We're glad that you guys are here for night one of our Forecasting Hope seminar.
Now, let me just, before we get into this, there's some announcements we're going to
do because this is going to go for four nights in a row this week, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday night at 7 o'clock each evening.
And then next week, it'll be the same thing, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
And then the next week, it'll go Thursday, and then it'll stop on Friday.
So that's just kind of what's upcoming.
And we're going to be looking at lots of the different Bible prophecies.
And we want you to be here, and we hope that maybe you'll bring somebody else.
So when you came in tonight, you filled out a little registration card.
So later tonight, we're going to pass out, actually pass that out right now, why don't
you, a response card.
You only have to do the first one tonight, the first time you come, just to let us know
who you are.
But each night that you're here, there's going to be a little sheet like this that has some
questions and it just helps us to understand.
Like one of the things says, the teaching tonight was clear.
That helps me to know, okay, I presented in a positive way and you understood.
And the second one says, I have some questions.
If you have a question, there's a good chance that somebody else has the same question.
So write that down on the back if you have a question.
And tomorrow night, for some of the questions that we get, we're going to take a couple
minutes and answer those questions.
So that's a key thing that you can share with us, any questions that you have.
We're going to do something else with this when you turn it in at the end of the night.
Because tomorrow night, we're going to take all the ones that are turned in, we're going
to draw one out, and the one that's drawn out, we're going to have a prize.
It may be a book, some nights it may be a gift card or something like that.
So it's going to be different prizes, some sort of book to help you in your Bible study,
a gift card to the ice cream store or to Walmart to help with gas or whatever it is.
So that's something else that you'll get when you fill out one of these cards, some questions
answered and maybe you'll win a prize.
And there's one other thing that we want to challenge you to do.
Because we hope that as you come here night by night that you will be blessed.
And so here's something that we want you to do.
We want you to continue to come.
So if you come to seven meetings, seven, there's going to be about 13 or so altogether, no,
11 altogether.
If you come to seven of them, there's going to be a really nice book, Understanding Daniel
and Revelation that we'll give you if you come to seven of these meetings.
One other thing, you are here tonight.
Thank you, thank you for coming.
If you know somebody else that you think would be blessed by coming, then I want you to invite
them and bring them.
Don't just invite them, but say, I'm going to pick you up and you can come sit by me.
And if you bring somebody, then both you and the person that you bring will get another
special book, a special gift, because we want you to learn and we want somebody else to
learn as well.
So if you have any questions, write them on the back.
If you know somebody that might be blessed, bring them with you.
If you come to seven meetings, there'll be a great book that you will get.
So with that in mind, I think it's about time to begin.
So I'm going to say a prayer.
We're going to spend some time in prayer here and then we're going to dive into our study
of Bible prophecy tonight.
Let's bow our heads for prayer.
Dear God, we thank you so much for all that you do for us.
We thank you for bringing us here on this day.
We thank you for some cooler weather.
And Lord, even as we are here in this safe place, we know that there are people in other
states not far from here who are not having a good situation.
And we want to pray for those who have come through storms, whose homes have been damaged,
and we just want to lift them up and pray for their protection.
And God bless us as we study your word tonight.
In your name we pray.
Amen.
So before we dive in, I just want to introduce myself.
My name is Greg Hudson.
I am the pastor of the church here and I'll be presenting our Forecasting Hope series.
I enjoy studying the Bible.
Before I was a pastor, I was a nurse.
And as they say, you know, you get the call or whatever.
And so I changed careers and now I enjoy reading the Bible, studying the Bible, and teaching
the Bible.
So let's dive into our topic tonight, Bible prophecy and the coming new world order.
Could there be something coming to our world that is a little bit different than what our
world is shaping now?
Because the Bible says there is.
Now you may or may not realize that it was 85 years ago this last month, September 1,
that World War I begun.
And World War I begun when Germany invaded Poland.
Thank you.
Thank you for hearing that.
World War II started.
World War II started 85 years ago.
In 1939 when Germany invaded Poland.
And just a couple days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany and it was
about 10 days later that Canada joined in.
But we know that the United States did not get involved until a little bit later.
And we know, we remember that that happened in December 7, 1941 at that horrific event
known as Pearl Harbor in December of 1941.
Now on that morning, two US privates were manning a mobile radar unit.
Early that Sunday morning on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
And as they were looking at their radar unit, they saw something that shouldn't have been
there.
They saw a detection.
They saw some blips.
And it turned out that that was the actual Japanese planes that were coming to do damage,
that were coming to drop those bombs on Pearl Harbor that resulted in over 2,000 deaths
of American personnel.
Over 3,000 planes destroyed and about 18 ships that were sunk including the USS Arizona where
over 1,000 sailors died when that one ship exploded and turned over.
It was a colossal tragedy, but it didn't have to be.
Nothing could have changed because those men when they saw the blips, they called their
superior officers.
They called and said, something is amiss here.
Something doesn't look right.
But their superior said, don't worry about it.
That's just some other planes that are on maneuvers.
There's a group of B-17s that are supposed to be coming in from the mainland.
That's probably what it is.
And about 745 in the morning, those blips had disappeared because those planes had gotten
so close that they were hidden behind the mountains.
