Hello and welcome to the Anchor Podcast, a ministry of Rock Harbor Church. We want to help guide and grow you in your walk with the Lord by providing an in-depth study of God's word. So please grab your Bibles and let's set a course for spiritual maturity. Here's our guest speaker with this week's message. I know Pastor Brandon's not here and that's very disappointing. He's away in Oklahoma, as you know, serving the Lord out there and spreading the good news about remnant churches and the end times. And he's really in demand, Pastor Brandon, and it takes a lot of maturity on our part to share him with the rest of the churches. It's hard, isn't it? And I thought, not so much that I would be here really in place of Brandon, but more that I think a lot of folks like the Wednesday night service and they don't like skipping it except for the breaks, you know, at Christmas and summer. So I took a chance and I told Brandon, I said, I wouldn't be able to do what you do, but I could fill in and do something that might be of some value. And if you want to, I'll take that Wednesday. And he thought maybe that would be okay. So thank you for coming. I know you didn't come because of me, you came because of the food. And I want to tell you that I made a big sacrifice to do this tonight. A big, big sacrifice, all right? And I want to make sure you know about it and appreciate it. I didn't eat, okay? Because... I didn't want to be bogged down up here and excusing myself, you know, for burping. And so I made the ultimate sacrifice, all right, because I come Wednesday nights for that wonderful potluck. I just love the potluck. How many of you like the potluck here every Wednesday night? All right. It's just wonderful and it's a wonderful time of fellowship and we've got a special topic tonight and I've got a couple of surprises for you during the next two and a half hours. And so let's get started. Let's get started with a word of prayer. And if you're still seeking your seat, just go ahead and take that last bite. And thank you, Father, for this food, for this dinner, for this meal, the physical meal, we pray that you would also nourish us spiritually. from your word and from your hand moving in history, and we pray that the Lord Jesus Christ will be honored and lifted up and draw all men to himself. And we pray for Pastor Brandon, Lord, bless him. We know he's tired. Bless him, take care of them, keep them out of danger. Make him a blessing to those he ministers to out there. Be with Keith and Ty also and all of their families back at home without them and us here tonight. We pray for people still traveling and those who will be going home afterwards, which is, I guess, all of us, Lord. And we ask for your safety as we return. Now take us and make us mindful of the world around us and the needs of the world for your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen. Now, we decided on consideration to cut down on this presentation a little bit. But then, my wife persuaded me to show you what you're not gonna see, okay? But she cautioned me, and this was her strict instruction to me. David, do not comment. on the slides that you're going to push through, okay? Because I know you, David, and you'll get bogged down, all right? So I must do this silently. Now here's the deal. If you want a presentation on the slides, this is complicated now, on the slides you're gonna miss, which are slides one to 33, come to the West Wing Sunday morning at 9.30 and the Koinonia class we'll be using, we're gonna go off track off of our regular curriculum and we're going to do the 33 slides because they're rich in history and in useful stuff about Iran and we're gonna present them there and talk about them and explain them and read them at a more leisurely pace, okay? So that's Sunday morning, 9.30 at the Koinonia class in the West Wing. You got that? Now my wife over there is giving free tickets to this class because there's only 60 seats and we have about 40 regulars that come. So you've got about 20 seats to try to get into. Okay, here we go. And this is a history of Persia, the Persian Empire founded by Cyrus. Don't comment, David, okay? Mentioned in the book of Esther, how many provinces, Canada has 10, the Persian Empire had? 127 provinces from Greece to India. I hope your geography is good enough to give you some idea of what that is. We'll show you a couple of maps. From Greece to India. They had a pony express system of championship horses specially bred horses that would ride on Persian made roads from one end of the empire to the other with the message, and it's all here in the book of Esther. Okay, come and hear about it Sunday morning. Daniel was praying in Babylon and he didn't get an answer for 21 days. because the Prince of Persia prevented God's messenger angel from coming through, okay? The Prince of Persia and the messenger angel who may have been Gabriel needed help from Michael, okay? There is a prince over Persia. A goat from Greece smashed the Persian Empire. And the goat was named, he's named, he's described in the book of Daniel, but not named. And he was named later in history. His middle name was of, okay. No, sorry, the, okay. His middle name was the, okay. Alexander the Great, okay. Not Alexander Smith or Alexander Jones, Alexander the Great. All right. That's Daniel's description. Now, the Persians had a series of empires, and I know this is burdensome, and you know, boring history and stuff, but if you're interested in Iran at all, you might wanna know that they had three brilliant empires. The second one, after the Persian Empire, or the Achaemenid Empire, the original one, before Christ, is the Sasanid Empire. And it was a brilliant achievement, almost as big as the original Persian Empire. And it lasted longer, 400 years, from around 226 to the 600s BC, okay? Isn't this neat? Look at these cool guys, okay? Armored, mounted archers, all right? And some of the symbols of the Sasanid Empire beside them. They developed their own religion in Persia called Zoroastrianism. And at the beginning, it wasn't really a bad religion. They didn't have human sacrifice or baby sacrifice, anything like that. They revered the sun, fire, water, and truth-telling. Okay, so you know, that doesn't sound too bad, does it? Okay. and Zoroastrianism spread through the Persian Empire. The Sassanids picked up on it in their second empire and enforced it on all of Persia, okay? So Zoroastrianism at one point in the 200s to the 400s AD was a big deal in Persia, okay? Until the 600s AD. What happened in the 600s AD? Islam arrived from the south. from Arabia and the Sassanid Persians were busy fighting with the Byzantines, the Romans in the east and those two empires were fighting and nobody noticed the Arabians, the Arabs coming up from the south, very motivated, very united by this new religion of Islam and they just wiped out Zoroastrianism. And you can hardly find a Zoroastrian today. There are a few in Iran and in India, but not many. This is the explosion called Islam in the 600s. And in one century from 632, which was the death of Muhammad, from 632 to 732, Islam spread explosively from the middle there, the dark part in the middle along the Red Sea, see that? That's Arabia, and Mecca and Medina are down there along the Red Sea, the centers of Islam. And it spread west all the way across the North Africa, look at it, all the way into Spain. Okay, and eastwards as far as Central Asia, upwards in the north and India in the east. Okay, so Islam overcame the empire of Persia, the Sassanid Empire and it's Zoroastrian religion. Now, the Persians got even with the Arabs. by making their own kind of Islam called Shi'ism as opposed to the Arab Sunni version of Islam. And these are a couple of little things about the divisions. And they don't like each other very much. And that's a fundamental fact that you have to keep in consideration when you're talking about world events or Middle Eastern events, okay? And the Persian language is Farsi, all right? Which you may or may not know. And then there was a third empire, it was called the Safavids, okay? You said, wasn't that the last one? No, no, that was the Sassanids, okay? This is the Safavids. In the 1500s, they lasted from around 1500 to 1700, our era, AD. And what really happened of significance here is that one of the shahs of the Safavids in the 1500s said, enough of all this confusion with different kinds of Islam, we are going to impose one kind. And it became Twelver Islam. 12 Imams, the last one hiding, soon to return, okay? And this map shows you a little bit of the extent of Sunni. Sunni is the majority, Arab version of Islam. And of course the Arabs feel, you know, Muhammad was an Arab, so we have the authentic kind of Islam. Those other guys are heretics, okay. and the other guys are the ones in blue in Iran. So that's Iran in the middle and it's the center of what? Shia Islam. And this is a big deal. I can't overemphasize this. Now from these three empires, modern day Iranians, remember, we don't know anything about this stuff. But if you're an Iranian, okay, you say, wow, we had the Persian Empire, we had the Sassanid Empire, we had the Safavid Empire. We are empire builders, that is our fate, that is our destiny to build an empire. We think of them as another little Middle Eastern country, but they're not, they have 86 million people. and their government, not so much the people, but the government is highly motivated. They have a mission, they have a crusade, they have something they wanna do, and Allah has gifted them with oil so they have the money to try to do it, and it's to spread Islam to the whole world, the Shia form of Islam, okay? So you understand, the Iranians are empire builders by descent, by DNA, and they're building an empire now around them in countries around them. All right, other countries have had this same sort of, we deserve to rule the world complex. And they share it with the Chinese Communist Party, for example. And the Japanese in World War II were another good example. We deserve to rule the world, we're gonna try to do it, okay? Now this shows you four Islamic empires in the 1500s, okay? I just want you to notice two of them, the green one and the yellow one. And the yellow one, even though we don't like them very much, they don't like us very much, they saved Christendom. Now where's Christendom on this map? It's over to the west and up in Europe. You see Italy sticking out into the Mediterranean. You see Spain, France, Britain, Ireland. That's Christendom, okay, Europe. Now notice the Green Empire, which is the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Empire, you notice that it's practically swallowing up Christendom, right? See that? And that was their mission. The Caliphs of Istanbul said they had taken Constantinople away from the Christians, and the next thing on their list was Rome. They were gonna take Rome away from the Christians, and then Vienna, and they almost did it. One of the reasons they didn't is because the Safavid Empire kept biting them in the rear end every time they moved or lunged toward Europe. So the Ottomans would attack Europe, the Safavids would say, oh, that's good, all their forces are over in the west, let's attack them over here in the east. And they would bite them in the rear end and make the Ottomans turn around and distract them from their mission of conquering Christendom. So the Safavid Empire, my thesis is Saved the Christian World. And this is one of the famous battles between the Shia and the Sunnis, okay? And if you learn nothing else tonight, if you remember nothing else tonight, remember please that the Arabs, the Turks, the Kurds, and the Persians, we think of them as Arabs, they're all Arabs over there in the Middle East, okay? No, they are not. The Turks are not Arab. Don't call a Turk an Arab. That's like calling a Marine a soldier. Don't do that, okay? They're not soldiers. They will correct you very quickly. We're not soldiers. I know they look like soldiers, right? They have