Isaiah was a bright and shining light to a dark and unfaithful nation. I've said it many times before, but I'm always amazed at how the same group of people can make the same mistake so many times. But I guess it was generational. One generation didn't believe mom and dad, when mom and dad said, you know what kids? Don't disobey God because we did, and God spanked us.

And so we admonish you to follow the Lord with all of your hearts. You know, I don't know why it is, except it's true, every new generation always thinks it knows much more and is way far ahead than the last generation. And every new generation coming up thinks it can conquer the world and the world is at its fingertips and often has to learn lessons the hard way. Israel seemed to be a whole nation that learned lessons the hard way and actually didn't completely learn all of the lessons.

The New Testament says these things were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world have come. And it says that they were written for us so that we would not make the same mistakes that they made and that we would do the right things that they did. We always see examples of faith in the light of a dark, sinful group of people, God's faithfulness. And though God said, I will send you into captivity, He said I'll send you into captivity to chasten you, to spank you. And that will cause you to turn, to return back to me, to my faithful love. And I will heal your backsliding.

So every time there was a promise of judgment, there was a promise of restoration. And that's always God's intention, is to spank so that we could be restored, is to punish so that we might return to Him. The whole purpose for the captivity is that they would learn the lesson and return back to him. So behind all of the wrath, behind all of the judgment is a loving, faithful God whom God beckons the children of Israel to return to.

In chapters 13 through 23, it's a series of judgments that God pronounces on the nations surrounding Israel. Israel has never been in a safe position. She has always had enemies, always had people who tried to put her out of the land. And there were times when they were successful. But God always promised to bring them back in the land. And though Israel is in the land today, it seems that though she's there in the land, she's in a precarious situation, ready to be driven out, it seems, at any moment. For the nations surrounding Israel are not sympathetic toward her.

We have that scene here in the Old Testament but perhaps in a more dramatic way. For the nations around Judah, the Southern Kingdom, were ready to expel her at any moment. And so God pronounces the ultimate punishment upon these nations who are coming against Judah. They wouldn't see it immediately. Judah wouldn't see retribution immediately. But eventually she would see it.

Probably none of these judgments were prophesied directly to the nations that they pertain. But they were prophesied to the inhabitants of Judah, God's people, so that Judah could take comfort. That though God is punishing them, that God will bring retribution on the very people that he uses to punish them so that they could take comfort, that this isn't a lifelong thing. That it would last 70 years, that they would be in captivity for a while but return back to the land. So it's for Israel's sake.

In chapters 13 and 14, it's a series of declarations against Babylon. Babylon plays a very significant role in the scripture. And in chapters 13 and 14, there are specific predictions. God makes some detailed prophecies concerning Babylon and the fall of Babylon, how it would fall, way in advance before they ever happened. And as you know, prophecy is one of those trademarks of God. It proves who God is.

God would often match himself up to any idol and say, OK, let's have a battle of the gods here. You guys are worshipping pagan gods, I am the one true God. You match all of your pagan idols next to me. And let's see who's really the best here. And his final card that he pulled out was prediction. He was accurate in prophecy. He wasn't like Jeane Dixon or Edgar Cayce, who were right some of the time. He was right all of the time.

In fact, God gave the declaration on how to distinguish a true and a false prophet. And, of course, as you know, it says if a prophet speaks something in my name, it must come to pass. If it doesn't come to pass, he's a false prophet. Don't say, oops, I guess he blew it. Take him outside and stone him. That was Old Testament. God wanted the children of Israel pure from all false prophets. And so he simply said, if somebody is going to speak in my name, first of all, they're not going to want to speak in my name unless they know they've heard from me.

And secondly, it will come to pass. Because if the Lord has spoken it, well, it's going to happen. If you turn with me to Isaiah, chapter 48, you see where God brings this out. So we'll kind of skip ahead. See, the prophecy is a sign of God's power. "Hear this, O house of Jacob, you who are called by the name of Israel and have come forth from the wellsprings of Judah, who swear by the name of the Lord and make mention of the God of Israel but not in truth or in righteousness. For they call themselves after the holy city and lean on the God of Israel; the Lord of hosts is his name."

Verse 3-- "I have declared the former things from the beginning; they went forth from my mouth and I caused them to hear it. Suddenly, I did them and they came to pass because I knew that you were obstinate and your neck was an iron sinew and your brow bronze. Even from the beginning I have declared it to you-- before it came to pass I proclaimed it to you lest you should say my idol has done them and my carved image and my molded image have commanded them."

So God's calling card was the fact that he could predict something that would come to pass accurately. It speaks here in Chapter 13, it says "The burden against Babylon, which Isaiah, the son of Amoz saw-- lift up a banner on the high mountain, raise your voice to them, wave your hand so that they may enter the gates of the nobles. I have commanded my sanctified ones. I have also called my mighty ones for my anger, those who rejoice in my exaltation."

Babylon was the greatest, perhaps, of all of the ancient cities of this time. There were other cities around the world that were springing up. There was a great civilization, of course, in Northern Africa, great civilizations in Greece. But Babylon was in its height of glory, perhaps the greatest city in the ancient world.

It is estimated that Babylon was 196 square miles. I don't know if anybody knows the square mileage of metro Albuquerque, anybody know that? Nobody knows it. Well, anyway, Babylon was a 196 square miles, pretty big. It was surrounded by a 30 foot moat. The sides of one wall, the wall that went across the city was 14 miles long.

The walls were double walls 311 feet high. And the top of this sanctuary is about 38 feet high. 311 feet high, probably higher than any building in this entire state were the walls of Babylon, double walls. You could put 11 parked cars on top of them, on the wall. And it was said that you could take eight chariots and run them abreast on the top of the wall.

