down the leaders of Hamas who are in Qatar rejoicing and living the high life, you know, with Arab oil money in Qatar and the rest of the world, wherever they are. Okay? And you can decide for yourself whether that's good or bad, a good approach, a bad approach. You know, I'm not, it's not nice. It's not something you want to do. It's not something Israel usually does. But some of you may remember or some of you may have read about right after World, well, a little ways after World War II, Eli Wiesenthal, Simon Wiesenthal founded a center for worldwide Jewish detectives all over the world to track down Nazi war criminals, okay? And they found one of the worst ones in Argentina in the late 50s. And they spent years plotting and planning because they knew that Argentina would never, you know, let the guy go legally. I forget the name for that. What's that called? Yeah, and so they plotted and planned to take him out illegally, and they had found Adolf Eichmann, all right? And they got him on a plane, and they flew him in the night out of Argentina. I don't know where they went to. I wonder if they did the first leg right across the South Atlantic to Africa, and then worked their way up through Africa. I'm not sure, but it would make an interesting journey. I'm sure it was interesting for Adolf Eichmann I think he was probably sedated, you know, in the plane, because they took a doctor along with them. And I remember watching the movie and the female doctor, the Jewish doctor from Israel, she didn't want to go. She said, I've done other missions with you, I don't want them to do anymore. I can't take part. And they said, we need you for this one. And this one is really important, okay? And they put them on trial publicly in Israel, and they made an exception to their law, their rule, that they do not execute people, okay? And they still don't. I mean, they may assassinate them sometimes, but they don't execute them. They don't execute them publicly, okay? You know, juridically, judicially. But they made an exception, and they, executed Adolf Eichmann in 1962, I think it was, and that was Mossad that tracked him down. Okay, enough of that. One more thing, one more pre-message sermon, okay? So here's the big push for tonight, and it is that Israel is going through some very difficult times, and what we forget, and what I want to emphasize tonight is that God's hand is behind it. his providential hand. He doesn't appear personally, usually, okay, but he operates behind the scenes. Now, there's many examples in Scripture, and the book of Esther is one of the best ones, because the book of Esther doesn't even mention God. Did you know that? Have you read the book of Esther recently? doesn't mention God. In fact, when Mordecai asks her to go see the king or the emperor, she says, well, I want you to fast for me, and she does not mention what goes along with fasting. Now, what always goes along with fasting? Prayer! Because that would have been a mention of God. She doesn't mention that. It's all completely left out. But you know how God was working in the book of Esther and brought things to pass to protect his people and to accomplish his purposes. And I would submit to you tonight that God knows what he's doing. This hatred of Israel is not human bred. It's not easily explainable. There is no reason why one particular people should, especially the one that has contributed to civilization and to the welfare of humanity in so many ways, should be picked on century after century after century. If it's not this group, it's this group, it's another group that are always persecuting Israel, all right? They have very few interludes of peace in between the persecutions. And the persecutions have gotten, if anything in the 20th century, horrendously horrible, more horrible with the Holocaust, for example. And then this thing with Hamas on October 7th, and I'm not going into details here, but we all know it was God-awful. How do you explain some of the things that Hamas did to those 1,400 people that they killed? They killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, in one day, all right? And so Israel is on the cusp of another terrible persecution. And Hamas is not repentant about it. They have said publicly that they would do it again and again and again if they are able to. Okay? So then Israel says, well, we're going to have to destroy Hamas. And then the rest of the world goes crazy and says, Oh, genocide, genocide, genocide. You're killing a poor Palestinians. Okay. And I saw a cartoon of a Palestinian guy and he goes with a stick and he pokes a hornet's nest, okay? And the hornet's nest is Israel. He pokes a hornet's nest, the hornets come out or the bees come out and of course they sting him and he's dancing around and in pain and he's yelling, you know, Israel is hurting me, Israel's persecuting me and Israel's committing genocide against me, you know, sort of thing. But I think God knows what he is allowing for his own purposes. And here's what I submit to you tonight, that, and I've heard this, this is not me being smart, this is, you know, YouTube, okay? Hey, there's some good guys on YouTube, okay? All right? You know, because once the algorithm identifies your interests, then they keep feeding you more and more similar stuff. It is that God is shocking the American Jewish community, which in the last 75 years of the history of Israel has largely been indifferent or neutral about Israel, okay? Now, there have been a few Jewish exceptions. people from America who have immigrated to Israel or that helped out Israel in various ways. But the American Jewish community is quite comfortable and many of them don't even like Israel. They indulge themselves in a little bit of dislike of Israel. What is with that? So this speaker that I heard on YouTube was saying, God is shocking the American Jews into some kind of action, okay? They are realizing that their friends on the left, because many American Jews are liberal, many are democratic, and many of them are against Israel. It's incomprehensible, I don't understand it, and it's really hard for Christians that support Israel to understand that, isn't it? How do you understand that? But they are, and what is happening is God is shocking them into realizing something. Realizing what? with all these protests on the streets that come out of nowhere, that shouldn't be. Three Ivy League university presidents were called on the carpet by Congress yesterday. And they just, what's the word? They just stonewalled. They thought, well, we're protecting free speech. We're gonna let all these protests and anti-Semitic things happen. Okay, but that's a message to the American Jewish community and all these protests on the streets. And the message is, you thought you were gonna be okay here. Now there was something called the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s in France. You Jews thought you were going to be okay in Western Europe. Western Europe, fairly civilized. France, Belgium, Holland, England. But we found out with the Dreyfus Affair, and guess who was watching it? Theodore Herzl, that the Jews were not going to be okay in France after all. And he decided then that they needed their own homeland. And he started the Zionist movement in the 1890s, okay? And you know what the results were 70 years later. My arithmetic's a little bit off there. About 50 years later, okay? And what's happening here in the States is American Jews are realizing maybe they're not so safe here after all. And this particular speaker, okay, whose first name is Amir, all right, said that he thinks another Aliyah is coming from America, that God is doing this and allowing this to happen to the American Jewish community. so that they will get the message and move Amaz to Israel to build Israel up even stronger than it is now, okay? All right, so what about the five lies, okay? Satan is very active, Satan is a great deceiver, Satan is a father of lies, and he just loves to deceive people. And one of the unfortunate facts of life is that governments lie to us, did you know that? No. Yes, I'm afraid they do, as much as they inform us of truthful events. The U.S. government lies to us at their convenience and probably tells us the truth about half the time. That's pretty good, okay? Because, remember the whole COVID, oh, I misspelled that, my goodness. Sorry, YouTube, I misspelled that, okay? Hoax, you remember that, okay? This thing is going to rage through, it's going to kill half the people, you got to wear a mask, okay, got to get vaccination, blah, blah, blah, blah, okay, and shut down the whole economy and then it was just like any other flu. But some governments are even worse and tell lies most of the time, such as the Chinese Communist government. Their whole existence is based on a whole fabric, a whole web of lies. And we need a lot of wisdom and discernment and indeed skepticism to watch the nightly news. You know, watch it skeptically. Ask questions of yourself, all right? We really need to be, as Jesus put it, wise as serpents, but harmless as doves, all right? And there's the Chinese Communist flag. And there is, now, Jacob, help me select this picture. Take a close look at it. The eyes, is it doing it in the? Yes, it is, okay, all right. I don't think he really looked like that with the eyes, but anyways, whoever put this picture in, I like the picture of him, but Hitler told a lot of lies in his lifetime, and he shared some tips on how to lie successfully. So if you want to lie successfully, study Hitler. He pointed out that if you tell a big enough lie to a nation, you have a better chance of them believing it. He and Dr. Goebbels, who was his propaganda minister, believed in using propaganda to manipulate entire populations, like convincing the Germans that they had to go to war with Poland, okay? So they put a whole fabric of lies together about how Poland was persecuting Germans in Poland and killing some, and Hitler, the great champion of German peoples, had to go into Poland to rescue the Germans there. Now, there's a guy called Putin in Russia, and he is actually claiming that he's fighting evil in the Ukraine. Now, there may be some evil in the Ukraine, I'm sure there is, but generally speaking, Ukraine is a lot more righteous than Russia is, okay? And the Ukraine did not invade Russia. Russia invaded the Ukraine without any really visible reasons other than some kind of prestige or something. And he claims he's fighting evil in the Ukraine, that he's the champion of good in a war which he started and is unpopular, the war that is, with most Russians. And he may be unpopular too, but he's also strong, so he gets to do what he wants to do. But he carries on convinced that most people will believe him if he tells a big enough lie and, you know, repeats it enough about the Ukraine. The biggest deceiver of all is though is Satan. This is the background to the five deceptions, okay? Who the Bible says deceives the whole world. That's his hobby. That's his raison d'etre. That's his reason for being. Revelation 12 describes a war breaking out between Michael and his angels and Satan and his angels. Satan lost the battle in Revelation 12. You can read about it there. And as he was cast out, the narrative says that he was the deceiver of the whole world. Okay, that's his title. What did Jesus call him in John chapter eight? Anybody remember? And he says that you believe, you tell lies like your, you know, father, and he's the father of lies, okay? And they didn't like that very much, okay? And at the end of chapter