And so let's read the first verse here of Revelation, chapter one and verse one. So let us hear God's word. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants things which must shortly take place. And he sent and signified it by his angel to his servant John. May God add his blessing to the reading and hearing of his holy word. Now, So we go back a few years now. We spent about a year and a half spending some time looking at about 20% of the Psalms. And we looked, you recall, at 20% of each of the books of the Psalter, all five of them. And this was to get God's, if you will, overall message that is given to us in the Psalms. The genre we are looking at there, of course, is the poetic genre. And it creatively communicates God's word to us. Large sections of scripture are poetry, not just the Psalms, but the prophets and other places. Poetry can be very challenging, especially when you're trying to do something creative in one language, and you try to translate it into another language, and things can be obscure doing that. And so, this in large measure is why I gave you a translation of the Psalms and pointed out some of these things. Well, more recently, of course, we've spent also about a year and a half now looking at Romans chapters one to four, hearing God's message about sin and the gospel of God's righteousness. And most recently here in chapter four, how our salvation is the same as how God saved his people in the old covenant. Paul's letter to the Roman churches is a letter. But as we've seen, especially from 118 through chapter 3, it can be quite abstract. And his argument can be very slow and pedantic in some ways, but very precise. And it's taken some effort to understand that. Now my initial plan was to return to the Psalms at this point, preaching through another 20% of the Psalms. But you may recall last winter, as we were reading through the New Testament in our weekly scripture readings, we got to the book of Revelation, and just as happened a few moments ago, reading from Zechariah, there were a lot of quizzical looks, furrowed brows. What in the world does this mean? And so because of that, I thought, you know, John Boga and Bill Anderson did a Sunday School in Revelation, but few of you were here for that. It's been, what, 20 years ago or something like that? It's been a while. So I thought it was time for us to try to tackle this genre of apocalyptic. And some have considered this to be the most challenging in all of scripture. It's quite understandable. I'm not quite sure how much I'm going to cover. Maybe it'll be half the book. We'll just kind of see how it goes. But my goal here is obviously to let God's Word speak for itself, but also to give you some skills. How do you understand this? We just read Zechariah. How in the world does this woman in a basket, what's going on with all that? How do we understand it? So to begin that process here, we're going to say a few things to that effect now. And I spent approximately two months worth of Sunday school classes talking about these things too. And so if you miss some of those Sunday school classes or all of them, I encourage you to go online and listen to them. I think that'll be helpful for you because I can only touch on a few things today. And even in a sermon, there are some things not as conducive in that format. But anyway, we come here then, today to this and as I typically do let's answer a few questions to set this broader context so that we can better understand the particulars of what we find here. And so the first question we ask simply is who wrote the book and of course the ultimate answer is God did. And this is especially true here because John was given visions You know, when we look at the different books of the scriptures, there are portions of it that are on the far end, if you will, of just basic dictation. God said these words, write it down. Hey, Moses did that. Even God wrote down part of it there in the Ten Commandments. On the other end of the spectrum, you have, say, Paul writing a letter or David writing a poem, and it seems, if you will, very human, and yet God is behind it working. Well, this is on this end, right? More of the dictation end of things. God showed these visions to John and he wrote them down. Only the Spirit could have done what is found here in the book of Revelation. John, no human, could have done it by themselves. There are so many connections to the Old Testament, so many themes brought together here in this book, that only the Holy Spirit could have made this happen. And so we are on the end, if you will, of more dictation here in this book. Now, as I've mentioned, God used John. Look at verse 1, the end of the verse, his servant John. Verse 4, John. And verse 9, I, John. So it's very clear it's John here. And in the early church, there was no question. Everybody believed that it was John the apostle. We have document after document indicating this. But by the third century, some people started to question it. Because as you read the book of Revelation and you read the gospel of John and the letters of John, there are differences. And so because of those differences, some say it was a different John, like John the elder, or some other options have been given. But the reason why there are differences between these is because, as I just said, there's more dictation and there's all kinds of Old Testament references. There are things happening here that John does not address in his gospel, for example. And so, even though there are some differences, there's really no reason for us to believe that John the Apostle did not write