But then at 753, eight minutes later, eight minutes after the men had gone to breakfast,
suddenly those bombs began to fall.
And that horrific carnage and devastation and destruction and death began to take place.
And one of the greatest tragedies of that is that for almost an hour, there was warnings.
There was clear message that could be seen that danger was on the way.
The evidence was there.
The evidence was seen, but the evidence was rejected.
It was ignored.
They ignored the signs.
And could it be that the Bible gives us signs that something is happening in our world that
Jesus is about to return, but are we heeding the signs?
Are we observing them?
Are we noticing them?
Are we paying attention?
And so we see that in the Bible, it does talk about signs of the times.
And the purpose of those signs is to let us know what lies ahead, to let us know that
things are going to change.
But the ultimate purpose is to point us to Jesus.
And so that's why we're going to take time to look and see what the Bible says, not just
to learn some cool stories, some cool things that are happening, but ultimately so that
we can learn more about Jesus.
I want to look at Matthew chapter 16.
Now as we go through this, I hope that you will take a Bible.
There's a Bible in front of you in the pew rack if you didn't bring one.
And I hope that you'll look at your Bible, whether it's on your phone or the one that
you have or the one that's in the pew in front of you, because I want you to not just listen
to something because I say it, because I'm not really that important, but we want to
read things from the Bible.
Now all of the verses will be on the screen, but you're going to gain more from this if
you take a few minutes and look up the verses for yourself.
Even look it up on your phone or wherever you may look at your Bible.
But we're going to look at Matthew chapter 16 and we're going to see what Jesus has to
say.
And in fact, if you don't have a Bible at home and there's one in front of you, take
the one in front of you home.
And I think there's some folks looking for, okay, they got one now, so perfect.
Matthew chapter 16 and verse 2, the Bible says, when he answered, Jesus answered and
said to them, when it is evening, you say it will be fair weather for the sky is red.
And in the morning it will be foul weather today for the sky is red and threatening.
You know, we have a similar saying to that.
If anybody is a fisherman or perhaps you have a boat and you're a sailor and our saying
goes something like red sky in the morning.
Anybody know how it ends?
Sailor take warning, red sky at night, fisherman's delight.
And so we have a similar saying to that.
And Jesus is saying we can look at the sky and we can know a little bit what's going
to happen tomorrow.
But then notice what he goes on and says.
He says hypocrites, you know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern
the signs of the times.
Jesus is calling them hypocrites because even though they can know if it's going to be good
weather or bad weather tomorrow, they had the prophecies of the Old Testament that were
proclaiming the Messiah, that were talking about Jesus, what his ministry was going to
be like, when he was going to come.
And yet even though Jesus was standing before them, they missed it.
They did not discern the signs of the times.
They didn't see what was actually happening.
And so Jesus called them a hypocrite there.
And could it be that he's saying the same thing to us because the signs of the times
could be happening around us and perhaps we're not seeing it?
Because the folks in Jesus' day, they missed out because they were distracted.
They were distracted.
And could it be that sometimes we're distracted as well?
Distracted by trends in society, distracted by Hollywood, distracted by the latest sporting
event, distracted by politics, whatever it might be, we could be missing out on what
is most important.
And so we're going to look briefly here at Revelation chapter 14.
And this is kind of a key prophecy.
And we will look at this several times over our nights together.
And in Revelation chapter 14, it has three angels, three messengers that are sharing
some different important things in the days before Jesus comes.
And we want to look just at the first angel today.
And the first angel says in Revelation 14, 6, the Bible says, then I saw another angel
flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who
dwell on the earth.
So there's something that's going to be everlasting.
It's the gospel.
It's the good news.
And it's going to go on forever.
And it's for those that dwell on the earth.
And it goes on and says to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people, it's for everybody.
And then it goes on and says, saying with a loud voice, fear God and give glory to him
for the hour of his judgment has come.
Now that sounds a little bit scary when we think about God's judgment.
Often that can cause us to worry, to be upset.
And so when is this timing?
What is happening here?
And it goes on and says, and worship him who made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and
the springs of water.
And so we begin to see here that this is looking at something that's going to be happening
at what we refer to as the time of the end.
We see that God sends a warning message, a wake up message, because he loves us so much.
He doesn't want us to be distracted, but he wants us to be paying attention to what is
coming so that we will be ready when he comes.
In fact, just a page or two over, Revelation chapter 16, Revelation chapter 16 and verse
15.
Notice what it says.
The Bible says, behold, this is Jesus talking, I am coming as a thief.
What is he who does what?
Who watches, who pays attention, who looks at the different prophetic signs that are
going on around us.
And so God calls us to watch, he calls us to pay attention.
And so we need to ask ourselves the questions, what are these signs?
What are the signs that Jesus wants us to watch?
And are they happening?
Are they being fulfilled in our world today?
And so to investigate this more, we're going to look at two different streams, you could
say, of Bible prophecy.
And it's going to seem like maybe they're not connected, but by the time that we get
to the end, you're going to see that they totally go together.
We're going to start in Matthew chapter 24.
So the first gospel, the first book of the New Testament, Matthew chapter 24 is a classic
chapter that people study, that people look at when they want to look at the signs of
the time.
So Matthew chapter 24 is where we're going to go right now, starting in verse three,
Matthew 24 and verse three.
