I was quite emotional this morning speaking with people when they were asking about the condition of Ron in the hospital. He suddenly experienced a bit of a slur in his speech last Monday at 9-1-1. They took him to a stroke hospital, Niagara Falls, and according to the family his speech, his speech was worse on Tuesday, but then it was worse on Wednesday, and when I went there Thursday, I couldn’t understand a word that he said, and it was an emotional visit with him, and so as I was coming this morning, I thought, how can I tell you people that without breaking down in tears? I just, when I decide I’m gonna let myself love people, I kind of go overboard, and I just love this man so much, and so I saw Violet come in.
Violet is his sister-in-law. For those of you who don’t know the family connections, and I went to chat with her, and I said, I really don’t want to talk about this. I’m too emotional, and she said, well, why don’t you sit down, and I’ll do the talking.
She’s very forthright, and here are the words that she said, in essence. I can’t quote her verbatim. She said, I was there yesterday.
She said, he held on to my hand with a firm grip. I said, just with his left hand, because when I was there, he wasn’t moving his right hand at all. Everything was with his left hand, and she said, no, he gripped me with both of his hands.
I said, he was drooling profusely. No. I said, this side of his mouth was really drooping down.
No, and she said, he talked and talked and talked and said, for goodness sake, Violet, take me home. I want to go home. That makes my day.
That just makes my day, and those of you who know him, to know him is to love him, and I will tell you this. I shouldn’t tell you, but I’m going to tell you anyhow. He’s a real enthusiastic guy when it comes to humor, and he’ll say things he never means.
He just, and he’s a tease. He’s a desperate tease, and so I said to him, I couldn’t understand anything that he was trying to tell me. Nothing.
I just, we were trying to help him, trying to guess what he’s trying to say, and he was getting frustrated because he couldn’t get it out. He knew what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t get the words out, so I said, Ron, Tom and I, I had Tom with me. You know who Tom is.
I said, I’m going to pray, and he looked at me with that chin down here, and he just said, no. I didn’t know how to interpret that. Don’t pray for me.
In other words, just let me go. I didn’t know what he meant. I said, Tom, look, I have to leave, Ron, and you know I’m going to pray.
No. Then he lift up his hand, and he pointed at Tom, and somehow he slurred it out. He’s going to pray.
I said, oh, Tom, he doesn’t want his pastor to pray. He wants you to pray. He comes across with, yeah.
Then he points at me, and in this slobber and whatever, he said, he doesn’t even know how to pray. You pray. If you don’t know him, I think you’re catching on to why we love him so much.
He’s such a sweet, sweet man. There’s a lot of talk about the end times, and there’s lots of people who have lots of ideas. If what I’m sharing with you today disagrees with what you’ve been taught or what you believe, you just throw all that out, because I’m giving you the real guff that this is the real stuff.
I know what I’m talking about. No, but yes. I’m going to show you what I’ve prepared so that you can follow along with me.
So there’s a rapture going to take place. There’s a lot of things going to take place, and when you read in Matthew 24, Jesus goes to great lengths to talk to his disciples about the things that are going to unfold. They had just come out of the temple area, and the disciples were showing Jesus the massive stones, the works.
The temple was a beautiful thing to behold. We can’t appreciate it from our point of view. Well, of course, it’s no longer there, but it was a majestic thing.
And so the disciples were saying to Jesus, isn’t this a wonderful thing, to think that our forefathers built this? And Jesus turned and said, yeah, and there’s not going to be one stone of it left. It’s all coming down. It’s going to be torn down.
And what he was really doing is opening up a topic about what’s happening in the future. Well, of course, they wanted to know what’s in the future. And so they asked him three questions, and I put them up here for you.
The destruction is coming because Jesus started to say that the destruction of the temple is a very rustic beginning. And that destruction of that temple, by the way, happened about, I’m guessing now, I think it was 70 years after the resurrection. And great destruction.
And although it was a stone structure, there was a lot of wood and tapestry inside. The Romans knocked it down, and they wouldn’t care how much work it took. They knocked it down.