this, led by the Spirit. All right, now, the next question, when? When did John write this? When did these visions come? Well, there are two main positions here. Some people will say that all this happened prior to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. And, you know, roughly that six, seven, eight year window of the Jewish war and so forth. And then there are others who say, no, it was written after all those events. But let me give you some reasons why I think after makes more sense. There are at least a dozen of the early church fathers who indicate that John wrote the book approximately 95 A.D. Let me read one of these to you. This is from the commentator Robert Mounts that I'm using and here's what he says. This is, he quotes Irenaeus, one of the early church fathers. Irenaeus lived from 130 to 202, and he probably wrote this around 180 AD. And here's what he says. For it was seen, referring to Revelation, it was seen not long ago, but almost in our generation, near the end, excuse me, near the end of Domitian's reign. Now, the mission was Caesar from 81 to 96 AD. And so here is one evidence of this. Eusebius, and like I said, about a dozen of them say something along these lines. Let me also read here from another commentator I'm using. This is John Wolvard, and he is referring to verse nine here, where John is on the island of Patmos. Okay, and here is what he says in this way. Early church fathers such as Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Eusebius state that John was sent to this island as an exile under the ruler Domitian. According to Victorinus, John, though aged, was forced to labor in the mines located at Patmos. Early sources also indicate that about 96 AD, at Domitian's death, John was allowed to return to Ephesus when the emperor Nerva was in power. So here is some historical evidence that points to the fact that the early church believed John wrote this approximately 95 AD, 25 years after the fall of Jerusalem. Now you might think, why is this important? Well, you're gonna interpret Revelation totally differently if you believe it was written prior to the fall or after the fall. And I'm not exaggerating, okay? So let me continue. There are a few other reasons why we think this. One of the things that are addressed here in the book of Revelation is the persecution that we as Christians face. And certainly there was persecution under Nero. But Nero, his persecution was largely limited to Rome, not Asia Minor. Plus you see a development of the worship of Caesar. Okay, you probably heard how the early Christians had to decide whether or not they would say Jesus is Lord. Because eventually the law was if you said anyone other than Caesar is Lord, you could be killed. And by the time you get to the second century, especially under Trajan, that's exactly what the law was. But prior to that, there was more of a gradual development. Nero, you see some of it to some degree, but it was largely centered around the fire of Rome. But under Domitian, you see it more and more, but not an official policy yet. And so as you read through Revelation and the persecution they are facing, John speaks of it, but he also speaks of it getting worse. And certainly that happened under Trajan. So as you look at the development in this way, and add to the idea that Jews were permitted to worship under Roman law and Christians were considered Jews according to Roman law during the days of Paul and then here John and so forth, but that started changing. And again, by the time you get to Trajan, the law was Christians are different from Jews and they are not permitted to worship. But under Domitian, again, this was starting to change. Again, it fits better with what John says here. Furthermore, if we look at some of the churches in the historical context of the churches, let's turn a moment to chapter two. The first church here, of course, is Ephesus. And note especially verse four, it says, nevertheless, I have this against you that you have left your first love. All right, now if John wrote this before the fall of Jerusalem, okay, that's, most people would say somewhere between 65 and 69 AD, okay? If that's when he wrote these words, remember that Paul wrote a letter to Timothy in Ephesus somewhere between 63 and 65 AD. So there may be overlap or possibly five years in between. Paul does not indicate any of these things in his letter to Timothy, nor does he say anything about it to his letter to the Ephesians written about 60 AD. But 30, 35 years later, it does seem to make more sense. Let me add also this one. If you turn to chapter three, the last church mentioned is the Laodicean church. And they had a major earthquake about 60 AD, totally leveled the city. They didn't even really start rebuilding until the 70s or 80s. So how then does verse 17 fit? Verse 17, because you say, I am rich, I become wealthy and have need of nothing. How can they say that about their city if it's been leveled by an earthquake? Now, by the time you get to the 90s, we have all kinds of evidence that the Laodicean city had been rebuilt and they were feeling good about themselves again. I could continue with examples like this. There are many reasons for us to believe that John wrote this about 95 AD, not prior to the fall of Jerusalem, but about 25 years after it. If you haven't guessed yet, this is my view. But I've read the other views. And in the Preterist view, Kenneth's entry gives seven reasons why it was written before the fall. I don't find any one of the seven compelling at all. And I tried to read it fairly. I think it makes much more sense to