The Bible says, now as he, as Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to
him privately saying, tell us when will these things be and what will be the sign of your
coming and of the end of the age?
And Jesus answered and said to them, take heed that no one deceives you for many will
come in my name saying I am the Christ and will deceive many.
So Jesus's disciples came to him and they said, what's happening?
What's going to be the signs before you come again?
What are going to be the signs of your coming?
And notice before Jesus gets into what we generally think of as the signs of the times,
the very first warning he gives is a warning to not be deceived.
And so he's saying that there's going to be a confusing time, a deceptive time in the
days before he comes again, before he comes again.
And so as we look at the signs in the religious world, we can recognize that there's lots
of different voices telling us lots of different things.
And Jesus gives the warning here, don't be deceived.
And so how can we know what voice to listen to?
There's a seminary called Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, a Protestant seminary, and they've
done a study and they've discovered that there's 45,000 different churches, 45,000 different
churches.
Now that's not church structures.
That's not church buildings, but that's different church organizations that have different doctrines,
different theologies.
There's 43,000 different teachings.
So how can we know which one of 43,000 to choose?
It's like walking down the cereal aisle at the grocery store.
How many different kinds of cornflakes are there?
And then you add raisins and have mercy.
There's so many different flavors.
How can we know which one to listen to?
The good news is that we don't have to check out 43,000 and read all about them as long
as we determine that we're going to stick with God's word.
That's what we want to do.
And that's what our goal for this series is, that we want to go by what the Bible says,
not necessarily what the vast majority says, not necessarily what we see on the news, not
necessarily what Hollywood tells us, but we want to go by what the Bible says.
And so if we look at John 17, 17, as it shows on your screen, Jesus says, sanctify them
by your truth, your word, the Bible, your word is truth.
We don't have to look at 43,000 different churches.
We can look at one Bible and that's what we want to say that we're going to live our life
by.
So let's look now at these signs, at what Jesus said.
So back in Matthew 24, we're going to be in this chapter for our first little bit here,
Matthew 24.
We're going to continue on and we're going to read verses six through eight.
The Bible says, and you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.
See that you are not troubled for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not
yet for nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.
There will be famines, pestilences, earthquakes, and in various places, all these are the beginning
of the sorrows.
So let's stop right there for just a minute because Jesus mentioned at least four very
specific things that are these signs of the times.
Did you catch them all?
We'll put them up there.
He said there's going to be wars and famines and pestilences and earthquakes.
Do you think we have those in the world today?
I would say that yes, we do.
And it's really easy that people could say, wait a second, haven't we always had those
things in our society since Jesus's day?
And I would have to say yes, there has always been those things.
In fact, even in Jesus's day, all of these things are mentioned in the Bible itself.
It talks about all four of those things.
So how can we say that that's a sign of the end if they've been happening all along?
Did you catch that one phrase?
We'll kind of wait for the train to stop blowing its horn here.
Verse six, it says, all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
And then in verse eight, it says, all of these are the beginning of sorrows, the beginning
of sorrows.
That phrase there, the beginning of sorrows, is actually talking about birth pains, the
beginning of birth pains.
We would use a word maybe like contractions.
Now I see many ladies out here.
I don't know all of you, but I know some of you at least out here are mothers who have
gone through and experienced childbirth.
And most mothers tell me that that's something that is unforgettable, that you will never,
ever forget.
And whether or not you've experienced that, you probably know enough about how that works
that as a woman goes through pregnancy, sometimes the body is preparing to give birth.
And so there begins to be pains, begins to be contractions.
And the closer and closer one gets to the ninth month, the more intense, the more frequent
those birth pains become until you get to that week, that day that baby is to be born.
And now they're getting much more frequent and much more intense.
And if you've gone to any kind of birthing class before, what's the number?
If your contractions are this close, when do you need to go to the hospital?
You know, like 10 minutes, you better start considering it.
Five minutes, you better be there.
You know, two minutes, you need to be in the hospital or wherever you plan to give birth.
And I know people who have thought to themselves, you know, I know that sometimes people go
to the hospital and then they're sent home because it's not quite time.
And oh, they didn't want that to happen because they felt it would be embarrassing.
And so they put it off and put it off and they barely made it because those birth pains
became closer and closer together.
What does that have to do with what we're talking about?
Well, these signs, they've been in existence all along.
But it seems to be that as we get closer to the time of Jesus' coming, that those signs
are going to be more frequent and more intense, just like those contractions, just like those
birth pains.
And so as wars and famines and earthquakes, they've been happening all along.
But could it be that they become more frequent and more intense?
Let's look at some of these real quick wars.
Do we have wars in our world?
Yes.
Studies show that the good old days of the 20th century, the 1900s, you know, people
ever say, oh, you're from the 1900s.
Have mercy.
That's what seems like the Wild West.
That's a long time ago.
Well, the 1900s was the bloodiest century of all time.
That 180 million people died from war during that 100-year period from, you know, World
War I, World War II, Holocaust, genocides, you know, all kinds of different wars took
place across the world.
But that was the good old days.
That was the 1900s.
But what about now?
In the 21st century, the United Nations have reported, so this isn't some religious organization.
This is the United Nations.
And they've noted that in the last, you know, 10 or 15 years from about 2010, that the number
of conflicts or the number of wars have been increasing, and this is the United Nations
mentioning this.
