(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Man, Daniel chapter 10 is a pretty interesting chapter that has to do with a lot of the things that are going on in our world behind the scenes that we don't understand, the spiritual battle between good and evil, and these forces that are at work, God's angels on one side, and then these evil spirits and principalities on the other side that are behind some of the evil rulers of the darkness of this world. And so this chapter gives a little glimpse of something that the Bible doesn't usually give us a lot of detail about, but we get enough of a glimpse about it in Daniel chapter 10 here to understand how important it is that we pray and how important fasting can be and how there's a spiritual battle that's going on, whether we can see it or not. Now, the Bible says in verse number 1 of Daniel chapter 10, in the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, a thing was revealed unto Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar. And the thing was true, but the time appointed was long, and he understood the thing and had understanding of the vision. Now this verse is introducing the fact that Daniel is going to receive a great vision. Now the bulk of this great vision is going to be found in Daniel chapter 11, which is the longest and most detailed vision that Daniel is given. And Daniel chapter 10 serves to be an introduction to that vision. And then Daniel chapter 12 is just a closing to that vision. But chapter 11 is pretty much the meat of that. So this is a major revelation that he's going to get from God. It's one of the most interesting chapters in the book of Daniel. And we see here everything leading up to it, that God didn't just randomly choose Daniel to give him this revelation. Daniel was a guy who'd been searching the scriptures, he'd been studying the Bible, and he'd been praying and fasting and seeking to know the truth. And the Bible says, ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. If we seek the truth, if we hunger and thirst after righteousness, we shall be filled. And that was the case with Daniel here. Instead of just being concerned at this time with just filling his face with physical food, he actually was seeking the spiritual meat of God's word, the hidden manna. Now he still ate to sustain himself, but he ate a very austere diet during this time. Look if you would at verse 2. In those days, I, Daniel, was mourning three full weeks. I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled. So he spends three weeks mourning before God. And you say, well that sounds depressing. We live in a society that tells us to just be happy all the time, but there's a time to laugh and there's a time to mourn. The Bible tells us in James, let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. Truly the joy of the Lord is our strength, and the fruit of the Spirit is joy, but there's a time to mourn and weep as well. We don't need to be happy and giggling and bouncing off the walls at all times. And today, when people are sad or down, even for a short time they're told to get on drugs or something to fix it right away. I mean, I've known people who had a child die, and two weeks later, the doctor's trying to put them on anti-depressants. That's a normal situation where mourning and weeping is appropriate. Now we don't mourn like those who have no hope, but we do mourn. And especially there are times to mourn before God, to weep over the state of our country, or to weep for lost loved ones, or to weep for ourselves, and to pray to the Lord to bless us and to teach us what we need to know from the Bible so that we can be a better Christian and serve him better. And so Daniel is trying to understand prophecy. He's trying to understand the Bible. He's trying to understand the book of Jeremiah because of the fact that in Daniel chapter 9, if you would back up to that for a moment, it's said in verse 2, in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood by books the number of the years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish 70 years in the desolations of Jerusalem. So Daniel has hit the books. He's studying the Bible. He's studying the book of Jeremiah. He's trying to understand and he succeeds at understanding God's teaching of the 70 years captivity in Babylon. Then in verse 3 it says, and I set my face unto the Lord God to seek by prayer and supplications with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. You know, there are times when we should pray to the Lord and even fast to understand scripture. You know, when we come to something in scripture that we don't understand or that troubles us, we can pray to the Lord and get an answer from him. That's what Daniel did here. Daniel prayed for understanding of the scripture. Now in verse 3 of chapter 10, it talks about the fact that during this three-week period of mourning, he did not eat any pleasant bread. So he did eat food to sustain himself. He's pretty much on a basic bread and water diet during this time. He's not eating any pleasant bread, meaning that he's not buttering his bread. He's not eating a cinnamon roll or lemon cake and that kind of bread. He's just eating bread to sustain his body. And then it says that also during that time, he did not eat any flesh. So he's not eating any meat during this time. And he's not having any wine come into his mouth, obviously in this context just referring to fruit juice. So in this situation, we see that Daniel is practicing these austerities, but the very fact that he's only doing this for three weeks shows