And they often had chariot races three to six abreast racing on the top of the walls of the city of Babylon, 311 feet above the ground. 250 watchtowers, each watchtower extended another 100 feet above the wall itself. So 411 feet high were the top of the watchtowers where men would be stationed with their armor, their bows and arrows, watching to see if any invading army would dare be arrogant enough to try to conquer Babylon.

They would have to get through its moat. They'd have to cross the Tigris and Euphrates River that was diverted in channels around the city so the people would get bogged down trying to come in. The entrances of the city were solid bronze gates. It was impenetrable, they thought. It was a magnificent city and we see here in chapter 13, God pronounces the doom upon the city. It was the center of trade, culture, and learning.

Babylon came up with the first measurement system. They were the ones that discovered or set in order 360 degrees in a circle. They took the circle and broke it down into 360 degrees. They came up with it first. They kind of rivaled Egypt when it came to learning. Now, at the time that chapter 13 and 14 was written, the dominant power was not Babylon yet. It was upcoming, but the dominating power was Assyria.

Babylon was a dependent state upon Assyria. Yet Isaiah predicts the fall of a nation that even hasn't risen to power yet. So when this was written, people would look at and go, what do you mean Babylon? And it talks about it being a great city, a great and mighty glorious city.

It says in verse 17, "Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, who will not regard silver. And as for gold, they will not delight in it. Also, their bows will dash the young men to pieces. And they will have no pity on the fruit of the womb. Their eye will not spare the children. And Babylon, the glory of the kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldean's pride, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah."

Not only was Babylon not risen to power and not seen as glorious, but very few people in Isaiah's time of writing this ever heard of who the Medes were. They were a small people group with really no authority. So way in advance before Babylon had risen, way in advance before the Medes were of any notable size as a people group is the prediction of the breaking down of their power structure by the Medes whom God would raise up.

In chapter 13, . Verses 17 to 22, there are five predictions of the fall of Babylon. Let's just finish it up. It says in verse 20, "It will never be inhabited nor will it be settled from generation to generation-- nor will the Arabian pitch tents there; nor will the shepherds make their sheep folds there.

But wild beasts of the desert will lie there; and their houses will be full of owls. Ostriches will dwell there. And wild goats will caper there. The hyenas will howl in their citadels, the jackal in their pleasant palaces. Her time is near to come and her days will not be prolonged."

Babylon was not only the center of trade, of wealth, of education, it was the center of paganism. And Babylon is often spoken about in the scripture as the seat of idolatry. And it's used in a figurative sense. Read the book of Revelation. You read chapter 17 and 18 and you see commercial Babylon and religious Babylon, two great powers that will rise up in the last days.

The word Babylon is figurative of some great political and religious power that will overwhelm the earth that is run by the Antichrist and the false prophet. So Babylon has its roots in paganism. And it's always seen as having pagan overtones, even in the last days. If you trace the history of Babylon, it goes way back to the Tower of Babel in the plane, out in the Tigris Euphrates River, the plane of Shinar.

And what is really scary is the religious system. The religious system of the Babylonians centered around Nimrod the hunter, Semiramis the mother, and Tammuz. And the worship was of the mother and child. She was called, Semiramis was called the queen of heaven.

On Yule night, which was December 25th, through a series of divine circumstances, a child was born, her son, into the world. She was considered the queen of the stars, the queen of heaven. And the mother and the child were worshipped. So many of the practices of the church in the early centuries of Christianity were adopted from Babylon.

And this is what happens. Babylon grew up, became an empire, developed a pagan worship system that grew around it for thousands of years. As each nation succeeded one another and took one another over, they also took over the religious system. They looked and they thought, you know, that's kind of a neat way to worship. We'll incorporate that style with us.

And finally when Rome took over the world, the Roman worship system resembled Babylon to such a high degree, it was uncanny. And many practices were brought in from the Roman cultish way of worship into the church. For instance, Christmas celebrated on December 25th. Most scholars believe that Jesus couldn't have been born on December 25th. Most scholars place his birth somewhere in October at the very latest.

Because it says that shepherds were keeping their sheep at night when Jesus was born. And in Palestine, in Israel, shepherds don't keep their sheep outside past the end of October. It's too cold. They keep them inside in the city. They're huddled. They're not out grazing like during the summer warm months.

You say, well, how did December 25th come around? It's because during the time of the Babylonians and Rome when they were worshipping Nimrod, Tammuz, Semiramis, they had all of these customs. And they worshipped by going into the forest, it says in the book of Jeremiah, cutting down a tree that was green, putting it inside their home or inside the palace, and decking it with silver and gold.

They would get drunk, they would give gifts. They'd have drunken office parties. And hence Christmas. You say, how did it get passed, into the church. At the time that Constantine allegedly became a Christian after his battle in northern Italy, and it was an alleged profession of faith, I don't believe he ever really made one. It was Constantine who asked God, he said, look, God, if you let me win this battle and become numero uno in the empire, I will be a Christian.

He said that he saw a sign in the heavens in the form of a cross that said, in this sign, conquer. He felt it was a sign from God. He went out and boldness. He won. And he allegedly became a Christian, at least officially.

Then he commanded everyone in the empire to do the same. And since all of the priests and worship leaders were funded by the government, he basically told them, if you don't become a Christian, you're not going to be working here anymore. We're going to pull your paycheck, your status. And so a lot of these pagan priests and priestesses became, quote unquote "Christian" priests and priestesses and took Christianity, not in a real conversion, but brought it, sort of embraced it, and mingled Christian principles with principles that they had inherited from Babylon.