And you can think of names that you've seen on the news or online, whether it's terrorism
or Afghanistan or Ukraine or the Middle East or Houthis or whatever it is.
And that's politics, but it also goes right in line with Bible prophecy.
And then we could talk about the way wars are fought.
You can go back to, you know, my grandfather's day or World War I or World War II, World
War I especially, you know, you had a rifle that you had a bolt action.
And then they invented the, well, I guess, Civil War, they had the Gatling gun and machine
guns and then tanks and then planes dropping bombs and then, you know, bombs that flew
themselves, and now they're smart bombs.
But so often there's dumb leaders that are using those.
And a bomb can fly right in somebody's window, and yet it's taking people's life.
And there's intercontinental ballistic missiles that don't just blow up, but they could have,
you know, a nuclear device on the end.
And so since, you know, the 1940s, those nuclear weapons have been used and continue to grow,
and there's enough capability to destroy not just an enemy, but to destroy the entire world,
the entire planet.
Every person could be wiped out in just a few touch of the buttons.
Only recently in Earth's history has this capability come out, and this is just a reminder
that the frequency and the intensity of this is growing as we go through our world.
So Jesus talked about wars, and he talked about famines.
Now a famine is different, it's something that we don't typically think about or experience
here in the United States, but in other parts of the world, many people do.
Now there's poverty that we have in our country.
Poverty is where people may not have enough money, but famine is where there's not enough
food and there's not even the ability to get the food.
And so many people die from poverty, from famine.
And in fact, in the world, statistics show that 9 million people die of hunger and hunger-related
diseases every single year.
9 million people die every year.
That's just those that die.
There's many more that suffer.
820 million people suffer from hunger or malnutrition in the world today.
Think about that, that must break the heart of Jesus to see his people hungering around
the world.
If there's 8 billion people in the world, that's almost one out of eight people or one
out of seven people go to bed hungry every night.
And the sad thing is that there is enough food, the earth produces enough food for everybody
to have enough to eat, but it's not always in the places where the people are.
And unfortunately, even when people gather things together and ship it to countries that
are in need, it still doesn't always get to where it needs to go.
Why?
Because of greed, because of power, because of control.
People might seize that food because of politics or whatever it is.
We see this and we can recognize that this is just another sign that the world is quickly
coming to an end.
So Jesus talked about wars and famines, and he also mentioned pestilences or sicknesses
or diseases.
Like I said, I used to be a nurse.
Before I was a pastor, I was a nurse.
This was back in the 90s, back in the old days.
And then I became a pastor.
And so for over 25 years, I was not a nurse.
But then in 2020, you remember 2020, there was this little thing called a pandemic, and
there was a lot of uncertainty in the world.
And I thought to myself, you know what, I've been trained in that area, so maybe I should
put that to use.
So I got my nurse's license reinstated.
And so I started working like two days a month, the bare minimum, and I still do that.
And it was because of pestilence, because of a disease that was killing many people.
In fact, different types of diseases in one year, infectious diseases kill over 17 million
people a year.
And that statistic was before COVID was even around.
And COVID has added to that.
And it's not just that disease, but how many diseases does our world face?
Each year or so, we maybe hear about Ebola coming back, or SARS, or mad cow disease,
or avian bird flu.
New disease seems to come up all the time, but there's even old diseases that are making
comebacks like tuberculosis that had almost seemingly been wiped out, and yet, nope, it's
still around, and it seems to be growing.
And not only that, many diseases are becoming resistant to antibiotics.
So let me just give a little healthcare provider side note here.
When the doctor gives you 10 days of antibiotics, take the 10 days of antibiotics, even if you
feel better.
Because if you only take a little bit, that's why those diseases tend to get resistant to
that antibiotic.
And so those antibiotics aren't as effective.
And so it's just another sign here that Jesus is coming soon.
And as we talk about wars and diseases, that can seem like a very scary thing.
But I just want to remind us that our world is wearing out.
And these signs are to point us towards Jesus.
And the last thing Jesus mentioned was earthquakes.
Do we have earthquakes?
Yes we do.
We haven't had a big one in a little while.
We've been a little more distracted with hurricanes in the last couple of weeks.
But actually, 20,000 earthquakes occur every single year, and about 55 occur somewhere
in the world every single day.
And even here in North Georgia, every so often, there's a little earthquake of 1.3 or 2.1
or something.
And you'll think, did I feel something?
And then later that day, maybe you'll see on the news, sure enough, there was something.
Here's a statistics quote.
It says, natural disasters have been increasing every year due to various factors, such as
urbanization, population growth, destruction of natural environment.
We could talk about wildfires and hurricanes and mudslides and all these different things
as more and more people populate the earth.
And those places are often the ones that are facing different types of destruction.
So we could attribute it to natural factors.
But we also see it's a fulfillment of Bible prophecy.
So sometimes people may say, wow, God is angry at the world.
He's trying to wipe it out.
He's trying to destroy it.
No, that's not.
God has told us these things so that when they happen, it can be a wake up call.
It can be a reminder.
Notice the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3.16.
You guys know this one?
It says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes
in him should not perish but have eternal life.
You know what the next verse is?
Anybody remember the next verse?