that he did not do this all the time. See the implication here is that if he's bringing up specifically, hey, for three weeks, here's what I didn't do for three weeks. I didn't eat any pleasant bread, I didn't eat any flesh, and I didn't drink any wine, then the obvious implication is that at other times, he's doing those things. See a lot of people will try to make a lifelong vegan out of Daniel because of the fact that in Daniel chapter 1, he specifically did not want to defile himself with the king's meat nor of the portion of the wine which he drank. But that's because there was something specifically wrong with that meat and wine from Daniel chapter 1. Presumably, it was sacrificed unto idols because that's a big issue that we see even back in the book of Numbers and then all the way in Revelation and several books of the Bible in between where eating meat sacrificed unto idols is a problem. Well, wine could often be used in a drink offering unto idols or it could have been an alcoholic beverage. But for some reason, the wine and the flesh from chapter 1 was something that Daniel did not want to defile himself with. But here in Daniel chapter 10, we can see that later in life, he is normally eating those things. He's normally eating flesh and drinking wine. It's just during this particular period, he is laying off those things. And this is something that can be helpful in our lives, to go through periods of austerity, to withhold things from our flesh at times and deny self. Now this can take the form of actual fasting where we just only drink water and don't eat any food. Or this could be something where we just have an austere diet, bread and water, just something to keep us rolling but where we are focusing not on indulging the flesh but on seeking the Lord and praying. Now I strongly believe that the Bible teaches us that it is good for us to enjoy these things in life, to eat flesh, to eat pleasant bread and to drink the wine on a special occasion. I'm not talking about alcohol now, I'm talking about a fruit juice or a soda or some other kind of fun drink, some fructose laden drink that you drink on special occasions like today, Easter or something for example. But the point is that God does not teach us in the Bible to be ascetic. And asceticism is the teaching of just going through life with as little pleasure as possible. This is like the philosophy that Buddhist monks would follow or the philosophy that Catholic monks would follow because they are copying the Buddhist monks which came 500 years before Christ even walked on this earth and they are borrowing that Eastern satanic garbage and bringing it into their religion. There were monks and nuns and monasteries before Jesus ever walked on this earth and the Catholics didn't get those things from Jesus and his apostles, they got those things from the devil who is the same one who taught it to Buddha. And so these Catholic priests or Buddhist monks who would afflict their bodies and they refused to sleep on a soft mattress and many of the Catholics will even beat themselves and whip themselves and they just try to go through as much pain and suffering and don't enjoy any pleasure and be celibate and all these things. This is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that God wants us to enjoy life. He wants us to eat and to drink and enjoy the fruits of our own labors but what we need to understand is that there is a time to withhold those things. Even though we don't believe in practicing a life of asceticism, there is a time to take a break from those things and seek the Lord in a special way and not only that, we want to make sure that we don't just descend into total hedonism where it's all about just gratifying our flesh. It's a good thing to tell your flesh no about things and not to just give yourself everything that you want. And so we see Daniel here practicing not a life of severe asceticism but three weeks of asceticism in order to seek the Lord in a special way. And when it comes to fasting, often fasting in the Bible is just one day. So you don't have to have this all or nothing mentality that you're just going to do a seven day fast, I'm going to do a fourteen day fast, a forty day fast, I'm going to go up into Camelback Mountain for forty days and seek the Lord. You don't have to do that. You can actually just fast for one day. That's the most common fast in the Bible and there's nothing unspiritual about that, just fasting one day. And different people have different situations. I mean that Pharisee who fasted twice a week, how long could his fast have possibly been if he's doing it twice a week, right? But he's only fasting for one day at a time. So the point is we can fast and seek the Lord at times in order to pray and seek God's face in a special way. Now the Bible does not command us to fast. I've heard preachers say that we're commanded to fast. I don't believe that. I believe that fasting is a free will thing that is done at our own discretion. If we decide to do it, that's something that we do and it has its place and there's a time for it and it can be helpful and beneficial. But I do not believe that it is the command of God. Now the Bible says here in verse 4, after it goes through the fact that Daniel had been seeking the Lord for these three weeks, it says in the four and 20th day of the first month as I was by the side of the great river which is Hiddekel, also known as the Tigris River, the land between two rivers is the Tigris and the Euphrates, right? Well that's the area that he's in there. And it says, then I lifted up