If you want a thorough write up of this, I recommend a book by Alexander Hislop called The Two Babylons. He does a thorough, historical, detailed explanation of the development of this religious system. If you're not well-versed in history, however, don't bother with it. It's a very tough book. It's tough reading. But he documents things beautifully and clearly.

Then you get to Easter. And you wonder, why do we have eggs, colored eggs, and the whole Easter bunnies thing? When we celebrate the Resurrection, well, just as they married together the pagan worship system of Babylon with the birth of Christ, you see the Babylonian worship day was already December 25th. Nobody really knew when Jesus was born. And so they put those two together and said we'll worship him on that day-- Christ-mass.

Later on they put the Resurrection day at the time of their celebration of Easter or Astarte-- the day where they celebrated the goddess Astarte, the goddess of fertility. And the Babylonians believe that Astarte came down from heaven in a large egg and was given to the earth. And so the egg became a symbol of fertility, as it is still. And so they took eggs and they decorated them and they hung them throughout their palaces in Babylon. And they worship Astarte, Easter.

And so you wonder, where did the eggs come from? It came from the Babylonian practice of worshipping Astarte now. That's kind of a bummer, isn't it? I mean, those are my two favorite holidays. And I like Easter eggs and I love Christmas trees. And I still use Easter eggs and I still get Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me because I don't bow down to Christmas trees. And although some people make a real hangup about it, I don't. It's become a cultural thing. I love the smell of them. I love giving gifts. It's a neat time to display Christian love.

And, you know, if you're hung up on it, then don't do it. But it says in the book of Romans and Corinthians, give leeway to your brother and sister. Not a big deal. But Babylon really definitely becomes that religious system that influences the whole world for years after.

Now in chapter 14 it says, "For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob and will still choose Israel and settle them in their own land. The strangers will be joined with them. They will cling to the house of Jacob. The people will take them and bring them into their place and the house of Israel will possess them for servants and maids in the land of the Lord. They will take them captive whose captives they were and rule over their oppressors."

And now we have the fall of the King of Babylon. "It shall come to pass in the day that the Lord gives you rest from your sorrow and from your fear, from the hard bondage in which you were made to serve, that you will take up this proverb against the King of Babylon." And the rest, up to verse 11 speaks about that. Of course, we know that Belshazzar was the King of Babylon when Babylon fell. It was predicted that he would fall. He raised himself up in pride and God put him in his place.

In verse 12, there's an interesting kind of a switch. And most people believe that this speaks of the origin of evil. For notice, it says, "how are you fallen from heaven, oh Lucifer son of the morning. How you are cut down to the ground, you who weaken the nations.

For you have said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will also sit on the mount of the congregation in the farthest sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the most high. Yet you will be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the pit."

Jesus said, "I saw Satan fall as lightning from heaven." And it seems that Satan was a created being. You could compare Ezekiel 28 with this passage and several passages in the New Testament that allude to the fact that whenever Satan was mentioned, he was a being of great beauty and great power and that in his pride, he lifted himself up. He wasn't content with being a servant.

Ezekiel said he was the anointed cherub that covers. He was like number one among all of God's created angels. He was number one minus one. He wasn't like God. And it was that minus one that really bothered him. And so he lifted himself up in pride.

And the Bible alludes to the fact that a third of the angelic beings defected and fell with Satan. The book of Revelation talks about a third of the stars or angelic beings being cast down out of heaven with Satan when he fell and rebelled from God. It says you have said verse 13 in your heart.

Now notice five "I wills." And this is always the beginning of sin. You want a definition of sin? This is it-- I will, I will, I will, I will, I will. That's sin. It's when you raise your own desires above the revealed will of God.

You are, in a sense, becoming your own god, worshipping your own desires, rather than desires of the One who created you. And sin always begins with a rebellious heart. "The heart is deceitful above all else," the Bible tells us, "who can know it?" It's desperately wicked.

The old nature rebels against God. The flesh rebels against the Maker. And Satan says, "I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God." And stars in the scripture is often a metaphor of other angelic beings.

"I will also sit on the Mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north," perhaps speaking about the fact that he wanted reign over God's land of Israel. The sides of the north-- Mount Zion. "I will a ascend above the heights of the clouds." And here is the real clincher-- "I will be like the most high."

Even after Satan's fall, he seems to have a very, very powerful position, so powerful that even Michael the archangel would not have a one on one confrontation with him and would not come against him in his own power. But it says in Jude, Michael said, daring not bringing a railing accusation against him, rather saying, the Lord rebuke you.

Satan has tremendous power. He can exercise tremendous authority. He is not omniscience. He is not omnipresent. But it seems that he has the ability to travel quite quickly. In the Book of Job when all the sons of God gather in front of the Lord, God says, Satan, Satan appeared also, what do you been doing? He goes, I've been cruising throughout the Earth, going to and fro.

To help Satan in his rebellion against God, he has emissaries. A third, perhaps, of the angelic beings as we have said, fell from heaven. Now we don't know how many that is. But as much as we face temptation, we know that's got to be a bunch.

As tough as spiritual warfare is for the Christian, and if you're a Christian you know what I'm talking about. Every Christian experiences the spiritual warfare once he becomes a child of God. So there must be a bunch of them. And in wanting to be like the most high, drawing a third of heaven with him, he became powerful and he was sold out to the evil side.

God says, however, "Yet," verse 15, "you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the pit. Those who see you will gaze at you and consider you, saying, 'is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed its cities, and did not open the house of his prisoners?" I don't know, but perhaps Satan, if we ever get the chance to view him, could be one of the most beautiful creatures that our eyes could behold.

You know, we get this picture that all of a sudden he turned writhing and ugly and horns and gob, you know, bleh. We get that idea of him. We just kind of picture him that way. That once you fall, you kind of turn ugly. And that's not necessarily the truth.