eight, they took up stones to kill Jesus. In Isaiah 14, the prophet questions Satan saying, and this is a beautiful passage, very poetic. I like this stuff. How you have fallen from heaven, oh Lucifer. We have a rooster at home called Lucifer, okay? It's because he's, Evil. Okay. And here, I'm trying to figure out if this would be Isaiah or the Lord talking to him. Somebody is talking to Satan and he says, How you have fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning. Isn't that great? Lucifer was a beautiful being. If you don't believe it, read John Milton's Paradise Lost. Big thing about big poetry. I had to read it in high school, you know, because it was 1600s, great English literature. And in it, he really builds up Satan to this, like, unbelievable character who's nobly kind of fighting against God. You know, he wants to rule in hell instead of serving in heaven. That's Lucifer. And he was beautiful, okay? And what did he do? He weakened the nations, it says here. But a change is coming. In Revelation 20, John also writes that Satan will be bound for a thousand years in a bottomless pit, quote, so that he should deceive the nations no more. See, he habitually deceives the nations. That's his pastime. That's his vocation. So he deceives the nations constantly, but he's going to be locked up in a bottomless pit so he can deceive them no more till the thousand years have finished, okay, in verse 3 of chapter 20 of Revelation. And if you want to know what's going to happen during that thousand years, you go back to one of my sermons, okay, in the summertime there on the millennium. So we see that Satan is the arch deceiver. He's the one behind these five lies. He's the one behind all the deception that's going on now with the protests, you know? People accusing Israel of genocide. Well, last I heard, genocide means you're systematically killing a whole race, okay? And if you send, you know, telephone messages and leaflets to neighborhoods before you bomb the rocket factory in the basement of one of the buildings, And tell them get out because we're going to bomb this thing, you know at six o'clock tonight I don't understand how that qualifies as genocide Okay, I think what Hamas did that comes much closer to qualifying as genocide But we should be careful about the terms we throw around but I remember waiting for we waited the longest time for I forget all the names and all the things. I think it was for the Secretary of State at a certain time a few years ago, maybe it was Hillary even, to announce, to use the word genocide, about the Uyghurs in China. They didn't want to use it, because American law then requires that you treat that nation in certain ways, okay? They don't get all the privileges that other nations might. And she was very reluctant to do that, and I can sort of understand it. But, you know, people were encouraging her and saying, you know, what they're doing there is genocide. What they're doing there is genocide. And unfortunately, the people on the streets, of course, and they're supposed to be university students. They're supposed to be seeking truth. They're supposed to be learning science, learning rational ways of thinking. What do they teach them there? I was there a few years ago. I did pretty good, I thought, but I don't know what happened after I left. In Bible language, the nations, or ethnos as they are recorded in the Greek, are not the same as Israel. There's the nations and then there's Israel, when you read through scripture, okay? So anytime you hear about the ethnos in Greek or the nations, that's not Israel. Those are the Gentile nations around them. Israel is separate from the nations. And one of the main deceptions that Satan pulls on the nations is about Israel. He has five big lies about Israel. Now that's not to say that Israel does not get deceived. It gets deceived also. but not as badly and not in such a concentrated fashion as the ethnos, the nations of which we are part. Now, America is a happy exception to the rule that Satan has tricked the nations into mistreating Israel, okay, or persecuting Israel. America is that happy exception. Why is that? Well, maybe it's because there's so many Christians and Jews in America, okay, and the Lord has spared us that deception. The big five, here they are. You ready? Number one, God is finished with the Jews. He's fed up with them. He has disclaimed them as his chosen people and he has forgotten them. Okay, and there's a lot of good reasons why he should do that. Most churches in the last 2,000 years have believed that and you will see here that I am not perfect. I was working on this note and I got distracted by a YouTube video, no doubt. Thank you, Leanda. And I didn't go back and finish it. Can you finish it for me? Most churches in the last 2,000 years have believed that. The church has replaced Israel, okay, and that's called what kind of theology? Replacement theology, and it's very common in most churches, all right? Number two, the land is not Israel, it's Palestine. How dare you say Israel? The Jews only arrived there in 1948, and they renamed it Israel. It was Palestine back through history to the Philistines, and the Jews never had a temple there. Number three, the Arabs were there first. The Jews only arrived since the beginning of Zionism in the 1890s and the Arabs have been there since forever, okay? Number four, Israel has no right over the land. It's illegally occupying Arab land. Israel must be driven off of Arab land by any means necessary. Now, a little bit later, I'm going to get into a bit of an explanation about the legality of Israel, okay? But I want to tell it to you very simply in very, you know, short language right now. So when we come to it and we get more involved in, you know, the treaties and various things that happen, you'll remember this, okay? The deal is this. The Turks, the Ottoman Empire, which controlled most of the Middle East and a lot of North Africa and stuff like that, it was a big empire in the Middle East and in Anatolia, where Turkey is today, and in Europe somewhat too. The Greeks, for example, used to be under the Turks. And they joined the wrong side in World War I. They joined the German side. The British and French defeated them. America did not fight against the Turks, but against the Germans and Austrians only in World War I. Okay, so the British and French defeat the Turks, and they had, you know, for a hundred years sort of contemplated carving up the old Ottoman Empire, 500 years old. They used to call it the sick man of Europe in their diplomacy. Turkey, the Turkish Empire, the Ottoman Empire was the sick man of Europe. So finally, the Turks do the British and French a favor, they join the wrong side, the British and French defeat them. Watch the movie Lawrence of Arabia, you'll see a little glimpse of that, a little part of that process of defeating the Turks. And they get to do what they want after the war. Well, they were pretty harsh. And they took most of the Turkish empire, the Middle East, away from Turkey. And then they put together a group. This guy called President Wilson came over the ocean. six months over the ocean to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, had a great idea. Hey, let's make an organization that talks peace and solves problems instead of, you know, making wars. And they called that the League of Nations. All right. But the Americans didn't join. Because the Senate has to ratify treaties. So Wilson brought this treaty home for the League of Nations and the Senate rejected it. So Britain and France dominated it. What did they do? They took the Turkish holdings and they gave them to themselves. They had a little vote, leaned on some people, you know, 50 countries basically that were their allies in World War I. And they said, yeah, we think we should take it. And what we'll do is you give us this land and we will create countries. We'll call it a mandate. We won't call it part of our empire. The French and British both had empires, but they weren't going to call it part of their empire, just a mandate. It means a special job to do. And we're going to create countries out of these former Ottoman territories. The British win the territory, including all of what's called Palestine and Israel today. The British won it. Okay? That means they get to do with it whatever they wanted. And they accepted a job from the League of Nations to make countries, two countries, out of some of this territory. One for the Jews and one for the Arabs. All right. Now, we skip a lot of stuff, and we go 20 years into the future, and after World War II, the British are, you know, they're trying to figure out, what are we gonna do with this stuff? Maybe we shouldn't have taken it on, it's a big problem. Okay, watch the movie Exodus. Better still, read the book by Leon Uris. How many of you have not read Leon Uris' Exodus yet? Raise your hand, shame on you. Okay, get on Amazon tonight and order that book. and you read it. That's the book which changed my life in the, it's not a Christian book, in the 60s, okay? I was in high school. I read Leon Uris' story about Exodus. It's the modern story, the story of the founding of modern Israel, and it's fantastic, and it'll open your eyes so much, and you won't be the same afterwards. Anyways, the British get to do whatever they want. The French get to do whatever they want with that territory. Why? Because they wanted a war. Okay? So be quiet, Palestinians. You lost the war in the Ottoman Empire. Okay? And so 20 years later, after World War II, the British say, ah, we're tired of all this fighting and we can't put up with these guys. They can't get their act together to form the two countries that we are suggesting they suggested before World War II. Two countries side by side. One for the Arabs, one for the Jews, okay? And so then they say, well, we founded the United Nations after World War II. That replaced the League of Nations, okay? But the United Nations inherited all the mandates and all the treaties and all the membership of the League of Nations. So the new United Nations, it's very zealous and very kind of keen on, you know, solving problems peacefully. So they send a commission over to Israel, to Palestine, British Palestine, to talk to the Jews and the Arabs. And guess what? The Arabs wouldn't talk to them. I mean, literally, literally, they wouldn't talk to the commission, the United Nations Commission. Guess who did talk to them? The Jews and David Ben-Gurion showed the commission how they'd been working for 30 years, building roads, hospitals, schools, farms, kibbutzes, communities, the infrastructure of a country. They were very impressed. The Jews are making a country out of this desert. They go back to the U.N. in November of 1947 and the U.N. votes and impossibly, miraculously, it voted by a two-thirds majority for the establishment of two homelands, one for Palestinian Arabs and one for Palestinian Jews. And the Jews rejoiced and took the offer. Now what I'm saying to you is Britain won World War I. They took the Ottoman territories and they held them until after World War II. They turned it over to the UN and the UN took a vote of 51 member nations. And that is the legal basis of Israel. Do you understand? The UN voted for it in 1947, okay? Six months before they became a country, before they became a country. So keep that clear in your minds, okay? The UN, which is the most legal sort of body of anything that you could want on the planet Earth, okay, voted for the two countries side by side. And guess which one took the country