a rifle. They fight on land. They look like soldiers, but where do they come from? They come from the ships at sea. They're Marines, okay? And they fight like soldiers on ground, but they always say they fight better, so they're Marines. The Kurds and the Turks are all different. And the Persians are different. And they fight among themselves constantly and speak very different languages, okay? And you remember the Persians speak Farsi. My son John, who will be here speaking on July 2nd, has learned over the past 20 years to speak Kurdish. Now that is no mean feat. That's a hard thing to do, okay? And I hear him jabbering away on the phone with people that call him up in Kurdish, okay? And remember, please, the first three up there, Arabs, Turks, and Kurds, are all Sunni, and the Persians are Shia, and that is a big deal. Okay, Britain and France and Russia played political games in the Middle East through the 1800s and played their games in Iran also. And the Iranians kind of resent that and look back on it. The British went so far as to detach Afghanistan from Iran. Now how would you feel if you were Iranian and the British did that to you back in the 1800s? You wouldn't feel very good about the British, would you? And the British would send armies into Afghanistan to Kabul through the famous Khyber Pass to calm the Afghans down. And sometimes the British lost their I was going to say shirt, but I might say kilt, okay? Guess where this particular British unit is from? Scotland, right, and the poor guys are in Afghanistan dying, okay? One of their 4,000-man armies were wiped out in Afghanistan. How many of you remember Rudyard Kipling, the famous British poet? He wrote If. If you don't know the poem, look it up and read it, study it, memorize it, If, okay? And he wrote a lot of poetry. He wrote Jungle Book, that's what you know, Jungle Book, right? And he wrote one poem about Afghanistan. And he told the soldiers, he says, if you're wounded in Afghanistan, roll over with your rifle and put it under your chin and blow your brains out before the Afghan women get to you with their knives, okay? Modern Khans and Shahs, Shahs are kings of Iran, changed the name of Persia to Iran in 1935. We occupied Iran during World War II. By the way, what does Iran mean? I love this, okay? This is very politically incorrect. Iran means, you guessed it, Aryan. You wanna see some white supremacy? I don't see much white supremacy around here yet. I don't see people strutting out their whiteness and showing it off. It's not fashionable today in America, is it? But in Iran, they're not ashamed of being white and they proclaim it to the world. We're Aryans, all right? And you know what that means. And if you don't know, go look up the Brotherhood in prison. And there's the old Persian Empire. There's the modern Iran to compare it with and their flag. And the Tehran Conference of World War II. Come and hear about it on Sunday morning. With the big three there. I hope you can name those three guys. All right. I'm not going to quiz you on it right now. And the last Shah, who was our friend, okay, he was for us the policeman of the Persian Gulf. He kept things calm over there. He bought a lot of American military hardware. We helped him with his government. We also helped him, unfortunately, with the SAVAK, his secret police. And he sort of kept a lid on religion, Shi'ism in Iran. And the Iranian mullahs, they didn't like that. And then they identified that also with the US, which was helping him. And the top would get blown off in a few years, off of Iran. But first, just a geographical consideration. This is something that concerns you all, whether or not you know it, and it's the Straits of Hormuz, which is the entrance to the Persian Gulf. And it's very constricted, it's very small. It's only 30 miles across. And guess who sits on the north shore all along there? The country of Iran. And our ships and our friendships and allies have to go in and out and in and out and in and out and get oil. One third of the world's proven oil reserves are all around the Persian Gulf. And at any time, Iran could shut that down on us, okay? And the US Navy goes in and out there just to show the flag, and we get harassed by Iranian motorboats and drones, okay? And we try to keep this open for babies like this, a super tanker, okay? 160,000 tons. An American aircraft carrier is like 80, 90, 100,000 tons. This baby is twice as heavy as an aircraft carrier, okay? And it carries 300,000 tons of oil, all right? And if you'd like to see these first 32 slides, you may feel like you've seen it now, okay? But a more leisurely presentation, come to Koinonia class in the West Wing this Sunday. The following Sunday, now I know, I've been very, very modest over the years, the last three years, but I am shamelessly promoting the class now, okay? And the following Sunday, we're also gonna take a break from the regular curriculum and have a special 75th birthday party for... Israel, okay, and it's miraculous founding. You wanna see a miracle? Okay, look at the founding of Israel. Real live miracle, okay? So this is where we're supposed to begin. And here's the Prince of Persia brooding over the Persian Empire and biding his time until he can turn it into something that his master, would like to use against Israel, all right? And they found the perfect instrument, all right? You may recognize, you may remember this fellow. This is the Ayatollah Khomeini, okay? A religious leader from Iran who was sent into exile and he went as a good Muslim, he went to like a real great, poor Muslim country where he could evangelize for Shia Islam and where he could live a humble life Okay, and you know, stay close to Allah. Okay, the place he picked to do this was Paris, France, all right? And he sent tapes, notoriously cassette tapes, you remember cassette tapes? Back to Iran in the 70s with his messages on them. You know, don't listen to the Shah, get rid of the Shah, bring me back from Paris, France. I'm having such a hard time living here in all this poverty degradation with these French people, especially the way French women dress, horrible, terrible. And worst of all, some of those Western customs were drifting into Iran, because the Shah liked to westernize Iran. He thought the Shia stuff, that was old-fashioned medieval stuff, and that they needed to get rid of that. Meanwhile, an elderly religious leader in exile in Paris kept up nonstop criticism of the Shah. Pahlavi and his Western supporters, pressure grew during the 70s. I lived through this, okay, I remember it. On the last Shah, who was our friend, until he felt so pressured and so much stuff was breaking out, so many protests, he left. At the end of 1978, and about one month later, the Ayatollah Khomeini arrived in triumph from France on an Air France passenger jet. He just barely got off the plane, I think he bent down to kiss the tarmac in Iran, at Tehran, and he immediately declared Iran to be an Islamic republic, and shut down all the movie theaters, bars, newspapers, and instantly required women to dress modestly in Islamic garb, okay? Now there are only two Islamic republics in the world. One is Iran, you just saw that, what's the other one? The Islamic Republic of who? Pakistan, okay. Now that sort of tells you something, right? And when that's in the title, okay. And it's like the flag of Saudi Arabia, okay? They don't say anything about it. They got some writing up there about Muhammad and Allah. And what do they have right underneath? A sword, okay? A scimitar sword. What does that tell you about Arabia's attitude toward the rest of the world? To show his hatred of the West, okay? That he had had such a bad time in Paris there. The Ayatollah labeled the U.S., now remember the U.S. had helped the Shah and helped them a bit with their secret police, okay? And so they labeled the U.S. the great Satan and Israel became the what? A little Satan, okay? Now this was big, okay? This still is big today. This Iranian revolution in 1979, okay? The coming of the Ayatollahs to power to take over the government and impose on Iran an authoritarian, a dictatorial, theocratic government, okay? That tells you what to think, forces you what to wear, and what to eat, and he even has a handbook. 3,000 problems answered. And if you want every intimate detail of your personal life, told to you what to do, lined out for you, get a hold of his book. And I assure you that every intimate detail of your life will be described as to what you ought to do in this book that he wrote, The 3,000 Problems. This was a gigantic cultural religious earthquake. that hit Iran and rocked the Middle East and the whole world, and the world would never be the same again. When I was teaching at Venice High School, I met some of the counselors there, and some of these counselors were Iranian, and I got to chatting with them sometimes. I'd drop in and sit in their office and chat with them, and found out that they were Jewish. They were Jewish Iranians, and they had fled, of course, during the revolution. If you meet a Hungarian person, Now it would be their parents. When did their parents come from Hungary to the United States? In 1957. Because in 1956, they had a revolution against the Russians, and the Russians crushed them. And many Hungarians fled to Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and through there to the West, to Austria, and over to US. So we have Hungarians, and we have Iranians, and the Iranians are scattered over the whole world, and they are wonderful people. So whatever else you hear me say about Iran, the Iranians themselves are really wonderful people, very nice people. And I went in and I sat and I talked to these Iranian. And they don't want you to call them, this is a big deal by the way, it's like calling a marina soldier, okay? They don't want you to call them Iranian. How many of you know that? Do you ever experience that? You got an Iranian friend, they don't wanna be called Iranian. They wanna be called, Persian. When did the country change its name under the first of the two latest shahs? In 1935. They don't like being identified as Iranians. They don't want anything to do with the Iranian government. They hate it as much as we do, if not more, and they want to be known as Persians. This is a really very important big deal. I was stunned when I found out that some of the young people who speak to me occasionally had no knowledge of this event. A huge humiliation for the United States. What was it? Well, shortly after the Ayatollah took over Iran, there were protests everywhere. They were running around protesting everything that had to do with the Shah and the old government and the US or Israel and protesting it and trying to destroy it and stuff like that. And they had no conception of the sanctity of embassies, okay? And at one point, so-called students were riding outside the American embassy, and some idiot in the State Department, okay, ordered the Marines who guard the embassies around the world, Marines do that, the Marines, they have these special things they do, and that's one of them. You may get an assignment to guard an embassy somewhere around the world. And they were told to unload the rifles. Now what they should have done is load the rifles. And when the first Iranian student came over the wall, they should have shot him, okay? Because at the wall starts U.S. territory. And what you're doing is invading illegally. Now this is 1979, not today. They might have had a slightly different attitude toward this thing. 