apply it in this way and come to this conclusion. So that's the way I'm going to go with it here. Now the next question is where? Here's one of the times I would like for you to take out your handout, and especially this bigger packet of pages. And thanks to Jesse for helping to make this copy here for me, and of course Kathy at the college. But if you look at the very back page, you'll see the map there. And if you look at the bottom left, You'll see Patmos with that little box with the arrow there pointing. John writes Revelation and such. John was on the island of Patmos here. And then if you go north and east a little bit, you come to Ephesus. And then, make your way around. You see, go north, Smyrna, Pergamum, then south and east, Scyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. These are the seven churches. This is where they were. This is what we would call Turkey today, Asia Minor at the time. If you continue westward, you'll come to Greece, and even further, of course, to Rome. If you go south and east further, you come to Jerusalem and such. So here's where John was and where the churches were. We'll say more about some of that in verse 9. So let me now take a few moments and talk about the views that different people have about revelation. You know it's always true whenever we come to anything whatever our presuppositions are going to determine how we interpret things. If you assume the earth is old, you're going to look at any evidence to prove that the earth is old. It's going to support your view. If you believe the earth is young, it's going to be the other way around. If you're a Republican or a Democrat, all evidence of Trump goes one way or the other, right? Well, the same is true, theologically speaking, here in this way. If you're an Arminian, you're going to interpret Romans 9 differently than a Reform person. If you're a dispensationalist, you'll interpret Hebrews 8 differently than a covenant theologian. And so here with Revelation, there are four main positions that people have held over the years. And there's some variation within them, but these are the main ideas. The first view, if you have your bulletin here, you can see on the handout some of these names. The first one is the Preterist view. This view believes that everything that John's writing here has to do with the fall of Jerusalem in some way or another. And so John wrote prior to 70 AD, and the words here in Revelation are fulfilled in the fall of Jerusalem. As I've already said about the question of when, frankly, they ignore a lot of historical evidence to come to this conclusion. Some of their main arguments center around these words. If you look at verse 1 here, chapter 1, verse 1, note in the middle of the verse it says, must shortly take place. And if you look at the end of verse 3, it says, the time is near. Those words are used a variety of times in the book, and they greatly emphasize that, saying that it had to happen before the fall. In my view, the preterist position has some very helpful ideas when it comes to the Olivet Discourse, Matthew 24 and 25, Mark 13, and such. But their understanding of the Revelation, I think, totally misses the point. I think they are off historically, and so therefore they interpret and apply the words wrongly. Typically, this view is connected with post-millennialism. Now, you remember the millennium, right? A thousand years. Post-millennialists believe that things will get better and better over time, and after the end of that thousand years, Christ will come back. Preterism and post-millennialism tend to go together, though not have to. The next view, as you see there, is the historicist view. This is the idea that chapters 1 to 3 in Revelation take place during John's day. So the letter to the churches and so forth. Then chapters 4 to 22 refer to the rest of church history between John's day and the return of Christ. Now what is, you might say, unique to their view is they think it's done chronologically. So what you see in chapter six is gonna happen sooner in time compared to say chapter 14 or 15 or something like that. So if you turn to chapter six a moment, just give you an example here. In chapter six, verses three and four say this. When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, come and see. Another horse, fiery red, went out. And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth and that people should kill one another. And there was given to him a great sword." So this red horse is going out, and basically there's war, all kinds of killing. Now, a historicist would say, well, that was fulfilled, for example, when the Muslims invaded the Holy Land and conquered Jerusalem in the seventh century. And their position would be it was fulfilled in that event and that event only, and it doesn't apply to any other event historically. Now, the challenge that the historicist has is how do you know it applies to that event? Maybe it applies to a different event. So if you read historicists, they don't agree with each other very much on when these words are specifically fulfilled. There are other reasons why I don't think it's as strong, but that's one of them. John Calvin, as you may know, never wrote a commentary on the book of Revelation because he said, I don't understand it well enough. Well, he was a historicist. And I think that's partly why he didn't understand it well enough. Well, the third view then, as you see here on the outline, is the futurist view. Now, probably all of us have been exposed to this view in one way or another. It is by far the most common view today. And their idea is