and which one didn't. Okay, where am I? Did I do number four? No, I don't think I did, did I? Okay. Israel has no right over the land. This is lie number four. It's illegally occupying Arab land. Israel must be driven off of Arab land by any means necessary. Number five. Oh, I like this one. Peace is possible if we just try a little harder. Let's have one more conference. Let's call in the Arab leaders one more time. Let's make an even more generous offer to them of Israeli territory and money and bribes, okay, and see if they will accept to found a country in this area. Peace is possible if we just try harder and if the Jews give up more land to a possible Palestinian state. It's the Jews who are blocking the peace process by not surrendering enough land to create a Palestine. And these are the five big lies that Satan has foisted onto the nations around the world and he fools them into hating Israel, and seeing her as the problem. And I want to suggest to you that they are under a great deception. The world out there is under a great deception. Now, I ask myself, am I just fooling myself and playing mental games with myself and brainwashing myself? And as far as I can see, rationally examining the evidence, the documents, the Bible, the history of the treaties, the writing, okay, the actions, you know, Jesus said, you'll know people by their fruit. Okay, if you look at Israel, there's a lot of fruit, a lot of flowers, a lot of medicine, a lot of research, a lot of technology, a lot of blessings to the world. Okay, what did God promise Abraham? Do you remember that in Genesis 12? Okay, there's fruit. And on the other side, I'm gonna summarize it this way. You have a culture of death, all right? So you compare those two, and I think we're right to stand with Israel. And this is, as much as I can analyze and see the problem and look for traps and look for things and look for deceptions, I think the big deception, unfortunately, is out there and it's on the other side. When you see the word genocide used about Israel, you realize how far the grand deception has come. Now I might just look at these maps here for a second. And if you look, you have to look now the years. Okay, so you have to look at the left, and that's the oldest one, and that's just before the founding of Israel, and the white parts are the Jewish parts. See the white parts? So that was going to be more or less the center of Israel, those white parts. It wouldn't have been very much, right? A little more than that perhaps, but it wouldn't have been very much. The UN came over and made a plan and they were a little more generous and they said, okay, we're going to give you the parts where you are populated plus the desert. We're going to give you the desert, Israel. Okay. How's that? Okay. And you go down there and see how you enjoy that desert. Well, of course, Israel has worked miracles in the desert. I don't have time to tell you about them all, okay? And then, in 1967, after the Seven-Day War, the Seven-Day War, the Six-Day War, thank you for correcting me. Don't be afraid. Okay, Israel is much larger again, and then today it is, you know, it's putting settlements in the West Bank, and the West Bank is being eaten up, you know, little by little, because the longer the Palestinians pause and hesitate without a treaty, without a country, official country, you know, the West Bank was, again, it was conquered by the Israelis. Well, guess what? When you win stuff in a war, especially a war where they attack you, you get to make the call about the land and stuff afterwards. Now, what you usually try to do is be wise enough that you don't want to create a lot of enemies who are going to hate you forever and come after you in war after war. The British and French did that to the Germans after World War I. and they paid for it dearly 20 years later, okay? So you don't want to make enemies unnecessarily. But at the same time, Israel needs land and these people, you know, they just can't get their act together to make a treaty, so guess what? And it's not the government, it's settlers. You know what settlers are? Settlers are fanatic Jews who think God gave them this land and that they ought to settle on it to claim it for God and themselves, okay? And so they risk their lives to go make settlements in very dicey areas where, you know, Arabs, a lot of Arabs and they may be hostile. And here, the settlement, how would you like to do this? The settlers go in, and they build their house in a day. They have to put it together, because it has to be fortified, you know, with bullet, bullet things to shoot out in a day. And they have to put up a fence that's bulletproof, okay? The early days, when they couldn't afford to, they put a fence up, two fences, two wooden fences, and fill it in between with gravel. to stop the bullets from outside that they knew would come. They're like beachhead pioneer soldiers storming the beach. So they go into a territory, they build their house, and they build a little community, and they have to get up at night, the men, and patrol around, you know, and watch all the time, okay? But, and I'm not even sure as the American government discourages settlements and settlers. You know, it's a kind of controversial thing, but that's how they feel. And Israel has at least twice moved its own settlers out of territories. I remember in the 80s, it was out of the Sinai. They had taken the Sinai in 67 from Egypt. Egypt was gonna get it back and sign a peace treaty. They did sign the peace treaty. And Israel was moving out in three stages out of the Sinai, okay? And at each stage, there were settlers. And Israel went in with bulldozers and bulldozed the Jewish settlers' houses and took them by force, had to drag them, okay? They didn't shoot anybody or kill anybody, obviously, you know, it's Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers, but they dragged them to the trucks and they dragged them back to main Israel. That was one time, and just recently in 2005, Israel gave Gaza to the Gazans. They got out of Gaza. Hey, you know, if us occupying them is such a problem, let's leave and see what happens, okay? Let's see if they start a wonderful, you know, capitalistic, entrepreneurial, You know, they live on the Mediterranean coast. All they have to do is put a few casinos and a few resort hotels right there on the beach and they'd have it made. They're between the pyramids and, you know, the Bethlehem and all the biblical sites in Israel. They're right in between. All they have to do is, you know, put up some hotels and they'll be rich. I'm talking about the Palestinians in Gaza. And so in 2005, Ariel Sharon hauled them all out. And they had, settlers had to be dragged out again. And then you know what happened to Gaza? They voted Hamas in 10 years ago. Okay, so unfortunately, just as Satan is the father of lies, We know that the source of all truth, the Messiah, Yeshua, who is the way and the truth and the life, okay? If we would know the truth about anything, we must soak ourselves in the word of God. Even modern questions like, how many genders are there? Now that's a very difficult biological question. I grant you, okay? And guess what? The answer's in the Bible. And not only that, it's sort of black and white. It's very plain. Very understandable. Genesis 1.27 says, so God created man in his own image. Male and female, he created them. How many genders are there? And history helps too. Those who would deny, for example, the Holocaust, are up against a tidal wave of photographic, there's some on the left. Now I decided not to horrify you with all the bodies and skeletons, okay? And just to show you piles of shoes, all right? That's horrifying enough, okay? You know, they're up against a tidal wave of photographic. Forensic, forensic is like actual stuff like you can go to Auschwitz in Poland and see the ovens Okay, that's forensic evidence. It's kind of gross, big, bulky forensic evidence. Usually forensic evidence is like a bullet or something. And artifact evidence, okay, about the Holocaust, such as, you know, the gas chambers and the crematoria and the barracks and things. And of course, photographs too. And confessions from, you know, concentration camp guards and other people involved in the Holocaust. and eyewitness testimonies from the victims themselves and soon gave up. You have to give up denying, you know, the Holocaust. But they don't. They don't give it up because they're not dealing with reason. How many of you remember a guy called Aqman Minajab? Aqman Minajab. Aqman Minajab. I think I'm mangling his name. He was a president of Iran. He's not an Ayatollah. He wasn't a religious imam. He was a secular president of Iran, but he was just as anti-Israel. Okay, and in the early 2000s, do you remember this joke? He called for a Holocaust denial conference and he called people from all over the world who would come and support his goals. Have you heard about that lately? No, because it's impossible to deny the Holocaust. That was like against all reason and it's against this paragraph I just read you here. Those who would deny the Holocaust are up against a tidal wave of evidence, okay. we will use both the Bible and history to fight the five lies about Israel. Now, I know you've been dying to get into the five lies, okay? So let's get into them, all right? God is finished with the Jews. Now, everybody knows that. The Romans finished them off 30 years after they rejected their Messiah. You see the thought process? It's logical, right? They rejected the Messiah, God's gonna be through with them, and 30 years later, the Romans destroy their temple and finish them off with a couple of rebellions, all right? The early church, didn't particularly want to follow the Bible's clear teaching about the Jews and God. They saw the Jews at best as a problem and at worst as Christ killers, okay? Nowhere does the Bible say that God is finished with Israel. Many passages teach just the opposite, that God will never let go of his people. But the church in the first 400 years became anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic, and actually taught that Israel and the Jews, they were not God's people anymore, and the church had replaced them. Deuteronomy 14.2 says, For you, the Jewish people, are a holy people to the Lord, your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. Okay, so God says, my Jewish people, they're special, they're a treasure. Generally speaking, you don't throw your treasure away, do you? Okay? It doesn't actually say that he doesn't, you know, that he always lets, he's still holding onto them, but we know you wouldn't throw your treasure away. Isaiah says that the Jews themselves may think God has left them, but Zion said, the Lord has forsaken me. That's the Jewish people speaking. The Lord has forsaken me. Bad things are happening to me. The Romans are defeating our revolt, you know, and spreading us out all over the Roman Empire. Okay, but this is what God says back, or Isaiah says back. to them. Can a woman forget her nursing child? Ask any of the ladies here who have ever had a child and they will tell you they can't forget their children. My mother had three, four, maybe, children. I was one of them, the oldest, and I remember growing up that every anniversary or so she would tell me about the miscarried child she had lost. Okay. She never forgot. All right. A mother never will. And isn't it interesting that God, instead of using a masculine metaphor here or simile, he uses a feminine simile. There's not many in scriptures, but there