1979, okay, you're invading U.S. territory. And you're on U.S. property. It's not Iranian property, it's U.S. property. And the same thing with all the other embassies. It's their property, not yours. And your job as the host country is to use your police, and if necessary your army, to protect the foreign embassies. You must protect them. If all your people want to get in the streets and kill all the people in the embassies, you must stop them. Because those diplomats are sacrosanct people, protected by a thing called diplomatic immunity. What that means is, if a diplomat from another country breaks a law in your country, you may arrest them, but you don't take them to jail, you don't take them to court, you take them back to their embassy. And you revoke their credentials, give it back to them, and you say goodbye, you're gonna be on the next plane within 48 hours to your home country. And we will be in your home country checking on your punishment, okay? Like if you killed somebody or hit somebody in a car, you would be hopefully punished, but you've got to be sent home, all right? And you don't punish them yourself, because otherwise diplomacy and communication between countries will not work, okay? Iran just kind of ignored all the rules of civilized countries, and it refused. The students came over the wall, the Marines were unloaded, practically disarmed, and they took 55 hostages. Now let me put a little insert in here, and there were other American diplomats out on the streets of Tehran. And when they heard that the embassy had been overrun, of course, it scared the daylights out of them. What do you do? You're on the streets of Tehran. You're unprotected. Well, some of them, about 10 of them figured out to find the nearest friendly embassy and get into it. And they found the Canadian embassy. I have to pat myself on the back. I'm from Canada. I have dual citizenship, Canada and America. I'm a Can-American, okay? And the Canadian thing took them in, and to make a long story short, they got passports from Ottawa flown over, and they flew the American diplomats out to Canada, to Ottawa, and then let them go down to Washington, and had big ceremonies thanking the Canadians. And of course, as soon as that plane left, the Canadian embassy closed up. and its diplomats were on the next plane out of town. And the British did the same thing by the way. They sheltered and helped some American diplomats, but 55 were taken. Now they weren't tortured or anything, they just were sort of enclosed. We asked for their release and Iran refused. In other words, they said, we're not gonna play by the rules. We're not gonna play by the conventions of modern countries with diplomacy and diplomatic immunity and embassies, and we're not gonna do any of that. President Carter, We think of him as being weak and things, but he gave permission for a military effort to try to rescue the hostages. Unfortunately, Some of the aircraft that were refueling in the Iranian desert on their way to Tehran clipped each other and they were refueling and just blew up in an inferno. I think there were like four or five or six C-130s, the big cargo planes. And there was like eight or nine or ten heavy helicopters, big ones, okay? Not Hueys or Blackhawks, but the big ones. And two or three cargo planes and two or three helicopters blew up. And the whole thing was a disaster. And of course, they pulled out without rescuing anybody. And the Ayatollah Khomeini was able to say, Allah has thrown sand on the Americans, okay? There's the students going over the wall, and you notice their inspiration on the right over there, that's a picture of the Ayatollah, right? Okay, going over the wall. I know it sounds nasty and cruel, and the first one should have been shot, but the first one should have been shot, and the rest would have got back on their side of the wall. You know, and when it's your territory, you have to, I saw a cartoon once of the Russian embassy beside the American embassy, and the Russian embassy had a big bear, and the American embassy had a beaten up, what's his name, Uncle Sam. and he was all beaten up, and students were beating him up in front of his embassy, and he's saying to the Russian bear next door, which is all calm and orderly, to the Russian bear, how come you don't get overrun? And the Russian bear says, because we do not permit it. Okay, all right. It's a matter of willpower. The Russian embassy, they never get overrun, okay? There was a song about a prisoner getting out of prison and he's asking his girlfriend to tie a yellow ribbon on the old oak tree if she wants to see him again, okay? How many of you would have seen your prisoner boyfriend again? I know you girls, you all go for the underdog. You wanna... Get that guy well again, and you're the cure, right? So you would have taken him back, right? Okay, look up the song, Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree, okay? I know you girls, you go for losers, okay? Guys just out of prison, all right? And he's asking you to tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree. Well, people took that song and they began a campaign of yellow ribbons to remember the hostages and remember to pray for them. And they were hostages from 1979 for 404 days. Okay, which is a little more than a year. That's a picture of the wreckage after the accident in the Iranian desert. And I think you can probably figure out why the pictures of those servicemen are there. And Carter lost the election to Ronald Reagan in 1980 because of these humiliations. Along about that time in the 80s, we've made a really neat movie with Sally Field. And she, and I have a little caution here for you girls and women, don't marry losers that you want to heal and bind up and make well. It usually doesn't work. And don't marry Muslims. Oops, that's an awfully prejudiced thing to say. Okay, but Muslim men come over here, and they're very charming, and they're suave, and they're dark, and they're handsome, and they get girls to marry them. And a couple of years later, after they've had a baby or two, they tell the girl, it's time to go back to my country and meet my family. Okay, and Sally Field was an American wife with her daughter, seven years old, and she goes back to Iran to meet his family. And it's really hard to kind of pin them down and to sit down with them, because there's always sort of confusion and consternation in Farsi language that she doesn't understand. And it finally dawns on her that his wife is there with other children, and he hasn't been able to tell her yet. Well, she freaks out, of course, when she finds this, and she wants to leave, but he holds her daughter, okay? And the title of the movie is, they tell her, go home, go back to the United States, go, go, go. without your daughter. So the title of the movie is Not Without My Daughter. So you'll have to watch it to see what happens, okay? In the last 20 years, Iran has been working very hard at strengthening its military and modernizing them. They worked hard at developing missiles, which could carry nuclear bombs if they had some, to Israel or even to Europe. They're currently threatening to destroy Tel Aviv and Haifa if Israel does one little thing to harm Iran. which signals that the Iranians are expecting an attack from Israel. They're also working on drone technology, very, very hard. In fact, they supply, get a load of this, drones to Russia. You would not think it would be that way, the other way around, but no, Iran supplies drones to Russia to use in The Ukraine. It's amazing how just as the Arab countries are finally getting tired of fighting with Israel, Satan has ramped up the Shiite theocracy in Iran to a fever pitch of hatred for Israel. And this is a pattern in history. Now this is the Iranian army parading, okay, with all of the money spent from the oil revenues on this kind of thing instead of the welfare of the people. But the pattern in history that I've spotted is that one empire, one kingdom, one country after another hates Israel intensely for a time in history. And as their hatred dies down or they get tired of hitting their head against the brick wall, like the Arabs, they did four major wars against Israel, lost all of them. Well, after four wars, maybe, you know, you get tired of hitting your head against a brick wall, and set out from Egypt, went to Carter in Washington, and made a deal with Begin to get the Sinai Desert back from Israel, if he would make peace, just sign a treaty. "'with Israel,' said Carter." And he did. He stopped banging his head against the wall, because it felt so good when you stop, okay? And so after four, well, just as the Arabs died down in their hatred for Israel, and now some of them are making more peace treaties, you know, the Abraham Accords, and whatever else you wanna see, say or criticize them for, they're still peace treaties with Israel, okay? And so just as that's happening, the Arabs are dying down. Satan gets Iran. The Prince of Persia is finally called to duty to get Iran agitated. The Arabs aren't gonna do it for Satan. So he's got to use something else. Well, let's use the Shia, because they're split Sunni Shia. They don't go together. So the Shia, maybe the Shia will do what the Sunnis won't do, okay? Because maybe they're more dedicated. So here's their army marching. And I used to read about the Russians with their military parades. And somebody said, a Russian soldier said, you know all those guys, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers that parade every May the 1st, and I think it's November or October, you know, the revolution. He says, they're not real soldiers. He said, none of them could fight. He said, all they know is how to march. in a pretty parade like that. He said if they were ever in a battle, they'd be wiped out. They wouldn't know what they're doing. They have a rifle, they know how to shoot it, but they wouldn't know how to work as a unit under combat conditions, this Russian soldier said. Now say something too here about Israel. Israel has by far, man for man, not the biggest, but man for man, the most efficient, the most lethal, the most modern, the most high-tech, the most effective, the most deadly army in the world, all right? You wanna get killed? Mess with the Israelis, all right? You kill some of their civilians, run off and hide anywhere you wanna go hide. Norway, Pakistan, okay? You're gonna have an accident in the next few years, all right? I have a t-shirt at home that says Mossad, that's their secret service, and it says it's never an accident, all right? Now, for all of that, the most effective, deadly army in the world, do you know they don't even salute? I mean, they will salute once in a while, but they don't salute normally, okay? Do you know that they're kind of sloppy about their uniforms? I mean, you know, they look okay, but their boots are not polished, because that's not what they're about. They don't waste any time on that. It's called spit and polish. Okay, they don't waste time on that. They waste time, they use time on training, constantly training. And the way they train is, you've heard me say this before, they solve problems. They're given tactical problems to solve. how to put a bridge across this creek here, how to sneak up on this machine gun nest, how to get into this office building. Okay, it's all problem, problem, problem oriented. And when they come out after their three years in the army, they can't sit in a cubicle in an office. So many of them find their mother's empty garage and they start a startup in Israel, okay, to make a new app like WhatsApp, all right? It was one of those startup apps by Israeli veterans. And you know what the Israelis do not do? Don't waste money, don't waste time on is military parades. You're never going to see an Israeli military parade, anything like this, but they have by far a deadlier army. Iran is working hard on its nuclear program. United States tries to discourage them, but it's always sort of half-hearted. And given the nature of US government, that we might have a change in government every four years, and sometimes you get a black and white policy change, okay? So Trump says, Iran, don't you mess with those, and I'm gonna slap you with this sanction and do this and that. And the Iranians actually slow down, okay? And then he doesn't win or is cheated out of his election in 2020. Biden comes in and it's like, whatever, Iran, don't worry about it. We'll send you the money, okay? You know what I