We're in this marvelous story in Genesis of the story of Joseph, and my wife is quipped that someone should make a movie of this, it's so good. Someone should, in a professional manner, make a movie of the story of Joseph because it's got every element of every conceivable family dynamic that you could ever imagine. Good and bad, and the most evil, if you will. I mean, selling your brother into slavery? trying to kill him. And then Joseph, as we see in subsequent lessons, is going to become the prime minister of Egypt. It's almost overwhelming to conceive that these things have happened. And in our session last time, we were looking at how Joseph was sold into slavery. Joseph had this charge by his dad to be the overseer over his brother. Reuben, the eldest in the family of twelve in that polygamous family, had lost that right for several reasons, primarily though because he committed incest with one of his father's concubines. So they had all colluded together when they were shearing sheep, or tending the sheep if you will. Joseph was sent by his dad up to see what they were doing, because they had been bad guys before, and he wanted to make sure they were doing the right thing. So Joseph goes up there and is wearing his coat, which was a significant coat. It meant that he had a rulership, if you will, or overseer function in that family, which is typical in Egypt. And we see these paintings in the ancient Egyptian caves to attest to that. So his brothers see him, and in their complete jealousy and animosity, they say, let's kill him. Reuben, the oldest, decides that he doesn't like this, he's uncomfortable with it, and he suggested that they just, let's put him in a pit. Here's an empty well, let's put him in that cistern, and then we'll just leave him there to die. And they kind of agree with that, and Judah, one of the other near elders says, yeah, that's not a bad idea. Let's do that. He starts to have misgivings about this too. And so they throw him in this pit and then Reuben is going to come back later. See, his plan is to pull him out of the pit and save him because he knows how badly this is going to hurt the dad. I mean, Jacob is just going to feel horrible If his favorite son, who has just been elevated to the firstborn status because of what Reuben had done, the favorite son of the favorite wife, is dead. So he says, I can't do that to my dad. I'm going to get him out of there. So he comes back and can't find him. See, they sold him to the Ishmaelites, who were also called the Midianites. And here's Judah, saying to his brothers, what profit it us if we slay our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him." In other words, let's not kill him. For he is our brother, he is our flesh. You know, Judah had a change of heart here. Not as strong as Reuben, but he did have a change of heart. These guys were so insensitive that the scriptures tell us that Joseph was crying mercifully, let me out of here. He knew what was going to happen to him. It was just imminent death. He didn't realize that the Ishmaelites were going to come and take him away and his brothers were going to get some money for this. But he was crying and crying and crying and they just were having a great time partying. They didn't care. Well, how insensitive can people get? You know, your brother is trapped in the cistern and you're expecting him to just die there and you're having a great time partying away. So these guys were up north of Shechem and they were near a trade route that ultimately connected with the VMIRI and that took the travelers down to Egypt. So these Midianites come by in a caravan, and these guys are traders. They were laden with spices, nekehot, which is a gum, and tesri, which is a balsam, and leot, which is a fragrance that they used in perfume. And the Jews see this and they think, oh, these guys got a lot of money. Man, these guys are good traders. Let's see if we can't make a deal here. Now remember, the Midianites and the Ishmaelites at this time were pretty much the same group of people. The Midianites came from one of Keturah's sons, Midian, and they had all intermarried with the Ishmaelites, because the Ishmaelites had been there for a longer period of time, even as Esau intermarried with them. So they get him. And, the text says, they drew and lifted Joseph up out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 pieces of silver. 20 pieces of silver? Is that all he was worth? I mean, that's all a slave was worth in the times of Moses. So, I mean, they could have probably bargained for something better than this. They just expected the Midianites would probably take him down to Egypt and sell him into slavery. They didn't tell Reuben, because they knew that Reuben would really be sensitive about this. And if Ruben knew what had happened, Ruben would have gone back and told his dad. And then his dad would have really been upset. So what they did was they concocted this story that Joseph was killed by wild animals. And they killed a goat and they dipped his coat in blood, the coat of many colors, and then they gave that to Ruben. And Ruben was distraught. renting his clothes. He's having a real tough time with this. And the brothers won't even go and talk to Jacob. I mean, they were ashamed of what they've done. And they knew how Jacob was going to react. Isn't that the way people are? You do something