["In the Hall of the Mountain King"]
Yeah, you know what I mean, you know what I mean?
You know what I mean?
But you know what you'll notice is that Jesus Christ, when he was on this earth, he had
a lot of problems with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, didn't he?
But you know one thing you never see is, you know, darn these graven images.
Where's that sermon by Jesus?
I mean, Jesus is rebuking a lot of things, right?
But where is Jesus rebuking them for having molten images or graven images?
He's not, because they don't.
And even today, the Jews do not have graven images and molten images even to this day.
Now, they're, you know, messed up for other reasons.
They're worshiping a false god, because if you don't have the son, you have the father.
The Bible says, whosoever denyeth the son, the same hath not the father.
But he then acknowledges the son hath the father also.
They don't have the son or the father, because it's a package deal, folks.
They've got other problems.
But you know, one problem that they don't have is they don't worship graven images.
And you say, well, the welling wall.
The welling wall is not a graven image. It's a wall.
What animal or human is that in the shape of?
It isn't.
You say, well, they strap a box to their head and, you know.
Okay, but still, it's a box.
You know, there's no animal.
I mean, unless you think SpongeBob SquarePants is a real animal.
You know, there's, what shape animal is that?
Okay, that's not, you know.
The Jews came back from Babylon pretty much cured of idolatry.
So at least they learned something.
Something came out of that.
Also, look at all the scriptures that came out of it.
The Book of Jeremiah came out of it.
The Book of Ezekiel came out of it.
Right, you get all this wonderful scripture that's all based on the exile.
There's no Book of Ezekiel without the exile.
That's the whole thing that the book's about.
So, you know, it meant something.
So what I want you to take away from this part of Ezekiel 29 is that the world goes through
the same type of suffering that God's people go through, except it's just totally meaningless.
And when they come back, they're the basest of kingdoms and they don't matter.
When Israel comes back, they matter.
And they're ready to receive the Messiah a few hundred years later and become the focal point
of all human history with the ministry of Jesus and the cross and the empty tomb.
It's all focused right there on the returned nation of Judah.
So the suffering means something.
So don't have this attitude of like, oh, the Christian life is so hard.
I'm just going to go out to the world.
It's going to be hard over there, too.
It's just a different kind of hard with no meaning, with no silver lining.
Whereas staying with the Lord, your life has meaning.
Okay.
Or if you're saved and you go try to live a worldly life and get disciplined,
well, then, you know, at least that that will have meaning, too.
But it's probably not the kind of meaning that you want.
I would much rather be a guy getting punished for no reason because I'm being tested like Job
and I'm going to come forth as gold than to be doing it to myself with my own sinful life or something.
Right.
You know, that's worse.
Okay.
So that's a good takeaway from this chapter.
But now let's talk about the prophecy application of this chapter.
So we talked about the fact that Tyre resembles Babylon in so many ways
and that, in fact, some of the statements that we saw in chapters 26 and 27 of Ezekiel
are almost verbatim the same as Revelation 18, the destruction of Babylon.
Right.
So the destruction of Babylon in Chapter 18 is very reminiscent of the destruction of Tyre in Ezekiel 26 and 27.
It's the same kind of motif that's being used.
Well, what's interesting, if we're reading the Book of Revelation,
what comes right after the destruction of Babylon in Chapter 18 is the Battle of Armageddon in Chapter 19.
So after Babylon is destroyed in Chapter 18, then in Chapter 19, you have the Battle of Armageddon.
And what is the Battle of Armageddon all about?
Well, let's flip over there and look at it quickly.
So keep your finger in Ezekiel 29 and think about what we just read in Ezekiel 29.
And then let's look at the Battle of Armageddon.
So in Chapter 19, look at verse number...
Let's start with verse 17.
It says,
Now, remember, chapters 26, 27, and 28 were the destruction of Tyre,
which in many ways is parallel to Revelation 18, the destruction of Babylon.