simply this. Chapters 1 to 3 applied in John's day, seven churches. Chapters 4 to the end happened during the tribulation, and then the millennium, and then the final return of Christ. And so, we now have about 2,000 years of history where the book of Revelation does not apply to the people of God. This is the view that tends to give you predictions. Jesus is gonna return on this particular day, and then they drop everything and Jesus hasn't returned. This view also is very commonly connected with premillennialism, So, right, the thousand years of rule, Jesus comes at the beginning, right, the rapture of the church, okay, the left behind series, all this sort of thing, and then during the millennium, right, the temple will be rebuilt, the sacrifice is restored, and so on and so forth. Darby and Schofield popularized this view about 200 years ago, and again, many of us have been exposed to this. This is often called the dispensational view. But as we have seen just in the last number of weeks here in Romans chapter 4, the idea that Paul gives us is continuity. What happened in the Old Testament with Abraham happens to us, too. There's not a hard distinction between the Old and New Testament in Paul's mind. So this is one of the reasons why I would lean away from the futurist view. They also tend not to be very consistent in how they handle the text, but I'll say more about that in a moment. The fourth view is the idealist view. Some people prefer the term modified idealist here. And so they would say, yeah, chapter six, verses three and four, yeah, it did apply to the Muslim invasion of Jerusalem in the seventh century. But it also applies to any other similar event throughout history. In fact, pretty much every generation sees something like this. Some have said that the Idealist view takes the best of the other three views and puts them all together. And there's some truth to that. But with the Preterist view, you have to remember, it doesn't fit so much with Revelation, but it does fit well with the Olivet Discourse. And so there are some initial fulfillment in the fall of Jerusalem, yes. They see the benefits of this historicist view is, yeah, these things are happening throughout history, not just at the very end. But the helpful thing about the futurist view is there's going to be a heightening of these events just before Jesus' return. Now, my view. I think the idealist view makes most sense. The idealist view typically goes with the amillennial viewpoint. And the amillennial viewpoint is that the millennium is not a literal thousand years, but it's symbolic and it refers to the time between Christ's first and second coming, the church age. And the symbolism should guide us, not the literalism, which would guide the preterist in some ways, but especially the futurist. My view, and I've given you more reasons why I think this view is the best view in Sunday school, is this, and as we go along, I'll try to explain more why I think it's the case. I cannot get up here every week and every verse, give you the four different views of that verse. But that is not an exaggeration. Whatever view you hold is going to impact how you interpret pretty much every verse in the book. And so you need to come to a clear position here, because you're going to interpret things differently if you're a futurist or a preterist, or an idealist or a historicist. So I am going to come from the idealist, amillennial viewpoint and touch on some other things, yes, some other views, but this will be my emphasis. All right, now let's talk a little bit about the genres of Revelation. You know, every book in the Bible tends to mix some genres together, but especially here in Revelation, it makes it rather complicated. On the one hand, the book of Revelation is a letter. We just saw that, verses 1, 4, and 9, right? John's writing to these seven churches. These were real people. John was actually on this island. These are real places and situations here in chapters 1 to 3, but not just chapters 1 to 3. We see letter qualities, if you will, in other places, especially at the end. And so we need to read this as John sending you an email, so to speak. But the other genre that we see is prophecy. Look at verse 3. In verse 3 it says, blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy. Because it's prophecy, it's going to predict the future. We call this foretelling. That's pretty obvious. But prophecy also includes foretelling. In other words, the telling forth of God's word that's already been given. And there are literally hundreds of places in the book of Revelation that connect back to the Old Testament. And so John, led by the Spirit, here is writing, hey, look, look at Zechariah 4 and 5 and see how that applies in chapter 1 or chapter 11 and so forth, okay? And so it's prophecy here. So we're going to see initial fulfillment, greater fulfillment, ultimate fulfillment, things that we normally see, say, in Isaiah or Amos or whatever. And then the third genre we see here is what we call apocalyptic. And this is what we typically hear about with Revelation. But again, it's just one of three. But notice verse one, the very first word is in the Greek apocalypsis. And we get apocalypse, apocalyptic from it. We translate it here as revelation. But the emphasis here is on the symbolism, similes, metaphors, images. And we must understand that symbol, like the woman in the basket being carried by this bird over to another country. We have to understand the symbolism if we're going to understand the main point and how it applies, in that case, to Israel. and of course even to ourselves. We