The next verse goes on and says, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn
the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
Jesus' greatest desire is for the entire world to be saved.
But sometimes we are stubborn and we don't always listen to Jesus and we don't always
pay attention to him.
And so when we see these signs, it can wake us up just a little bit.
So let's look at some more signs here.
Signs in the social world.
We're going to turn away from Matthew and we're going to look at Paul for a moment.
We're going to turn over to 2 Timothy.
So kind of right in the middle of the New Testament.
Second Timothy.
Just a little bit before Hebrews.
And we'll see what Paul has to say.
And I'm going to read about five verses in 2 Timothy chapter 3.
And I'm going to read through them quickly.
And there's going to be a bunch of different things.
And as I'm reading, I want you to just think if you can picture news stories or faces or
events.
So let's read through this.
2 Timothy 3.
The Bible says, but know this, that in the last days perilous times will come for men
will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud blasphemers, disobedient to
parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers without self-control, brutal, despisers
of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having
a form of godliness, but denying its power.
Wow.
A lot of things.
In fact, 19 different things.
We can put those up there.
Did that sound familiar to our society, to our world today?
And you can probably all look at one and say, oh, that's the worst.
I recognize that one.
It's almost like Paul was looking at our newspaper, our internet today and noticing what our world
is going to be like.
These are things that we're experiencing.
We could look at all of those, but let's just talk about one.
What about brutal?
Is our world brutal today?
The way people talk to each other or don't talk with each other, talk at each other.
And if people have a differing opinion about something, have mercy.
We can't have a kind disagreement.
We can't have a kind conversation.
If somebody likes a different team than you, we don't want that.
If somebody likes a different candidate than you, we want to stop that right away.
We can't even have a difference of opinion without wanting the other person to be dead
sometimes, to not even want to communicate, to not even want to be around that person.
I'm going to say it's okay to have an opinion about things, but if our opinion causes us
to lose the image of Jesus in our heart and people, when they see us, they don't see a
picture of Jesus, well, we need to be careful.
We need to make that a red flag because we could be experiencing that brutality.
Jesus even said, the love of many will grow cold.
What about that last one there, having a form of godliness, but denying its power?
What does that mean?
A form of godliness.
You drive around this town or many towns, drive between here and Chattanooga, and how
many churches do you pass?
There's a lot of churches.
There's a church on every corner.
If everybody was having a form, a true amount of godliness, this world should be the happiest
place ever because there are so many churches, but so many people, we're only going through
the motions.
We're not letting Jesus change our heart.
We're not letting the kingdom of God make a difference.
We're having a form of godliness, but denying the power of that.
We do religious things, but we're not letting Jesus change us.
We need to let the righteousness of Christ cover us.
As we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, that can not just be something that
we talk about, but it can change the way that we live and change the way that we are.
We're going to summarize real quick, and then we're going to look at a totally different
stream of prophecy here.
Here's some things we mentioned.
False Christ and false prophets, deception, wars, famines, earthquakes, pestilences, violence,
economic uncertainty, some of these we didn't even get a chance to talk about, technological
advances.
Remember, all of these things are simply to turn our eyes, to point our mind towards Jesus.
The signs are neat to see, but they're not going to save us.
They're going to point us to the true center of prophecy, Jesus.
In fact, in Matthew 24 verse 33, Jesus says, so you also, when you see all these things,
know that it is near, even at the door.
When you see these things, know that it's near, even at the door.
So according to Jesus, according to the New Testament, we could say, yes, we are living
in the days right before Jesus comes.
But let's see if we can collaborate this and look at another prophecy and see if we can
triangulate our position just a little bit.
We're going to go to one that we've talked about in a previous seminar in Daniel chapter
two.
I know some came to our Daniel seminar a few weeks ago, but we're going to briefly look
at Daniel chapter two.
So let's just refresh what's happening here in Daniel, the book of Daniel.
The book of Daniel is a companion book to the book of Revelation.
Those are the two great books about Bible prophecy.
And in Daniel chapter two, King Nebuchadnezzar is the king.
He is the king of Babylon, this world empire, this superpower.
He is a great leader, a great general.
He has a great empire and he has gone and conquered many lands.
And in fact, in the year 605 BC, 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar took his armies to Jerusalem and conquered
God's holy city.
And he brought back many of the people from Jerusalem to Babylon.
And one of the people he brought was a young man named Daniel.
Now Daniel is a prophet.
The book is written by him.
It's about him.
Jesus, in the New Testament, calls him Daniel the prophet.
And Daniel was one who in Daniel chapter one, he stands up for God.
And no matter what test is thrown at him in this pagan land, they're trying to brainwash
him, but he's determined that he's going to stand for God.
And God blesses him.
And he's given wisdom.
And as he's trained in the ways of Babylon, he actually excels.
And he becomes one of the king's advisors.
And so that leads us to Daniel chapter two.
Daniel chapter two, we pick up the story in verse one.
The Bible says, now in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, Nebuchadnezzar had
dreams and his spirit was so troubled that his sleep left him.
That ever happened to you?
You had a dream in the middle of the night, maybe you woke up and, whoa, that was a strange
dream.
That was a scary dream.
That was a funny dream, whatever it was.
He was troubled by this dream.
