Revelation 13 Pt 2

Just like five minutes. Mr.

Barry, will you finish up with a word of prayer? Well, Heavenly Father, we're thankful you can come into your presence this morning,

Lord, to study your word. We're thankful for just giving us a day that we can come in and be admonished and edified, and have the

Lord open to us. We pray you would be with us this morning as he opens the word, and just guide his words, in Jesus' name,

I pray. Amen. I'll stop at the end of 4 and the beginning of verse 5.

And his throne and great authority. And I saw one of his heads, as if it had been slain. And his fatal wound was healed, and the whole earth was amazed and followed after the beast.

They worshipped the dragon, because he gave his authority to the beast. And they worshipped the beast, saying,

Who is like the beast? Who is able to wage war with him? There was given to him a mouth speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, to act in authority of forty -two months was given to him.

And he opened his mouth, and blasphemies against God, blasphemies against his name, and his tabernacle, that is, those who dwell in heaven.

And it was also given to him to make war with the saints, to overcome them. And authority over every tribe, people, tongue, and nation was given to him, and all who dwell on the earth will worship him.

Everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world, in the book of life, and the lamb who has been slain.

If anyone has an ear, let him hear. If anyone is destined for captivity, to captivity he goes.

If anyone kills with the sword, to the sword he must be killed. Here is the perseverance and faith of the saints.

Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon.

He exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence. He makes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose fatal wound was healed.

He performs great signs that he makes fire come down from heaven to the earth in the presence of men.

And he deceives those who dwell on the earth because of the signs which was given to him to perform in the presence of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life.

And it was given to him to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast would even speak and cause as many as do worship the image of the beast to be killed.

I'm sorry, who do not worship to be killed. And he causes all small and great, rich and poor, the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand and on their forehead.

He provides that no one would be able to buy or sell except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.

And here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man, and his number is 666.

Good morning. We're in chapter 13 of Revelation.

So last week we walked through and we got to the end of verse 4, or got to verse 4.

We talked about the seven heads, the ten horns and the diadems, and that that was actually a reiteration of Satan, which had been described as the great dragon in chapter 12.

So, when I finished up, towards the end, I said something and got some crazy looks, and we talked about the unholy trinity.

And it looked as if some of y 'all had never heard of that. And I'm going to put here, if you remember correctly, this is actually the beast number 2 that comes up out of the land.

And he's actually called the false prophet in chapter 16. It begins being called 16, 19, and then

I think in 20 as well, because that's when you get to the end, towards the end of the book.

Who's thrown into the lake of fire? It's the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet.

Now, as these three work together, and everybody remember what

I said last week? What does the dragon give to the beast? Actually, you read it.

It's very clear. It gives authority. What does God give to...

We're seeing a parallel here of counterfeit.

This is all a counterfeit. A counterfeit of this. So if Satan, the dragon, gives his authority to the beast, what did

God give to his son? All power and all authority. Now, in this case, let's be very clear.

When God gives him his authority, God in no way relinquishes any type of power. He is just giving him, when

Jesus did his messianic work, what did Jesus say when he went to the mountain in Galilee?

Anybody remember what he said in Matthew 28, verses 28 -31?

Or 28 -30? All power is given unto me in heaven and earth. Yes, and why was it given to him? Because he had finished his messianic work.

Now that he had finished his messianic work, he had made for atonement, and when he had resurrected, he was now not only the...

He was not just the God -man, he was the glorified God -man, the son of man that was prophesied in Daniel chapter 12, and if you remember

Daniel chapter 7, when you see the son of man going to the

Ancient of Days, what did he give him? He gave him all authority and he gave him a kingdom that would never end, made up of every nation, tribe, and tongue.

So that's what the father gave the son. The dragon gives the beast his authority so that he then can deceive, and what does the beast give to the false prophet?

He gives him authority as well, so that this false prophet wants people to worship who?