They wanted to really demoralize the Jewish people. And so now Jesus is saying, but there’s a whole lot more coming. So they asked three questions.
When will it happen? When is trouble? He was describing the tribulation time. When will that happen? And the second question they asked was, what signage will we have so we know it’s coming on? This is it. What will be the sign? And then the third question was, and what will be the end of it all? Because destruction and turmoil and people dying and the world being just tossed to and fro, that can’t be the end of God’s plan.
What will the end of this all look like? Well, I want to talk to you about the pre-tribulation rapture this morning, just for a few moments. And this is where you may have been taught wrongly, so I’ll just straighten it out right now. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with a voice of an archangel, and with a sound of a trumpet of God.
And the dead in Christ will rise first, and then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. That’s 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verses 16 and 17, and if you’re a King James person, that’s you’re familiar with, you would have heard a couple of different phraseologies there, but in essence that’s exactly what’s in the King James. I believe, and I asserted this last Sunday, I believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, and if you’re not familiar with scriptures, just roll with me for a little bit.
Some things will sort of come together as I share with you, but the tribulation is going to be a very terrible time, and it’s going to last for seven years, and right in the middle of it there’s going to be a truce, a covenant, that was made with Israel. There is a covenant that will come, and that’s not what they’re messing with right now, but there will be a covenant with the Antichrist, a person who will rise up, and there’s much thought and talk now even about who the Antichrist is, and I’m not going to go into that. So in the middle of the tribulation, the Antichrist will do something desperate with the temple.
Now that’s interesting, because that means the temple is going to be rebuilt, and that’s another topic that I want to save for another day as well. So the temple has to be rebuilt, because the Antichrist is going to spoil the new temple, and Jerusalem cannot be destroyed. I mentioned that last Sunday, because Jesus is going to come to the city of Jerusalem, and he’s not going to ride on a donkey through the Eastern Gate this time.
He will come through as the great King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So we know Jerusalem cannot be destroyed, and we know the temple is going to be rebuilt, and we concluded last Sunday, as I said, that they’re making all kinds of preparation now in Israel to reconstruct the temple, and that gives the Muslims heartburn, because the dome of the rock is sitting on the place that the archaeologists, and we have to trust them as best we can, they say that the original temple is underneath its remnants, the major part of the temple, that the Muslims built the dome of the rock right over top of it. And so we know that the dome of the rock has got to be gone in order for the temple to be erected, and I’m not going to go into thoughts about how the dome of the rock could be torn down.
That really doesn’t matter at this point. I have other things in my mind. So I believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, because, and I brought this out last Sunday, that you can see the church mentioned.
Seven churches, in fact, are named in Revelation chapter 2 and chapter 3, and when you get to chapter 4 of the book of Revelation, there you’re confronted with 24 elders who are dressed in white robes and beautiful golden crowns. And when I was a we used to sing a song about them, and in my head, I assume we are going to be in the white robes, and we’re going to be wearing the gold crowns. And the Word of God says he will place a crown upon every one of us, so we’re all going to be treated in that way.
And in those years, we used to sing a song, and we sang it frequently, and before this service is over, we’re going to sing this song. A robe of white, a crown of gold, a harp, a home, a mansion, fair. Is it resonating with anybody? Two at the back.
Two 90-year-olds said, I remember that fashion. You and me, we’re in that Sunday school class together. A robe of white, a crown of gold.
So here’s the thing. Revelation chapter 2, the church is mentioned. Revelation chapter 3, the church is mentioned.
Revelation chapter 4, the 24 elders. It is commonly agreed by Bible scholars. I’m not one of them.
I just follow them. But it is commonly agreed. Those 24 elders represent the church.
So that’s the only way that the church is mentioned in chapter 4 of the book of Revelation. So chapter 2, the church. Chapter 3, the church.
Chapter 4, the elders of the church. Chapter 5, no mention of the church. Nor 6, nor 7. You don’t read anything about the church until the last chapter of the book of Revelation, where Jesus addresses the church.
And so this has been a great question of theologians and Bible readers all along. Where did their church go? It just disappeared in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. That’s where it disappeared.