really bad, and you're intent on it, and you don't care. You've got purpose. You just want to do something bad. And after you do it, you know other people aren't going to like it. And the worse, item is that you've done, the more sensitive you are about who's not going to like it. So, the brothers had somebody else go talk to Jacob. They couldn't even do it themselves, and he does the same thing. He goes into really, really deep sorrow, and he mourned for many, many days. His kids all came to him. They tried to comfort him, and he just pushed him away. He says, no, no, I'm not going to be comforted. He says, for I will go down to Sheol to my son's mourning, And his father wept for him. Man, that is just a sad state of circumstances to lose a child or have one of your children be harmed. It's such a devastating sense. People don't recover from that. People that lose a child never recover. My parents lost my brother, and they never recovered. And I know others the same way. That pain stays. It may diminish somewhat over their life, but it always stays. It's an unnatural order of death when your children die before you. And when that happens, it never ever goes away. And so you can just imagine how distraught Jacob was. And he just did not want to be comforted And when he's talking about Sheol, we remember that Sheol was where all the dead people went before Christ came to this earth. And Sheol had two compartments, the good compartment and the bad compartment. And the good people, the people that had faith in God, went down to the good side of Sheol, which is called the Abraham's bosom. And the bad side was hell. They went to hell. Those that had no faith in God. And when Christ died, his sacrifice completed the process. He went down to the prisoners and he brought them up with him when he ascended. Those that were in the good side of Sheol. Joseph finally gets sold though, again, to a guy who was the captain of the host, if you will. The captain of the guard, the name is Potiphar in Egypt. Now he had high ranking position under Pharaoh. So Joseph immediately gets placed in a family that's very close to Pharaoh. However, Potiphar's title means that he's chief of the executioners. Not just captain of the guard, but that title has reference to what he did. He was chief of the executioners. Now we're going to hold that story, almost like a cereal here, you know? The Sunday morning matinee, like when I was a kid. We're going to hold that story until next week. The text in the scripture for today goes into a huge digression, or an interregnum if you will, parenthetical portion of scripture, to talk about the messianic line. The messianic line that Christ came from was through Judah. And what God is going to show us in these texts today is that no matter what happens, He gets His way. His will is always done. And in this particular chapter, we're going to go through chapter 38, He's going to show us that regardless of what humans do, how our emotions drive us and move us to do one thing or another, God is going to get His will. He's going to bring that Messiah. And for us today, we can see that He's going to bring Him back. None of this is given to us as a casual story. It's given to us to let us see exactly how God works, that His Messiah was going to come, And for us, he's going to come back. I'm going to start reading in Genesis 38 verses 1 to 11. And it came to pass at that time that Judah went down from his brethren and turned into a certain Adolamite, and his name was Hura. And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua. And he took her and went in unto her, and she conceived and bare a son, and he called his name Er. And she conceived again and bare a son, and she called his name Onan, and she yet again bare a son and called his name Shelah. And he was at Shezeb, when she bare him. And Judah took a wife for Eir, the firstborn, and her name was Tamar. And Eir, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of Jehovah. Jehovah slew him. And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother unto her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed would not be his. And it came to pass, when he was in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did was evil in the sight of Jehovah, and he slew him also. Then said Judah to Tamar his daughter-in-law, Remain a widow in thy father's house till Shelah my son be grown up. For he said, lest he also die like his brethren. And Tamar went and dwelt in her father's house. Now Judah, we remember, was aligned with Reuben somewhat to try and keep Joseph alive. They sold him. Then Judah travels to the southwest, a little bit southwest of Bethlehem actually, And he goes down to this town, which was later going to be a real area of tribal significance for Judah after Joshua conquered that. It's also associated with the life of David. David spent some time there. And Judah must have had a disagreement with his siblings, because those guys were pretty tight before this. And Judah leaves them. He didn't stay with them. This account is going to give us a time frame in this chapter of about 22 to 23 years, because we're going to see Judah with his sons growing up. Because they didn't die as young children, they died as adults. And I placed a map in your notes there that shows you where Adullam is. It's slightly south and west of Jerusalem, and it's just