mine eyes and looked and behold a certain man clothed in linen whose loins were girded with fine gold of eu-fest. His body also was like the barrel and his face as the appearance of lightning and his eyes as lamps of fire and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude. Now that's a pretty scary thought, isn't it? I mean you're just down by the river and all of a sudden this guy is there and the Bible says that his face was like lightning. Now lightning is a pretty scary thing. When it comes close to you, it will make you jump. I mean you'll hit the roof. I mean I remember when I was out Soloning recently at one of the Soloning marathons. I don't remember what city I was in. Somebody remind me if they know. Toronto. There we go. Toronto Soloning. And I was on the porch and a lightning bolt struck closer to me than I've ever seen in my life. I mean I believe that it was literally about 20 to 25 feet away from where I was standing where it actually hit. And it was just a very shocking thing. I could feel it. It was close enough to where you could actually feel the electricity or either that or my imagination made me feel it. But whatever it was, it was pretty intense. It was pretty scary. It was like, and it sounded like a shotgun, just boom. I mean this guy's face was like lightning. I mean that's a pretty intense visage. And it says that his eyes were like lamps of fire. And then it says that his voice was like the voice of a multitude. Now multitudes in the Bible are like 4,000, 5,000 people. So a multitude is like thousands of people. Then thousands of people in a stadium cheering. That's what this guy sounds like when he talks. That's how loud his voice is. That's the power with which he projects his voice. So that's pretty fearsome, isn't it? And it says in verse 7, and I Daniel alone saw the vision. So he's the only one who sees this guy. I Daniel alone saw the vision, for the men that were with me saw not the vision, but a great quaking fell upon them so that they fled to hide themselves. So there's some kind of a quaking that falls on them where they just feel some kind of a vibe or something intense is there. They just get scared and they're shaking and they run away and hide. They don't know what's going on. And Daniel's just left alone just seeing this man with these amazing attributes. And the Bible says in verse 8, therefore I was left alone and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me, for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength, yet heard I the voice of his words, and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face and my face toward the ground. So he's standing there. He sees this vision. All of a sudden he just has no strength in his body, and the next thing he knows he's listening to this guy talk, asleep on his face laying down. So what happened? He passed out. He fainted. He just collapsed. Now, I've passed out one time in my life, and it was because I broke my collarbone, and then I went to the hospital and they injected me with morphine and something else, some kind of radical painkillers, and they injected them into me, and I thought I was okay, and they offered me a wheelchair, and I said, no, I don't need that, you know, I'm fine. So I'm walking down the hall and I went in to get some x-rays, and as I was getting x-rayed, I said to the nurse, hey, I think I need to sit down now. Next thing I knew, I was being wheeled down the hall in a wheelchair, and apparently I passed out and was caught by the nurse and put in the wheelchair and so forth, but what it felt like, and maybe some of you have had more experience passing out, you know, back in, hopefully it wasn't because you were drunk or something, but, you know, back in your worldly days or whatever, but this was my only passing out experience, and it was drug-induced, you know, from being at the hospital, but this is how it felt to me right before I passed out. I felt like my muscles just had no strength. It was like I could feel my legs just turn to jello, and that's why I said to the lady, I think I need to sit down now, right before I passed out, because it's like the muscles in my legs just had no power, no strength, and they just collapsed, right? So that's kind of how Daniel felt her, because he said I had no strength in me, like all of his muscles just had no strength, and then next thing he knows, he's just on his face, and he's just hearing the voice talking to him, but he's asleep. He's unconscious. You know, that's the Bible's way of saying he's unconscious. He passed out, and I don't blame him based on what he saw. Verse 10, and behold, a hand touched me, which set me upon my knees and upon the palms of my hands. So basically, the hand reaches down, grabs him, picks him up, and just kind of sets him on his hands and knees, all right? So he was on his face, now he's on his hands and knees, and he said unto me, O Daniel, and remember, this guy sounds like a multitude, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright, for unto thee am I now sent. And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling, shaking, then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to chasten thyself before thy God. Thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words, but the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days. But lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, and I remained there with the kings of Persia. Now, this is really interesting, the fact that the day that he started praying to God to answer his question or to teach him the truth about the word