It was very clear. This is not me making these conclusions. It's very clear.

He wants the false prophet, or beast too, wants him to worship this beast.

Anybody remember what I said this was? Based on what the... This is the... Yes. Political and government.

Government structure. That's actually what this represents. I mean, that's what the seven heads, the ten horns, and the diadems represent the governmental power that the dragon has called up out of the sea to then do his bidding.

Now, as I understand the chapters 10 through 13 is the little book.

Everybody remember that part, right? It's the little book, and it is a prophecy within the larger prophecy, and this isn't me making those conclusions.

These are very clearly what it says. Now I want you to prophesy again about many kings, nations, and tongues that will come.

That's what he's saying, chapter 10. So we understand that in chapter 13 when we're talking about the dragon, the beast, that over the course of the church age, the 1260 days, times, times, half of times, and 42 months, we will see iterations of these and these over the course of the church age.

At the end of the age, what will happen? There will be a final manifestation of the final beast.

There will be a final manifestation of the false prophet, which will culminate in the destruction of the man of sin who was destroyed by the word of God's mouth when

Jesus appears. So did that clear up any of that confusion from last week, or did I just confuse you all more? All right.

So when we look at what the false prophet points to the beast to be worshipped, what's the role of the

Holy Spirit? Point to the sun. The sun? If the Holy Spirit says, Worship me, who does he point to?

He points to the sun. Who does the sun always point to? What does this do? Same thing.

He points to here. He points to here. Hey, if you're worshipping the beast, you're a dragon worshipper. Because the dragon and the first beast, the political government structure, are characters the same.

It's right here. Chapter 12, verse 1. I mean,

I'm sorry, chapter 12, verse 3. And then in the beginning of chapter 13, you see that the beast and the dragon have the same characteristic.

So what do we see happened to the beast? Remember, one of its head was slain, right?

And it looked like it was dead, didn't it? Looked like it was dead. Yeah. And what happened? It said its fatal wound was healed.

What happens here? It looks like Jesus was defeated. And what happened?

Resurrected. Now, this won't make any confusion. This was a real deal, okay?

Jesus will never die. He is resurrected, glorified. This is just a counterfeit. Remember, that is a parody.

However, whatever fancy word you want to use, it's a parody. Why? Because the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet want you not to worship the real.

They want you to worship the fake. Why? Because if you worship the fake, then ultimately the dragon gets what he wants, which is to take away from the

Son of God, take away from the Holy Spirit, take away from God the Father being worshiped, worship Him which enters to the demise of everyone else just like Him.

Remember, at the end of the age, when Christ comes, He's going to make every wrong right, and He's going to judge everyone.

You know what? Everybody that's an unbeliever goes to the same place this guy goes. Where? To the lake of fire, okay?

His desire is to destroy. Remember, just as in the beginning of the book, when we saw the red horse come, the red represented what?

Bloodshed. Why is the dragon red? Because his desire is to slay the people of God and anybody else he can take with him.

He is an equal opportunity murderer, okay? That's his job. He has come to kill, steal, and to destroy.

That's his job. Now, last week we made a clear application to how the first century would have saw this.

If they would have saw one of the fatal heads had been killed or had been wounded with a sword, being wounded with a sword means death, and it had been resurrected, that would have been

Nero. No, I don't think there's anybody that takes an early date that would disagree with that understanding, okay?

Now, in the first century, they would have thought that the empire was in decline.

I'm sorry. I think I told you Edwards. It was Edward Gibbons. I'm sorry. My apologies. I just thought about that.

Edward Gibbons. And I did find an unabridged version if you want, relatively inexpensive. It's 700 pages.

You can read it in a week. Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding.

Yeah, it's 700 pages. So, what we do understand is that in the first century, they would have saw

Nero as the beast. Why? Because he is the one that had raised himself up to persecute the people of God, blaspheme

God, and based on Daniel chapter 7, it said that there would be a beast that would come up out of the fourth empire that would raise himself up, speak blasphemous words, and who was that person?