north and east of Shezeb. So here in a dowm, Judah meets a guy named Herah, and he makes friends with them. So they become really close buddies. And through him, he's introduced to Shura, who's got a marriageable daughter. We never know the daughter's name. We just know Herah and Shua. So he marries this Canaanite woman, which is also a big mistake. They weren't supposed to marry into the Canaanites, but they started doing this. And he has three children. You know, it's interesting that both Abraham and Isaac told their kids, do not marry into the Canaanites. You can't do that. Well, here's Joseph's son starting to do it. That's a big problem. And the big problem is one of the reasons why God took the Jews out of Canaan and put them into Egypt. So Esau violated this. My goodness, we knew that. And he married into the Canaanites and the Ishmaelites. But Joseph, we will see, excuse me, a Judah who we're going to see later in the chronology here in Genesis 49, is blessed as being the designee, if you will, to bring the Messianic line down. The text simply says that he takes this woman and he went in unto her and then he had three sons by her, Onan, Shelah, and the first one was Eir. It's interesting, in the Hebrew language being so expressive, they name their sons and daughters after commemorative events. They want those people to realize that they were born during a time of great happiness or joy or sadness or something, but their names reflect things that were taking place at the time. Eir means forsaken or lonely, Onan means sorrow, and Shelah means deception. We think that this is closely aligned to what Judah did and his brethren did to Joseph because of the way these children were named and the fact that he separated from them. So he must have been quite remorseful about what had happened. When Eir was grown, He married a woman named Tamar. The text further tells us that Er was really wicked and God killed him. Divine retribution. Now it's interesting the Hebrew word for wicked here is Ra. And that word Ra used in the Old Testament always refers to something that is so wicked that has a magnitude that is so wicked that it requires divine punishment. That's what happened here. He was killed in some manner by Jehovah. They recognized it. They knew that his death was the result of God judging him. It wasn't just an accidental death. Jehovah who knew and knows and will know everything. Our thoughts past, present and future was keeping Tamar who would be in the messianic line from being associated with this guy, Er. And as a result of his death, Judah instructs his second, Onan, to go into thy brother's wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her and raise up seed to the brother. Now this became the concept that was established into the Mosaic law as the law of loverite marriage. And we see this discussed in Deuteronomy 25, we see it in Ruth 4, and we see it in Matthew 22-24. I'm sure you remember the story in Matthew where the Sadducees come to Jesus and they're trying to trick him because they didn't believe that there was life after death. The Sadducees were essentially the liberals of Christ's time. They were very powerful, though. They had a real big presence on the Supreme Council of the Sanhedrin. And they were very powerful, very, very wealthy, and they just didn't believe most of the stuff in the Bible. They just didn't trust it. So here they see Christ coming, and they're trying to trick them, and they use an example Okay, this guy dies and then his brother becomes his wife or husband and then the second one died and then the third one and so on. And they're talking about the sequence of leperite marriage while brothers are dying. It was even in practice in Christ's time. The idea of this, though, was to keep the brother's name alive so the brother's name wouldn't die out. But more importantly, there was an inheritance involved here. And you know, the old saying, follow the money if you want to understand what's taking place. It's true here too. These guys knew that there was inheritance that was going to come from Judah to the firstborn, and they wanted it. They wanted that. So that gave them additional motivation to marry the deceased brother's wife. Deuteronomy 25, 5-6 is how it got codified in the Mosaic Law. In one spot anyway, it says, If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no son, the wife of the dead shall not be married without under a stranger. her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wipe, and perform the duty of a husband's brother unto her. And it shall be that the firstborn that she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother that is dead, that his name be not blotted out of Israel." Now, Onan doesn't seem to have any problem with having intercourse with Tamar. And he doesn't seem to have any problem with the inheritance. But the idea that the child that would be produced from this union would be the heir, would be heir's son, would be the heir, H-E-I-R, but it's going to be heir's son because the ownership, if you will, or firstborn transferred over to him. So in succession, Judah would give his estate and his leadership to normally to heir. Now he's going to give it to Onan, but Onan can't keep it. He's got to give it to this firstborn son. He can't give it to any of his own children. It's an interesting way of looking at this, but