of God, the day that he started praying, God had already answered his prayer. And God dispatched this fearsome angel to give him the answer, but it took him twenty-one days to get there. So a lot of times we might be praying and thinking, God's not listening, God's not answering me, but sometimes the answer is just delayed. And it's on its way, it's coming, and that's why we just need to be patient sometimes for God to answer our prayers. But this is pretty interesting, the fact that there's this spiritual wrangling going on that God sends this angel to send Daniel this information that God wants him to have, but then there's this prince of the kingdom of Persia withstanding him. Now the Bible says in Ephesians, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. So it calls demons, or evil spirits, principalities. The devil is also called in the New Testament the prince of the power of the air. So this prince of the kingdom of Persia, this is not the literal monarch that's sitting upon the throne of Persia, but rather this is a demon, this is an evil spirit that went out and fought against this good spirit that's being sent to bring Daniel the answer to his prayers. So it's interesting how there's this spiritual battle going on between these two angels, if you will, or these two spirits, whatever you want to call them. The Bible doesn't give us a whole lot of details about these things, and I don't believe it's right for us to go too deep into these things, because we don't want to speak about things which we understand not. God has revealed us glimpses of this just so that we'll realize that it's going on and so we'll be aware of it, but he doesn't want us to intrude into things that we ought not, the Bible says, and we shouldn't delve too deeply into these spiritual things that are too high for us that we don't understand at this time. Someday we'll understand these things in a greater way when we get to heaven. But it says here that Michael, one of the chief princes, so out of these various princes or principalities or spirits on the side of good and on the side of evil, one of the chief princes is Michael. So we often call him Michael the archangel. We use that name archangel to denote that he's of a higher rank. He's one of the chief princes here. And so Michael steps in, he calls for backup, and Michael comes and helps him defeat this prince of the kingdom of Persia that was withstanding him, and so he gets there with the message. And it says in verse 14, now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days, for yet the vision is for many days. And when he had spoken such words unto me, I set my face toward the ground, and I became dumb. So he falls on the ground again. And behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men touched my lips. Then I opened my mouth and spake and said unto him that stood before me, O my lord, by the vision my sorrows are turned upon me, and I have retained no strength. For how can the servant of this my lord talk with this my lord? For as for me, straightway there remain no strength in me, neither is there breath left in me. He's basically hyperventilating. He can't breathe. He's passing out because it's just so shocking and so fearsome. And Daniel's a tough guy. Daniel's not a wimp here, but these are some pretty amazing things that he's allowed to see. And when John saw this stuff, he acted the same way. John, when he was faced with the Lord Jesus Christ, it said he fell at his feet as dead. And so the Bible says here in verse 18, then there came again and touched me, one like the appearance of a man, and he strengthened me and said, O man, greatly beloved, fear not. Peace be unto thee. Be strong. Yea, be strong. And when he had spoken unto me, I was strengthened and said, Let my lord speak, for thou hast strengthened me. So basically this man comes, this other man comes, puts his hand on him, and by laying hands on him, he gives him strength supernaturally to where now he's able to stand up straight and listen and pay attention and take all this in, even though in the flesh he's very afraid. And God can spiritually and miraculously give us boldness as well. There are times in life where we are scared to death in certain situations, fearful, shy, timid, where God can spiritually infuse us with boldness. Now I don't believe he's going to send his angel to physically lay their hand on us. You know, we might get a soul winning partner to pat us on the back and give us a little bit of an attaboy, but we need to pray to the lord for boldness. Because even the apostle Paul, the great man of God that he was, he prayed for boldness. He needed more boldness. We all need to pray for boldness because in our flesh, the tendency is to become fearful, timid, shy, and then we won't do the soul winning that we need to do. We won't do the preaching that we need to do. We won't take the stands that need to be taken. And so here he's infused with supernatural boldness and strength. Let my lord speak, for thou hast strengthened me. Then said he, knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? He's saying, do you know why I have come unto you? Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? And now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia. And when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come. But I will show thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth. And there is none that holdeth with me in these things but Michael, your prince. So what he's saying is, I'm going to go back and I've got to go fight the prince of Persia again. And then after that, the prince of Grecia is going to come. But first, he's going to give them this amazing revelation. And in Daniel chapter 11, we have this very detailed revelation, this very detailed vision that Daniel's going to receive. And then, of course, the very important information in Daniel chapter 12 regarding the end times and the tribulation and the resurrection and so forth. But here we see that after he gives this vision, he's going to go fight against these spirits one more time. I mean, this is just a spiritual battle that seems to be constantly raging. Because when the battle with the king of Persia is over, I'm sorry, because when the battle with the king of Persia ends and then it's the prince of Grecia is next, it's like you just go from one to the next. Now what I think is pretty interesting about this chapter is that these evil spirits have a certain geography that they're associated with. And this geography is especially related with those who are in power in the world at that time. This is spiritual wickedness in high places. It's the rulers of the darkness of this world. So when Persia is the world power, you've got this special demon of Persia. And then when Grecia becomes the world power, that's going to be the main evil spirit that's going to be battling and doing these things. And then after that, it's going to be the Romans. And today, it's the United States of America. You know, we're the modern Babylon. We're the modern Roman Empire. If you wanted to point to the place in the world today that most resembles the Roman Empire, it would be the United States of America. The parallels between the United States and the Roman Empire are endless. And our founding fathers of this country, they even wanted it to be that way. I mean, they patterned all the architecture in the capital after Roman style architecture. It's all Greco-Roman buildings and monuments and statues of gods and goddesses that are the emblems of our nation's capital itself. And not only that, but the mottos of our nation are in the Latin language. A pluribus unum, right? And all kinds of Latin inscriptions are found in Washington, DC. Not only that, the monuments that are engraved with English inscriptions are written in Latin styled letters. You know, they're carved with those diagonal lines that are so characteristic of the Latin uppercase alphabet of Roman times. And so we see all the parallels between the United States and the Roman Empire. Not only that, but the Roman Empire had a legislative body known as the Senate. And what do we have? The Senate, right? And we could go on and on with those parallels. And we today have a world military empire. We are the only nation in the world that has an empire to this scale. We spend more on military than I think the next 10 countries combined. We have bases in over 150 different countries. We have a worldwide military presence. Now it's interesting, just recently Donald Trump signed this great spending bill of 2.3 trillion dollars. This giant budget and of course our national debt is just going way, our national debt is just huge and it's just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And they just keep spending more and more and more money. But a lot of people are pretty upset at Donald Trump for signing this thing because he was supposedly going to be this outsider who's going to come in, he's going to drain the swamp and how many conservatives and even libertarian types were rallying behind Trump saying he's different! He's different! He's going to do something different! He's not one of them! Isn't that what they said? And I didn't fall for it. I didn't support him. I was against him. And I'll tell you why in a moment. But now even his staunch supporters after seeing this bill that he signed, which fully funded Planned Parenthood, which broke a whole number of campaign promises that he made, and which just brought us even deeper into deficit spending and it was just this total liberal Democrat garbage bill and he signed this thing. He didn't take a stand for his principles. He didn't fight him on this. He basically just rolled over and he even said when he signed it, this is a horrible bill. I'll never sign a bill like this ever again. But what was the reason that he gave why he had to sign it? He said, you know, the reason why I had to sign this, though, is that this bill gives a lot of money to the military and we need to rebuild our military. So we needed these, you know, $600 billion or whatever dollars for the military. So that's why I'm signing it. That was the big redeeming grace of this bill for Trump, was the gigantic military spending. We have a world military empire. You know, it makes me wonder what big war they're cooking up, why they need to beef up the military spending even higher than it already is when it's already huge. But a lot of people, when this happened, they said, you know, I've been supporting Trump. I've stood for Trump, but now I see what he did here. He sold us down the river. He signed this liberal garbage. He broke his campaign promises. And now I don't even see how he can even get reelected because he's alienated his own base. But maybe a big war will get him reelected. We'll see what happens. Hopefully that's not what's in the works, but I fear that it is because we've seen it happen so many times over and over and over again, just this endless cycle of going to war, going to war. And someday the war is going to be even bigger and worse than anything that we've ever been involved in. We know that's coming, according to scripture. We don't know