History tells us that was Nero. Okay? If any time there's something in prophecy, you have to look in history to see if it's been fulfilled.

If it's been fulfilled, then we say, okay. But does that exhaust the beast?

And I say no. Okay? Just as we're in, coming into the advent season, or already in it,

Isaiah 7. Anybody know the Isaiah 7 passage for there will be a virgin or a maiden will be with child?

You know, that had an immediate fulfillment. Everybody know that? Okay? Immediate fulfillment.

Immediate fulfillment. Isaiah, if you read chapter 8, Isaiah goes, he sleeps with the prophetess, which is his wife.

She gets pregnant. Immediate fulfillment to Ahaz the king. This was going to be the sign.

But that didn't exhaust that prophecy. And how do we know that?

Because the understanding of the Jews when they translated into the Septuagint, they translated not maiden, but then virgin, pointing that there was something else to come.

So in the book of Matthew, Matthew tells us that when Mary was pregnant, that was a fulfillment of what

Isaiah said. Understand that that had set a pattern and trajectory. It didn't exhaust the original prophecy.

It was fulfilled in the final prophecy, which pointed to the person and work of Christ.

Same thing for the beast. You will have pictures of the beast over every generation.

Okay? All the Roman Empire. Well, let me just do this. I wasn't going to do it, but we're not getting out of chapter 13 today anyway.

Caesar Augustus. You want all the dates?

I can give you the dates when they lived, too, if you want. Just let me know. All right. So over the course of the

Roman Empire, beginning with, just to let you know, Julius Caesar was not the first Caesar.

Okay? He was not. Don't care what somebody tells you. He was not. He was part of the first triumvirate, which was a triad of people that were ruling, what were ruling as basically three dictators over the

Roman Empire. And when he got killed, he left all of his stuff to Octavian.

Octavian then becomes the first emperor, not by seizing the throne, okay, like Julius Caesar tried to do, which got him killed.

He tried to seize the throne and make an emperor on his own. The people willfully gave it to Caesar, or Octavian, then he changed his name to Caesar Augustus.

So over the course of the Roman Empire in the first century, going into the second, this is for a reason, because that starts in the second century.

This here is how we would have seen it. There was primarily no, from here, no persecution.

None to the people of God, okay? None until this guy comes on the scene.

And we've said this a million times until he comes on the scene. He gets killed.

He goes from 54 to 68. By and large, Nero was not off his rocker at the beginning, okay?

He was actually pretty decent on the front end. But he starts getting wrapped up into being young ruler, spending large amounts of money.

Then he starts, you raise your hand? No. The coffers start depleting.

He then starts, I've got to find a way of getting the people back on my side.

And what happened in 64? He set Rome on fire, which started the persecution of the people of God from 64 to 68 in the local area of Rome, okay?

He made a distinction between the Jews and between the

Christians. Christians would not capitulate. They would not compromise.

Jews would compromise. They would. Now, after he sets it on fire, he becomes deemed enemy of the state, 68.

What happened, Mike? He killed himself. He said it last week. He killed himself. At the same time this is going on, there is civil war going on between 66 and 70 in Israel and Jerusalem.

When he kills himself, chaos goes into the Roman Empire. There was civil war not only in Jerusalem but in Rome.

When Nero died, there is no historical writer that disagrees that Rome was collapsing.

Most comprehensive would be Edward Gibbons, okay? That it was collapsing.

And it looked, when one of those heads had been slain, it looked like it was going out of control, and it was.

So the senate, Vespasian. Vespasian comes in and brings order back into it, okay?

Stops the persecution of Christians, okay? It starts the golden age of Rome again, believe it or not.

If you want to solve that. A resurrection of the beast. They were benevolent.

He was very benevolent. He dies in 79 while he was trying to finish up the

Colosseum. His son comes in and goes from 79 to 81. Very benevolent.