that's how they managed estate planning back then. They had this law of leverite marriage. So you can see that Onan is a little skeptical about doing this. So what he does is during intercourse, and this is just not one time, this is throughout all the time he was married to her, he withdraws, coitus interruptus, and will not deposit his seed into her. And in doing so, she never gets pregnant. She wants children. He's denying her children. You know, some have mistakenly taken this to believe that God does not sanction contraception. That's not what this is about at all. This is about the law of loverite marriage and what the brothers are supposed to do to keep that family name alive and have the appropriate line of inheritance. And here, in this chapter, it's the line of the Messiah, which is even far more important. Anyway, so she's just not allowed to become pregnant. And she's not really enjoying this here. So what happens is, because of his wickedness, Ra, the wickedness, he's killed too. Divine retribution comes on him. So Tamar is a widow again. And Judah says to her, well, remain a widow in thy father's house till Shelah, my son, be grown up. For he said, lest he also die like his brethren. Now, Judah's looking at her like, you've got a major issue here. I give you two sons and they're both dead. There's something wrong with you, Tamar. God is judging this situation. There's nothing wrong with Tamar. It's these two kids. That's what it is. He doesn't want to give his younger child up So he makes the excuse that the younger child is too young. Sheila is just too young now, but I'll give him to you later. And he tells her that when he becomes of age, she can have him and love her right, because that would be the right thing to do. But he's deceiving her. He's not going to do it at all. And because of the curse that he thought she had, he figures, I'm just backing out of this whole thing. I'm just not going to do it. I'm not going to give up my third child. Remember, we just talked about that, how painful it must be to lose a child. And he lost two. He lost two. I'm not saying Judah is the pillar of faith or anything. I'm just saying the sensitivity that he had about his third child was strong, not wanting him to die too. Now the next section that we're going to look at I've titled the strange case of Tamar and Judah because it is really strange and it just shows a huge amount of deception on both parties but it shows us how divinely God moves people to do what he wants to get the Messiah's line to come through even through a Canaanite woman I'm going to read to Genesis 38 verses 12 to 26. And in process of time, Shewa's daughter, the wife of Judah, died and Judah was comforted and went up onto his sheep shears to Timnah. He and his friend Herah, the Dolomite, and it was told Tamar saying, Behold, thy father-in-law go up to Timnah to shear sheep. And she put off from her the garments of her widowhood, and covered herself with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat at the gate of Enim, which is by the way to Timnath. For she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she was not given unto him to wife. When Judas saw her, he thought her to be a harlot, for she had covered her face. And he turned unto her, by the way, and said, Come, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee. For he knew not that she was his daughter-in-law. And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou mayest come in unto me? And he said, I will give thee a kid of the goats from the flock. And she said, Well, wilt thou give me a pledge till thou send it? And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet and thy cord. and thy staff that is in thy hand." And he gave unto her, and he came unto her, and she conceived by him. And she arose, and went away, and put off her veil from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood. And Judas sent the kid of the goats by the hand of his friend Adelamite to receive the pledge from the woman's hand. But he found her not. Then he asked the men of her place, saying, Where is the prostitute that was here at Nine by the wayside? And they said, There is no prostitute here. And he returned to Judah and said, I have not found her. And also, the men of the place said, there hath been no prostitute here. And Judah said, well, let her take it to her, lest we be put to shame. Behold, I send this kid, and thou hast not found her. And it came to pass about three months after that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar, thy daughter-in-law, hath played the harlot. And moreover, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, bring her forth and let her be burnt. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father-in-law saying, by the man whose these are, am I with child? And she said, discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet and the cord and the staff? And Judah acknowledged them and said, she is more righteous than I, for as much as I gave her not to Sheolah my son, and he knew her again no more. Time had passed and Judah was making no effort as he knew right from the beginning that he was not going to make any effort to exercise the law of the lover right marriage and give his youngest son to Tamar and Tamar not wanting to remain a widow she was young she wanted children She figured that, you know, I've got to do something here. Now Judah's wife dies. He had gone through a period of mourning. And Judah was comforted. It says he's beyond the period of mourning. So he and his friend, Hira, go up to the sheep shears. Now, at the time of sheep shearing, this is a big celebration going on. This is the end of the season, so to speak. And these guys all get together, and they work all day shearing sheep. And then they just party like the Dickens. They're having a great time. A great time. And that's why he went up there. He was a shepherd. These were his sheep, and these guys were working for him. So he was going up there to party with them. It was a real festive time. The morning was over, and he was having a great time. But we need to remember that he was really susceptible to the lures of Tamar because he'd been in mourning and he hadn't been with a woman for a long time. And she had devised a plan to force him to be a lover for him. She contrived this to entrap him. So she changes out of her widow's clothes and she made herself appear as a woman of Iscarte, a temple prostitute, if you will. A temple prostitute. She puts on a veil and the veil during that time was worn by a bride. A virgin bride wore a veil. The prostitutes also would put them on when they paraded around to try and sell sexual favors so that they looked sort of like a bride. But the bride, the real bride, would not have been out with a veil. She would have been inside with a veil. And so the prostitute would also reveal part of her body through her gown to make herself look seductive, but have this veil to make her look attractive like the virgin bride. That's what they did. She wanted to be wholesome looking, but sexy, if you will. She was available to him for sexual intercourse. And when Judah saw her at the city gate, he was just enamored with her. and she is retaliating for not getting Shua. Now this puts her into a doubly sinful situation here. She's not wholesome in this matter. Shua was given to her, or would be given to her, so they had what we would call an engagement, and it was a firm, solid engagement. The Weberite marriage was a law of the day. I mean, they had to do this, so you were betrothed to this person that you were going to get. So one, she's essentially committing adultery here by going out to have intercourse with Judah, and two, it's incest. He's a close family member. He's a close family member. She shouldn't have done this. But Judah sees her. Boy, he is just enticed into this sexual union. And it's Judah that suggests it. It's not her. All she had to do was just really look good and reveal part of herself. And that's all it took. That's all it took. Judah says, come, I pray thee. Let me come in unto thee. For he knew not that she was his daughter-in-law. He was coming off a period of mourning, so he was really vulnerable to this temptation. He just didn't realize who this was. Now Tamar, who's playing the role of a prostitute to the hilt, says, what are you going to pay me? You know, this is not going to be for free here. I'm just not out having these good times. And this is a normal request from a prostitute. And she says, what will thou give me that thou mayest come in unto me? So he promises her a kid from the gopher, but he doesn't have it right there. It's not like he can give it to her and then they can have this sexual union and she's paid and they leave. She didn't trust him. She didn't trust him. She wants something more as a pledge. She wants like a down payment or good money or give me something to assure me that you're going to come back and pay me. She was actually looking for evidence. That's what she wanted. She wanted evidence because she was trying to entrap him. That was what this was all about. She was really smart. So Judas says, well, what pledge shall I give thee? What pledge? And she's so savvy. She wants his signet, the cord that it hangs on around his neck, and she wants the staff that's in his hand. Now, the signet that they wore around their necks I mean, that was their sign of authority for executing legal documents. They'd stamp that on documents so everybody knew, that's Judah. Judah's sign, you know, and he had his own special engraved sign. There's no doubt about identifying the person if you got their signet. and the cord that it was carried on around their neck, and then his staff showing what his occupation was. I mean, you can't get any closer to identifying somebody than those things in that day. So she gets this stuff, she has sex with him, and like the text tells us, she became pregnant. So she removes the veil and she goes back to her widow's clothes and Judah's trying to make good on the promise, so he sends Hera with the payment and Hera goes up to where she was and they say, there's been no prostitute here. What are you talking about? He says, yeah, but she was just... No, no, Judah said there was a prostitute here. There wasn't any prostitute. And so Hera's asking these guys and he's saying, where's the prostitute? They just say, there's been no prostitute here. Now Hera was trying to honor the commitment that Judah made. But Tamar had decided long ago, there isn't going to be any exchange here. I'm keeping what I got from Judah. And now Judah tries to just forget the entire incident. He just says, forget it. It's done. Let's just move on. Then the revelation comes. Three months later, Tamar