are a couple of places where God has female characteristics. You know what the other one is? Boaz, in the book of Ruth, What does he say to Ruth when he sees her and meets her? He says, you come under the wings of the God of Israel. That's a mother bird. that takes care of her chicks under her wings. Okay, surely they may forget, but I will not forget you. See, I've inscribed you on the palms of my hands. Teenagers at school, if they want to really remember something, I'd probably put it on their phone, but in my day, they used to write it on the palms of their hands, whatever it was, okay? Like phone numbers and things, okay? Important stuff like that. But my personal favorite about the scriptural teaching about God's attitude toward the Jews forever, you know, is Jeremiah's claim that only if the sun, the moon, and the stars stop working, and those of you in Sunday school have heard me quote this before, will the seed of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever. And then I asked my Sunday school class, and they're pretty smart. Did the sun rise today? And they say, yeah. They're pretty smart, you know. Did the moon come up last night? Yeah, it did. Are the stars still in the sky, you know, if there's no clouds overnight? Yes, right? Pretty smart Sunday school class. You come join it and you get smart too. That's a shameless ad for my Sunday school class. I apologize to Rory and Frank, okay? Sorry about that. They got great classes going too and you should check them out. Okay, but God's not going to forget them because they're written on the palms of his hands, all right? Your name is written on the palm of his hand, okay, if you're a Christian. But my personal favorite is that if the sun and the moon and the stars can stop working, if they stop working, then Israel could cease from being a nation before me forever. In other words, the reverse is true. If the sun, moon, and stars are working, the seed of Israel is a nation before him forever. The apostle Paul was even clearer about this when he wrote in Romans 3 to 11, and so all Israel will be saved for the gifts and the calling of God are what? Irrevocable. cannot be revoked or rescinded. Why not? Okay. In other words, don't even talk about the Jews. You're not their creator and you're not their champion and savior. Let God talk about them and tell you what his attitude is. Don't tell him what his attitude ought to be. Can't be revoked or rescinded. Why not? Haven't the Jews done enough to disappoint him? Yes. The Jews have been very disappointing to God on occasion, but that's not what his loyalty depends on. Does it? Okay? Maybe they have disappointed them, but that brings us to the crux of the matter. The Jews' calling and protection as God's chosen people does not depend on their faithfulness. I don't know if I'm gonna get through this message tonight, because we're gonna get stalled up in this first question. I'm gonna need four more Wednesday nights, okay? After this. Because Do you see how critically important this is, the matter of God's handling of the Jews? If he treasures them, puts them on the palm of his hand, remembers them forever, is loyal and loving toward them, even if they disappoint him, as long as the sun and the moon and the stars work, then that has ramifications, pardon the word, applications to us. God cannot be finished with his people, the Jews. He cannot leave them. He cannot abandon them. As long as the sun and the moon rise in the east each day, Paul says their calling is irrevocable. Say that with me. Irrevocable. It cannot be undone. Their preservation depends, and here it is, on his faithfulness, not theirs, okay? So don't look at them and say, well, they were unfaithful. They rejected the Messiah. Yeah, I know. That's pretty bad, rejecting the Messiah. But their status, their standing with God does not depend on their own behavior. He cannot lie. God can't lie about this. I love Israel forever. He can't lie. He's not telling a lie. I'm going to keep Israel forever and do stuff with them in the future. He cannot lie. He cannot break a promise. He cannot undo a covenant. He made a covenant with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and he can't undo that triple-threaded government, okay? Covenant, rather, okay? Ecclesiastes about lines, ropes with three components in them. Can't be broken, okay? And you and I should rejoice every day that such is the case. We should rejoice every day that God still loves the Jews. You know why? Because it means he cannot break his word to us about the promise of salvation if we believe in his son. Have you ever doubted your salvation? Don't raise your hands. It's a rhetorical question. Most of us have, okay? You're focusing on your worthiness to be saved. What you're looking at is your worth, your worthiness. Lord, I'm not worthy, I just sinned, I just did a bad thing, and I just can't, I do it over and over again. I'm not worthy, okay? I must not be saved. I wouldn't blame you if you rejected me. All right? And so we might doubt our salvation. But you're looking at yourself when you should be looking at, instead of looking at His worthiness to save you. Okay? If you can focus on that, if you can realize that, and if you can understand that, it will make your trip here tonight worthwhile. You need not doubt your salvation ever. If you have asked Jesus to save you, sincerely, how sincerely? Do I have to be really, really, really sincere? No. Okay? You gotta be a little bit sincere, like a mustard seed. which grows into a great tree, okay? Because your salvation doesn't depend on your sincerity. Now you gotta be sincere, yeah. You gotta wanna get saved, you gotta ask for it. but it doesn't depend on how many times you ask for it or how well you ask for it. Or did you go forward in a meeting? It depends on your sincerely asking him once. Once is enough. Now we doubt, but what are we doubting? We're doubting God. We're doubting his hand around us. Should we? No. All right? So you don't need to doubt your salvation if you've sincerely asked him. And of course, a great example is the thief on the cross. What a wonderful example, event. How could you design a book or a story with a more, you know, dramatic ending to it? You know, here is the Savior on the cross. between two thieves, abusing him, and then one wakes up and says, hey, Lord, you know, maybe something's going on here. I just feel a little bit queer, you know, a little bit strange. You know, I don't think you're just like another thief like us. And then he breaks into, he takes a chance. It's a chance of faith, a leap of faith. And he says, Lord, remember me when you come into your own. Now, he's got messed up theology here, okay? The Jews have rejected the kingdom. Jesus is not bringing them their kingdom at this time, all right? But he doesn't know that. What he knows is that the Jews believe Messiah's coming and I'd say, I think maybe this guy on the cross beside us is the Messiah. Maybe He's the Messiah, and He's going to bring us His kingdom. He's going to come down off the cross and bring us His kingdom, okay? And so, Lord, remember, when you come into your kingdom, He doesn't say, Lord, I accept you as my Savior, okay? Now, take me to heaven, you know, forever. He says, Lord, remember me, all right? And what does Jesus do? The most sublimely beautiful effective, wonderful thing that's ever been said from one human to another. This day you will be, you know it, with me in paradise. Is there anything more beautiful than that sentence? And how much faith did the thief have? Not a lot. How much sincerity did he have? A little bit. How much effort did he put into it? It wasn't up to his effort. It was up to Jesus' effort, right, to save him. Please, you know, make sure, like we've got some pastors here around, and make sure that you go home tonight assured of your salvation if you have asked for it. You only need to ask for it once. You probably asked for it a hundred times. I know you. but once would do it, okay? And I got some bad news for you, all right? It's not really bad news. It sounds like bad news, but you know, once Jesus gets a hold of you, guess what? You're his forever, forever. Now you may turn around and say, I don't want Jesus anymore in my life. I want to live for myself. And you live a terrible life for the rest of your life and die that way. Now there is the possibility. that you were never saved, okay? That you weren't sincere when you asked for it or you didn't ask for it. You were just, you know, faking it with the other Christians. That's a possibility. But if you asked once and then decided to live, you know, away from the Lord, you can't undo your salvation. He's gonna get you in the end and you can't get out of it, okay? The good shepherd's not gonna let go of you. He taught very clearly on this subject of can you lose your salvation in John chapter 10. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and he's very assertive, very positive, very forward here, very forceful, Jesus talking. My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me and I give them eternal life and they shall what? Never perish. Now, if you're gonna lose your salvation, you could perish. But Jesus says, you can never perish if you follow me. Neither shall anybody snatch them out of my hand. You're in the hand of Jesus. and he cannot let you go. The truth is that once you've asked Jesus to save you, you cannot get rid of him. You belong to him forever. He paid for you with his blood. Do you think he would ever let go of you? He paid for you with his blood. Is he gonna let go? No. If you need reminding, write this on your hat. Okay, you ready? Got your ballpoint pens out? Get them out. Here it is. I didn't make it. and I can't break it. You know what we're talking about? Your salvation. You didn't make it. and you can't break it. Don't think that you can. You cannot. And if everybody here who has ever asked Christ to save them, ever asked Jesus into their life, went home tonight with full assurance that they know that they're walking in the hand of Jesus, and they have full assurance of their eternal destiny with him, that would be marvelous. That would be well worthwhile than us coming here tonight. Okay, number two. Oh man, you're gonna have to come back next week, okay? I don't know if I'm going to make this. There's no such country, well the land is not Israel, it's Palestine. Now here's the refuting argument. Here's the argument back. There's no such country as Palestine. There never has been a country named Palestine. Oh, wasn't it back then? No, not a country. We're talking about a country, not a territory that somebody named. And actually during the Ottoman Empire, they didn't talk about Palestine. They talked about Syria and Southern Syria. And the Syrian government in Damascus will tell you to this day that Israel is part of Syria. It always was during the Ottoman Empire. They have a claim to it. They also claim Lebanon, by the way, for the same reasons. It was Southern Syria during the Ottoman Empire for 500 years. And more recently, the territory administered by the British after World War I was called Palestine. It was called the Palestine Mandate, okay? But there was no Arab government there. There was no Arab country there. It was governed by the British. as a mandate or a job or a task from the League of Nations. They were supposed to create two independent countries, one for the Jews and one for the Arabs, out of the mandated territory. At the time of the Roman Empire now, it got called something else for a while. It was called