when that's coming, but that's going to come at some point. And so he's done this and alienated his supporters in so many ways, even staunch Trump supporters that I know, well, I called them up and said, is this something that affected your view? And they said, oh, absolutely. I'm done supporting Trump. Now here's why this comes as no surprise to me. Because of the fact that Trump is a rotten, scummy individual in his personal life. And what I understand, and what many other Bible-believing Christians understand, is that we're in a spiritual battle. The battle is a spiritual one. The reason why our country goes down the toilet, or finds itself in warfare that we shouldn't be involved in, or finds itself going through an economic depression, or other things that are the curse of God, is because of sin. We know that according to the Bible, if we do right, we'll be blessed. And if we do wrong as a nation, we'll be cursed by God. We know that that's what the Bible clearly teaches. So we know that no matter how good of a financial guy this guy is, or no matter how effective of a leader he is, or no matter how tough he is, or how bold he is, it doesn't matter what his attributes are, if our country continues to be a wicked, sinful place, God can't bless us and we cannot succeed. We cannot succeed without the blessing of God. And so Trump was not our great hope. Because Trump is not a symbol of godliness. He's not a symbol of righteousness. He's not one who is going to lead us into a greater conformity to the scripture. No, he's a scummy, money-loving, greedy, arrogant, pompous, prideful, sleazy, filthy, adulterer. He's a wicked person. You say, well, we're not electing a pastor, you know, we're electing a president. Who cares about his mom? And you know what, it's funny how supporters, they don't care about his adultery. They don't care about him talking about, grabbing him by the whatever. Nobody cared about that. Everybody's fine with all the filthy casinos and all of the adulteries and the porno and the smut. Nobody cares about any of that. They didn't care when Bill Clinton is committing adultery in the White House. They say, that's his personal life, leave him alone. They don't care. But when he signed that spending bill, oh, that's it, can't support him. The point is, that when you have somebody who's an ungodly, wicked, perverted person, God can't bless that person. God can't bless our nation with a leader like that. And God gave us that leader because that's the leader that we deserve. Obama, the queer little sissy that he was, is a reflection of our country today. Our country's filled with a bunch of queer little sissies, so of course we're going to have a leader like that. And then we have Trump because we've become a nation of what? Adultery, drunkenness, gambling, promiscuity, the love of money, greed, wickedness. You say, oh, you're supporting Christianity. Come on. Just because he talks a little bit about two Corinthians. You know? Hey Trump, what's your favorite Bible verse? All of them. Love them all. Hey, hey, Donald Trump, have you ever asked God to forgive your sins? No. I just try to not make mistakes and then I don't have to ever ask for forgiveness. I just do right all the time and then I don't have to ask forgiveness. This man, Donald Trump, was not even close, not even close to being a Christian, but our Christians today in America have become so worldly and so godless that if someone half way barely sort of invokes Christ, they're just like, oh, you're so Christian. Good night. You need to hang around with some real Christians. They're nothing like Donald Trump. If Donald Trump went to our church, I'd throw him out of the church. You know why? Because the Bible says covetousness is one of those sins that get you thrown out of the church. People who are obsessed with making money and that's all they think about and talk about and care about, get him out of here. Why? Because that Trump, as a member of our church, would just infect us like a cancer with the love of money and teach us that that's what life is about because that's what his life is about. His own personal ego and making money and self-aggrandizement, look, even his staunchest supporters would admit he's super prideful. Well, everyone that's proud of heart is an abomination to the Lord. So they're an abomination to me too because I feel the same way as the Lord feels about this type of thing. We ought to have the mind of Christ on these issues. And so if our country is going to be blessed by God, we need to turn from our iniquities. We need to turn from our sins. We need to live righteous lives in this country if we want God to bless our nation. That's why Daniel spent Chapter 9 confessing the sins of his people because he knows that confessing and forsaking your sins is the way to get the blessing of God. And you have to understand that it's not really Trump that's running our country today. And it wasn't really Obama that was running our country. And it wasn't really Bush that was running our country. It was the prince of the United States that was running our country. Some demon who is the prince of the USA is running our country and Trump and Obama and Bush and people like that, you know, they're just pawns. They're not really the ones calling the shots. If they're the ones calling the shots, then why did Trump end up just signing such a horrible bill that he didn't want to sign? Why did he sign it then? Because at the end of the day, he's not the true boss anyway. He is just a figurehead and a sleazy scumbag of a figurehead at that. And he's not a role model that I want for my children or for myself or for any of our church members or anyone else for that matter. He's a wicked person. And so he's not going to solve our problems. You know what's going to solve our problems in this country? It's going to be to win people to Christ. But even that's not enough. I don't care if we knock every single door in this country and we end up winning millions of people to Christ because you know what? Even people that are saved will be wiped out by God physically on this earth if they continue to live a life of sin. Salvation is salvation from hell. Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ saves you from your sins and gives you a ticket to heaven, gives you eternal life, gives you the Holy Ghost inside of you sealed unto the day of redemption. But you know what? It is not a get out of chastisement free card. It is not a get out of discipline free card. My children will always be my children, but if they disobey me, they're going to be punished. And if we disobey God, it doesn't matter whether we're saved or unsaved, we're going to be punished. Actually, if we're saved, we'll get punished more. Because whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. So we need two things to save America. Number one, we need to get many people saved. But that's not enough. Number two, we need the hard preaching against sin. You know, most independent fundamental Baptists are only on half of that program. They agree with about half of that program. They want to preach on soul winning and salvation and the gospel. And they'll even go out and knock some doors and win some people to Christ. I'm thankful for that. I praise the Lord for anyone who wins anyone to Christ, even if it's just one person or two people. You know, praise the Lord for souls being saved. Amen? But we also want our country to be spared the judgment and wrath of God. We also want our country to be a place that our children can be raised in and live a godly quiet and peaceable life. And in order to stay the hand of God's judgment, and in order to prolong and lengthen our tranquility in the United States, we must preach hard against sin. And one of the biggest, filthiest, wicked thing that goes on in this country is sodomy. And that's what they don't want to stand up to. They're soft on that. And as that just takes over our country, it just negates the possibility of God being able to bless us. I mean, when that particular sin just runs rampant, and all the pastors are trembling. I mean, most pastors in America, they don't even need this angel to show up before they start shaking. They're already trembling just from a few sodomites that are outside the church house with a sign or something. It doesn't even take that. Just the thought of it. Just seeing it happen to us makes them tremble. They're too scared to preach hard. You know, I'm talking about hard preaching against abortion. I'm talking about hard preaching against drunkenness. Hard preaching against fornication. Preaching hard against adultery. Preaching hard against idolatry. These are the things that anger the Lord today. God's wrath is poured out on the children of disobedience because of these things. And we need hard preaching against sin in order to resolve our problems in this country. Not just elect a certain president. You say, well, if we would have elected so and so, things would be different. Yeah, but we didn't elect him. You know why? Because we didn't deserve him. You know who we deserve? Obama. You know we deserve Trump. You know, we deserve Hillary. You know, we deserve Oprah Winfrey. That's who we deserve. I mean, who do we deserve as our presidency? I mean, if you look at our country, if you look at our churches, if you look at the state of Christianity, if you even look at the state of the independent fundamental Baptist movement, Obama's perfect for us. Hillary Clinton's perfect for us. Right? I mean, who do we deserve to lead us today? Who do we deserve as our leader? Just name the most wicked, filthy people in Hollywood or in the media, and that's pretty much who we deserve to lead us. Why don't we elect Ellen DeGeneres as president? That's the president we deserve. That's a reflection of our nation. Because you know what? If I go to the homepage of YouTube and I'm not signed in, you know what? It's just Ellen DeGeneres 50 times in between just nonsense videos and just worthless, brainless, junior high garbage. This is what happens if you make the mistake of going to YouTube without signing in first. It's just this brain dead seventh grade bathroom humor interspersed with, you know, somebody swallowing a Tide Pod or whatever. And then it's just Ellen DeGeneres, Ellen DeGeneres, Ellen DeGeneres, Ellen DeGeneres. It was like Ellen DeGeneres was like one out of every eight or ten videos on the homepage of YouTube. I mean, look, whether she's in the White House or not, that's who's controlling people's minds apparently. Because I look at the videos and they have eight million views, nine million views, ten million views. You know, some Bible believing Christian uploads, you know, a sermon, gets a few hundred views, a few thousand views, maybe a few tens of thousands of views. But Ellen DeGeneres just brings on some pervert or some acrobat or clown or whatever and it's just like ten million views, twenty million views. I mean, look, if that's the trash and filth that people are filling their minds with, just constant junk. I mean, if you were to relate that stuff on that YouTube homepage to food, it would just be if it was just the worst