Then when we get into Ezekiel 29, we're talking about the destruction of the dragon.
And the great dragon is represented by Pharaoh.
Well, in Chapter 19, we're going to see the destruction of the dragon, the punishment of the dragon by the Lord.
And if you remember, back in Ezekiel 29, if your finger is still there, if you have a finger in both places,
it says in verse 5,
I will leave thee, talking about the great dragon and all the fishes that have bonded to him,
or attached themselves unto him, or stuck to his scales.
It says,
I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness, thee and all the fish of thy rivers.
Thou shalt fall upon the open fields, thou shalt not be brought together nor gathered.
I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of heaven.
Now, isn't that exactly what we're looking at in Revelation 19,
that the armies of Satan and the Antichrist are eaten by the fowls of heaven?
They die, they are gathered together unto Satan,
they have cleaved unto Satan,
and now they're going to die and be left in the field,
and they're not going to be given a proper burial,
but the birds are going to pick their bones.
So that's a parallel between Ezekiel 29 and Revelation 19.
So it says that you may eat, in Revelation 19 again,
that you may eat the flesh of kings,
and he's talking to the birds of the air that are going to eat their flesh.
And it says in verse 19,
And I saw the beasts and the kings of the earth and their armies
gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse and against his army,
and the beast was taken,
and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him,
with which he had deceived them that had received the mark of the beast,
and them that had worshipped his image.
These both were cast alive into a lake of fire, burning with brimstone,
and the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse,
which sword proceeded out of his mouth,
and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.
And then that leads into chapter 20,
which is Satan himself, the dragon himself.
And it says in verse 2 of chapter 20,
He laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent which is the devil,
and Satan had bound him a thousand years.
The beast from chapter 20 is called the beast of the sea in Revelation 13,
the beast rising up out of the sea,
sort of like the dragon of the great river who represents Satan also,
and he is brought out by the hook.
All those that are gathered unto him and himself lie in an open field
to be picked and eaten by the birds.
So you can see there's like a symbolism or a foreshadowing
in the book of Ezekiel of the events of Revelation.
So, you know, we don't necessarily want to read too much into that,
but here's what we can take from that,
is just that the Bible is very deep and has many layers of meaning.
So it has the immediate layer of meaning of,
this is what's literally going to happen to Tyre,
this is what's literally going to happen to Pharaoh,
but then there's another deeper meaning of,
you know, there's going to be another Babylon
that's going to be punished in the same way,
and then there's going to be yet another end times Babylon
that gets punished in a similar way in Revelation 18.
And just like this little dragon of Pharaoh is punished,
someday the great dragon Satan is going to be punished in the end times.
And so a lot of things happen in cycles or in patterns
where God follows a certain pattern and it happens again.
And so you can learn something from comparing Revelation and Ezekiel
and get a kind of a greater understanding about how these things work.
And then you can take it and even apply it to our current situation
because the United States is much like Tyre and is much like Babylon.
And the United States, like Babylon, is an empire.
Now we may not think of ourselves as an empire,
we just think of ourselves as the good old apple pie eating USA
and we just love everybody and we just want everybody to be as free as we are
and we just want everybody to enjoy the goodness that we've enjoyed.
And we're this great force for good in the world, turning everybody good.
There's all these evil countries out there, you know,
evil Russia and evil China and evil Iran and there's all these really evil countries
and we are the knight in shining armor
that's bringing truth, justice, and the American way to this planet.
Okay, so that's not really true though.
Because, you know, if you stop and look at our country now,
our country is becoming a wicked place.
And there are certain things that we are promoting throughout this world
that are actually super wicked.
You know, we've become basically a country that instead of evangelizing the world with Christianity
and the word of God, we're now evangelizing the world with the gospel of sodomy,
the gospel of homosexuality, the gospel of...
You know, we used to hand out the gospel of John, now it's the gospel of Elton John
is basically what we're spreading throughout the world today.