The trumpet of God shall sound, and we’re gone. So don’t you worry about the tribulation. Now if you’re gonna worry about it, that means you’re of that other crowd.
No. Do you know that there’s a passage that says that you, God’s people, are not appointed for destruction? What destruction is it talking about? It’s talking about the times of Jacob’s trouble. It’s talking about what’s gonna happen in this old world, where God is gonna try and discipline Israel for those first three and a half years.
Come to Jesus. Come to Jesus. They’re in no mood to do so now.
They’re scarcely religious. They’re Jews. They love their country.
You know the huge story about that country being reborn in one day in 1948. One day! And the Word of God, the prophecy was, and I’m not quoting all of these verses for you and give you a chapter and verb, but it says, can it be that a nation will be reborn in one day? It was prophesied, and yes, 1948, Israel was reborn. So those seven years are about trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble.
So when you read through Matthew 24, it’s a long chapter, and I chose not to read it for you or to you today. It’s a lengthy chapter. When you read that, don’t get all excited.
It says, you with children, you know, pick up your diapers and leave early. Don’t wait around. This is going to be a terrible time, and it’s for the Jewish people.
You read it in light of the Lord saying to the Jewish people, trouble’s coming. Get ready. Get ready.
It’s coming. You are not in that chapter. So I also want to just remind you, I, Jesus, Revelation, I said Revelation 24.
There is no chapter 24. Why didn’t you correct me, Peter Cuke? Revelation 22, 16 is the time after Revelation 4. The 24 elders, this is the next time the church has even alluded to. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony of the churches.
I am the root and the offspring of David and the bright and the morning star. So we’re not around for it. So how is it going to come? So I’m deviating now from Matthew 24, and I want to talk to you about the signals, the signs.
The disciples that day said, when will it be? And they asked finally, will there be a sign? And there are many signs. So here’s the first sign that I want you to acknowledge, 2 Peter chapter 3, verses 3 and 4. Knowing this first, that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts. The church is being pummeled now by the scoffers.
I’m not going to get overly political on you. I’m just going to quote something. This is not a political statement.
If it is, then Justin Trudeau can answer for it. I saw him on in front of a microphone, as he said. The greatest threat to America is not these terrorists.
It’s these conservative Christians. They are a greater threat. I saw him say it.
So we are being mocked. Now his father was buried out of a Roman Catholic Church, a famous Roman Catholic Church down in Montreal, and he will probably be buried from there too. And unless he changes his tune, that’s the last remnant of anything.
He doesn’t really believe what even the Catholic Church would propose, because everything that he put in place was anti-anti-anti-Christian. Where is the sign of his coming? People in many, many ways have given up. And I made a comment about a year and a half ago, right on this platform, and I said, somebody please tell me when these wonderful outfits that are singing new songs for us, new songs, they’re coming out all the time.
We sang a reasonably new one this morning. That’s a lovely song. When’s the last time you heard a new song? A robe of white, crown of gold, a harp.
When’s the last time you heard a song about heaven? When’s the last time you heard a song, a new song, about the resurrection, about the soon coming of the Lord Jesus? It’s all missing, because the church today is not anticipating the coming of the Lord. The church today is considering, how can we get a bigger crowd? Do we have to expand? Is our gymnasium and is our kitchen up to snuff? Have we done all that we can do? And we’re now focused on being, you know, people ready. You’ve got to have a rock climbing wall for the kids, so that people can come to Sunday school.
The whole focus, in so many ways, is not on scripture, and we’re certainly not looking for the coming of the Lord. In general, the church has gone silent about the coming of Jesus, but it is so, so, so important that we revisit the whole concept about what are the signs of his coming? I used to love it when I was a child. The church would sing it, like, frequently.
It was a habit. He’s coming soon. He’s coming soon.
It may be might, it may be morning, but we know that he’s coming soon. So many songs, so many songs that we sang in the past shaped our theology. I learned my theology as a young fellow in the church.
I learned it by the songs that we sang on Sunday mornings, on Sunday nights, and especially around the altar on Sunday nights. If you don’t even know what that wording means, the altar, the tarrying, the waiting before the Lord on the Sunday night. And people wouldn’t go home.