It could be that he is very beautiful to behold. The Bible talks about Satan being able to appear as an angel of light and deceive many people. And so people might view him at the end and go, he did it? That's the guy? It would just probably blow our minds.

"All the kings of the nations, all of them sleep in glory. Every one in his own house. But you are cast out of your grave like an abominable branch; like the garment of those who are slain thrust through with a sword who go down to the stones of the pit; like a corpse trodden under foot.

You will not be joined with them in burial because you have destroyed your land and slain your people. The root of evil doers shall never be named. Prepare slaughter for his children because of the iniquity of their fathers, lest they raise up and possess the land and fill the face of the world."

Babylon is destroyed in the next few verses. There is a lament against Assyria and a lament in verse 28 against Philistia, the stronghold of the Philistines. By the way, the word Palestine comes from the word Philistines. Palestine comes from [? "ur ?] Philistia"-- land of the Philistines.

That's why I don't like to call Israel, Palestine. I know the PLO likes to call it that. They won't call it Israel. I like to call it Israel. God calls it that. I don't call it Palestine because the Philistines don't inhabit it anymore. It's been a long time since they've been kicked out.

Chapter 15 is a declaration against the kingdom of Moab, which was the rolling, grassy plateau filled with many animals. Livestock fed east of the Dead Sea. In present day Jordan, you can see it. Actually, if you have been to Israel with us and you go look across the Dead Sea from where we're at at Ein Gedi [INAUDIBLE], you can see the plains of Moab rising up to a peak. Beyond that, there is rolling hills as the plateau winds down. And this is the area of Moab that the scripture is speaking about.

They also were coming against Judah. And God has a proclamation against Moab, the burden against Moab. "Because in the night, Ar of Moab is laid waste and destroyed. Because in the night, Kir of Moab is laid waste and destroyed. He has gone up to the temple in Dibon, to the high places to weep. Moab will wail over Nebo"-- which is the highest mountain peak over there in Moab or Jordan today-- "and over Medeba. On all the heads there will be baldness and every beard cut off," as they would be taken captive by the Assyrians. "In their streets, they will clothe themselves with sackcloth. On the tops of their houses and in their streets, everyone will wail, weeping bitterly."

The Moabites are the descendants of Lot. For Lot, it is said, after he left Sodom and Gomorrah, headed that direction. And the Moabites where his descendants. However, the Moabites play a very important part in salvation. Because it was a Moabitess-- you remember, who came back into the land-- named Ruth who married Boaz and developed the house and the lineage of King David, eventually. And so, although there is problems there, God used the Moabites at one time.

Chapter 16, again, a continuation of the prophecy, the destruction of Moab. Chapter 17 is against Damascus. "Behold Damascus will cease from being a city. And it will be a ruinous heap. And cities of Aroer are forsaken. They will be for flocks which lie down and no one will make them afraid. The fortress also will cease from Ephraim, the kingdoms from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria, they will be as the glory of the children of Israel, says the Lord."

There was an alliance, you remember, that developed. Here's Judah down in the south. Above them was the 10 tribes of Israel. They've already fallen. They've backslidden. They're apostatized. Judgment is already coming upon them. And in 722 BC, Sennacherib comes in and just wipes them out and takes them captive. There was an alliance that was forming between the Northern Kingdom of Israel and Damascus, Syria, to fight against Judah. We covered that the last couple of weeks.

God, here, is showing how that alliance will be broken finally. And that there will be a remnant that comes out. In verse 7 it says, "In that day a man will look to his maker. And his eyes will have respect for the Holy One of Israel. He will not look to the altars, the work of his hands. He will not respect what his fingers have made nor the wooden images nor the incense altars."

In other words, there will be a faithful remnant preserved in the northern kingdom and in Damascus after all of this mess, after the captivity, after the destruction. And this remnant will look back to God. And you see, this is the purpose of God's discipline. The purpose of discipline is to turn a person's heart back to God.

Now we know that if we have children. It is amazing what good, consistent, loving discipline can do for a child. It really is amazing. I've told you how many times I've had to spank my son. Now I don't like to do that. I don't really get my jollies getting to spank him.

In fact, I just loathe it. I don't like to do it. And every time I think I have to spank him, I think, oh man, I just wonder what God goes through when he knows he has to spank us. He doesn't want to do it. He doesn't delight in it. But he knows that afterwards, we'll come back crying, saying, Abba, Father, and we'll seek his consoling hand. We'll come repentant.

And so when we are rebellious and a little bit cocky, the loving hand of God comes to the backside and bam. And it's so beautiful to have my son, after the discipline, after I'm hugging him, I say, Nathan, I love you so much. Daddy hates to spank you. We want you to obey. We don't want to have to spank you.

He'll come out in a few minutes just wiping the tears away and say, dad, I'm sorry that I was a bad boy. And then he's very tender. He warms up and he just wants to cuddle for a long time. That's how we are with the Lord.

It's at that point during the discipline when God gives us over to our decision, if we're going against him, that we wake up and we turn to our Maker. And we say, God, I'm sorry, do you forgive me? And we cuddle up close to the Lord. The relationship is restored.

It's renewed again. There's a repentant heart. There's an open heart, a teachable heart. That's God's whole design for discipline, is restoration. We always need to remember that. God's actions toward us are never punitive. They are corrective.

He doesn't just punish, it's always to correct with a view to restore. Keeping that in mind, God has given his church the distinct necessity to discipline people who call themselves Christians. I don't mean flog them. I don't mean stand them up against the wall and shoot BBs at them until they repent of something.