mean? And it's sort of like, so US policy, foreign policy is often inconsistent. So it's hard for the US to slap somebody on the wrist and say, hey, slow down, don't do that, okay? And the other thing is the US doesn't live in the real world, not foreign policy wise anyways. They actually think that people are gonna keep the treaties they sign. What did I just say? The United States doesn't live in the real world. They actually think people will keep the treaties they sign. Like, let me think. The treaty the North Vietnamese signed in Paris at the Paris Peace Talks in 1973, I think it was. And then, you know, contingent on that treaty, we got out of Vietnam. We went home. They were supposed to go home. Guess what? They did for a while, and then they attacked, and they took over Vietnam. And we had made that peace treaty with the express goal of preserving South Vietnam as a free country, and not having it taken over by the Communist. But they did not keep the treaty, and many other examples of that. Of course, we're only getting what we deserve, because in the 1800s, we didn't keep a whole lot of treaties with who? The Native Americans, all right, okay. Andrew Jackson, he was the worst. Go look up the Trail of Tears and the Cherokee Nation and what he did to the, in fact, Brandon's there, okay. The Cherokee, they lived in Georgia, okay. And the natives are attached to their land. And where did he send them, Andrew Jackson? To? Oklahoma, okay. So Brandon's out there with them now. There's an undeclared war going on all the time right now between Iran and Israel already. It's not a declared war, it's not a full scale war. And a lot of it is being fought in the country next door to Israel called Syria, all right. The Iranians are big into Syria, have a lot of forces, advisors, military, there's Russians there, there's even a few Americans there. and probably some Israelis underground. And so they fight each other in Israel all the time. I'll give an example. An Iranian airplane will come from Tehran full of maybe drones, okay, or whatever, ammunition. And it lands in the Damascus airport in Syria. and as soon as it finishes taxiing, an Israeli drone hits it, boom, okay, and it explodes on the runway, all right? So the Israelis were on top of that shipment, they knew about it, and they were not going to let it land and get dispersed among, you know, enemies of theirs in Syria. Now, remember this, a little tiny bit of history that's very significant. In 1981, the Israeli Air Force bombed a French-built nuclear reactor near Baghdad in Iraq to prevent Iraq at that time from enriching enough material for a bomb. You have to remember that Iraq, even though it doesn't have a border with Israel, it had participated in two of the Arab wars against Israel. Also remember, please, that Israel bombed a site more recently in 2007 in northern Syria with the same idea. It wasn't a full-scale reactor. The North Koreans were there helping the Syrians to develop a nuclear facility. And the last thing the Syrians need is an atomic bomb, okay? They need to get their act together and make a country, make a government, and calm down their government and take care of their people. Syria is war-torn and is what we call a failed state. It does not function as a real country, which is one reason why Israel did not give back the Golan Heights. Have you ever heard anybody say that to you? Oh Israel is so bad they invade other people's countries and they took the Golan Heights from Syria and they didn't give it back and now they've annexed it. They annexed it because there's no Syrian government to sign a peace treaty and even if there was one they probably wouldn't sign a peace treaty with Israel. Israel is not going to give it back unless they sign a peace treaty. Okay? And give them a chance to break it then. All right? So those are two nuclear facilities that Israel has already bombed. Okay? 1981 and 2007. Now, can you see a trajectory here? 1981, 2007, 2008. 2023, a big nuclear facility research, bomb making plants in Iran. Now given the trajectory of Israeli foreign policy and history, by the way, what's their foreign policy on nuclear bombs made by their neighbors? They don't say anything, okay? They only do the exact opposite of us. All right, and I'll let you judge which is more effective. They don't say anything to their neighbors. Don't do that. We won't trade with you. We won't sell. We won't let your tourists come into our country. If you do that, no. They don't talk about it. They act, all right. So what do you think is gonna happen in the near future in Iran, okay? You think maybe it's safe to make a prediction? Well, I'm gonna stick my neck out tonight and make a prediction, okay? And if I forget to make it by the time I end, you remind me and I'll back up, okay? Short course on nuclear warfare. In case you think that a nuclear bomb is just a bigger bomb, okay? It's not, it's a different kind of an animal. This is one bomb blast going off, but I like this one better because it shows the fireball. Now that fireball, which is ascending, it goes up, it's sucking up air and dust and dirt. all up into the atmosphere and spreads out. And if you had a real nuclear exchange between say Russia or China and the United States, and enough nuclear bombs went off, it might precipitate what we call a nuclear winter, which is radioactive dust all over the globe, shutting out the sun, and it becomes then a nuclear winter on the surface of the earth, okay? Because the dust and radioactive debris up there shuts out the sun. Anyways, that fireball is many times hotter than either the surface of the sun or the interior of the sun. It's just incredibly hot and incredibly bright. You know you dare not stare at the sun, right? But you could look at it for a couple of seconds. Well, if you saw this for a microsecond, it would burn the retina out of the backs of your eyes. You would be completely blind. Now a month ago, I did something to detach a retina in my right eye. They did surgery on it a week later, and I'm still recovering from it. The site is coming back very slowly. They had to put a gas bubble in there, and it's sort of interfering. But some of the site's coming back. And that's just one little problem I had by detaching a retina. So this baby here, if you looked at it, you'd be instantly blind. Alright, short course in nuclear warfare, or at least the results. What would happen to you if you were anywhere near one? Well, the first thing would be a blinding light. You might get blinded, you might also get scorched, and if you didn't get scorched by the light, you'd get scorched by the heat wave which followed. Okay, a little slower than the light. And the heat wave would set everything in, everything in a certain area on fire. Everything would just explode. It wouldn't just set on fire, it would explode into flame, okay? It would be followed by a blast wave which would knock everything down, all right, for miles and miles around. And then finally, you would have, well not finally, but you would have radioactivity showering down on you in the days and months ahead, and it would even blow across an area of the country. It wouldn't, you know, sort of stay just around ground zero. Now, super fires, like a firestorm, like in World War II, would be created by the heat wave in this sequence, and it would generate incredible hurricane force winds that would be sucked in to replace the rising heated air, okay? So there you go. That's what the Iranians want to do to Israel. And it's been very busy sending advisors into other countries. And basically it comes maybe from their empire building days. They have this set of mind that they are fated, they're destined to have an empire in one way or another, in one era or another. And they practically control nearby Iraq through its large Shiite population. We were supposed to control Iraq. Okay, yay for democracy. United States invades Iraq. I don't know if you remember this. In 2003, George Bush invaded Iraq. He got rid of Saddam Hussein. He said, we're gonna have regime change and we're gonna institute a democracy. Well, most of the people are Shiite in Iraq, not Sunni, Iraq. But the Sunni Arabs controlled the country. Now they were forced out because we had a war with them and their leader, Saddam Hussein. And so we turn around and say, okay, everybody's gonna vote an election. All right, and so we have a nice democratic, American-led, American-style election with Americans standing around trying to teach them how to vote and stuff like this. Vote for who you want. Well, guess who they voted for? They voted for all Shiite representatives in their new Congress, and all Shiite governors, and in the cabinet, all Shia. And guess where they were controlled from? Well, you could see the puppet strings directly from those, now let me tell you again, Iraqi Shia, tribesmen, and the puppet strings went directly back to next door, Tehran, you got it, Iran. So Iran is now, we fought the war. and we put billions of dollars into Iraq, okay? And a lot of other things I could say too. My son is in Iraq, up in northern Iraq, in Kurdistan. Now he's safe up there because the Kurds don't like the Arabs, and they don't like the Persians either, and they're Sunni. So he's pretty safe up there because he helps people, and they will look after him. They won't let him get hurt. I once asked him, I said, what if Arab terrorists came that found you're a missionary? Don't say missionary. They found that you're an NGO worker up there in Kurdistan, and they come to kill you and your family, two little kids and a wife. And he says, well, and he has this way of talking and explaining stuff, patiently for the old people that don't understand. Well, dad, okay, he says, before any terrorists could get across the border into Kurdistan unnoticed, okay, and get into my front yard, all right, they, all of Kurdistan, half of Kurdistan would know about them. The security systems would light up going all across Kurdistan, and they would be tracked. And before they ever got near my house, I'd have a front yard full of Kurdish militiamen toting their AK-47s, standing in front of our house, okay. And so that, he feels pretty safe, pretty secure, somewhat, okay? Now, they control Iraq. They're very active in Syria. They have a fair amount of control in Syria. The Israelis are fighting with them in Syria. The Russians are helping them. The Americans are also there, obviously, fighting with Israel against the Iranians in Syria, we're talking about now. And the Turks are up in north too. And sometimes they don't act like they're on our side, but in theory, they're supposed to be on our side, the Turks, that is, okay? Because they're in NATO. If you don't know what NATO is, look it up, okay? The Israelis are conducting a low level war against the Iranians in Syria, who are constantly flying war supplies into the Damascus airport. The Iranians have supplied the Hezbollah, In Lebanon, you may as well learn these names because they're in the news all the time. Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Hamas in Gaza with thousands of rockets to rain on Israel. Israel has deployed the high-tech Iron Dome Missile Defense System against these rocket attacks. How many of you have seen that in the news, okay? Or on Amir Tsarfati's newscasts, all right? Lastly, the Iranians have inspired a civil war in Yemen which keeps Saudi Arabia on edge, their big enemy, their big Sunni enemy. The U.S. has labeled Iran the largest source of state-sponsored terrorism in the world. So we are officially opposed to Iran. We officially recognize Iran as a sender, a foster of terrorism around the world. Now this is, I think it's Hamas in Gaza. Now look at the spiffy uniforms, pretty nice, right? Pretty new, right? Guess who pays for them? Iran does, okay, with its oil revenues. So it has a whole other army in the Gaza Strip trying to mess around with Israel. But unlike Iran, these guys live right next to Israel. and shoot rockets, okay? And the most amazing, crazy kinds of situations come about because of that, okay? There were Israelis in the Gaza until 2007, and Ariel Sharon took them all home. He says, ah, we gotta make peace with these guys in Gaza. They won't sign a peace treaty, so just take all our guys home. And he bulldozed, well, he didn't bulldoze, but he took out all the colonists too, the Israeli colonists out of Gaza. He said, that'll solve our problem. Take them all home, okay? Get them out of Gaza. And then Gaza voted in Hamas to take over and Hamas started shooting Iranian rockets into Israel. And you get very unusual situations such as, Israel is the only army in the world that will phone you before they kill you. Okay, it's not quite that dramatic or simple. But in Gaza, for example, Hamas will hide its rocket factory or whatever else it wants to do that it's not supposed to be doing in the basement of a childcare center or a school or a hospital or an apartment building. And you know what the Israelis will do? This is incredible. They will phone the people in the apartment building and tell them, get out. You have two hours to get out, okay? Why, what are you gonna do? Well, we're not gonna explain. But what's going on is there's a rocket factory in the basement of the apartment building. But the Israelis look up all the phone numbers in that apartment building and phone them and tell them, get out, okay? Now they hope that they don't have two hours to move all the rockets out, okay, and the machinery, and maybe a few of the guys who build them, that they'll stay, okay? Because two hours later, they bomb that building, pinpoint, all right? Okay, so this is one gang. Notice the salutes here. Out in the street there is a conventional salute, but what do you notice along the sidelines there? What kind of salutes are those? I don't think they're ancient Roman salutes, I think they're fascist salutes, I don't know. And this is Hezbollah, how'd you like to meet one of these guys in a dark alley at night, okay? Very menacing, very bloodthirsty, very death oriented, they all wanna die. And one of the things I admire about Israel is that they heeded God's words in Deuteronomy chapter 29 where God says, choose life, okay? and that's so important in so many ways. We can't get into all the different ways, okay? These guys choose death, all right? They wanna die, and they wanna take a few Israelis with them. And so, you know, Iran actually sponsors these guys, okay? Now, what does Kevin McCarthy think? Okay, and I'm just throwing in here a few conventional, a few, you know, what's the word? Current remarks and commentary on this whole situation, okay? And he was over in Israel recently speaking to the Knesset, and he made this declaration, this is a short, I just have a short part of it here, that Iran is the source of all the problems in the Middle East. Now he's speaking for himself and his party and the House of Representatives, not for the administration. Although they might agree, but if they did agree, they would never say it, the Biden administration. My wife was watching Eric Stackelbeck today, and she reported that he reported today that Iran has declared a new world order. Do they look like they're working on a new world order? You betcha, okay? In Iraq, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Yemen, and anywhere else they can get in, on Israel, okay? They're working on putting together a new empire, because they always have been empire builders, and they have a motivation now. It's Shia Islam, okay? And anti-Israel, okay? We're gonna get Israel, and we're gonna build up and spread Shia Islam. So we need a new world order to do that. Iran is declaring it today. And they're pouring their oil revenues into military hardware, nuclear bombs, and interference in countries around it. This goes along with their history of empire building and their desire to rule the world for Shia Islam. Now Eric also reported today, and this is like fragmentary information. It doesn't exactly, I've got a lot of questions about it, but it came through, filtered by Leanda, who is not sure what the difference between an A10 and a warthog is, okay? And she reported that he reported that 18 A-10 warthogs are on their way to, not Israel, but the Middle East. We wouldn't send them to Israel. Oh, no, no, no. We send them to the Middle East. Who do you think is gonna get them over there, okay, if it's coming from the US? It's gonna be Israel. And that these ones are capable of carrying a very heavy bunker buster bomb. Okay, and they're being transferred. Now, the problem with attacking Iran's nuclear facilities is that they have gone underground in the last 20 years. They're building underground like the Germans did in World War II. Big, heavy concrete slabs of roof, you know, to protect them and all the vents and everything in there. And so they're way down deep underground. And it takes a very heavy, strongly made bomb dropped from a certain altitude so it develops a certain velocity, you know, and it's capable of penetrating the earth and then the concrete and actually getting into the bunker before it blows up, all right? And apparently some of these special bombs are being transferred as we speak to the Middle East, wherever that is, okay? Now, Emily, did your better half turn up yet? Do you think he's coming? Yeah, actually it's still early yet. Now we were gonna talk about a couple of different modern types of warfare and I had a special guest speaker to speak to you about drone warfare. And we're trying to figure out, I guess he's not here yet, so we'll see if he makes it by 7.30 or so. And so what I'll do is I'll go on and skip his slides and I will, you know, try to get into some of the conclusions, okay? Is that me rattling things? Is that, what did I do, walk across a cord or something? Yeah, okay. Now what we have is a situation here where an immovable object is meeting an irresistible force. And I think what that equals or what that's going to produce, there's gonna be a major war in the Middle East. And I'm gonna stand here tonight and make a prediction. Now this is a prediction, not a prophecy. So don't go home and read Deuteronomy 18 and quote it to me, okay, about the false prophet. All right. And what you do to him. Okay. I don't like that. I'm not making a prophecy. All right. So I'm not gonna be a false prophet under any circumstances. Okay. Yes or no. I will make a prediction though. I think there's gonna be a major war between Iran and Israel in the next six months. There has to be. There has to be. Because Iran is not gonna give up its nuclear program. It's absolutely determined. And this is a way of brushing over all their internal problems, okay, and distracting the population. Let's get Israel, okay? And Israel is not gonna permit them to get a bomb, all right? Now, by the way, how many of you have ever thought, that's kind of hypocritical of Israel, because don't they have a bomb? Officially, no. Unofficially, you betcha. for a long time, 30 or 40 years now. They've had at least one bomb. Tom Clancy wrote a novel about one of them. I forget what the title was, because I read all his novels back then in the 80s. One of them was about a lost Israeli atom bomb, and how the wrong guys got a hold of it, and a big story. I think it's the one, Some of All Fears. And they use the atom bomb in the story to become the trigger for a hydrogen bomb. that the terrorists want to put in the Denver football stadium, okay? So if any of you are Raiders fans or Kansas City fans, all right, and you hate Denver, you might like to read that book, see what happens, okay? And Ben Affleck made a movie about it too, all right? So do the Israelis have a nuclear bomb? Yes. Do they have more than one? Of course. The difference is they don't talk about it. I read books about guys in the IDF, you know, and guys in the Defense Department in Israel. And I read books and I'm always looking for the same thing. I'm looking, looking, looking like, where's the nuclear program? Come on, where's the bombs? In the Negev. I know they're hidden in the Negev desert. They're underground in the Negev desert. near an Air Force base, which would be very quickly, you know, the planes equipped with the atom bombs, if a crisis occurred against Israel, all right? They would send those planes out with maybe one or more atom bombs to wipe out invading armies coming against them, all right? Where is it? And you never see a trace of it. They will not admit or talk about having atomic weapons. Everybody knows they do. but they don't talk about it, all right? Why? Because they don't believe in talking, they believe in acting. Did I have a question over here? Yes, David, thank you. Sorry about that. I was reading something, I don't know, maybe six months ago about Iran actually building nuclear weapons in Russia that could reach Israel. Right, it just, that kind of thing raises all kinds of logistical problems for you. You have to find a location, you have to find Russian scientists that would let you do that, Russian government that would let you do that, and then you have to transport them down to Israel. You better believe by the time they're ready to fly them to Israel, sorry, to Iran, the Israelis would know about it. And the chances of their letting that aircraft travel from Russia to Iran with bombs aboard is very slender, very slim. But yeah, it's within the realm of possibility. It's one option that they might try, or purchasing them from North Korea. That was another one. All right, so we've got an immovable object. That's the Iranians. and they're up against an irresistible force, and we think that there's gonna be a major war in the Middle East very soon, all right? And that's what I say here, this standoff will bring about the next major war in the Middle East. Now, Israel is going to attack Iran, all right? Or maybe Iran will get some of its friends to help it attack little Israel, with a coalition or a team of countries. Amazingly, the prophet Ezekiel described this possibility 2,500 years ago in chapter 38 of his book. Listen to the words of Ezekiel. Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, son of man, set your face against Gog of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshach, and Tubal. And I'm not going to explain what all these places are, okay? No time for that. and prophesy against him, and say, thus says the Lord God, behold, I am against you, O Gog, the prince of Rosh Meshach and Tubal. I will turn you around, put hooks into your jaws, and lead you out with all our army, horses, I like this description, and horsemen, splendidly clothed, did you see any Iranian soldiers, splendidly clothed, you know, beautifully attired, beautifully uniformed, not here, but in some of the other pictures, A great company with bucklers and shields. In case you don't know what a buckler is, it's a small shield, okay? All of them handling swords. Really neat military description there, right? On Ezekiel's part. All of them handling swords. Now look at this, the next word. What is it? Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya are added to the list with Gog and Magog, okay? They're added to the list of countries that are gonna attack Israel. All of them with shield and helmet, Ezekiel 38 verses one to five. So it has two lists. The first list does not list Persia, the second list does. So Persia may find friends to gang up with it against Israel. And that may be the Gog and Magog War. Now I'm not sure, you know, and I'm not the deepest, most knowledgeable prophetic scholar there is, I'm not sure that the situation lends itself to the Gog and Magog sequence because there, they conspire against Israel. They say, we wanna go get the loot out of Israel. So let's gang up on Israel, let's attack her. And then in the mountains of Israel, they get wiped out, okay? Whereas I think this situation that's coming up is Iran is determined to get the bomb. They don't wanna be disturbed. Israel sitting over here watching very carefully and judging when the time will be right to send those 18 warthogs with their bunker buster bombs to go down deep into the facilities and blow up all those research facilities down deep. Gabriel. Do you think this will set up the Psalm 83 war? Maybe anything's possible. I think it lends itself a little bit more to a one-on-one war, okay? And then those other wars, either Psalm 83. The problem with Psalm 83 is there's no clue as to when it is. It's not mentioned in connection with any of the other events, the millennium, the tribulation, the founding of Israel or anything. Whereas Gog and Magog seems to come just before or just at the beginning of the tribulation. So this confrontation between Israel and Iran might turn into a one-on-one or maybe an Israel versus Gog and Magog situation. Could be. Okay, now, where are my tools of my trade here? Okay, there's a map of Gog and Magog. Self-explanatory. You see Israel in the middle? And those arrows point toward Israel. There are those countries ganging up on Israel. What's gonna happen? Hey, go read Ezekiel 38 and 39, okay? What's gonna happen is those countries are gonna gang up on Israel, they're gonna arrive in the mountains of Israel, and they're gonna be wiped out on the mountains of Israel. And Israel's gonna spend seven months going around tagging the bodies for burial. In Ezekiel 39, it tells you this, okay? And it's almost like graves registration out of a modern army being described to us from World War II or from Vietnam or something. The war movies never show you that, but there's this department of soldiers called graves registration, and they have to go through a battlefield after. It's nasty work, it's horrible work. tag the bodies, ID the bodies, bring them back to a burial ground, all of this kind of stuff. And Ezekiel 39 sounds like that. says they're gonna spend seven months tagging the bodies for burial. They're gonna put a sign up, a little flag on it, body here or body part here, okay? And it's gonna take them seven years to burn all of the debris, the war debris on the mountains of Israel, okay? So this is a possibility. It's one possibility for the confrontation between Israel and Iran. Okay, so I've just talked about this. Chapter 39 describes a great bloody defeat of this coalition of nations. Perhaps after this terrible defeat, Iran will be ready to listen to God. Now, let's summarize what we've seen so far tonight, okay? What we've seen is that Persia has a history of empire building. Three great empires, okay? The Achaemenid or Persian Empire, the Sassanid Empire, and then the Safavid Empire, and then at the present day, they're playing around with four or five countries around them, building another empire. And what are the goals of this empire? Well, it was always to further their religion. First it was Zoroastrianism, then Islam wiped that out, and so they got even with the Arabs by making a heresy out of their religion and saying we're gonna be Shia, we're gonna follow Ali and Hussein, his cousin or his nephew, and they're the right leaders of Islam and you guys with your caliphs over here, the Sunnis, you're wrong, okay? And the result was they've been fighting ever since, all right? And Iran now is with the motivation of the Prince of Persia, replacing the Arabs in their animosity toward Israel. So now it's Iran with the atom bomb, a potential atom bomb that is Israel's great foe that they have to worry about. And so Satan is getting, still raising up country after country, empire after empire to mess with God's people. and to interfere with what? God's plan of salvation. That's where the rubber meets the road and it concerns us all. Satan cannot let Israel and the Jews become or continue to be God's instrument of salvation in this world. nor can he afford for us to be, okay? And so we both experienced the fury, the Revelation 12 fury of the dragon, okay? He's furious, he's so furious as Revelation 12. He's just worked himself up into a froth, okay? He's so menacing against Israel, but also the other offspring of the woman, the church. And so you have the church persecuted terribly, and especially Muslim parts of the world, also communist parts of the world. And why is that? Why do people hate the Christians so much? I mean, like, Christians are really bad, right? I mean, they go to church on Sunday, and then they tell you the truth, and they pay their taxes, and they, you know, obey the government, mostly, okay, unless you say don't go to church, don't pray, then they can't obey you. But in other, you know, normal regulations, they would obey you. They're good citizens. Why are you persecuting them? Because we can't stand them. Why can't you stand them? Because Satan is motivating us and he's in a fury. Why? Because he knows his time is what? Short. Absolutely, okay? Now out of all of this mess, you know what? God loves to insert his providential hand. Okay, providential means you don't see it. Okay, in some miracles of God in the Bible, you would actually see, you know, something of God, you know, working. Providence, you don't see him working. Read the book of Esther. It's a great story about Esther and Mordecai saving the people of Israel in Persia, okay? God is not mentioned in the book of Esther once. Not once, not twice, not at all. Did you know that? What book in the Bible does not mention God? The book of Esther, okay? But God is very clearly active in the book of, you can't miss it. Hits you in the face. That's not the surprise that God has in store for you, okay? That's just me. Making a mistake, making a fool of myself. All right. And you know, you read through the book of Esther and God is at work from beginning to end. Mordecai says to Esther, who knows but what God has raised you up for a time such as this. And that principle can apply to any of us in different times, in different groups of Christians, different churches, different countries, different organizations. Who knows but what God has raised you up in your family, in your community, in the city of Bakersfield for such a time as this. It's a dismal time, it's horrible, the culture is so bad, it's horrible. But God has raised you up, every one of you here, that's here tonight, for such a time as this. He wants to use you in your world, like he used Esther to save the Israelis, the Hebrews, back in the time of Persia. And he's gonna use you to save people in your realm of influence. Okay, what surprise could God have for us about Iran? Well, this is a little aside, okay? The last Shah, who was deposed in 79 and he died in 82 in Egypt, in exile, had a son. The son's grown up. He went to visit Prime Minister Netanyahu recently, and he told Netanyahu what he already knew, but firsthand, that most Iranians hate their government and wish they could get rid of it. And there's large protests against the government, many, many times over, okay? Back when it was Barack Obama who was president, he failed to support them in any way, to say anything in support of them, he just kept quiet. In 2020, at the end of President Trump's presidency, beginning of Biden's, a Kurdish woman was killed by police for a dress violation, you know, like she wasn't wearing her shirt or something. And there have been widespread protests against the religious government and its burdensome dress code ever since. These protests are continuing. And they're cordially ignored by you-know-who, who ought to speak up and say something for them. Oh, we're all for feminism and all for feminine rights, and so am I, by the way, but I'm in some more practical ways, okay? And until, you know, it's politically incorrect, and then, you know, it's okay if they get away with, you know, oppressing women, that's all right, okay? So we won't say anything, and that's what the present administration does. They say nothing about all of this going on. In other words, the Iranian government is not very popular at home. In Jeremiah chapter 49, I'm gonna read you a passage. Now I just put a tiny quotation from it here. God says, I will set my throne in Elam, says the Lord. And Elam is a part, it's a province in Persia, okay? Now I'm gonna read you the whole thing very quickly here, all right? From verse 35 on. 34, the word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah the prophet against Elam in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah. God says this, behold, I will break the bow of Elam. By the way, the Elamites were great archers, bows and arrows, okay? The foremost of their might. Against Elam, I will bring the four winds from the four corners of heaven and scatter them toward all those winds. There shall be no nations where the outcasts of Elam will not go. So Elamites or Persians are gonna be scattered all over. For I will cause Elam to be dismayed before their enemies. Ooh, their enemies are gonna have one up on them. and before those who seek their life. So those seeking their lives will succeed. I will bring disaster upon them. My fierce anger, says the Lord, and I will send the sword after them. Until I have consumed them, I will set my throne in Elam and will destroy them, destroy from there the king and the princes, says the Lord. Now back in the 1970s or 80s, there was a guy called Hormuz Shariat. He's Iranian, and he had a kid brother, and his kid brother was arrested in Iran for some minor political thing, okay? You know, by the religious fanatics. And he was kept in jail, and eventually he was executed. And Hormuz Shariat, Okay, decided to take revenge on the government of Iran. Well, how do you take on a whole government with great difficulty, right? And so he immigrated to the United States, but he became a Christian in the United States. Now he has to forgive his enemies. He can't go have revenge on his enemies any way whatsoever. And he prayed and prayed and prayed about this, very frustrated about this. And what the Lord told him was, okay, smarten up, Hormuz, I want great things for Iran, but it's not in line with your ideas of vengeance and killing people over there. And Hormuz was being transformed by the Holy Spirit, regenerated, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and becoming a new creation. And lo and behold, the idea struck him that it would be a great revenge on the government of the Shia government of Iran if he could lead one million Iranians to Christ. Well today, he's known as the Billy Graham of Iran. He's had a ministry on TV. Okay, every Iranian has a satellite on the roof, and they listen to channels they're not allowed to listen to in the middle of the night. And 24 hours a day, Hormuz Shariat, the Lord has raised him up. We had breakfast with him about 10 years ago at a Voice of Martyrs conference, okay, and he was a speaker there, you know, about martyrdom in Iran. And he made some amazing statements there that I've never forgotten, okay. And so the Lord has used him to raise up this ministry. He ran alive. Now I want you, if I had been organized and more ahead of time, I would have gone and ordered a couple of stacks of this book. And I was just looking at it tonight, okay, an hour before coming here, and it has a wonderful exposition of Jeremiah 49, verses 35 to 39, which is the ones I just read you, okay, about Elam. And at the end, God says, I'm gonna set my throne in Elam. Jacob, come on up here, okay, when you're ready. I'm gonna set my throne in Elam. And he's preaching 24 hours a day. on Iran Alive, and it goes out, and the Iranians sneak their TVs open, and the police come and try to find out if they're watching certain shows, and they try to hide it, and they watch a show, and they're being saved in their hundreds, and in their thousands, they're being saved. They're coming to Christ. because Hormuz Shariat presents a very clear, he's the Billy Graham of Iran, a very clear gospel message, and they have discipleship shows, and underground church shows, and they are persecuted, and the Iranians are persecuted. And I remember one story from 10 years ago about an Iranian army major who was arrested for being a Christian. He's taken out of the army, put