Somebody would go to the piano and play just as gifted. Isn’t this wonderful the way, like, this group up here that played, and Tim wasn’t here today. They took a day off.
But these people do wonderful things. And I just thank you, Linda. And Jay-Z’s down with the kids, I guess.
And Al, I just love what you do. And I’ve lost my voice to sing, and I hate that. But I don’t sing like a wide-mouthed frog anymore.
I just don’t sing. But at the end of the service, people would go, and they’d gather around the piano, and we’d be singing till 11 o’clock at night. And what were we singing? We were singing our theology.
And the theology that we sang around the piano, it was not about me. The songs that we sang in those days back there was not, you’re going to be so pleased with me. We sound like the Pharisees.
Lord, you’re going to be so thrilled with me. The songs that we should be singing are about Him. Oh, come let us adore Him.
Let’s come and bless His wonderful name. We’re in an age of mockery. I was standing at the mouth of my driveway.
April and I were living in the city of Montreal in an English sector. It was the only place we could survive. And so all of our neighbors spoke English.
It was wonderful. And so my next-door neighbor and I, we became great friends. I’m at the mouth of my driveway.
He’s at the mouth of his. And our driveways were right there together. And a car or a truck drove up, and this fellow jumped out.
And they yakked for a moment. And then my neighbor apologized and said, oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t introduce you to my friend.
This is Dave, and he’s the pastor of the church in LaSalle. And the man literally turned and said, you’re a Christian? Yeah. We’re being mocked.
We’re being mocked for our faith. We’re being, people are losing their jobs because they mention Jesus in the workplace. Our faith is being ridiculed.
Never, never there was a day like today. 2 Peter 2, 2 Peter 3, scoffers will come in the last days, and they’ll live according to their life. Do you know why they don’t like the church? We’re kind of a, we’re a wall on the roadway.
Be like driving down the 401. All of a sudden, there’s a brick wall in front of you. That’s who we are because we have a standard.
We believe in divine truth. We believe in morals. We believe that a man is a man and a woman is a woman.
And we don’t apologize for that. That’s what I read in the word. And God made a man and a woman.
We’re being mocked. And at times we’re being criticized. And it goes further, we’ll be jailed for it.
Genesis 12, 3, I will bless them that bless thee, curse him that curseth thee. This is God’s promise to Abraham. Then it was restated to Isaac and reconfirmed again to Jacob.
And this is what has held Israel together for all of this time. Is Israel blessing the whole world? You bet your little green apples. Israel is being a blessing in so many ways.
I didn’t know this. I typed it. What things has Israel invented? I’ve got these little bushes in my yard there and growing tomatoes.
My tomatoes are growing little red marbles. You know, those tiny little, do you know where they came from? Scientists in Israel did that. They got them.
They got you, your little cherry tomatoes. They’re very much involved in the invention of robotics so that when you go in for surgery, they’re doing a robotical work on you. So much of that research happened in Israel.
Do you know that they literally taught the world about drip irrigation? They have a hard time getting fresh water. I mean, we all know that they live in a sandbox over there. Where do they get their water? Well, they have sources for their water.
And water is such a special commodity. And we just throw pails of water out the door, you know, like get rid of it. We leave the hose running and we forget about it.
And then you get a bill. So the town will remind you that you wasted some water. But in Israel, water, like a glass of water, it’s a precious thing.
So you got, you can’t just sprinkle your lawn, sprinkle your garden just endlessly. They came up with drip irrigation and it’s a marvelous thing. And it’s being used all over the world.
And when I was in Kenya, they, the missionaries that I was there with, they were teaching the farmers just outside of Nairobi how to install drip irrigation so that you don’t wash it, waste any water, just drip, drip, drip, drip. And like, these are the, these are the minuscule things, the things that Israel has done. They have the most advanced warfare technology.
They’re the ones that have created this dome thing that the iron dome, they are the ones who have done all of this. They are incredible, incredible. They’re feeding the world with their citrus fruit, with their oranges and what have you.