are gonna be assisted by these hundreds of references to the Old Testament. Some would say you can't understand Revelation without the Old Testament. I think there's truth to that. All right, now let's look at the first verse here just a moment and highlight three words. Three key words here in the verse. The first one is the first word, as I just mentioned, apocalypse. And it means to unveil, to disclose, to reveal. And so note the implication here. The book of Revelation is not designed to confuse us. So if we're confused by it, then we need to do some more work. Okay, God is not intending to confuse us, but to reveal something to us. Now let me just pause and say this. It's not the book of Revelations, just like it's not turned to Psalms 23, okay? It's one revelation here, yes, many visions, but one revelation, this is singular. Now the second word here is show, which God gave him to show his servants. This highlights that John was seeing things, right? He's seeing these visions. He's also hearing, of course, and he then recorded the visions for us. He's not inventing this image based on what he saw, but he saw it. God showed it to him and he wrote it down. And then the third key word is in the last part of the verse. He sent and signified it by his angel to his servant, John. In other words, God has made known these truths to John by way of symbols, signs. We use signs all the time, right? You drive down the road and you see all kinds of signs. Even if you can't read English, you know that a red octagonal sign means to stop. Or an orange one means there's construction or whatever. God is giving John signs to help us to see what he's revealing to us. And so we cannot read the book of Revelation literally. We must read it symbolically that gives us a literal understanding. Let's turn just a moment to chapter nine. As I mentioned a little bit ago, the futurist view tends to be very inconsistent on how they do this. And here in chapter 9, we see about the locusts coming out of the pit. And if you look at verse 7, okay, they're like horses, they have crowns and faces like men, hair like women, teeth like lion, breastplates of iron, sound of chariots with horses, and tails like scorpions, and so forth. Well, what we often hear in the futurist view is, well, that's referring to the black helicopters without any markings. Because, see, it says they had hard shells and they sound like chariots and so on. Okay, but where do you see the hair on that black helicopter? Well, maybe the pilot has long hair. I mean, they're just very inconsistent on how they handle this. The point is, all of the things that I just quickly mentioned are symbols. What does that represent? And then what does that mean for us? And so we must approach it in the right way, and verse one is telling us this is how you should approach it. Not literally, but with symbolic meaning. All right, well, as always, much to say. Let's take out these handouts in a moment. And first, if you look at the one that has the outlines. All right, let me just briefly run through this. But I strongly encourage you, take the time this week, or the next few weeks, and read these more carefully at home. It'll help you as we approach these things. But notice the first one. It's a very common outline, just pretty much runs through the words themselves. But then notice I give you some general outlines based on the views. The Preterist one will say everything is related to the fall of Jerusalem. And you see how they can divide it there. The historicist one, you see how they do that. And then the futurist one, the days of the end, the tribulation is what the emphasis of the book is. But even within the futurist view, there are some different ways of taking it. They take it chronologically, and this is how some people put the seals, trumpets, and bowls together. They see overlap with the seventh seal and the first trumpet chronologically speaking. and so forth. Some will say, well, all the bowls happen at the same time as the seventh trumpet. And in the third view, you see there's more overlap on how they work out in time. But again, we're talking about the time of the Tribulation from their viewpoint. All right, now on the back, and hopefully, I grabbed one where the copy isn't very dark. Hopefully, you can see that well enough. The idealist view. It approaches the book in two ways. First of all, the book is presented to us in two halves. Chapters 1 to 11 deals with what happens on earth. Chapters 12 to 22 deals with the spiritual background. But they're still referring to the same time frame, the time between the first and second coming of Christ. Then more specifically, you have the seven sections. Chapters 1 to 3, 4 to 7, 8 through 11, and so forth there. Each one of these, each section, is referring to the time frame between Christ's first and second coming. They all are happening at the same time. So it's not chapters one to three, and then chronologically moving forward in time, we have chapters four to seven. No, they're happening at the same time as chapters one to three. Now, it is true that chapters one to three focus on the end of Christ's first coming, those years just after he left. And chapters 20 to 22 emphasize the end, right, before Christ comes and when he comes. But nevertheless, you see an overlap, historically speaking. You can see also here seven cycles of judgments, the chiasm there in chapters 12 to 22. So again, I encourage you to read through that and look at it. Now, as for the other handout, this one obviously is much more involved. What I've done here is I've taken the Reformation Study