in jail. Okay, so, you know, he's sentenced to five years in jail for being a Christian. So he's there for six months, and people around him started to become Christians, inmates. And then guards started to become Christians. Okay, and this guy's talking it out to them. And, you know, and he's there for a year, and there's like 100 Christians in the prison with him. He has a church going. Okay, and he's getting Bibles, the guards are smuggling Bibles in, you know. And they couldn't control this and they got so concerned about it, they brought him into their central office and they said to this U.S., this Iranian army major, they said, we, you'll be very happy today, we're gonna release you early. And guess what he said? No, you're not. You sentenced me to five years. I'm gonna serve five years here. Okay, no, no, no, you gotta go. We can't keep you anymore. They eventually forced him out. But he didn't wanna, he made it hard on them. He didn't wanna go. He wasn't gonna come. Now this is the kind of miracles that God is doing in Iran. And it's not just through Hormuz. I don't wanna give you the impression that I'm sort of pushing his ministry on you. It's because it's the one I know best. I support it and I pray through that and stuff like that. And we met him. And oh, he was so interesting. We met him 10 years ago. You know what he said? He said this, I'm gonna lay this one on you, okay? And Jacob, anytime you want, just come up to the front here, okay? All right, but don't miss this. I know you're all watching, Jacob. Walk up here. Don't miss this, okay? Hormuz Shariat, the Billy Graham of Iran, says to me, take that, oh, you got one, okay. You can have two, okay. Come on up here beside me, and I'm gonna say this thing, and I'm gonna turn it over to him for a couple of minutes, and he's gonna talk to us about drone warfare. Why is he gonna talk to us about it? Because he was in the U.S. Army and he was over in Iraq and he flew. He flew drones in Iraq. And if you ask any more questions, we'll have to kill you, okay? Because he can't tell you everything. Now this is what Hormuz Shahrat said to us at the breakfast table 10 years ago. He may have said it in the conference when he was talking, okay? And emphasize, he says, I think that by the year 2030, Iran will have become a Christian nation, okay? I just lay that on you, it's just a prediction, it's not from me, it's from him. What we do know is this, missiologists tell us, that the fastest growing underground church in the world now is no longer China, it's the biggest in China, 100 million people, underground Christians, but the fastest growing one is in Iran. Okay, and do you want this, Jacob? Sure, yeah. And you want me to take it back or are you gonna take it back to? There we go. Okay. Right there. There, all right. Okay, let me get out of your way. Take the pulpit there. I'll be back. Can you guys hear me all right? Good? Awesome. Well, as Pastor David said, my name is Jacob Sholian. I did serve in the army and I flew the shadow drone while I was in. And I consider tonight a real privilege to be able to speak to everyone tonight and kind of shed some light on the new warfare that's taken place over the past 20 years. Yeah, let's get started. So the first one here, this is called the Gray Eagle. It's a really cool drone. It has a Mercedes engine, by the way. I just think it's funny how all these guys all know each other. This right here is made by the Army, and as you can see here, it has two cool missiles on the front of it right there. Those are called Hellfire missiles, and they come in all shapes and sizes, and they all do different things. And they're a laser-guided weapon system, If you look on the front of this drone right here, this little, kind of looks like a little soccer ball on the front of it. There right there is the camera, and it has all kinds of sensors on it. It has all kinds of capabilities, and it's really, really cool. This bird can fly up to 29,000 feet, and on one tank of gas, it can fly for 25 hours straight, which is a very long time. And it's a really cool bird. I got to be around them for a little bit my first year in the Army. These birds here saved a lot of American soldiers' lives. We can see all kinds of stuff with this. Now, the next one, this right here is called a Themis. And this isn't really an American vehicle. I just wanted to show you a little bit of variety of what's going on out there in the world. Mostly, NATO uses this, well, ground drone, I guess you could say. It's a UGV. And that is a remote control tank with a camera on it and a big old machine gun attached to it. And just for reference, from the front of the track to the rear of the track, that is eight feet. It is about six and a half feet wide and about four feet tall from the bottom of the track to the top. And they come in all kinds of different packages, all kinds of shapes and sizes. And they were testing these things in all kinds of environments in Croatia, right in the dead of winter. They're crazy, crazy machines. And this particular one comes in two different versions. You get your regular diesel engine, which has about 15 hours of runtime. Or if you want to be really woke and virtuous, it comes with a battery package. So if you want to mow people down while not emitting carbon emissions, then you can get that. So you can go to millremrobotics.com. I put the source that I get my information from on the bottom, so you can go in there and see it for yourself. All kinds of crazy things for these. Now, when I was in, it's not as glorious as the Grey Eagle, but this is the Shadow drone. This is the Shadow V2, I flew this when I was in. And this guard here has, it can go up to 18,000 feet, and has a max flight time of eight hours, and for reference, the wingspan is about 20 feet wide. And you can kind of see it right behind the front wheel there, you have your payload or your camera. And again, we can laser designate for targets with this thing here. And it can be from very far away. And they've upgraded this since I was in. When I was in, it was really loud, and we called it the flying lawnmower. So this right here is a picture of the shadow in mid-launch. You see this really long boom right here that it's on. And when we start for launch, it's at the bottom. And when I'm ready to go, I tell my crew chief, hey, go ahead and launch. And then it shoots it off like a bullet. right off that thing, like a big slingshot. And from then, that's pretty much how it takes off. And so, these things are really cool. They have all kinds of capabilities nowadays, especially since I've left. I've read up on a lot of different things. But, if you've ever wondered what it looks like, you know, where are all these drone guys at and, you know, are they like flying a drone over in Iraq and they're just chilling in the United States at the same time? Sometimes, but most of the time, we're in country where we're flying. And this right here is the UGCS. It's called the Universal Ground Control System, or station, sorry. And from here, we have pretty much everything we need to fly the bird from, aside from all of the antenna equipment and stuff like that outside that we use to communicate to the bird. Also, it has heating and air conditioning in it. So in the summer in Iraq, it is awesome to hang out in there and really be interested in what's going on. Yeah, the seats are really comfortable. That's actually a newer one that I was in when I was flying over there. And so then you can see on this picture here, they've got the maps up there, they've got all this crazy flight data on that side, and you both have your own set of keyboards and all kinds of bells and whistles in there. And it's a really cool system. One of the cool things that I discovered recently is that the company Textron that you see right there, That is the company that develops and manufactures the shadow drone that I flew. And I read that this year, right off of the website, that they have recently partnered with Shield AI. What Shield AI is, is a company that is trying to create an AI pilot program. And as you all have heard recently from Pastor Brandon, we've had a lot of talk recently about AI taking over black box programming, all kinds of stuff, and now it's starting to bleed over into the defense sector. And so, what the AI pilot basically will be able to do, and this is right on Shield AI's website, you can get this, Shield AI is capable of making these programs run through simulated missions. What they're learning is that this AI pilot program is able to learn and adapt to all different types of situations in combat, whether it's route reconnaissance, if they're protecting a convoy, if they're looking for someone. It's really crazy what they're able to do. And part of that programming is called Hive Mind. And I kid you not, it is right there on the website, Hive Mind. It's amazing. They're out with it now. They're not trying to hide anything. They know what they're doing and they don't care. Hivemind is basically launching a whole bunch of different drones, and they all share the same brain, if that makes sense, and a separate computer. And it eliminates the need for global positioning systems and all kinds of stuff, and it's just amazing what it can do. A couple other enhancements that have happened with the drone since I've been out was that one of the big things that drones struggled with is weather while we're flying, just like any other airframe. weather, clouds, precipitation, it really messes with the bird. And so now, that is becoming a thing of the past. They are able to have a lot more tolerance in reference to weather and flying in the rain. Another thing that's coming is object recognition. I'm talking like specific things like a gun or a type of truck that they're looking for or, I don't know, a face that they've been looking for that matches the person that they're trying to look for. All of these things are coming. You can go online and you can find all kinds of and there are some other things I did want to mention But I'm not going to tonight because I couldn't find my source So if you want to know a little bit more about those kind of things you can get with me afterwards and I'll try and find the sources for you, but for Accountability sake I'm not gonna put those up there tonight This right here is digidog or spot the NYPD is currently using this if you go to police1.com and There is a video of the mayor of New York celebrating its implementation into the New York Police Department. And I got to tell you, this thing right here is something else is from Boston Dynamics. If you go to Boston Dynamics website, this is not the only drone that they've made over the past 20 years, they've made all kinds of things from things that look like dogs to things that look like humans. And it's really wild and this thing right here has LIDAR capabilities basically it can create a 3D map of a building once it goes inside that's what that little tiny pineapple thing on the back of it looks like and it also comes with an arm and he mentioned specifically during this briefing and also the website mentions this is that This drone's original purpose is to go into situations that would otherwise put police officers at risk, like a hostage situation, for instance. It's a really popular one that they're wanting to use this for. They'll put a little iPad or whatever with the negotiator's face on it. They'll be able to talk to the person without even having an officer there. They're really cool. This is a personal opinion. I think that AI is gonna come to these things too in the future because that's what we've seen Unfortunately, what happens when sinful humanity gets a hold of authority, they don't stop. They keep going. So the reason why David wanted me to bring this up tonight, though, the main reason is to talk about drones in reference to Israel. And cool things about Israel is that they were the ones in the 1980s that were developing a lot of the drone technology that we have today. It goes