But there is something in the scripture that many Christians are unknowingly ignorant of or willingly ignorant of. And that is church discipline. We think, oh, that's for the past. And yet, the Bible speaks about being in authority, being under authority and having authority over your, accountability.

Now some people take it way too far. They want to shepherd over you. But in the New Testament, the Bible says if there's a brother in sin or a sister in sin, if you know that that person has committed a sin, not just you suspect, you know, you approach that person. And it says in Galatians, "In the spirit of meekness you seek to restore the person back to the Lord, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted."

You say, you have sinned. I'm not saying this because I'm the Holy Spirit. I'm not going to be holier than thou. I'm a fellow struggler with you. But I can see that this is blatant rebellion against God. Therefore I urge you to turn back to the Lord.

Now Jesus said, if they don't listen to you, take another person with you. The law of the witness, where two or three witnesses are, every word is established. If they don't listen to that witness-- hopefully it should be someone who is perhaps an officer in the church, holds some kind of rank-- he doesn't listen, tell it to the church, either the whole church, as some interpret it, or the leadership of the Church.

Jesus said, if that person after that many times fails to turn, you are to treat that person as a heathen and a tax collector. And Paul the Apostle took that very literally. There was someone in the church who was committing incest. And he rebuked the Corinthian church because they put up with it.

He said, you guys are so tolerant, shame on you. You shouldn't be that tolerant. Someone's committing flagrant sin. You need to cast that person out over to the domain of Satan, out of the church into the world for the purpose of restoring him.

And in 2 Corinthians he said, "sufficient is his punishment. Bring him back." He wants forgiveness now. He's had enough punishment. He's been ostracized. And being ostracized, it's woken him up. He thinks, I've been out of fellowship with God's saints. I can't get back in the church until I repent. And that kind of discipline, loving discipline, if it's handled biblically, is so beautiful it can turn a person back to following the right way of Jesus.

Now there are people who don't always want that. They don't receive discipline. They won't come under the authority of the Word. And there are those cases when church discipline fails to work. But you know what? Most of the cases where we've had to do it, it's been wonderful. We've seen people who are hardened in pride come open and broken and repentant before the Lord, seeking to be restored. And we've watched beautiful reconciliation take place.

And so this whole theme of judgment with a view toward restoration is a biblical principle. All throughout the Old Testament, God enacted it and Jesus gave the authority, the keys of the kingdom, to his followers. "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Not that we become authorities over every single move you make, not at all. We're fellow strugglers. But there is an accountability.

Remember, a man came to Jesus and said, I am a man of authority. I say to this person, go, he goes, come, he comes. I am also a man under authority. He was a man who was able to give orders and take orders. There was an accountability. There was a responsibility.

Jesus marveled at his faith because this man just said speak the word, I know how authority works. Speak the word and my servant will be healed. Jesus said, golly, I haven't seen that kind of faith even in Israel. This was a Roman soldier.

So we see that principle spoken of all throughout the scripture. And chapters 18 through 20 is the edicts against Egypt and Ethiopia. God pronounces judgment upon them. We're not going to get into them all. Suffice it to say, however, that Egypt and Ethiopia were some of the first places to ever receive the gospel.

How do we know that? Ethiopia, for instance, after Pentecost there was a Jewish worshipper who was going back to Ethiopia who represented Candace the queen. He was in a chariot. The chariot was stopped, he was by the side of the road having a hot dog. I don't know if he was having a hot dog, maybe a falafel. And he was opening the scroll of Isaiah.

And Philip, who was in Sumeria, was told by the spirit to go down to Gaza, which is the desert. And he sees the fellow out in the chariot. And the spirit said, hey, go join yourself to that guy. Go witness to him. And so Philip goes over and the guy's reading the Bible and he says, do you know what you're reading? You understand what you're reading?

He was reading Isaiah 53, coincidentally. You understand what you're reading? He goes, how can I unless somebody explained it to me? He said, great, I'll explain it to you. This speaks about Jesus, the Messiah, who has promised. He suffered. He died. He rose again.

That man made a commitment to Jesus Christ and went on his way to Ethiopia. And from the historical records we have, we know that the Ethiopian church is one of the oldest in the world. Perhaps it was that man's testimony that brought the faith to Northern Africa. We don't know, but perhaps. But we know that a great church started in Ethiopia and Egypt, one of the earliest that we ever know about. So it's beautiful to see how God works there. And God is doing a beautiful work there today, actually.

All right, chapter 21, the fall of Babylon, again, is proclaimed. In verse 9, it says, "And look, here comes a chariot of men with a pair of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen and all the carved images of her gods he has broken to the ground. O my threshing and the grain of my floor, that which I have heard from the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, I have declared to you."

Now do you remember another place where that phrase is given? The book of Revelation. Here we see the fall of the nation of Babylon. And in chapter 14, we see an angel going in the tribulation period, proclaiming with a loud voice that everyone should rejoice because Babylon has fallen, has fallen.

That great religious, spiritual, and economic harlot, as she is called in the book of Revelation, is fallen, has crumbled, is subjugated by God. "Babylon has fallen, has fallen. All the carved images of her gods he has broken to the ground."

In chapter 22, we get back to Jerusalem. Isaiah prophesies for a total of 58 years. So you don't see an order, necessarily, in this. But there was a time when he gets back to speaking about Jerusalem. "The burden against the valley of vision. What ails you now that you have gone up to the housetops?

You are full of noise, a tumultuous city, a joyous city. Your slain men are not slain with a sword nor dead in battle. All your rulers have fled together. They are captured by the archers. All who are found in you are bound together, who have fled from afar. Therefore I said, look away from me, I will weep bitterly. Do not labor to comfort me because of the plundering of the daughter, of my people."