And it says, then the king gave the command to call the magicians, the astrologers, the
sorcerers, and the Chaldeans to tell the king his dream.
He forgot what his dream is.
Has that ever happened to you?
At breakfast, you're like, I know I dreamed something.
It was exciting, but I do not remember what it was.
And so it says, they came in and stood before the king and the king said to them, I have
had a dream and my spirit is anxious to know the dream.
He could not remember it.
He thought that the gods, the god was trying to tell him something.
God was trying to get his attention, but he could not remember this dream.
And he called these advisors in, tell me what I dream.
Notice how it goes on here.
In verse four, it says, the Chaldeans spoke to the king, oh, king, live forever.
Call your servant the dream and we will give you the interpretation.
If you tell us what you dreamed, we can tell you what it means.
You know, if you tell me what you dreamed last night, I could give you some kind of
interpretation.
It probably wouldn't be right, but I could make something up.
But the king said, no, my decision is firm.
If you do not make known the dream to me and its interpretations, you've got to tell me
what I dreamed and what it means, then you shall be cut to pieces and your house shall
be made an ash heap.
We're going to kill you and burn your house down.
King Nebuchadnezzar was a vicious king here.
And it says, for this reason, the king was angry and gave the command to destroy all
the wise men of Babylon.
So the decree went out and they began killing the wise men and sought Daniel and his companions
to kill them.
So Daniel wasn't in this group initially, but the word went out that Daniel was going
to be killed.
And Daniel heard this and he recognized that something needed to be done.
And he sent word back to the king and he said, King, give me time.
Give me a little bit of time and I can give you the interpretation.
And believe it or not, the king, even though he was vicious, the king really wanted to
know what he dreamed.
And so he gave Daniel a night and Daniel and his friends in the middle of Daniel chapter
two, they prayed to the God of heaven and they said, help us to know this dream.
And that's exactly what God did.
God gave them the interpretation and Daniel went in before King Nebuchadnezzar.
We'll pick up the story in verse 31.
We could spend a whole lot more time with this.
Let me assure you.
And Daniel says to the king, he tells him what he dreamed.
You O King, we're watching and behold, a great image looks kind of like this one here on
this banner, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you and its form was awesome.
This image's head was a fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of
bronze, its legs of iron, its feet, partly of iron and partly of clay.
It's not over.
You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet
of iron and clay and broke them into pieces.
It's still not over.
Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed together and became
like chaff from the summer threshing floors.
And the wind carried them away so that no trace was found.
And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the entire earth.
You can almost see King Nebuchadnezzar hearing this interpretation.
Yes, Daniel, that's what I dreamed.
I did see the head of gold.
I did see the four metals.
I did see the big rock that came in and hit the feet.
Yes, Daniel, that is exactly what I dreamed.
And I saw that rock and it grew and it became a mountain and filled the whole earth.
Daniel, that is exactly what I dreamed.
What do you think the next question might be?
That's what I dreamed.
What does it mean?
And we could say, Nebuchadnezzar, what does it mean to you?
But we could also say, God, what does it mean for us in our world today?
Because we're going to take just a couple of minutes and we're going to see that these
four metals represent the track of history for 2,500 years.
We're going to do it quickly because we're trying to figure out where we are in this
timeline of history.
We saw what Jesus said, but what about this timeline of history?
Let's see what Daniel gives as an interpretation because he goes on and says, this is the dream
and now we will tell the interpretation of it before the king.
He says, you, oh, king, he's got to butter up the king a little bit.
The king was ready to kill everybody.
You are a king of kings for the God of heaven gave you a kingdom and power and strength
and glory and wherever the children of men dwell or the beasts of the field or the birds
of heaven, he has given them into your hand and has made you a ruler over them.
And then he says, you, King Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon are the head of gold.
We're going to see he's not just talking about the individual, but he's talking about a kingdom.
So Babylon, this great empire ruled from about 605 BC down to 539 BC and it was an incredible
city.
There's ruins there now.
It's not even there anymore.
It's another Bible prophecy, but historians of the day like Herodotus described it as
being about 56 miles around, 14 miles to a side.
The walls were hundreds of feet high, very, very thick, as wide as this building.
You could race chariots side by side.
So think Bristol Motor Speedway.
It's impregnable.
You could not conquer this city.
The walls were too thick.
They had food for 20 years inside.
You could not conquer this city.
But the very next thing that Daniel says, the next part of this tells Nebuchadnezzar
that in fact, this indestructible city would be destroyed.
Notice what the next verse says, verse 39.
It says, but after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours.
So after Babylon, there was going to be another kingdom, an inferior kingdom.
That's interesting.
Usually inferior doesn't beat the superior, but Babylon's fame and fortune were temporary.
It was going to come to an end.
How could that happen?
What did Babylon come to an end?
Yes it did.
There was another empire that rose and that was the empire of the Medes and the Persians
are a lot of history books just refer to it as the Persian Empire.
And it ruled from about 539 down to 331.
And this was two different people groups that came together and ended up conquering Babylon.
Well, how did that happen?
This impregnable city with wide walls.
Well through the center of Babylon flowed the Euphrates River.
So you couldn't do a siege because they had all the water they needed, all the food they
needed.
But the Persians came and they put down their swords for just a little bit and they picked
up shovels and history tells us that they began to dig and they began to dig a ditch.