Judea by the Romans for 150 years, and Israel by the Jews, generally speaking, during the Roman period. Later, in 136, after the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Romans renamed it Palestine. for the ancient Philistines. Then a couple of hundred years later, when Rome became Christian, they started referring to it as the Holy Land until the Muslims arrived in the 600s. And then it was called Syria until the British took over in 1919. And then the League of Nations said, okay, you take the Palestinian mandate and the French will take the Syrian Lebanese mandate. And there's a couple of old maps. And just to show you what Israel looked like, you know, in accordance with the United Nations plan. And there's two different maps there. And as you can see, one map is in, I think it's in German, okay? Yudishersthat. Anybody speak German here? How's my German doing there? Okay. And you'll see that Israel was, you know, not very big. And I always loved the fact that, you know, the UN thought they was pulling a fast one on Israel by giving them the Negev desert. And the Negev desert today is like, you know, super important to Israel. Okay. In Matthew 2, it says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, not Palestine, and that Joseph was warned in a dream that he could take Jesus and Mary home to Israel, not Palestine, okay? You like that nice Christmas scene? Okay, are you taking pictures of it, is that it? Or what, you got it? Okay. The Arabs were there first, okay? This is the silliest, this is the biggest lie of all. The Arabs arrived in the 600s with the great Arab explosion under Muhammad, okay? Called Islam, okay? It exploded for a hundred years and it grew outwards from Arabia all the way over to India and then all the way over to Spain, all right? In a hundred years. Now it did that, but it only did that when they were motivated by Muhammad and this new religion of Islam in the 6th and 700th AD. So the Arabs haven't been there first. All kinds of other peoples have been there for a long time. If you go to Egypt today and you admire the pyramids, okay, the Arabs are there to take your money and put you on a donkey or something, take some pictures, sell you some souvenirs. Okay, great. But lurking in the background are the, what do you call them? It's just escaped me here for a minute because I wasn't going to mention these guys. It's the native Christian population. What are they called? They're Coptics, thank you very much, and I'm sorry, I apologize to any Coptics in the audience tonight. Because there's a Coptic church around the corner down there somewhere on White Lane or something. Leanda and I have been there with Voice of Martyrs table, book table, at their annual fair, okay? The Coptics are lurking in the background saying to themselves, those Arabs that are showing you around the pyramid, Their ancestors didn't build the pyramids. They arrived here in the 700s and conquered Egypt. We were here all over Egypt, the Coptics. We're the original Egyptians. We built the pyramids. They're very proud of that. And they would like people to know, but they can't broadcast it until they get out of Egypt, because the Arabs like to take the credit for the pyramids, but their ancestors didn't build them. This claim is the silliest of all since present-day Israel is loaded with Jewish archaeological sites such as Solomon's Fortress and stables at Megiddo and the City of David. We've been to Megiddo. It overlooks the plain of Armageddon where there's supposed to be a big battle. It's a big plain where big armies could array themselves. And up on the hill is this fortress that Solomon built. And it's like a garrison fortress, you know, around the edges of his empire. And it has stables in it. The stables are nice. There are stone mangers in it. So the horses, they got, you know, deluxe goods. These were Solomon's horses, so he treated them well. And that stuff is still there today. Well, when was Solomon there? About 900 to 1,000, B.C. That's 3,000 years ago. So I can prove to you tonight, if we flew over, okay, and took you to Megiddo, that Solomon and his Israelites were there 3,000 years ago, you know, overlooking the plain of Armageddon. I can prove it. Anybody can prove it. Now that's just one site. Another thing that has exploded in the last 10, 20 years in Jerusalem, right on the steps of the temple, okay? Now the Arabs restrict all archeological work in and around and under the temple. They don't want the truth to get out. And the last thing they would want is for anybody to find the Ark of the Covenant, oh my goodness, the world would go crazy and there would be no more, you couldn't lie anymore about the Arabs being there first. Okay, so right by the steps of the temple mount, okay, close to it, within sight, here's the temple mount, just like this, right in front of you, okay? And then you get up on these scaffoldings, at least that's what it was three years ago, and you look down and here they're digging out the city of David. Now the Temple Mount dates back to Herod, you know, and some of those guys, about 2,000 years ago. But the city of David dates back another 1,000 years, 3,000 years ago, 1,000 BC, and is proof. They have a museum now about David's city. In other words, all the stuff that King David did, they're digging it up. and putting it in a museum. How are you gonna say the Arabs were there first? They weren't, okay? So there's, you know, just the whole country is archeological proof that the Jews were there first. They claim there was no temple on the temple platform. Oh, that's interesting. If there was, you know, no temple on the platform, why was the platform built? Why was this massive support platform built? if there was no temple erected on it. Oddly enough, and here's the clincher, okay, and my Sunday school class probably gets tired of seeing slides about this and hearing about this, but this is unbelievable proof of the existence of the second temple. Palestinians, a lot of them say, no, there was no temple, no temple there. Well, you could look at the temple mount and say, well, what was that for? It must have had something on it, okay? What did it have? You know, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock have not been there forever. They've only been there from the 700s, okay? Our era, A.D. So what was there before that the big platform was for? Well, since some of their literature, they slip up. And Amir Safadi found this, okay? 1926, an Arab publication, and it says, we built the Al-Aqsa Mosque on top of the temple site, or the Dome of the Rock. Now, why would they say that in 1926? It's because to the Muslims, it's very important that you know that if you go into the Dome of the Rock, okay, you are standing on the site where Abraham almost sacrificed his son. Is that special? Well, it's very special to the Muslims and to the Jews. And so the Muslims will say, we built our, you know, dome on the site of the temple, which was the Holy of Holies was built where Abraham almost sacrificed his son. Okay. So they admit it. All right. But just in case you have any doubts about a temple, In Jerusalem, I'm going to refer you to the Gentiles, to the nations, to the Roman Empire. And we go back 2,000 years, the Jews revolt in 66 AD. The Romans clean them up, clean house, all the way to the temple. And the temple is full of beautiful stuff, wonderful stuff, and valuable artifacts, okay? The Romans looted the temple. Okay, what did they do with the loot they took at home? What did Romans do after a victory? Several things. One was a triumph, and a triumph was a victory parade, and they would parade the slaves, okay, and the loot from the victorious battle or war. Okay, so they would have a parade and parade all this stuff around. And then Titus, who won the battle, got an extra honor and they built an arch for him. And it's, you know, quite large, not as large as the one in Paris, but it's quite large. And guess what? It's still there today. And in 1999, my son John and I, he was visiting with, we met in Europe. We did five countries. And when we came to Rome, we went straight to the Forum and we went straight to Titus' Arch. Why? Because I wanted to see The archaeological proof on the side of Titus's arch that there had been a temple in Jerusalem 2,000 years before. And there it is on the side of the arch, okay. Roman soldiers and servants. This is what's inside Titus's arch. Look and see if you can recognize the menorah right in front of your face. Now do you realize what this proves? And it's in Rome, 600 miles from Jerusalem. It's not the Jews. The Jews are not. They didn't make this. The Romans did. And so the ancient Romans, who are now gone, celebrating Titus' victory, you know, which is now all gone sort of thing, gave us an irrefutable proof of the existence of the temple in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. There it is, okay? The Romans are telling you, the Romans are screaming in your face, in your ear, that we sacked Jerusalem and we got the loot out of the temple and here's what we got. And they show it to you and they're proud of it and they're long gone. But the Jews are still there and the Jews were there first. There's also a biblical record. Hold up your Bible, anybody got a Bible? I know you don't bring your Bibles anymore. Anybody got a Bible? Hold it up. Okay, let me ask you a question. Now turn, turn to Genesis. Does Genesis tell you that the Jews were in the land of Israel? Mmm, yeah, a little bit. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the 12, they were in the land for a while, right? Then they left, they went to Egypt. Okay, Book of Exodus, second book in the Bible. Does it say the Jews were in Israel? Well, no, it says they were in Egypt. Then they came out of Egypt, they went to Sinai, and then they traveled around and they built a tabernacle. Okay, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. Not yet in the land. Numbers, not yet in the land, but they start moving. Deuteronomy, they're standing at the edge of the land and they get a second giving of the law. Preparatory to going into the land. When do they go in the land? The book of Joshua. Turn to the book of Joshua. And you will see that they go in the land. They cross the Jordan River. And the priests stand in the middle with the Ark of the Covenant. And the river stops. Okay. And they cross into Canaan. All right. The promised land. So now in the book of Joshua they're in the land. Okay, what comes after Joshua? Judges? Are they in the land? Yes, they're in the land. Ruth, are they in the land? Right, and who comes to join them? A Moabitess, can you say that? A Moabitess. A Moabitess woman named Ruth. Ruth comes to join them in, my God was going to be your God, she said to Naomi, okay. She comes to join them in the land and they weren't even living particularly for God. Okay, what comes after Ruth? First and second? Samuel? Are they in the land? You betcha, all through first and second Samuel, first and second Kings, first and second Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, okay. They're in captivity, but they're writing to people back in the land. Jeremiah, he's writing to people in Babylon from the land. Ezekiel is writing from Babylon back to the land. And then they get back in the land with Ezra and Nehemiah, and they're there in the land the whole time. And you say, oh, well, that's the Bible. I don't believe the Bible. Okay, well, that's okay. That's fine. But it still is a historical claim that dates back to at least, you know, 600 years before Christ. And you