He is describing the invasion of the coming army. As the Jewish people would be able to get on their rooftops and look down through the valleys, seeing the approaching Babylonian armies coming in, coming around the city to tear down their walls, to take away their women, their children, and to take their men as slaves or to kill them in battle.

Jump down to verse 8, it says, "He removed the protection of Judah. You looked in that day to the armor of the house of the forest. You also saw the damage to the city of David, that it was great. And you gathered together the waters of the lower pool.

You numbered the houses of Jerusalem and the houses you broke down to fortify the wall. You also made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not look to its maker, nor did you have respect for him who fashioned it long ago." As soon as King Hezekiah heard that the Assyrians, who had besieged Sumeria and the Northern Kingdom, were coming down into Judah, he decided to fortify the walls.

He decided to break down some of the buildings, use the stones and the timbers to fortify the walls of Jerusalem, to buttress them against any strong invasion. Then Hezekiah went down into the Kidron valley. And there's a spring, the source of the water of Jerusalem is called Gihon, the Gihon Spring. It was the place where the kings were anointed as king, where the prophets were anointed with oil. David was anointed as King there.

And he took the water source, which at that time, was outside the city wall, and he created an aqueduct 1,755 feet long. So it would take the water from the source of the Gihon, divert into the city of Jerusalem at a pool. It talks about a pool here. The name of the pool that he created was called "Shiloah" or "Siloam" the Pool of Siloam, where Jesus told the man later on to wash the mud out of his eyes and he'd be healed.

This was a pool that was created so the water source could be taken from outside the city to inside the city so that during the siege they could have a water supply. What is amazing is that that is still intact today. It's called Hezekiah's tunnel. It's created out of pure stone. And they began at two separate ends. A group began inside the city. A group began on the outside of the city and they dug through the pure, solid bedrock and they met each other.

In fact, they found the inscription not too long ago, it's in a museum-- at least, in our lifetime. The inscription in Hezekiah's tunnel, when those two parties met when Hezekiah ordered this diversion to occur. And it's in the museum and you can see it over in Israel if you go today.

Also, every time we go to Israel, especially if the weather's nice, we try to walk through, from the Gihon all the way through this to the Pool of Siloam and retrace the route and end up at the Pool of Siloam and then get out. It's totally dark. It's cold.

And you can barely fit through some of the places. In fact, they've dug it out. So especially for me, you have to really duck down in certain places where the bedrock was obviously hard. They didn't hew it out to a large degree. But then where it was soft, it's cavernous. It's huge.

And we've gotten in there where the water's a little high. And we've had the whole group of tourists going through from one end to the other. And it's quite claustrophobic actually. But it's a blast.

What God is saying is that they did all of these fortifications. They made the pool of Siloam in Hezekiah's tunnel, they did all of this in their own flesh. And they didn't seek God or trust God. They didn't take it to God in prayer.

For He says, "You did not look to its maker, the maker of the spring of Gihon itself, nor have you respect for him who fashioned it long ago." You made these elaborate preparations but you have not sought God. What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. Oh, what peace we often forfeit. Oh, what needless pain we bear. All because we don't not carry everything to God in prayer.

That says, you know, you went through all of this self-fortification, made plans for your future. They're not going to work, man. You're going to be taken captive. You never turned back to me. You never saw this invasion to be the very tool for which I created it, to bring your hearts into relationship with me.

So "in that day, the Lord of hosts called for weeping and mourning," verse 12, "for baldness, for girding, and with sackcloth." They would shave their heads, shave their beards, put sackcloth on them, and humiliate them and take them walking all the way back to Babylon.

But instead, joy, gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating meat and drinking wine. Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. When the Lord was calling for their own mourning, they were partying. They didn't see it as a threat. They figured, look, you know, they're going to come and take us anyway. And we're going to eat our lunch on this whole deal, so let's just have a great party. Let's go out in a blaze of glory.

There was no repentance. You know what blows my mind is in the tribulation period when all of these judgments fall upon the earth, judgment after judgment, bowl after bowl, vial after vial of the wrath of God. It says "neither did they repent of their sins and their iniquities." They didn't turn back to God. Their hearts became so hardened.

And here it's just pleasure mania. They're trying to tune out the realities of life by filling their life with one pleasure and then another. The rest of the chapter in verse 15 on speaks about the judgment of Shebna. In chapter 23, the proclamation against Tyre, which was the seaport about 25 miles north of present day Haifa in the area known as Lebanon, which now is not a great place to visit.

But at the time that the proclamation was against Tyre, it was the center of the Phoenicians, who were known for their wealth and for their navies. And they boasted it being the strongest navy in the world. God pronounces a judgment upon them for their persecution.

Now in chapters 24 through 27, it's what is called Isaiah's little apocalypse. It speaks about the future times. It's not now about what happened in the past. Isaiah telescopes and goes way out to the future. He speaks about a time of intense suffering on the world called the tribulation period and finally ends up, in the last few chapters of this section, speaking about the millennial kingdom.

It probably would be good to give a little panorama of prophecy just so you know what the Bible states so that you'd know what to expect, you know where we've come from and you know where we're going, you know what God's plan is for the future. The first stage is the church age. Between the first coming of Jesus Christ and the time when he comes again, especially when he comes for his church in the rapture, is called the church age.

It's where he reaches out to Jews and to non-Jews alike and brings them into an assembly he calls his ecclesia, his called out ones, or in English, his church, his assembly of believers. We are at, I believe, the very end of the church age. It's an age of grace. It's a time when God is dealing with the nations of the world before he once again deals specifically with the nation of Israel.

Then after the church age comes the rapture of the church, 1 Thessalonians, chapter 4. I believe that the scripture teaches that the presence of God's people, his church, upon this earth is the restraining power that keeps all hell from breaking loose literally. It keeps the Antichrist from assuming power.