There became a canal that became a riverbed and that river Euphrates was diverted.
And so where the river flowed under the wall, now an army could march under the wall.
You see they had a gate there but when that army came to surround the city, it was a different
king now.
His name was Belshazzar, Nebuchadnezzar's grandson.
And in Daniel chapter 5 it tells us that he threw a drunken party.
We're safe in here.
And he threw a drunken party and everyone was distracted and so the gate was not shut.
The army came under the wall and Babylon was defeated.
And in fact, that was actually a Bible prophecy as well.
In Isaiah 45, about 150 years before that event, the prophet Isaiah wrote, Thus says
the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus whose right hand I have held to subdue nations before
him and loose the armor of kings to open before him the double doors so that the gates will
not be shut.
And the verse just before that, it talks about drying up the river.
It talks about the gates not being shut.
And it says the name of the king was what?
Cyrus.
And guess who the general was who came and diverted the river?
It was Cyrus.
And they dried up the river, the gates were not shut, and Babylon was conquered by the
Medo-Persian army.
God had predicted it 150 years before, even the name of the general.
So that's a pretty incredible prophecy that helped to fulfill this.
And that's listed in Daniel chapter five.
Now it goes on in Daniel two, verse 39, and it says, Then another kingdom, a kingdom of
bronze shall rule over the earth.
Now I know we're doing a little history class here.
You did not come here tonight thinking you were going to be in 10th grade history class.
But if you remember that, there was the Babylonians, the Medes, and the Persians, and then there
was another empire.
What came next?
Does anybody remember?
It was the Greeks.
The Greeks came.
They were the next dominant power from 331 to 168.
The armies of Greece conquered these other nations led by a young general who swept across
the world.
His name was?
Anybody remember?
Alexander the Great.
And history tells us that when the armies of Alexander met the armies of Persia, the
Persians outnumbered them 20 to one.
And yet the Greeks won the battle.
The Greeks won and were able to defeat that empire and become the ruling empire.
But Alexander died at a very young age.
He was about 33 when he died.
He had everything he could have asked for.
He had conquered the world.
He had the world at his fingertips and yet history tells us that he died unhappy.
And he died by drinking himself to death because he had to turn back from conquering India.
He had conquered so much and yet he still wanted more and he died at the age of 33.
Just as a reminder that the things of this world don't really satisfy us.
There's something else we should be seeking.
We need to be seeking our support, our personality through Jesus, our meaning in life.
So when Alexander died his generals began to rule and it wasn't long before another
kingdom came along.
Daniel 2 verse 40 it goes on and says, the Bible says, the fourth kingdom shall be strong
as iron inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything and like iron that
crushes that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others.
So the Greek empire would fall and another would arise, an iron kingdom.
Tenth grade history class, what came after the Greeks?
Ruled for a long time.
The Roman empire came and in about 168 they conquered the Greeks and became the dominant
force and they ruled all the way down to 476 AD.
It's interesting that Babylon and the Medes and the Persians and the Greeks are all mentioned
by name in the book of Daniel.
Rome is not, but Rome was the kingdom that was reigning when Jesus walked on this earth.
So all four of those are mentioned in the Bible and Rome is actually referred to by
many historians as the iron kingdom.
And so it's got that nickname that matches up exactly with this Bible prophecy.
There's kind of a summary there of the kingdoms, the metals tracing down earth's history.
So has this happened just like the prophecy said?
Yes, but we're trying to figure out if we're living in the last days before Jesus comes.
That's what we're trying to look at here.
So is there another empire that was going to come?
Well this prophecy changes just a little bit because the pattern you would think empire,
empire, empire, you'd expect another one.
But that's not what happens.
Look at verse 41.
Verse 41 as we go on.
It says, whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron,
the kingdom shall be, what's the word?
Divided, the kingdom shall be divided, not conquered.
The kingdom's going to be divided, yet the strength of the iron shall be in it just as
you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay.
So Rome was not going to be conquered.
It was going to be divided from within.
It was going to break up into different units, into different entities.
And so these feet of iron and clay would represent the kingdoms that would come out of this divided
Roman empire.
And that's exactly what happened.
Most historians would say that Rome fell about 476 by different tribes coming in and conquering
it.
And you can look at a list of some of these tribes and you see some familiar people groups
because these tribes didn't go away.
They became the nations of Europe that we have today.
For instance, the Franks became the French people, the Saxons became the English and
so forth.
And so we see that this division of Rome has continued on down through hundreds of years.
And so this prophecy foretold from Babylon, from Nebuchadnezzar's day, all the way down
to a time of kingdoms that came from Rome that were divided.
Now we're trying to figure out where we are.
We're almost done.
Don't worry.
There are a couple of things we need to look at.
It says as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men.
That means these nations are going to try to unite through marriage, through birth,
the seed of men.
And those nations of Europe, they tried to intermarry and to combine.
But it says they will not adhere, or the King James version says they will not cleave one
to another just as iron does not mix with clay.
So the marriage alliance wouldn't do it.
They would not cleave one to another.
And ever since 476 when Rome was divided, there have been people trying to put it back
together just like Humpty Dumpty.
They've been trying to put this thing back together through marriage or through battle.