have, you know, documentary proof, people saying the Jews were in the land back then, okay? And you don't have any books even sacred books, even the Koran saying the opposite. Nobody says they weren't in the land way back then. Nowadays they do, but they're just talking, they're just wishing out loud, oh I wish those Jews had never been in the land. You know, oh they were never in the land. But the Bible is documentary proof ignore God, leave God out of the equation, just treat the Bible as a historical document, and it does date back to way before Christ, and it attests to the fact that the Jews were in the land. And if that's not enough, go look at the stables of Solomon, okay? Only the most ignorant, I'm getting really nasty here, obtuse people, would deny that the Jews were in Israel at least 1700 years before the Arabs arrived. And I have here Dr. Mensink and he's got some very incredible good news for us, okay, about all this bad news, some good news out of it. Here he is. All right, this morning I had breakfast with a surgeon that I've, a Jewish surgeon I've known for 20 years, all right? And we've been fairly close over the years. And to make a long story short, last week he bought a gun. Never had a gun before. And in fact, most of the Jews locally are buying guns in our county. This is amazing, all right? And he was an anti-gunner. Well, he did. Okay, number two, the interesting thing is he, I don't want to give away too much so you don't know who he is, but bottom line, He is very disenchanted with the local Kabbad and the Jewish community. Do you follow what I'm saying? For a reason. And we talked quite a bit about, you know, things. And bottom line, he needs to forgive. You know what I mean? And that's okay. We'll talk about that. But out of that, he is more open right now to looking at another type of spirituality than Judaism. All right? That's amazing. Okay? One of the things, another thing I want to mention, all right, and most of you don't know this, but my, one of my daughters and her husband are missionaries in Beirut right now today. All right? Beirut is a, Lebanon is a mess. All right? It is, just living is hard. Why are they there? In fact, they went back probably about a month ago. Why? Because Beirut and Lebanon has never been more open to the gospel in the last 100 years. Here's the message, ladies and gentlemen. God is not out of control. He is in control. Remember that. Give Him the glory. I just wanted you to hear that from the horse's mouth. Pardon me, Dr. Mensink, okay? Isn't that wonderful though? Okay, and that's God moving in this mess. In 1517, in case you're interested, by the way, that's the year that Martin Luther pinned the 95 Theses on the Wittenberg church door and started the Reformation. In 1517 also, the Ottoman Empire conquered the region, you know, the region of around Israel. ruling it until the British conquered it in 1917. Now, you've heard this stuff before, so this is a little bit of a summary. The region was ruled under the British mandate for Palestine until 1948, when the Jewish state of Israel was proclaimed in part of the ancient land of Israel. All right? Now, question number four. Israel has no right over the land. All right? has no right of the land, shouldn't be here, shouldn't exist. Let's get rid of it. Let's drive them into the sea, from the river to the sea. Sean Hannity said last night to Donald Trump, he had Donald Trump on for an hour in his show last night. And he said, they're out there chanting from the river to the sea. They don't even know what it means. Ask them what the river is. Which river is it? What sea is it? I better go home and look at my map, you know, if they ever look at a map. In 1917, in the middle of World War I, the British published the Balfour Declaration, which said, His Majesty's government views with favor the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Okay, that's very nice, but you got a problem. It's the Turkish Empire. What are they going to say about it? Well, the Ottoman Empire, which controlled most of the Middle East, lost the war. And the British and French who defeated her took much of her land away to divide among themselves. And then there was a peace conference in 1919, and they put together a thing called the League of Nations. The League of Nations started handing out jobs to various victorious countries. The League of Nations, as was the United Nations in 1946, was a club of victorious countries which had defeated Germany and her allies in either war or both wars, okay? So the club got together to divide up the spoils, right? Okay? And by the way, one thing about America in both those wars, it did not take any land, it didn't gain any land from, it was just like on principle, we don't do that, okay? But they didn't join the League of Nations after World War I and that, you know, really sort of maybe had some bad effects on international relations. But they learned from history and they did join, now you may not like them, okay, but they did join in 1946 the United Nations to help keep the peace in the world, okay, which you can decide, you know, that they've been more or less successful. And the new League of Nations met in Paris in 1919, and then again next year in San Remo, Italy, and gave the French and British how convenient. Who do you think was dominating the conference, okay? the French and British, I'll bet, the job of creating modern countries out of the former Ottoman lands. That task was called the Mandates. But that's the legal sequence, that's the legal basis of Israel, you see. The Ottomans had it, the British won it, and the British got it from the League of Nations, took care of it for almost 30 years, gave it back to the United Nations. The United Nations voted for two countries. One accepted and one did not, okay? Very, very important sequence of history here. The new League of Nations met in Paris in 1919 in San Remo, Italy, gave the French okay, and they were called mandates. And continuing the idea, the question, under what right does Israel occupy its territory? What right did the two World War I allies, that's the French and the British, I hope you know by now, have to carve up the Turkish Empire. Why should they carve up the Turkish Empire? Who gave them the right to do that and then to hand it off to Israel? It was the right of conquest. The British and French had lost lots of soldiers, spent lots of money on World War I, and they wanted something to show for their efforts. Okay, so it was by right of conquest that the British and French could make new countries as they wished out of the former Ottoman territories. They had won the long bloody war and Turkey had lost. Now that we lose sight of in all of this talking, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the Palestinians say, the Jews have no right to be there, blah, blah, blah. But the British won the territory. and they won the mandate from the League of Nations, and they tried to make two countries that couldn't do it, handed it back to the United Nations, and the United Nations voted. You know, sort of not all the countries of the world, but all the countries that were in the club at that time representing the world, and it's as legal as you can get. Okay, do you see what I'm saying here? In 1938, the British offered the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine, they tried at this point, a small strip of land each for their respective homelands. The Arabs refused, they wouldn't even talk about it and they started fighting and protesting and rioting. and, you know, protesting against the British offer, you know, and that ended that. So the Jews did not have to make a decision on that account. That was the white paper in 1938. It was the first time that the Palestinians were offered a country. Do you know how many times they have been offered a country? I've counted seven, okay? I don't think anybody has really counted it as far as I can appreciate. I've seen different books on it, and they list different events, different conferences, and there appears to be at least five, maybe six or seven, times that they've been offered a country. The first time is in 1938. The British did it. The British had the mandate, the job, and they said, here, we'll give you Palestinians this, and we'll give the Jews this. Two little countries, okay? And the rest will be Transjordan. And the Arabs said, no, they wouldn't even discuss it. Blah, blah, blah. So that finished that, that sunk that. Now the war comes along and Britain is sympathizing with the Arabs and they restricted immigration of the Jews to Palestine. They restricted it from Europe. You know what was going on in Europe. I don't have to tell you about the Holocaust. and the Germans, and Hitler's war on the Jews. And this is going on year after year in the early 40s, you know, for four, five, six years. And many Jews wanted to, tried to escape to Palestine, and the British would have none of it. I like the British. I come from Canada. I had a British flag, you know, in school, grade school. Picture of the Queen. We used to sing, God Save the Queen. You know, I like all that stuff. I like the redcoats on the Mounties, you know. And I like the idea of the British Empire, you know. Did you know that Bermuda voted against independence and the Bahamas? You know why? And so Gibraltar also, Gibraltar is mostly Spanish, but they vote against independence or like Gibraltar's case, rejoining Spain. You know, they were conquered from Spain by the British back in 1701. You know why they vote against becoming independent or rejoining Spain? Because they like the British so much. The British rule well. So there's a commercial for that, okay? But seriously, I mean, okay. So enough of that chauvinism. So the British offered them a country and they refused it. The Arabs refused and that ended that. World War II starts. After the war, Britain became fed up with the fighting between the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine and hands the problem over to the new United Nations, okay? United Nations started in what city? What city in 1946? San Francisco. And after two years, they were switched to New York, okay? And I don't know when the building was built, probably in the 50s, okay? The famous building. But at any rate, the early, you know, the new United Nations, it took this job seriously. It said the British hand it over by the mandate, they don't wanna, you know, they can't, blah, blah, blah, they can't get them together, so we'll go over. So they send a commission over to discuss with the Palestinians. Now remember, the Palestinians are both Jewish and Muslim. Golda Meir, when she's famous Prime Minister of Israel, back before 47, 48, when she had her passport, guess what it said on the passport? Palestine. And then it would have a British crown above that. because it was administered by the British. She was Jewish. What is that? Well, the Jews were Palestinians. During World War II, Jews volunteered with the British. They didn't like the British particularly. One guy said, we're going to fight the Germans as if the white paper, which gave us that 1938 country, doesn't exist. and we'll fight the white paper like the Germans don't exist, okay? So the Jews were caught but twixt in between. They didn't like the British that much, but the British were by far the lesser of two evils, okay? And so they volunteered, they fought in the British army, they fought in Italy. I met a veteran from there in Montreal, living out his years in Montreal, and he was a Palestinian Jew, fought in the Palestinian