The desert has blossomed like a rose, as the word of God predicted. And how else have they blessed us? We wouldn’t be here this morning if it wasn’t for the sons of Jacob. The word of God, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, all came as a result of Genesis 12, verse three, a whole world, the return of the Jews to Jerusalem.
I brought this out last week. In one year, how many thousands of Jewish Ethiopians came home to Jerusalem? I just read a follow-up on it just this week. And Israel’s big problem with these Ethiopians who are coming, we have an idea, I guess, about Ethiopia, well, that’s an African group and so on.
And so we get this boxed in picture. No, no, no. These are people who, if you were to check their DNA, they were probably of the tribe of Dan and maybe of Manasseh.
They’ve got proof of the same. And so the scholars of Israel have discovered this whole thing and have done research on it. And they have said to the Knesset, to the Jewish government, said, when these people come, if you’re going to say to any Jew that wants to come home, that you’re welcome.
And the moment your feet touch, when they get off of the airplane and they come down that stairway, and the moment their feet touch the tarmac in Israel, it’s declared to them, welcome home. And they’re told, you’re citizens and we’ll give you the paperwork in a couple of days. And they can get the paperwork done a lot faster than we can get stuff out of our own government.
It’s so incredible. But the challenge is that they’ve been promised absolutely everything. Come on home, we’ll take care of you.
And so Israel’s got a problem now, how to house them, how to feed them, how to help them. And these people come, their language is Amharic. That’s the language of the Ethiopia.
Trust me, it’s a challenging language. I scarcely learned, I learned a word for bread because I had to eat. But it’s a challenging language.
All of these people are coming to Israel and they’re being welcomed in. What a challenge. And all over the world, people are going home.
There’s a built-in magnet in all of Jewish people. They’re heading home. And it doesn’t make sense, heading home to a land that’s being, October the 7th, scared to live in daylight in front of everyone.
And people are saying, I still have to go home. It’s my country, I’m needed there. The rise of the King of the North, that is an indication that the time is coming.
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall. And we all breathed a sigh of relief. In fact, I remember hearing some pundit on a television talk, news show saying, looking at how things really appeared to everybody once we got inside Russia and that the drapes would open up and we all, and they said, and to think we were afraid of these people for so long.
And they were mocking, they were mocking Russia. They were mocking the Soviet Union. I’m not going to read these passages.
There’s some length to them. But Ezekiel 38, 15 and 16 talks about the King of the North who will rise out of obscurity. He’s disappeared for a long time in biblical terms, but this King is going to arise.
That’s what he’s known as, a King. In Daniel 11, chapter Daniel 11 and verse six through 15, you can read it for yourself. Great description of this King.
This King is against Israel. Ezekiel 38 and verse four, again, vivid description of the King that’s going to rise. We all know now his name is Putin.
Now, if Putin doesn’t survive, there’ll be another who will come behind him who will be worse than Putin. Why is Putin going to attack Russia? He’s going to do it. You can write that down and cash it on your favorite bank account.
He’s going to attack Russia and he’s not going to do it alone. Oh, you say that’s impossible. We know that Ukraine’s got him down on his knees and he’s whipped.
He’s got stuff that we don’t know about. Did you know that he’s now pulling together a major naval armada? He tried to get ahold of Greenland. That’s why Trump went over there.
You probably thought Trump was an idiot. He said, I’m going to buy Greenland. What Trump was doing to Putin at that time, Trump is not talking about Greenland anymore.
He got this signal to Putin. You don’t get Greenland. I have Greenland.
And so what Russia is up to now is they’re, they’re building a fleet of nuclear subs that they’ll be able to go up and they’re going to take over the Arctic. And that’s why just a couple of months ago, when our prime minister, well, he’s not prime anymore, but you know, the fellow got up there and he made this statement on television. He said, he said the arrangement that we had with the U S in trade and in military defense, it’s gone.
It’s never going to happen again. He’s changed his tune, honey. Somebody finally said to him, do you know what Russia’s planning? And when they show up in the Arctic and stare at your Northern border, I bet you’re going to say, could we talk again? Why is he getting ready also then to attack Israel? And how is he going to do it? Because the nations that he’s going to use as his handmaidens are already named in scripture.