2 Thessalonians, chapter 2, talks about, "I believe the spirit of God in the believer. The believer is the salt and the light of the world." It's the only thing that keeps the earth from total, absolute corruption. Now we're really corrupting. Take the Christians out and you're handing the reins over to Satan himself.

And the Bible says when that event takes place, when the rapture of the church takes place and his saints are called out, there comes a time of tribulation period upon the earth when God judges the world, number one, for her iniquities, collectively. And number two, God deals with the nation of Israel, bringing out a remnant of 144,000, which, in turn, become powerful evangelists through the tribulation period.

And then finally-- the kingdom age. After the rapture of the church comes the judgment seat of Christ. 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, "We will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ." In Greek, It's the bema seat. It's the reward seat. It's not judged if you're saved or not saved. If you're a Christian, you're saved.

But if you're a Christian, you're going to stand before God at a judgment seat, a bema seat, where he will give you rewards or he will withhold rewards, depending on your faithfulness in serving God. And that's an important concept. If you're a Christian, if you've made Jesus Christ your Savior, you're following him, we're going to see each other in heaven. But not all of us have the same position in the kingdom.

There will be different positions. Turn for a moment, just to get a glimpse at this, to the book of 2 Corinthians, chapter 5. Now I've got to find it. Oh yeah, that's it. 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, great. 1 Corinthians, chapter 5, in verse 9 it says, "therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. For we must all," we collective, we Christians, "must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what He has done, whether good or bad. Therefore knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. But we are well known to God and I also trust, are well-known in your consciences."

The word bema seat comes from a word that was used in the old Olympics of the Greek days. You would compete in Greece. If you won the race, they would bring you before the judges and they would place a laurel wreath on your head. The stand that the judges were on was called the bema. And they would place a little crown on your head.

And so Paul says that we as Christians are also running a race. We should strive to win the race. 1 Corinthians, chapter 9. He says, "We don't strive or run to win a perishable crown, but an imperishable crown." We're not running the race so that God will put a little laurel wreath on our heads that will shrivel up in a couple days, but an everlasting crown.

As a Christian, you will be rewarded in the kingdom and you will have a position in the kingdom dependent upon your service to the Lord here on earth. It's not speaking of salvation. Salvation is not predicated upon your service, were you faithful here or there. You're saved by grace through faith. It's not of works, it's not of yourself, lest any man should boast.

But your position in the kingdom is definitely predicated upon those works. And you'll stand at the judgment seat of Christ. He won't say, get out of here, if you're a believer. But you won't be rewarded what you could have been rewarded. And there are several crowns the New Testament speaks about, all the way up to a martyr's crown, special rewards that will be given during this time.

So there's this judgment seat of Christ, not for salvation, but for rewards. After the judgment seat of Christ comes a tribulation period. And I think, actually, it will unfold simultaneously during the judgment seat of Christ. The rapture of the church, the bema seat, simultaneously the earth will go through the great tribulation period. The tribulation is divided into two.

And I bring this up because chapter 24, I believe, speaks of the great tribulation period. Very definitely, it's judgment on the whole earth. It goes way beyond Philistia, Moab, and Jerusalem, and Assyria, and Babylon, and all the way out to the future the whole world. The tribulation period will be divided into two sections-- 3 and 1/2 years and 3 and 1/2 years.

The first 3 and 1/2 years will be pretty peaceful. People will think, oh, this is great, not bad. The last 3 and 1/2 years will be murder, literally. People will be dying right and left. You read the book of Revelation beginning in chapter 4 all the way through and you see the havoc that is wrecked in the great tribulation period, judgment after judgment.

And so chapter 24, the impending judgment on the earth. "Behold," let's read a few verses here, "the Lord makes the earth empty and makes it waste, distorts its surface, scatters abroad its inhabitants, and it shall be as with the people, so with the priest, as with the servants, so with his masters, with the maid, so with her mistress, as with the buyers, so with the seller, as with the lender, so with the borrower, as with the creditor, so with the debtor. The land shall be entirely emptied and utterly plundered for the Lord has spoken this word."

No one will escape. If you have a higher station in life than someone else, you won't escape the judgment of God. Your American Express will do you no good at that time. You can't say, I'll buy my way out of this one. Nope, tough luck. It says during that time in the book of Revelation that people will cry to the mountains to fall on them and crush them, to hide them from the wrath of the lamb, but there will be no relief. There will be a judgment that will sweep, actually, the entire world.

In Matthew 24, listen how Jesus describes it. "For then there will be great tribulation such as has never been since the beginning of the world until this time, nor shall ever be. It will be chaos unrestrained, full reign of terror upon the earth. And there rises, during this time, a satanic trinity."

Satan always has desired to mimic and mock God. I will be like the most high. The tribulation, it's his hour to mimic God. And there's a satanic trinity. Just like you have the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Satan assumes the position of the Father. The beast assumes the position of Jesus Christ.

And the false prophet, in leading people into delusion and worship, assumes the position of the Holy Spirit. And they work in concert together, deceiving the world politically and deceiving the world religiously. Now the Antichrist will make a pact with the nation of Israel. And people will be saying, peace, peace, this man is a great man of peace.

He'll make a pact with the nation of Israel to rebuild their temple and restore the worship. They will believe, no doubt, that this is their messiah. Jesus said, "I come in my father's name and you do not receive me. But another will come in his own name. Him you will receive."

Prophetic that Israel will receive the Antichrist as their messiah. He's the coming one. He's restored political peace. That's really what they're looking for. And many of them will be deceived. He will break the pact with the nation of Israel and plunge the world into a time of great destruction.