Jewish Brigade in the British Army. Ever heard about those guys? I'll bet not. But they were the veterans who filtered back to Palestine in 46, 47. And guess what? They became the core of Okay? Haganah, Palmak, Irgun, okay? The militia groups with which the Jews were fighting the British and preparing to fight the Arabs, preparing for independence. Okay, so, the Arabs would not even speak to the commission. The Jews cooperated fully. They showed the commissioners how they were preparing to become a country. I talked about that a little bit earlier. The Commission went back to the UN and shared its findings and the UN set a vote for November 29th, 1948 to approve the two tiny countries. Now you all know about May 14th, I hope, right? May 14, 1948, the establishment of Israel, right? The declaration of the existence of Israel. A country was born in a day, says Isaiah. That's a kind of a hard thing to do, but it came true May 14, 1948. You all know that date, right? This is the other date, maybe even more important. Okay. This is the one that the Jews celebrated around the world. This is the one they named streets after. Okay. David, have you ever seen a November 29th street or, you know, building? I'm talking to the other David there too. He lived in Israel. Okay. He hasn't seen one, but I've seen him on, on where? YouTube. Okay. So, um, November 29th, 1948, now the year before independence, okay? So the commission has gone back, they've reported to the UN. And the UN was, you know, they took all this stuff seriously. So they examined the evidence, the testimonies, the stuff that the commissioners brought back from Palestine. And guess who looked good? And guess who looked not so good? Okay? Guess who talked to them and gave, you know, evidence and stuff of seriously trying to, you know, make a country? And guess who didn't? Okay? The Commission went back to the U.N. and shared its findings. And the U.N. set a vote for November 29th, 1948 to approve the two, two, not one, two tiny countries. Okay? The vote would require a two-thirds majority out of the 51 original members of the UN. And the 13 Arab countries quickly declared they would vote against the resolution. So do the arithmetic, okay? They would require how many votes to overcome the 13? 26, okay. They would need 26 votes to overcome the 13, all right? So, the voting started on the radio. Jews around the world were listening avidly and they did not think they had the votes. Now, once the voting started, you would think it's too late to do anything, right? You want to see a miracle? Okay, well hang on and look at this, all right? Unexpectedly, okay, because they voted country by country, and I think a brilliant scholar in my Sunday school class, I think it was you, Becky, you looked up the record, the voting record. Actually then, I tried looking it up, I couldn't find it. That's why I call you brilliant, because you found it. Okay, it's exciting to see the voting record going from Afghanistan, okay, in alphabetical order. down the list. And for a long time, the totals kind of were equal. Well, the Jews weren't going to win statehood with an equal vote. And they had several guys that they just didn't think liked them, several guys they didn't know about. And what happened was, The Soviet Union, okay, and its eastern satellites, and it accounted for and it led and it dominated, you know, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, you get the picture? Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine. I think Ukraine was listed as a separate country for voting in the UN. And all of those Soviet satellites voted for Israel because Stalin decided that he would like to bug the British And so he'd like Israel to be established, okay? And so they continued the vote. The United States voted for it. The UK abstained, perhaps that was appropriate after the way they had behaved with the Jews. France voted for it, some of the big countries voted for it, and that kind of led some of the smaller countries, South American countries and stuff. And the vote came out with some abstentions, 33 to 10. And the Jews in Palestine and around the world celebrated the outcome of the UN vote. David Ben-Gurion was standing on a balcony and it was a big crowd there in Tel Aviv, below the balcony of Jews. And they went wild and they're dancing and celebrating and doing everything on the night of November 29th, 1947. Now the British were still there and the British announced then they were going to leave in the spring. And so the Jews hung on and waited. Now, here's a little summary of what happened, in case you have some confusion. The British won land from the Turks in World War I, and they held it for the League of Nations, and then handed it over to the United Nations, which voted in favor, not the British, okay, all by themselves, the United Nations. See, God arranged things Because if the British by themselves had made, created Israel, then people could criticize and say, oh, that's the British Empire, they're colonialists, they're this, they're that, we don't like the British. But it wasn't the British, it was the United Nations, young and innocent, that voted for the establishment of these two countries. And that is the legal basis for the Jews to establish a country. in British Palestine, okay? And then the summary is that the British handed it back over to the United Nations, which voted in favor of a Jewish homeland in 1947, which the Jews then declared to be the new state of Israel on May 14th, 1948. Now, objection number five, two, and big lie about Israel. Peace is possible. We all love peace. We all want peace. If we just try harder. There have been at least seven major attempts to bring the Israelis and the Arabs together to make a deal for the establishment of Palestine as a sovereign country out of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. At least seven major attempts. The British tried. We talked about that one. The UN tried. In 1947-48, the U.S. tried four times to get the Palestinians to accept an offer. President Clinton got Yasser Arafat to accept the Oslo Accords, which could have led to a Palestinian state. But Arafat reneged on the Accords when he returned home. Clinton later called him, and I think it was when he was advising Bush about setting up international relations, and Clinton to Bush called him the biggest liar he had ever met. Not Bush, Yasser Arafat. The U.S. tried three more times in the early 2000s with a couple of extremely generous offers. All were refused. You got that? Seven times. This is what I tell my liberal friends, okay? Don't cry to me about the Palestinians. They've had seven times to make it. Well, yeah, but it wasn't a large budget. Yeah, but the Jews didn't have much of a country either, and they took it and ran with it. And look what they've done with it, okay? Even if they had stayed in the original territory, it'd still be a miracle country today. All right? And the Arabs could have gone with them. The Arabs could have worked with the Jews, provided the labor. They could have provided some of the brain power. They could have provided, you know, even fought in the army. There are some Arabs who are in the Israeli army, but they have to be, you know, native Israelis and they have to be, you know, proven loyal to Israel. There's some Druze in there. The Arabs could have worked with Israel. They would, could have had a, remember I said, like, they've got this wonderful coastline on Gaza. You know, on the Mediterranean, you ever seen the Mediterranean? You ever seen the Tel Aviv, the beaches there? Well, they have the same thing in Gaza, except there's mines in the sand. So if you walk over, you might get blown up. And if they cleared out the mines, you know, they would have one and built like, remember I said, some casinos and some hotels. They had a wonderful tourist trade. They're between the pyramids and the holy sites of Israel. My goodness, you can't get any better than that. And they could be rich, rich, rich on the tourist trade. And they, Don't catch on, unfortunately. Maybe not that it's all about getting rich, but it's all about peace, so you can have peace for your children and your family, raise your family in peace, instead of telling them that they have to go kill Jews and get shot in the process. Can you imagine raising your kids that way? Tell your kids, I got to go stab a Jew, drive a car over a Jew. And they do it in school constantly until the kids imbibe that and they are successfully indoctrinated and they grow up that way. What became apparent, okay, now this is becoming obvious to everybody now, is that peace with the Palestinians is impossible, all right? because they have irrational expectations from the river to the sea. They don't want a little country. They want to wipe Israel off the map. And all of their maps show Palestine as a unity with Israel, not visible at all. There's no Israel on the Palestinian maps. You understand? So what do they want? Do they want a country? Do they want peace with Israel? No. They want all of Israel converted into Palestinian territory. All right? So there's no compromising with them. There's no dealing with them. It makes peace impossible. The Israelis have pointed out that the trouble with having a peace conference is that you don't have anybody on the other side. There's nobody there to talk to. Okay? We've got to keep going here. They really don't want to make peace with Israel. Let me list some of the obstacles to an Israel-Palestinian peace. Okay, oh, there's one obstacle, okay, right there. How would you like this guy for your grandpa, okay? That's Mahmoud Abbas. Now, in about 2005, he had a little election on the West Bank and they elected him president of, I don't know what they call it, the PLA, Palestinian Liberation Authority, I think. The organization, the PLO, is gone. That's old. That was Yasser Arafat. But this is the new guy, successor to Yasser Arafat. What I want to say is this. He was elected once. He's never had an election since. He's president for life, or you could call him dictator, okay? And he's the guy you would have to deal with about the West Bank in order to create a country of Palestine. Okay, well, let's see how that would work. Well, there's some obstacles. Number one, Gaza and the West Bank have two different governments. What's Gaza ruled by? Hamas. They fight with the PLA. They have had many little mini wars with the PLA. Lucky they don't join territories so that the Gaza and the Hamas cannot get to them. But they fight. They don't like each other. They hate each other. So how can you put those two parts together to make a country? You can't do it. It wouldn't work. Number two obstacle. Gaza is ruled by Hamas, which declares that it does not want peace. Don't talk to us about peace. We don't want peace. We want war eternally until Israel is wiped off the map. Now, if you disagree with that, you cannot talk to them at all. And we disagree with that. Number three, the guy I showed you the picture of, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the PLA in the West Bank, refused the last two offers of a country because he probably knew, or probably because he knew he would be assassinated if he made peace with Israel. Sadat, Anwar Sadat, great man. President of Egypt in the 70s. The president of Egypt was assassinated two years after making peace with Israel. He was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood. They didn't make the peace, he did. He stuck his neck out, way out, and it got cut off because he made peace with Israel. And