Why does he want to attack Israel? Because Israel has discovered they’ve got a wealth of oil underground. We don’t want to use oil because we’re afraid it’s going to mess up our pansies. I don’t believe any of that stuff, global warming, of course, but the fact that it was destroyed by people smoking cigars and us letting our cows wander around and pass gas.
I, I just, I just, I don’t believe all of this stuff that they’re saying. I can’t buy it. Of course there’s global warming and the dinosaurs worried about that and that didn’t help.
And there was this, there’s a place of ice, ice, ice, and it’s all gone. The planet warmed up and it’ll cool off again. Just relax about that.
He wants the oil. It’s there. How can he get it? He’s going to formulate a federation of a number of nations.
I’m going to give them to you in a few moments. He’s going to form a federation of a number of nations and he’s going to say, come on, you guys been upset with Israel for a long time. I’m going to help you out.
It’ll blow your doors off when you realize who’s named. He wants the oil. He wants something else.
He hasn’t got a warm winter port, but Israel is on the Mediterranean. So he will attack Israel for oil and for a port because he still believes that he can dominate the world. And the word of God says he’s going to do it.
He’s going to have a fleet there so he can control the nervous system of all of Europe. Guess why now you’re hearing it just in the last few weeks. Europe has arisen to the cause.
They’re all committed to spending 5% of their GDP for why? To formulate a powerful defense mechanism, an attack mechanism. And why? Because Trump, the guy that you don’t like with the orange hair, he’s the smartest thing that’s happened in shoe leather for a while. I know that he’s got some crooked ways.
I know he has said some filthy things. I said a few filthy things in days gone by. Don’t ask.
I’m none of your business. There’s none of us righteous. No, not one.
Some pretty pathetic people have been used by God. There was even a donkey. There’s another word for it, but I don’t want to hurt your feelings.
But God used that animal and got it to speak. The Lord has used wicked and cruel people. The Lord puts in place what he wants, when he wants, where he wants, and Trump is doing it.
He has somehow a picture of what’s going on in this world. I don’t know where his clues are coming from, but he’s the sharpest pencil in the drawer, and he knows what Putin’s up to. Putin’s playing a game.
Putin’s playing a game. He wants to control all of the Mediterranean, and it will blow your doors off to realize who’s going to join him. When I tell you Germany is going to help him to attack Israel, you’re going to say, oh no, not Germany.
Germany’s mentioned in the word. The federation that he’s going to put together, all those countries are already named. Gog and Magog.
Boy, I get mixed up on this. I think Gog is the country, and Magog is the king of the country, or it could be vice versa. But Gog, Magog, that’s Russia and its leader.
Forming a federation, and who wants in? What’s left of Iran. Now Russia is hurting right now because Trump dropped a couple of bombs and messed up a marriage that had formed between Iran and Russia. Russia was counting on Iran to step up and go after Israel, but Trump messed it up.
Of course, our own political people of Canada are not sure they even liked what he did there. And then you’ll read another name, Cush. That’s Ethiopia.
But pastor, you just said all these Ethiopians are trying to get into Israel. They’re going to love Israel. No, no, no, wait a minute.
When Israel was in trouble, started breaking up, people from all the tribes were scattered all over the world, and it’s really believed that a couple of tribes, Dan and Manasseh ended up down in Ethiopia, but they lived to themselves because the official church of Ethiopia hates them, despises Jews. So when these people got to Ethiopia, they maintained their Jewishness. They brought scrolls with them from Israel with the word of God with Moses.
They still celebrate. They do circumcision of their children on the eighth day. They still celebrate the Sabbath, but they’ve been living all on their own way up in the north country where the Orthodox Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church said, good, they’re out of our sight.
We’ll leave them there. It’s those people who for the last 2,500 years have been praying, Jerusalem, Lord God, Jerusalem. We’ve got to go home to Jerusalem.
And somebody from that part of the world made their way in among them and said, you can go home. They’re waiting for you. And so that’s the people of Ethiopia that favor Israel, but the rest of the country, they’re going to turn on Israel.