In the Middle Ages, it was Charlemagne of France.
More recent times, there was Hitler and Stalin of Russia and of Germany.
But the one that came the closest was a couple hundred years ago, another person from France
named Napoleon.
In the French Revolution, Napoleon wanted to envelop all of Europe.
He wanted to unite these kingdoms and make them his own.
And two things brought him down.
One he went and tried to attack Russia in winter.
That didn't work out well for him.
And then on the eve of what became known as the Battle of Waterloo, or the morning of
that battle, he was ready to march his troops across the battlefield.
But it had rained the night before.
So it was muddy.
And they weren't able to attack until later in the day.
And that delay allowed the Allies to bring in some more troops.
The Prussians came from a different direction and provided enough troops for protection.
And even today, we have the European Union, but it's different countries working together.
There's a euro, a common currency, but they're still different kingdoms.
They're different governments.
They're different countries.
And the Bible says that these countries will never unite because they shall not cleave
one to another.
And so even people sometimes want that to be united, but the Bible says it's not going
to happen.
And so we've got these different kingdoms that have come and gone and come and gone.
And where are we in this timeline of history?
We're in this feet part, right?
Because those kingdoms of Europe are still divided.
That is the time that we are living in.
Now this is what we've been getting to, the next few verses here, because this is the
time period that we are living in.
So what is the next thing according to this particular prophecy?
This verse 34, it says, you watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck
the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces.
And then it goes down in verse 44 and it says, in the days of these kings, in the days of
these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed.
Where are we living?
We're living in the days of these kings.
And it says, in the days of those kings, God will set up a kingdom which will never be
destroyed.
The kingdom shall not be left to other people.
It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms and it shall stand forever.
That's a picture of the coming kingdom of Jesus, of something that's going to make this
world brand new.
In the days of these kings, God will set up a kingdom.
And notice how this chapter ends.
It says, the dream is certain and the interpretation is sure.
The dream is certain and the interpretation is sure.
This prophecy says that a rock, a stone is going to come out of the heaven.
In the Bible, Jesus is called the cornerstone or the capstone or the rock of ages.
He's going to come and set up a kingdom, a kingdom of peace and a kingdom of hope.
And we get to be with Jesus forever.
And so we've seen the prophecy of Jesus.
We've seen the signs of the times.
We've seen that they are becoming more intense and more frequent.
And we see that in the days of these kings, that Jesus is going to set up a kingdom.
And so we can look at the Old Testament and the New Testament and see two different streams
of prophecy that triangulate, that collaborate, that yes, we are living in the days right
before Jesus comes.
Are we going to heed the warnings?
Are we going to look at the warnings?
It's been over a hundred years, but the greatest ship of its time sailed from Southampton,
England, making its way to New York, the great Titanic.
It was unsinkable, the most elegant, the fastest ship, the best ship of the time.
But now it sits at the bottom of the ocean, 600 kilometers south of Nova Scotia.
Why?
Because the Titanic struck an iceberg.
We know the story.
But what we often forget is that while that Titanic was streaming west towards the United
States, it received nine different warning messages, nine different telegraphs, nine
different radio messages.
And do you know what those messages said?
There's icebergs ahead.
Beware.
Look out.
There's icebergs in your path.
Every one of those messages was received.
Every one of those messages was understood.
And every one of those messages was ignored.
And today in Nova Scotia, there's cemeteries filled with the dead who drowned in the wreck
of the Titanic.
We have warnings from Jesus.
Jesus tells us that he loves us.
He tells us that he's coming soon.
And he gives us an invitation, such as one in Matthew 11, 28.
Jesus says, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Do we want to rest in Jesus tonight?
Do we want to heed the warnings that Jesus shows us and gives us?
I think this could be a prayer that we have.
Lord, I realize these signs are being fulfilled right before my eyes.
I need to draw close to you.
Please come into my life.
Let that be your prayer.
We're going to pass out some cards right now.
Oh, we already did that, didn't we?
So I want you to take out that card.
Sorry.
Take out that card because this is the time I want you to just let us know.
Was this teaching clear?
Do you have any questions?
Just fill that out.
And as you are writing that, as you are filling that out, so just look through this card.
This is a temporary home that we live in and we're waiting for that day when Jesus comes
again and then it won't be temporary anymore.
As you leave tonight, just hand in that response card because tomorrow night we're going to
have a drawing.
So if you want to be able to participate in that, just hand that in.
And as you do, there's going to be a handout for you.
It's got a lot of the verses that we talked about tonight that you can take and read them
again and study them because don't take my word for it.
We want to go by what the Bible says.
We hope that you will come back tomorrow night and tomorrow's topic is Bible prophecies,
apocalyptic battle.
What is the big battle that takes place between good and evil in the book of Revelation?
We're going to examine that.
Let's have a word of prayer tonight.
Dear God, we thank you so much that this is a temporary home.
That you promised that you're coming soon.
And as we've seen tonight from two different sources of prophecy, it seems like you're
coming back really, really soon.
And Lord, may each one of us be ready in our heart and in our life to accept you as our
Lord and Savior.
And I want to pray for each one of these families as they're driving home.
Give them safe passages and bring them back tomorrow that they may be blessed again.
Thank you for all you do for us.
In your name we pray.
Amen.