Bible Introduction to Revelation and copied it for you to read. I've covered a few things here today, but I can't cover everything. Read it. I think it'll be very helpful. Nalene's already been reading through it. She's like, this is wonderful. Where did you get this? And so I was telling her. So it's very helpful. And so just to briefly show you, the first section, title and author, we talked about. That's John. Date and occasion. It was before or after the fall of Jerusalem. The genre questions there is the next section. Some literary things there. You see some of the chiasm there they talk about. Note the seven main themes they emphasize. You can read through that. And some of its theology, how does it fit in the Bible, how does Christ fit. And then the history of interpretation, those are the four views I talked about. And then they talk about the three millennial views. And then you see a fuller outlined on the last page, and then on the back of that, you see the map. So again, I really encourage you to read this. I think it'll be very helpful for you as we come to this book. Listen to Sunday School online if you didn't hear it. I think these things will help you. And I will make reference, of course, to these things as we go along, but I wanted you to have it now, stick it in your Bibles, and use it. All right, now, two last things I want to do here briefly. First of all, let me tell you a little bit of what I am using to help me understand. Every time I come to preach on a book, I typically use eight to 10 sources. In Romans, I use 12. Here, I'm using 15. There's just so much to try to understand. So let me tell you what those are here very briefly. I'm using, of course, the Reformation Study Bible, as I just mentioned. I'm using the NIV Study Bible. I'm using my seminary notes on this class. All three of those come from the idealist amillennial perspective. I'm using some Bible background commentaries, one from InterVarsity Press by Craig Keener. He has a similar view. But I'm also using one by Larry, or Lawrence, I should say, Richards, and he is a futurist, a dispensationalist. I'm also using one that I got from Carol McBride when she died, actually, from Zondervan. And the man who wrote on Revelation is Mark Wilson, and he is a preterist in his viewpoint. I'm also using a one volume whole Bible commentary by Eerdmans and Beazley Murray is the one who contributes Revelation. It's not his whole commentary but it's abridged and he is a futurist but not a dispensationalist. Then I'm using a commentary on how the New Testament uses the Old Testament, and there's a lot here in Revelation. Greg Beale and Dr. McDonough are the ones who contributed to this one. I'm also using Greg Beale's commentary, and so again, you've got that modified idealist amillennial viewpoint. I'm using Stephen Smalley's commentary. He has the same view. I mentioned Robert Mounts here a little bit ago. His view is similar, though he's not quite as conservative. And then I'm also using John Wolvard. If you want to know the futurist dispensational view, get this. Read it. It's usually considered the epitome of this position. And so I am using that. I'm using Grant Osborne and William Hendrickson, who are also idealists, amillennialists, and I'm using Kenneth Gentry's book, and he is a preterist postmillennialist. It's not his full commentary, but a shorter one. So I have two from a preterist view, three from a futurist view, two are dispensational, and then the rest are some variety of the idealist amillennialist viewpoint. So I'm just trying to understand the different views and explain them to you as we come verse by verse. All right. Let me end with this, if you will, main theme. It can be easy for us to get bogged down in the details, and I'm going to do my best not to do that. Okay, but we need to look at the details so that we can understand the point. Remember, this is a revelation, not an obscuration or something like that. So what is God telling us? Well, he tells us first and foremost, I rule over everything. And I protect my people and I judge the wicked. Take comfort in that when you're being persecuted. Revelation has often been called a philosophy of history, and there's a lot of truth to that. The better we understand Revelation, the better we will understand how we should interpret what's happening in history, including what's happening today. So, as always, there's much to say, but hopefully this has given us a little bit of a taste of what's coming and helped prepare us for what we'll actually look at as we go through these verses. And so we'll pick up, Lord willing, with verse one next time. Let's pray together. Our Father in God, we thank you for your word, and we are thankful that your word, even here, is clear and understandable. But Lord, we do ask that you would give us skills and abilities to be able to read this, because it isn't quite as clear as other passages. And so we pray, Lord, that you would guide us by your spirit to see what John saw, and understand what you have revealed to us through these visions. We pray, Lord, that you would not only give us more understanding, but that it would impact how we live from day to day, as we see what is happening in the world around us, that we would not despair, that we would not be oblivious, that we would not run to extremes, but that we would use your word to guide us as we interpret history, even modern history and current history. And may you be glorified in this and may it prepare us for the persecutions that we face. And so we pray all these things then for your honor and glory in Jesus' name, amen.