Gomer, that’s Germany. Put, P-U-T, that’s Libya, and somehow Monaco is included in that when you look in the Old Testament. Togarmah, Armenia.
We don’t think of Armenia as a powerful nation that’s going to make things change. We don’t see them as a huge influencer, but Putin needs as many chess people on the board as he can get. And the word of God shows us Armenia is in on it.
So I really want us to stand this morning, and I’ve asked my good friend, and I think he was up all night practicing this. Did you stay up last night and practice this? Because I wanted the people to say, if you don’t know this one, you’re going to learn it, because I’m going to force it on you, and then the service is going to close in just a few moments. I’m going to be preaching along this same ribbon of thought, not exactly what I shared with you today.
I want to talk about the restoration of the temple. I want to talk about a lot of things. I’m into it.
I’m digging. And why am I doing so? Because it’s in every newspaper. It’s on every radio broadcast.
It’s in every TV broadcast, and you need to know. We all need to know. We all need to know things that will comfort us and keep us calm and say, it’s all right.
Jesus is in control. Say amen, or I’ll start again. Would you stand with me? So this is a song we used to sing.
How many think you know it? Oh, this is good. Okay, you got to sing then, all right. Marching on in the light of God.
Faster. Marching on. I am marching on up the path that the master trod.
Marching, marching on. A robe of white, a crown of gold, a heart, a home, a mansion fair, a victor’s palm, a joy untold are mine when I get there. Now, when I was a kid, the men had a hanky in their pocket and it was never clean.
And they were waving germs like this, but the ladies, they always had this cute little handkerchief and they always had it tucked up in their short sleeve up here. They always had it right there. They pulled it out.
That meant this one’s fresh, unused. And so we were waving the victor’s palm. You say, David, this sounds so silly.
Not if you were there, you were learning about the book of Revelation. You were learning about a day when we’d be waving our palms, we’ll be wearing crowns of gold, we’ll be dressed in robes of white. It gave us a hope.
And Russia was going to bomb the living daylights out. I’m sorry, I’m going to just take another minute. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Hey, how many of you were raised like this? Once a month, they’d have a drill. And all of a sudden they’d sound this horn throughout the school. My kids have never heard such that they think we’re all nuts.
We had to get under our desk because the Russians were coming. A teacher of mine drew a circle on the chalkboard, a big circle. And then he put a dot in the middle of it.
He said, the big circle is Russia and the dot is a button. And he said, if some Russian pushes that button, you got to get under your desk. So when the school collapses, it won’t fall on your head.
We weren’t eating much pizza in those days, but we sure knew Russia was coming. So when we got to church, here was this little mind that was controlled by, at times, fear. I remember sitting and saying to my mom, mommy, are the Russians coming? I don’t want to die.
That’s how I lived. I would cry myself to sleep. I’d say, dear Jesus, don’t let the Russians come.
I don’t want to die. But then I’d go to church and especially on a Sunday night, the men would pull out their filthy hankies and the women would pull out their, and we’d sing the next verse. Oh, that’s my, that’s my problem.
Sorry. Marching on through the hosts of sin, marching on, I am marching on, victory’s mine and of Christ within. Marching, marching on, a robe of white, a crown of gold, a harp, a home, a mansion fair, a victor’s pomp, a joy untold are mine when I get there.
Marching on while the skeptics sneer, marching on, I am marching on, perfect love casteth out all fear. Marching, marching on, a robe of white, crown of gold, a harp, a home, a mansion fair, a victor’s pomp, joy untold are mine when I get there. Last verse.
Marching on with the flag unfurled, marching on, I am marching on, preaching Christ to the dying world. Marching, marching on, a robe of white, crown of gold, a harp, a home, a mansion fair, a victor’s pomp are mine when I get there. We better quit.
This is not typical of my preaching. Last Sunday wasn’t either, and I hope you’re not going to get discouraged with me. I’ll get all excited and dangle you over the flames of hell on another time.
You know I never do that. I never do that. I will tell, I told somebody this week that you people, for the most part, at times can be naive.