And we literally, as a nation, have a mission to spread
and this is like just openly the policy to spread homosexuality throughout the world
and make it legal everywhere.
And this was the same thing under Trump.
It was this way under Obama, but it was this way under Trump.
Trump appointed an open flaming faggot to be ambassador to Germany
and sent him there and, you know, it made a lot of people mad.
And even under Trump, our government was talking about the fact that,
hey, you know, there are 79 countries where homosexuality is illegal
and it's our mission to change that.
You know, we want to make this legal everywhere.
We want to go just up and down one side of Africa and Asia and make this legal everywhere.
You know, that is super wicked.
Maybe that's not a big deal to you.
Maybe you're just like, oh, don't talk about that.
You know, we're supposed to be talking about, you know, how Ukraine is our boy
and, you know, down with Putin.
You know, I don't really care what I'm supposed to be talking about
because I'm going to talk about what I want to talk about.
You know what I want to talk about is I want to talk about how our country
is spreading faggotry throughout this whole stupid world.
How about that? You want to talk about that?
Oh, the West is so wonderful.
But, you know, and look, I'm not into politics,
so I'm not going to speak in detail about this current situation with Russia and Ukraine
because I don't really know enough about it.
And frankly, I don't care enough about it because it's on the other side of the world
and I'm not troubled by it.
I'm not worried about it.
Jesus said, see thee, be not troubled by wars and rumors of wars.
So, you know, it really doesn't affect me, okay?
And I don't like to just jump on bandwagons of whatever everybody's telling me
I'm supposed to think about and believe right now.
You know, so I don't really care about that.
But, you know, let me just bring up some uncomfortable facts for you.
Let me just bring up some uncomfortable things for you, okay?
Like, how about the fact that I seem to recall,
and correct me if I'm wrong, those of you who follow the news better than me,
but I seem to recall a few years ago that the Olympics was going to be in Russia, right?
Was it a winter Olympics in Moscow or something? Somebody help me out.
Give me the facts on it.
Sochi? What does that mean?
Is that a place?
Sochi? Okay, well I need to work on my Russian geography apparently.
So, is that where they had the Olympics?
And when was that?
2014. Okay. Thank you for refreshing my memory.
I don't follow the Olympics.
You know, I'm not really interested in watching all the steroid users competing.
So anyway, that's another sermon.
But anyhow, I have no interest in the Olympics,
but I seem to recall that Putin basically had to tell the United States,
we don't want you bunch of faggots coming over here and openly, like, touching each other,
because we don't want our children to be exposed to that faggoty filth.
Now I'm, you know, he said it in Russian, so I feel like I can use different English words.
You can't say it like, well, he didn't say it like that.
Well, he said it in Russian, so I'm giving it to you in English.
I'm translating.
Now, I don't speak Russian, so maybe I'm not the best translator,
but, you know, that's my translation.
Who remembers that?
He's like, look, guys, you guys are known for a bunch of homos.
Bunch of athletes are homos.
I mean, nowadays, we probably send a bunch of transvestites over to compete as women
and really take home all the gold medals with their big, fat, masculine thighs and whatever,
you know, with their big, old, broad-shouldered, manly whatever.
But, you know, Putin basically had to rebuke the United States and say,
we will arrest you if you want to do that stuff in the U.S., fine, but don't bring it here.
So you better be on your best behavior, because we'll arrest you if you do that,
because if you do that publicly, that's abusive to children,
because children have to see that.
They have to look at that, you know.
You know, and then I happened to see, somebody sent a video of the president of Ukraine in drag.
You know, and again, I don't know, you're going to have to fact check that,
but there he was.
There was a picture of him in drag, and he's a Jew into the bargain.
Now, and again, I'm not taking sides, because, you know, let me tell you what my position is.
My position is that the U.S. should not take a side on things that happen on the other side of the world.