Very good. The only thing that these men did was they issued a decree that the

Jews, because the Jewish wars cost their coffers so much money trying to squash, that they were going to have to start paying some taxes back.

And they weren't really that big of a deal about enforcing it until his brother poisons him.

I'm sorry, 81. 81 to 96. Domitian comes in.

Domitian comes in and he says, I'm going to now impose. I think I said this right at the end last week. He then imposes a tax, the temple tax.

What happened to the temple in 70? It's gone. So he's saying, hey, because you all caused all these problems with this wasting the coffers money trying to squash your insurrection, what we're going to do is now make you pay a tax.

So when the persecution came, Domitian said, you're going to pay that tax, and every man's going to do it that was a

Jew, and we're going to make him go around to each town, and we're going to say drop him. And why would he say drop him?

Because that's how you find out if a man's Jewish. He was circumcised. That's what

Domitian did, and he persecuted the Jews very, very badly, along with the

Christians. Some history books will say he made this big campaign against Christianity.

Domitian did not. Read Suetonius, the Four Caesars. Just read it.

Come to your own conclusion. He persecuted anybody who got in his way. He was a madman. So a lot of people thought that the head that had been wounded, that came back to life, that this is

Nero resurrected again. Okay? That was the Nero Residivus, that's how you say it in their language, the

Nero resurrection myth. I mean, there was, if you read, I think it's in Gibbons as well, there were sightings of Nero, like we would hear sightings of Michael Jackson and Elvis today.

Okay? It's just how it was. Okay? Now, when he died, persecution stopped.

Then Nerva comes in, puts some order back into it, and by and large, from here to here, there's the

Pax Romana again. So it looked like the

Roman Empire was back to its golden age. Now, there was some things that did take place, dealing with Christians and Jews, okay, trying to get their money back.

Trahan says, hey, if we catch a Christian and they've done some other crime, then we'll try them for insurrection.

But we're not going to go out and knock on doors. As a matter of fact, his quotation is, we're not going door to door to find these people. They're really no big of a deal.

Pliny, Pliny or Pliny, however you want to say it, Pliny the Elder and the Younger, both were lawyers for this guy, this guy, and this guy.

So we have records of what they actually wrote. So there was primarily no persecution for Christians here.

Okay? Primarily. They actually had free to do what they wanted, except for in local areas.

Where were there local areas where they were persecuted? Certainly Smyrna, where we've already read in the beginning of the book that some

Christians were put to death in Smyrna. Why? Because they didn't do whatever was necessary in the local communities dealing with the

Roman Empire. We often hear that Rome required the pinching of the incense, the throwing to the bust, and the bowing down and saying,

Caesar is Corias, Caesar is Lord. That did not take place until 249 to 250

A .D. We often think it's happening in this time. It was not.

It was not happening then. So Hadrian decimated the

Jews. He was from, I know he died in 138.

I do know. This might be questionable. But I know he died in 138. Okay? Because in 137,

Hadrian let the Jews come back into Jerusalem, try to set up, hey, y 'all want to come back into the land, come back in, and we will let you set up your

Jewish community back in Jerusalem. And you know what happened? That happened in 132 and 133.

You know what the Jews did again? Them fools revolted. Them fools revolted.

Hadrian in 137 went in there. It's called the Bar Karkoba Revolt.

He went in there. He killed every one of them he could get a hold of. He burned the land, and he salted the land.

And you know what he called the place? This is where all the problems come with the Palestinian nonsense.

He named it Capitula Palestina. He says because that's named after the

Philistines, and the Philistines were the arch enemy. So you know what Hadrian said? I'll really make them mad.

I'll name their land after the Philistines. That's where all those problems come from. These guys and these guys were very benevolent to the kingdom.

They did not persecute Christians. They did not persecute Jews. They tried to get some order back in place. They did not desire to be worshipped.