Then he will cause every person on Earth to undergo a huge economic process. He will put a mark on their body. They cannot buy or sell unless they have that mark. To take that mark, however, is to align yourself with the forces of the devil.

And the scripture says, "If a person during the tribulation takes that mark, he will never, under any circumstance, enter the kingdom of heaven." Because he's making a final declaration of his allegiance with the devil and the satanic trinity. And so the person who, in the tribulation period, says, I'm not going to take the mark. I'm going to follow Jesus Christ will have to die, be martyred for his faith.

And the book of Revelation speaks about this great mass of martyrs that are kept. And their blood cries out, how long, O Lord, will it be until you avenge the blood of your servants. And God says, a little while and I will do it. It's interesting. I've talked to some folks who said, you know, I've got this whole thing figured out. I know how to play my cards.

You say we're living in the end times? That's great. What I'm going to do is I'm going to live the way I want to live. And then when the rapture of the church comes, I'll know it's true. It'll be proof positive. And I know what the time element is. Because the Bible speaks about it, and then I will give my life to Jesus Christ because then I'll know the time element.

That's absolutely ludicrous. If you can't live for Jesus now when it's easy, do you think you'll be able to die for him when it's that difficult? I doubt if you can't live for him now you'll be able to do it. Although I know that God will touch people. People will be saved.

The Holy Spirit will still be working during the tribulation period. But you'd have to die for him then. Why not accept him now when it's much easier and you see those signs in the world mounting up? And you really have to be blind not to see the signs if you read the scripture and you read the newspaper or turn on the tube every now and then. The dominoes are falling and the end times is being ushered in.

A great tribulation period, Jesus said, "nothing has been like it in the past. Nothing will be like it in the future. There will be famines. There will be plagues." It says in verse 6, "Therefore, the curse that has devoured the earth and those who dwell in it are desolate. Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned and few men are left."

The first part of the tribulation in the book of Revelation opens up with what is called the four horsemen of the apocalypse, which usher in all sorts of horrible tragedies. And it says during that time that 1/4 of the world's population will be obliterated by the time those four horsemen are through with the plagues. 1/4 of the population of the planet Earth will be absolutely demolished by war and famine and plagues.

Now we have already crossed the five billion mark as far as population on the Earth is concerned. If you accept the statistics very generously and admit that 20% of the earth is Christian and will be taken in the rapture, you don't have to be a mathematician or a PhD in math to figure out that there's four billion people left. And that's one billion people that will be obliterated just after the end of the four horsemen of the apocalypse in their judgment, a billion people.

A billion people, that's a lot of folks. If you were to count, if you were to sit at home and count, one, two, three, four, five, six, and you counted one per second, it would take you to count one million, it would take you 11 days going one, two, three, 60 counts a minute. It'd take 11 days. To make one billion, it would take you 32 years nonstop. Just to give you an effect of how big a billion is.

And so you notice and you see with great authority. And it's really scary, in verse 6, "therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned and few men are left." And keep in mind what Jesus said, "such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time nor shall ever be." In World War I, 10 million died. In World War II, 50 million died.

In comparison, that's child's play. It's the ultimate wrath of God, as the world voluntarily aligns itself with the beast, voluntarily turns away in mass away from God. After the tribulation, toward the end of the tribulation, it climaxes in the battle of Armageddon. The battle of Armageddon climaxes with the return, the second coming of Jesus to the earth, obliterates the Antichrist with the word of his mouth.

There is then the judgment of the nation spoken about in Matthew 25, the separating of the sheep from the goats. And finally, the millennial kingdom. And so chapter 24 speaks about that. Chapter 25 and 26, as we get to next time, speak about the millennial reign of Jesus Christ. There's a beautiful, beautiful shift that takes place in those chapters.

But consider that for just a moment in closing. The wrath of God is coming. And the Bible says that every single knee will bow and every tongue will admit that Jesus is the Lord to the glory of God the Father. Right now, God gives everybody an opportunity to voluntarily bow the knee to Jesus. There will come a time when volunteerism is no longer en vogue. He will force a person to admit that Jesus is the Lord. But it's too late. It's too late to admit it at that time.

And there will be destruction and judgment. The Gospel has gone out in this day and age. The Gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ. If you just come to him the way you are, you don't have to clean up your act to come to him. You can come and be filthy, rotten, full of all sorts of stuff. I was. And there's still a lot of stuff that's wrong with me. And God's still cleaning me up, believe me.

And a lot of people who know me are saying amen. God wants you the way you are. And God will take you and redeem your life. The blood of Jesus Christ is able to cleanse you from all sin. If you have not given your life to Him, don't be foolish and put it off another moment. Do it this evening.

Let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, You have foretold these things and You said that you spoke them in advance so that when they came to pass we know that You have spoken. That no one can match this kind of accuracy. You foretold the fall of Babylon before it even existed as an empire, 100 years before it rose to power, You spoke of it. You spoke of the Medes, who were a small people group, taking them down when the Medes were not even heard of.

And 150 years before Cyrus was born, You named him by name in the pages of scripture as the principal one who would bring down Babylon. With accuracy You predicted the future and You have not failed in one instance. And because of Your track record, we commit ourselves to You. We trust our future to You. And we thank You, Lord, even as Jesus said, that we should pray that we could escape all of these things. Because Jesus told us to pray that, we believe that it's possible.

We believe that You have provided a way where You will snatch Your church away before that great and final judgment. And we thank You for that escape that You've given. But Father, our heart aches as we think of those who have hardened themselves against You.

And we pray that if there is a heart in this room that is left at all, that has tenderness left in it at all, that they will surrender their lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ tonight and not put it off another moment. We pray, Lord, that you would--

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