I believe that we should be like Switzerland, be totally neutral.
I'm for peace, you know.
I don't believe, but you know, our country has an empire where we have military bases in like over 150 nations.
So we're putting our military bases all over the world, our giant empire,
and we are the lone superpower in this world right now.
It used to be two superpowers.
It was the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
And let's make no mistake about it.
The Soviet Union was super evil.
No question about that.
Joseph Stalin was super evil.
The Soviet Union was super evil.
But you know, Communist China was super evil too.
What about that?
But I mean, I guess we're buddies with China, right?
I mean, and again, I'm not an expert on these things, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.
But you know, last time I checked, we recognized Communist China, and we don't recognize Taiwan.
Isn't that interesting, right?
In fact, didn't Trump get in trouble because he took a call from the president of Taiwan congratulating him?
His first day in office, the president of Taiwan gave him a call and congratulated him.
Everybody freaked out, like, what are you doing?
You're not supposed to talk to the president of Taiwan.
Taiwan doesn't exist.
We recognize Communist China.
So what's up with that?
So obviously the Soviet Union was super evil and super wicked,
but now the United States is kind of a lone superpower in this world, in a sense.
And we are taking over the entire world, one country at a time, and slowly expanding that.
And we keep adding countries, and I'm not trying to get all super political because I'm not an expert on these things,
but you know, we keep adding countries to NATO.
And we keep adding countries to NATO, and we want to add all of Russia's neighbors to NATO, you know.
Look, maybe this whole crisis that's happening right now with Russia, maybe it's just going to fizzle out.
Maybe it's just going to peter out.
Maybe it's just going to go away.
Maybe it's not a big deal.
But you know, one thing I'm pretty confident about is that eventually, someday, maybe it's not this.
Maybe it's not now.
Maybe it's way off in the future.
But someday, eventually, somebody's not going to like our empire getting bigger and bigger.
And eventually, we're going to have an adversary.
Eventually, somebody's not going to be satisfied to just let the United States and the Western sort of coalition just take over the entire world.
Eventually, we're going to run into a boundary.
And eventually, there is going to be a great conflict someday between the West, the Zionist West, and the East, whoever that ends up being in the East.
There's going to be an East versus West conflict eventually.
And I've got good news and bad news about this conflict that's coming.
The good news is we're going to win.
The bad news is we're on the Antichrist side.
So that's the good news and the bad news.
The good news is we're going to win.
The bad news is we're Babylon.
The bad news is we're going to empower the Antichrist.
So again, and I'm not saying that that's going to happen anytime soon.
And this could be way off in the future.
This current thing could just fizzle out and go nowhere.
But eventually, though, as the Bible said, when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, see that you'd be in trouble.
All these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
But notice, all these things must come to pass.
There's going to have to be some kind of a great conflict.
Because before the Antichrist comes into power, there's going to be a great world war that takes place.
And it's most likely going to be a conflict between East and West.
The Zionist West, the United States and her allies versus whoever ends up being on that eastern side.
You know, whether it's China, Russia, the Islamic world, who knows exactly how that's all going to play out.
I'm not into predicting these things.
I'm more into just teaching the general principles from the Bible.
But the general principle is that, you know, America is, if it's not the Babylon, America is a Babylon.
We have that empire-building mentality.
And every empire always believes that they are spreading the correct way of life to those that are in darkness.
That's exactly what the Roman Empire said.
You know, Rome is the light, and we're bringing the light to the barbarians.
That's what everybody thinks.
And you say, well, it's true in the case of America.
You know, America was a godly nation, but I'm sorry, I can't really believe that we're really spreading a godly way of life
when the biggest thing that we're spreading right now is sodomy, Hollywood, and rock and roll is pretty much our three biggest contributions right now.
You know, and I just can't get behind people that are dressing in drag and pro-sodomite and pro-homo.
You know, I kind of like it when people are against homos.
I'm not saying I like Putin. I don't know anything about him.