is entering her second trimester, and everybody's seeing that she's pregnant. She can't hide it anymore. And somebody reports to Judah that his daughter-in-law has been playing a harlot here. She's out screwing around, and she's pregnant. And what does he say in indignance? We've got to burn her. This is a terrible thing that she's done. I'm thinking, can you imagine? He's the one that brought all this on and now he's condemning her. Isn't that the way things work though? Isn't that how it works? You condemn the person for something that you did. I'm telling you, the family dynamics here just show us what happens in the real world. What happens in the real world. Judas still doesn't know, though, that it was him that impregnated her. He just looks at her like she's done something entirely inappropriate and she needs to suffer the penalty of the day. Adultery deserves to be punished with death. You know, in our society today, adultery is said by the liberal media to be acceptable. People don't think so much of it anymore. That is not true. You know exactly how you would feel if your spouse cut out on you. Nobody wants that. Don't listen to the media that tells you otherwise. God's laws pertain to us today just like they did several thousand years ago. And here he is saying, bring her forth and let her be burnt. Now he was the patriarch of this clan. He had a right to do this. And she was guilty of prostitution. So they have a trial, and during the trial, she pleads, by the man whose these are, am I with child. She says, discern, I pray thee. Whose are these, the signet, the cords, and the staff? Judah must have been just humiliated to have that happen in an open court. And he confesses, and he says, she's more righteous than I, for as much as I gave her not to Shelah my son, and he knew her again no more. So she goes her way, and he goes his way, and she's not punished for this. But everybody knows what happened now. Everybody knows that it's Judah that impregnated her. There's still some legal requirements of the leberite law that had to be maintained here. And this is where it gets interesting because the messianic line now is going to come from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and then it's going to go through Tamar's son who we're going to see in just a few moments, Perez. Genesis 38 verses 27 to 30 read, And it came to pass, when she travailed, that one put out a hand, and the bitter wife took, and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first. And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out, and she said, Wherefore hast thou made a breach for thyself? Therefore his name was called Perez, and afterward came out his brother, that had the scarlet thread upon his hand, and his name was called Zerah." The story ends with the twins being born. The younger of the two puts his hand out of the womb first, and the midwife ties a scarlet a ribbon on his hand, he pulls his hand back in, and the second one comes out first. And it's Perez that comes out first. And this caused the midwife to say, wherefore hast thou made a breach for thyself? That's a Hebrew play on words there. And what it means is, it means you breached a breach. And that's the name the meaning of the name Perez, who was the firstborn. And Perez now becomes the messianic line, who is the direct offspring of Judah. So Judah's son now is Perez, who is going to carry on the messianic line. The second son comes out, and his name is Zerah. And we think that means shining one. And they may have designated him that because of the scarlet thread. So this whole story seems out of place with the chronological flow of the story of Joseph, but it's a digression to show us how the messianic line came about and the fact that God gets what he wants. It's a detailed account of how human beings will push and shove and try and get their own way and the sin, the huge volumes of sin that we see here and God all the time is directing everything to bring his Messiah. right through Judah as he said he was going to. Now the chronology of the text doesn't tell us that Judah is the messianic lion until we get to Genesis 49. Because in Genesis 49 we'll see Jacob's on his deathbed, he's in Egypt, and he blesses his 12 sons. And when he comes to Judah he calls him the lion of the tribe of Judah. Shiloh coming through him. And to me it's just really exciting to see how God brings forth Jesus through these messianic lines. And there's a number of spots in the scripture that show us what that line is. Finally, in this one, there's a real strong contrast here that we see between Judah and Joseph. One brother was resisting temptation, and the other one was caving into it. And next week, we're going to see some really strong temptation that Joseph had, and he resisted it. Throughout his life, he was wholesome, he wasn't sinless, there isn't anybody on the planet that's sinless, but he was wholesome, he loved God, and he wanted to always do what God wanted. The rest of the brothers kind of did what they thought was cool for the time. You know, politics for the minute is sort of what they did. The promises of the Messiah would happen, have happened, and will still happen. Again, what we get out of this is to see that the Scriptures are true, God's in control, and He's going to get His way. And someday this Lord Jesus is going to come back, just like