right in line with what the Lord said about Israel, that they will be a blessing to every other nation. They are really smart, and they can create these things on the fly. It is amazing what they can do with programming and what they can do with their engineering capabilities. Also, over in the Middle East, when it comes to fighting Syrians or terrorists, Iraqis, Iranians, drones are going to be heavily implemented. Because what Iran has always done and continues to do is they like to fight with proxy forces. They will hire another group that is a terrorist organization that is radical. Well, they're all radical. This one's especially radical, and they'll tell them to go and fight. And they'll supply them with food, supplies, money, weapons, everything. And the best way to fight these people are with drones, because these people will not fight face to face. They like to hide. They'll hide in holes. They'll hide in mountainsides. They'll hide amongst the population. They'll use their own kids or other innocent bystanders for shields even. So it's nice to be able to fly these drones at night and see them when they have no clue what's happening, blow them up, so. But yeah, I mean, not to sound crude or anything, but it is war, and that's what you do, and it doesn't matter what your opinion is of the United States or not. We were there, and we were eliminating bad people. So that's all I really have for right now. Thank you for allowing me to share with you guys, and I really appreciate it. Standby. I want to mention to you that Jake came directly to us from his classes over at Bakersfield College. He got out early and raced over here so he could be with you. And also that he's responsible in this presentation for all of the graphics and pictures, more or less, okay? I did the text, you know, the writing and stuff, but he's the one that makes it look really nice and come alive and finds maps and things for me. And the same thing in my Sunday school class. He's been helping me for, oh, six or eight months now, and has really made a big difference. So thank you, Jacob, very much, okay? And we're gonna keep him up here in case you have a question for him. Now, we should be able to wrap up really soon, and then maybe even conclude in prayer and take questions. Okay? I have a question, David, or for Jacob. OK, go ahead. How easily are those drones detected? Can they be traced? It depends on who's trying to detect them and which drone it is. So every single airframe out there has what's called an IFF, which is a identify friend or foe signal. And basically, while it's flying, it continues to send out this signal saying, here I am, this is me, and this is what I am. When it comes to warfare, a lot of those things are turned off. So I can't really tell you a whole lot more than that. But I know while we were flying, we did take measures to be able to fly undetected. I wouldn't be able to answer that question. Sorry. Yes. I was seeing this morning, I think it was, I didn't have time to dig into it, but the gentleman that was responsible for creating AI resigned? Yes, okay, so I was there. There was something about that. But I don't know the details of it. I warned you. Okay, meet us afterwards. We're gonna have to kill you. Okay. Oh wait, did I miss something? I have any more sensitive questions? Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, that's not a sensitive question for me. But as far as radar and stuff like that, it's not that I can't answer. It's some of these questions I just don't know. Something about drone operators, we go through about eight months of classes. And we go through training and whatnot in Arizona to learn how to fly these birds. It's not like they teach us every single facet. They teach us how to fly it, how to set it up, It teaches a lot about the bird and our system itself, not a whole lot about the inner workings of the whole industrial or the world of military as a whole as to how they can track us and what they can't. We just know our own capabilities, what we're able to and what not to do in reference to that specific drone. You better believe, though, that the drones are designed stealthily. You saw the rounded surfaces, very thin wings, and probably materials that are specially made also to be radar absorbent or transparent so that they don't have much of a signature on a radar screen, if any. They might not have any at all. They might not be picked up. Here's Hormuz Shariat, nice smile, right? This is the guy that comes on TV all the time in Iran and explains the gospel in very winsome, joyful ways and is having so much success used by the Lord over there. And again, I don't wanna push one ministry necessarily on you, it's just the one that I know best. And it's the one that makes it sort of easy for you to do something about this, okay? So I want you all to go to the Iran Alive website. Now, you don't have to sign up or anything, but I want you to do one thing there, okay? And I'll mention that in just a minute. I want you to order this book. Okay, and Jacob's got a really good picture of it there, but I brought this because I'm so used to doing things in the old fashioned way. Okay, I brought this book to hold up. And I just discovered today that he has a whole section of chapters in the middle about the Jeremiah 49 passage. Verses 35 to 39 that conclude with, I will set my throne in Elam, which is in some ways the most important part of Persia. He says that the oil wells are there, the nuclear facilities are there, military bases are there, and a couple of other things, and that Elam is a really important part of Persia. So God is saying, I'm gonna set my throne there, which means I'm gonna take over. I'm gonna be the conquering king. And what Sharmuz Shariat takes from that is that God, he believes, has special plans for Iran. Special plans to convert the country and use them in a wonderful way that we probably can't even begin to conceive of. So what do I want from you tonight? Okay, I do want something. It's no good just to talk about something, blah, blah, blah. We have to take an action. What I'd like you to do is look up the website. It's real easy to remember, right? Iran Alive. I should have ordered the books ahead of time. Just didn't think that far ahead and had them here for you, okay? Because it's a really good read about the awakening of Iran. But I didn't. So you can go to the website, order them. If you think that it's too much for you, okay, give my bill to Leanda, your bill to Leanda, and she'll pay you for the book, okay? We'll buy you a book, all right? And then I want you to pray, okay? We encourage you to pray for Iran Alive Ministries, for the Christians that are persecuted there. We also encourage you to check out this book to gain a better understanding of the amazing work that the Lord is doing in Iran. Order Iran's Great Awakening from the Iran Alive website. Okay, and in conclusion, not quite, we have a few other things, but anyways, the last slide. May this presentation motivate you to pray boldly and regularly for Israel and Iran to see God's work and some miracles. Now, you may not believe that God can convert a country. It doesn't have to be the whole country, 10% will do. 10% will do enough to change the course of a country, okay? I remember teaching one of my classes and we were actually warned by the AP instructors, okay? to watch out for South Koreans. The AP instructors who are, you know, college guys, AP, college board, blah, blah, blah, take this AP course, get ahead in college credit. Okay, smart kids take this in high school. I was teaching an AP course in world history, and they warned us to watch out for the South Korean kids. Why? Because they carry Bibles in the class. Imagine that. Oh, a Bible in my class. Horrors, okay? Religious fanatics, okay? And that's a miracle. Did you know that? Okay, South Korea's a Buddhist country. What the heck is happening here? Well, what happened was, 50 years ago, we fought a nasty war over there from 50 to 53. Watched the old TV comic show with Alan Alda called MASH. Very unpopular war. useless waste of time and waste of American young men and their young men and their civilians, complete waste. And it ended in 53, not with a treaty, but with a ceasefire, which is still in effect today. And after 53, something happened in South Korea. Now it could have been taken over by the communists. If it was taken over by communists, it would be the most benighted peninsula in the world, sticking out of China, okay? It would be the worst place in the world, the whole peninsula, south and north. But we kept it free. And God went to work in South Korea in the years afterward, and he converted half the country. And the biggest churches, the biggest congregations in the world today, or in Seoul, South Korea. They meet in football stadiums and have 14 services a day. By the way, just a little aside, we're about to go to four services on Sunday, okay? When we get in the new building. Don't tell anybody I told you that tonight, okay? 14 services a day, biggest congregations in the world, okay? Billy Graham went over there before he got old and crotchety, and he preached to a crowd in Seoul, a crowd of, now this is very difficult to do, okay? A crowd of one million people. in Seoul, South Korea. I was teaching my AP class, here's a South Korean kid sitting there, and I said, you know, blah, blah, blah, Korean War, and it's really funny, after the Korean War, South Korea became one-third Christian from a Buddhist country, you know, entirely Buddhist. And the South Korean kid, he never said anything the whole term, put his hand up, said, Mr. Howell, One half, not one third, okay? Was what he said. The other miracle that you can actually put your finger on is the underground church in China, totally persecuted. Off the map, 10 million when the communists took over in 1949. And the 10 million should have become one million Christians in China, okay? But instead, it's 100 million. What happened? God did a miracle, okay? So let's pray for a miracle in Iran, because that's what Hormuz Shariat would like us to do. Pray for Iran, pray for Israel, the protection of Israel, and let's see some miracles in this world around us, okay? And once you see those big ones, maybe you'll have enough desire to pray for miracles in your country, in your community, in your family. Let's pray. I'm gonna ask Jacob to conclude in prayer. And if you want, feel free to go, but we'll take some questions, okay, if you have any. So let's conclude in prayer. And I'm gonna turn it over to Jacob for that. Dearly father, we just wanna thank you so much for tonight. Pastor David giving us this message, and we want to thank you so much, Lord, for Rock Harbor Church. We want to thank you for our brothers and sisters in Christ, for the ability to be able to lean on one another in times of need and through our struggles, Lord. And Lord, we just thank you so much for that ability to do that. Heavenly Father, we want to pray for Iran right now. It's crazy over there, and we want to pray for all those Middle Eastern countries with Christians in them, Father, that are persecuted way worse than anything that we've experienced over here in America. Dear Father, I want to pray that you would embolden the pastors in those countries to stand for the truth and to look death right in the face and say, no, I believe in you, and I'm not going to be quiet. Amen. Dear only Father, we just want to thank you again for Rock Harbor Church. We want to thank you so much for the ministry you have here in Bakersfield. And I pray that you would embolden every single one of us, Lord, to go out into our communities and share the amazing gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. Dear Lord, we just want to thank you again. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. And I want to thank the Lord for a time miracle. We actually ended at 8 o'clock. Isn't that super? I'm not known for ending on time. 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.