I'm not for him. I'm not for any of these big governments or anything.
I'm just against everybody. So that's why I think we should just be neutral.
So anyway, that's what I have to say about that.
Just wanted to upset the apple cart of all the Fox News people out there that are just kind of following whatever is being told to them.
But you know, to be honest with you, how much time did I spend researching this current situation?
Probably on the order of like 15 minutes.
But ask me how much time I spent reading my Bible.
Okay. Because, you know, this isn't going to matter five years from now, ten years from now, a hundred years from now.
But everything I read in my Bible is always going to be relevant.
So I spent about 15 minutes reading up a little bit about the current Russia, Ukraine stuff.
And I spent, you know, a lot more than that reading my Bible.
So I would suggest that you make sure that you read your Bible, too, before indulging in all the propaganda that's out there on both sides.
Last verse of the chapter, verse 21.
In that day, so this is after the, you know, he talks about destroying Egypt as the wages for Nebuchadnezzar because he destroyed Tyre.
He's also destroying Egypt.
Verse 21. In that day will I cause the horn of the house of Israel to bud forth, and I will give thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of them, and they shall know that I am the Lord.
So there's a little glimmer of hope there for Israel.
Foreshadowing of the later section of Ezekiel that's all going to be about hope.
We're going to get into a section that's all about hope for Israel coming back and so forth.
But this is a little foreshadowing of that in the midst of rebuking all these nations.
He said I'll cause the horn of the house of Israel to bud forth, and I will give thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of them, and they shall know that I am the Lord.
You know, Israel's coming back, and eventually the Messiah is going to come, and it's going to be great, and his name's Jesus.
Let's borrow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for this chapter, Lord, and Lord, help us not to be tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine, Lord,
and also help us not to be brainwashed by the media into just blindly believing the things that they tell us.
Lord, help us not to be pro-war.
Help us not to cheerlead the Antichrist's armies when he shows up.
We know that the Antichrist is not here yet, but when he is revealed, Lord, I hope your people will not be cheerleading him because he's on our team or something.
Lord, help us to always keep your word in primary focus, and Lord, anything that happens in this world, help us to try to at least interpret it through the lens of your word.
And Lord, help us to shine as a light of the gospel in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation wherein we shine as lights in the world, Lord.
And we know that our brethren over at Steadfast Baptist Church in Texas, United States of America, have been court ordered and evicted from their church building because they dared to preach what the Bible said.
And Lord, that's more important than what's going on in some country on the other side of the world, Lord.
We have our own problems here, and Lord, I pray that we would focus on spiritual things and not support the queerbaits and faghags of this world, whether they be heads of state or whoever, Lord.
Help us to support your people and men and women of God that are doing your work, Lord.
Help us not to be entangled with the affairs of this life, but rather to focus on the real battle, the real war, the real fight that's going on, which is for the souls of men so that people would be saved by believing in Jesus.
That's the army that we need to be worried about, Lord, so please help us to stay focused on that, and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Amen. Let's take our song books, please, and go to hymn number 303.
Number 303, My Faith Looks Up to Thee, number 303.
Let's sing it out together on this first verse, number 303.
My faith looks up to Thee, thou Lamb of Calvary, Savior divine.
Now hear me now, I pray, take all my guilt away.
O let me from this day be holy night.
May Thy rich grace embark, strength to my fainting heart, my zeal inspire.
As Thou hast died for me, obey my love to Thee.
Your warmth trains the speed of living fire.
Wildlife's dark days I dread, entries around me spread.
Be Thou my God.
Mid darkness turn to day, light sorrows tears awake.
Lord, let me ever stray from Thee, Thou scythe.
When man's life strands his dream, when death's false solace dream, shall o'er be wrong?
Blessed Savior, then in love, fear and distrust remove.
O, there be safe among the ransomed soul.
And that great thing is nigh Yours missed.
Thank You.