junk food and nary a vegetable to be seen, nary a piece of meat or a piece of fruit or anything with any nutritional values, just pure garbage. It would just be like Kool-Aid, Skittles, just gummy worms, you know, Starburst. It's like as if that's all you ate. You just woke up for breakfast and just ate just candy and just trash. No vitamins, no minerals, no real food. And then you trust these people to go down to the ballot box and decide who's going to run our country. And then you're shocked when they elect weirdos and idiots and freaks and people that should be behind bars, people that should be put to death, just the worst kind of scum of society. Why? Because that's who we are today in America. And until we change who we are, it doesn't matter who the leader is. We've got to change who we are. Now obviously I'm not saying that you're some kind of a junk garbage watching Ellen fan, but I'm saying as a nation that's what we are. And what we've got to do is we've got to turn many unto righteousness today. And so we need the hard preaching, not just the preaching on salvation, not just the gospel, not just the soul winning mega marathon. Hey, I love the soul winning mega marathon, but you know what? It's only part of it because the soul winning is step one. Step two is baptize them. And step three is teach them to observe all things Christ commanded. And so we need hard preaching on sin to win the spiritual battle. Look, if you're going to win the spiritual battle in your life, if you want to be like Daniel where you pray to the Lord and he sends you help and he answers you the day that you ask him and he's right there to give you what you need to help you and to give you understanding, you know what? You've got to be like Daniel then. Which means what? You've got to read your Bible. What was Daniel like? He read his Bible. What was Daniel like? He prayed. What was Daniel like? He stood up for what he believed in. What was Daniel like? He fasted. What was Daniel like? He was godly. He was a good Christian as we would see it today in 2018. And so we need to be a Daniel if we want to have the blessings of Daniel and if we want to understand the Bible like Daniel and we need to be Daniels today that we might turn our nation back to God. Now I'm not saying we're going to turn this into a Christian nation and everybody's going to be fundamental and King James and everything else, but you know what we can do though? We can stay God's hand of judgment. We can turn the tide because it only takes a little bit of salt to preserve the meat of our nation. We can just have some salt and light in this nation or at least maybe we could make Arizona a place that God could bless if not the entire nation. But God willing we could have a revival throughout this whole nation, not just a soul winning revival but a hard preaching revival. And this is what a lot of people don't understand. They're like, man, I love the soul winning at Faithful Word, but what's with these screaming angry sermons and what's with this ripping on this and ripping on that? Hey, it all has to be there. The Bible's not a la carte. Ooh, I'll just take this little positive thing over here. Ooh, I like the soul winning. Yeah. Oh, salvation's free. I like that. Yeah. Free gift. Yeah. I'll take eternal life. Great. Faith alone sounds great. It's like, sir, you forgot to pick up a little Leviticus 2013 over there. You missed a whole station of the buffet here. There's a whole station here of God's laws and God's commandments that you just bypassed. Don't go straight for the soft serve machine and start putting all the sprinkles on. Whoa, buddy. You forgot the meat and potatoes over here in 1 and 2 Chronicles. Hey, you forgot your vegetables over here in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. You got to take the whole thing. And we all enjoy that little soft serve at the end, amen, but we got to earn it by eating the right stuff first. And so let's be like Daniel and receive the blessings of Daniel and let's realize, hey, there's a spiritual battle. And that'll make us think twice about the way we live our lives. It'll make us think twice when we don't see the importance of prayer, when we realize, well, we better be praying because these evil forces are at work. We need to pray that the right forces might be there to counter them in our lives. And you know, a lot of our success is due to people praying. Whether we're praying or not like we should, there are other people who are praying and the people who do the praying take up the slack of some of the people that aren't praying. But I guarantee you, if you're succeeding in life, if you are blessed in life, if things are going well for you in your life spiritually, you're either praying for yourself or somebody's praying for you or both because we need prayer. We need God's blessing on us and God will answer us if we pray unto him. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this great chapter that gives us a glimpse into these spiritual things, Lord. Help us not to get too deep into things that are above our head, Lord. Help us to just limit ourselves to what you've told us in the Bible and to just study your word on these subjects of spirits and angels and principalities, Lord. And help us to apply those things, Lord, and to help them help us to take these things seriously when we make decisions of how we're going to live our life because these things do matter and we need to make sure that we have you on our side helping us and going to bat for us. And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.