I said, their problem is they believe everything that I say, and I told them the story, and I’ll just retell it in a tiny capsule because we got to go. You know, Charles, you’re not going to believe this story. They discovered a cancer in my ear right here, so I went to a surgeon, and he says, well, we better deal with that right now.
He said, we’re almost too late. We got to get busy with this. He said, there are patients who have had what I see right now, and he said, they ended up losing their whole ear.
So he said, we’re not going to take your whole ear today, and as we’re going down the hall, he said, but he said, if we don’t get it all somehow, he said, it could come back, and he said, we’ll just have to take some more, take some more, and he said, it can happen. He got me into this little room, and I got up into this barber’s chair. That’s what it felt like, and he’s got his back to me.
He’s got a wooden spoon, and he’s stirring something, and the people who are sitting here were looking at me. And it turned out to be one of those all-day cookers, and I said to him, sir, what are you doing? He said, oh, he said, this is clay. He said, I work with clay.
I said, no, we’re going to take something away. Yeah, he said, but I told you the possibility, didn’t I? He said, if you lose your ear, he said, you’d look kind of funny. So he said, what we’re going to do, we’re going to take a mold of what your ear looks like now, and then he said, if push comes to shove, he said, I’ll be able to ship this over to China, and it can come back as a tin ear.
So he said, I want you to sign this waiver, and I told you, I signed it, which allowed him that since he’s cutting and making a mess, he could make some slits. He said, I have tiny magnets here. So he said, I’ll put a magnet in each.
He said, I’ve done this before. I know what I’m doing. He said, I’ll mark it, and he said, I’ll put magnets around the ear.
He said, otherwise, what’s going to keep a tin ear on the side of your head? I went, I don’t know. So I said, okay. So I’m telling everybody, this is on a Sunday morning.
I said, everything went fine this week. I said, till this morning, I’m in my office, and I pulled out my pencil drawer, and suddenly I heard click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. I said, I ran over to the mirror on the wall.
I said, what’s on the side of my head? A whole bunch of paperclips. And then you could hear the murmuring and the chatter. He’s done it again.
He just got us again. So I told somebody this week, I said, this person said, why did the people come? I said, I tell them crazy things and they believe it. But this morning, I wasn’t telling you crazy things.
I was sharing with you what the word of God says. Can you say amen? And I hope that in with my preaching, it will inspire you to get into the book of Daniel, to get into the book of Ezekiel, get into the book of Revelation, and you won’t get lost because Pastor Dave’s going to help you. So I think we’re going to have a good time with it.
So we’re going to let you go now. And please remember this, that before you go, as you go, you must, you can’t leave here without doing that. This is our DNA now.
You must pray for somebody. Somebody’s going to pray for you, Brownie, as you’re going out of here. I think we already did that, but what’s going to happen is we’re going to, somebody’s going to pray. It could be anybody. It could be 10 or 15 people, but this is the prayer. God bless you.
That prayer means, my trust is that wherever you are in your position in life, whatever you’re going through, my cry is that God will kneel down wherever you are and hold you and will convince you he’s there with you. And with his presence, you’re going to make it. All of that’s wrapped up in God bless you.
Don’t say it fast like they do at Tim Hortons. I have a good day. No, no, it’s not like that. It’s God bless you. Mean it with your heart. It’s a prayer.
So heavenly father, I pray you’re blessing upon all of this people, no matter what we’re going through today, whatever Ron is going through in that little room that’s built like a cave. Lord God, I pray you’ll encourage him and cause him to lift up his eyes to the Lord from whence comes his help. Lord, I pray that you’ll kneel down where he is right now and hold him and convince him that you’re there with him.
And Lord for the man and the woman in the bed across as I prayed with them a couple of days ago, Lord, I pray that that even that prayer, and if they’re still there, I’ll have opportunity maybe to speak to them again. Lord, I pray that Ron’s presence and those of us who are visiting Ron can be a source of sunlight for that beautiful man and his lovely wife in the bed right across the way. I ask these mercies in Jesus name and everybody said, you have a great day.