Mahmoud Abbas, he knows he'd be shot the next day after he came back with a peace treaty. Yasser Arafat in 1993, Clinton had Arafat and Rabin. In the White House, on the gardens, shaking hands. They didn't want to do it. Yasser, our friend, didn't want to do it. He didn't want to shake Rabin's hand, a Jew's hand. And he, you know, Clinton kind of got him over. Come on over here, come on. There's a lot in it for you, Yasser, come on. Now work with me here. Okay, take this Rabin's hand there, so we can take some pictures, you know, and Clinton's smiling, you know. He got the two of them together. They worked out an agreement that would lead to a Palestinian country if certain things happened. Like, for example, if the PLO stopped shooting at Jews, okay? They had to do certain things and they would get some territory from Israel and they would create a Palestinian country. Okay, so Yasser Arafat signed this, said, yes, okay. He goes back to Palestine, he says, in Arabic, which most of you don't understand, Don't worry. We're going to kill the Jews anyways. Peace treaty is not, you know, don't worry. That's just a silly thing for those silly people. The Americas make them happy. Okay. So give us more money. We fooled them again, all right? And he's permitted to do that by number four, okay? No, number five, which we'll come to. So number four, Muslims cannot really make peace with Israel because their Quran teaches them that all formerly Muslim clans must be reconquered. Okay, and number five, the Quran also teaches that when Muslims are weak, they may make treaties of convenience with their enemies until they are strong enough to break the treaties. Now, they will keep a treaty. Egypt has kept its peace treaty with Israel since 1978. And that's, you know, a little while now. That's, what's that, 50 years or something? So, you know, they've kept that treaty for 50 years. They're not really just waiting to get stronger than Israel and attack Israel again. I think they participated. They took the brunt of the four major wars. I'm going to teach you someday about the four wars of Israel, okay? The four major wars of Israel in the 60s and 70s, they took the brunt of it. Egypt took the brunt of the fighting. After the Yom Kippur War, they said, enough is enough. Our allies are not fighting as hard as us. We're letting us down. We're just up against a brick wall here. Can we take another approach? And Anwar Sadat got on his plane. He went to Jerusalem. What? He went to Jerusalem. And he went to the Knesset, their parliament, and talked to them and said, I'd like to make peace with you. The American president, Jimmy Carter, you may not like Jimmy Carter, but he did this. He invited them over and he twisted arms and bribed them until they signed a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. And then two years later, Sadat, who signed the treaty, was killed by Muslims. Not Americans, not Jews. Muslims killed him in the Muslim Brotherhood. Okay? So, watch out. Because there's some obstacles. Now, for these reasons, I, who am nobody, nothing like an authority or anything like that on Israel, very flatteringly, Emily, who knows my weaknesses in her interview on Israel with me, called me an expert, okay? And I still remember that. I'm still glowing from that. I'm not. But after reading and listening and talking and debating about Israel for decades and decades, 40, 50 years, I've concluded this, and I was a two-state solution man. That is, I believe that solution to peace was to make two states, make a Palestinian state, side by side with the Israeli state. I have since concluded that a two-state solution to the problem is not feasible. I now believe in one state solution as the only way to peace. Now, that's my personal opinion. You don't have to believe that, okay? I just offer it, you know, to say, like, after going through all of this stuff and listening and, you know, reading and all this stuff, and there's seven times they're offered a country, I think that my solution for peace, now, I know you're gonna object. You're gonna say, well, this won't work either. My solution is for the Israelis to take all the land within the borders of Israel, and the Palestinians go live somewhere else. Now you say that sounds awfully, what's the word, insensitive, David, okay? And I would say in 1947, 48, when Israel was being established, okay, do you know what happened around North Africa and the Middle East? I've seen empty synagogues. Synagogues, well, one anyways, a synagogue that was emptied in 1948 in Northern Iraq. Why would they have, was it disease, a war? No, you know what it was? Establishment of Israel. So Iraq said, you dirty Jews, making a country over there out of our Palestinian land, get out of here, okay? And they told them to get out. And all over North Africa and the Middle East, the same thing happened in all those Muslim countries. And you know where the poor Jews, they lost everything. They didn't carry a whole lot. And you know where they went? They went to Israel. But Israel was brand new baby country, okay? Didn't have much yet. Didn't have like big buildings and hotels to put all these people in. And they came flooding in from all over the Middle East. And the Jews had to set up camps, like concentration camps, tents, you know, put them in the tents. And you know, the first thing they started doing with them after checking them for health, okay, which had never been checked before, started teaching them, guess what? Hebrew, Hebrew. You've just heard about a double miracle, okay? The regathering of the people. Why? How? Did they want to come? Did they say, oh yeah, let's go build Israel? No, they were kicked out of their countries and they flooded into Israel. And Israel had this policy from the beginning. Now, why didn't the Arabs do this? Because... I don't, you know, they don't, they're just not, they don't have the same mores, the same values that the Jews do. Where do the Jews get some of their values from? From the Ten Commandments, from the Old Testament. And the Jews said this about all the people arriving, all these poor, diseased people from all over North Africa, you know, Jewish people. They said, when you get off the plane and you set foot on Israeli territory, you automatically become, guess what? An Israeli, if you're Jewish, you can't go do this, an Israeli citizen. What country ever has done that in the history of the world? Okay. Set foot in our country. You're a citizen with full rights and benefits. Even though we're a poor country and things are looking very bleak at the time, we've got five Arab countries attacking us. We still welcome you. Come on in. Come on in. Here's the flag flying, you know, with the star of David on it, the two blue bars. Okay. Isaiah 11 says, God will set up a banner for his people to call them for the four corners of the world for the second time. Because the first time was out of Babylon. But the second time is for the four corners of the world. It never happened before in history. It did happen in 47, 48. And all those Jews were taken in. They all became citizens automatically. And their grandchildren are prospering and doing well now. You know, the old story, doctors, lawyers, you know, since coming to Israel. Unfortunately, Israel seems doomed to endless conflict and hostility until the Antichrist comes, makes an agreement with them. And he's going to confirm that agreement for one week, but then he's going to break it. And it seems like even the Antichrist cannot bring Israel long-term peace. But the good news is there is another one coming on a white horse, read Revelation 19, to destroy the earthly country armies that will attack Israel at the end of the tribulation. And then finally Israel will be at peace for a thousand years and will rule the world with their Messiah King. And I don't know where that T came from, I'm sorry. Okay. Satan will be restrained. It says in Revelation 20, the angel, an angel cast Satan. He cast him into a bottomless pit and shut him up, set a seal on him. So he should, here it is, deceive the nations no more. In other words, what's he doing out there today? Deceiving the nations. When the Holy Spirit and the church is raptured and goes to heaven, What's going to happen? It's going to be the greatest deception of all time, okay? Read 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. Satan will be restrained. He cast him into a bottom pit, set a seal on him that he should deceive the nations no more. Till the thousand years were finished. Read Revelation 20 and verse 3. Okay, where does this irrational undeserved hatred of Israel come from? Revelation 12, 17 says the dragon was enraged. with the woman who seems to symbolize Israel in Revelation 12. Satan hates Israel with a passion we cannot fathom. And he deceived the country so they will share the hatred with him. We can feel sorry for those who hurt Israel because Zechariah says they're touching the apple of his eye and they're gonna be severely punished. So everybody who's hurting Israel today is gonna pay for it. You and me are called on to stand with Israel. God promised Abraham he would bless those who blessed his family and curse those who cursed them. That promise is still active today. Do you believe that? The promise is still active today. It still works. And we need to choose whether we're going to be a blessing or a curse to God's people. Which one do you want to be? A blessing or a curse? but be prepared to be persecuted if you choose to stand with Israel. Oh my, the persecution has already started outside on our sign. As you drive by, you can see the evidence. Will you covenant with me to stand with Israel and pray for them and give to them and shelter them if necessary? Okay, well, let's stand and we're gonna close in prayer. All right. Thank you for being patient. Thank you for putting up with everything tonight. What I did was I bought a new laptop and Rory's been helping me learn PowerPoint instead of Google Slides. And everything has to be adjusted. So I arrived and I didn't get here early enough. So we lost 10 minutes at the beginning. Thank you for your patience. I'm thrilled that you're standing for Israel. Okay? And I'm going to ask God to bless you. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time together. We're a little bit tired. Take us safely home, we pray. And in the days and months and years ahead, help us to stand with your people, Israel. Not that they're perfect, not that they're even saved necessarily, but because they're still your people and the apple of your eye. And we claim the blessing, Lord, from Genesis 12. on us, your people, as we help and sustain and support your people, the Jewish people, and the citizens of Israel. We pray for Israel, Lord, for the peace of Jerusalem. Defend Israel. Be with the IDF. Be with Micah Carlson, Lord, whose dad is standing here at the front of this auditorium. And bless all of the IDF. Bless our team over there, led by Brandon. And Keith, be with them, Lord. Keep them safe. Make them a great blessing to Israel, we pray. And make us also a blessing. Help us to choose carefully and to stand with Israel by the power and support of your son, the Lord Jesus, in whose name we pray. And they all said, amen. Thanks for joining us for another lesson. We hope that this message is a blessing for you and helps you grow towards a more mature understanding of God's word. For more information about our ministry, we invite you to check out our website at rockharborchurch.net. Until next time, remember, keep looking up for our redemption draws near.