Matter of fact, he was, if you had my opinion, this guy, this guy, and this guy were the greatest

Roman emperors of all time. Pagans, they died for Rome itself. They did not persecute

Christians. They did not seek to go out there and kill them. They actually put things in place where widespread persecution was not available.

Now, there's a list of probably 30 that come and go in between Marcus Aurelius and this guy,

Decius. Decius comes in.

He says, now that I am in power, you're going to worship the state.

He said, you're going to worship the beast. That's basically what he said. You're going to worship the Roman Empire. And how you're going to worship the

Roman Empire is you're going to make it obligatory, incense of the burning, burning the incense, and Rome is

God. We are the one. If you do not do this, based on his decree, you would be put to the death.

You would be burned, whatever it was, thrown to the lion's den, wrapped in the clothes of animals and thrown to other beasts in the

Colosseum or wherever the arena was across the empire. That's what this guy did. And he also put in place a thing called, anybody ever heard of that?

It's called a legalist. It is a certificate that now you can buy and sell within the

Roman Empire. And you can buy and sell in the Roman Empire because you did your obligatory thing that he required for you to do.

So do you see how this is playing out already in chapter 13? As he was saying, look, people won't be able to buy and sell if they don't do what?

Worship the beast. This was already taking place early in the

Roman Empire and it will take place over the course of the church age until Christ comes.

So, I would even, we're getting a little ahead, but, I would even say, we saw micro parts of that even in our nation under COVID.

Do y 'all remember that? That utter nonsense. You remember people not being able to get on planes? Had to have that little card to go with it.

See, I'm thinking, obviously that, it's not the same as this, but we saw that they tried to do that here.

And what was that type of? Worship the state. The state knows what's best. The political parties know what's best for you.

What is this saying? The same thing. Now, there was great persecution from this guy on through Valerius, Gaius.

Great persecution goes on until 311.

Those that took church history in here with us, do you remember what happened in 311? 311?

It was the Edict of Tolerance. And what happened was they made an edict that said, hey,

Christianity is no longer outlawed. We're not going to persecute people anymore.

But you know what? It was mandated persecution from here to here. It was bad. Matter of fact, it was really bad in 303 by a man named

Diocletian. Anybody heard of him before? Huh? Diocletian, dude, it was bad. Matter of fact, in history, if you just look in history,

Diocletian is called the great Christian persecution and his plan was to wipe

Christianity out and to persecute them to death. That's what happened.

I mean, this is history. This is iterations of the beast just over from the time of Marcus Aurelius, okay, just iterations of it that came down, that came to a culmination of a guy who said you can't buy and sell anymore until the

Edict of Toleration, which came in 311 and then I think it was in 313, it said, okay,

Christianity is now legal. Then it goes on with Constantine becoming converted and then

Theodosius, which was his second successor, he actually in 380, it was 380,

Christianity becomes law.

Just to let you know, that becomes worship back in these two. It's because, well,

I mean, what happens is Christianity, hey, when you, any time you do, sacralism is? Any time you make state church the mandated thing, what happens?

People don't worship the true and living God, what do they worship? They worship the state. Look at the Roman Catholic Church.

Remember, you had the Holy Roman Empire, okay? That probably would have been, the

Holy Roman Empire would have been 800

Charlemagne, but you had that progression of the Holy Roman Empire or Roman Catholic Church, which would be coming to the

Roman Empire. You had the worshiping of that. So once the Holy Roman Empire takes over most of the land, people were baptized into the

Catholic Church. Why? One, you had to pay taxes and you had to be able to go fight for the Roman Catholic Church.

And to who? Worship who? The state. The state. That's why when we talk about the reformers and how they understood this section here, because they were under the historical view or historicism, they understood the beast as being the

Roman Catholic Church. They understood the antichrist as being who? The Pope. Yeah, and based on what we have just walked through, you could see how they understood it that way.

Now, they ran out of time because they said, based on their prophetic calendar, that the

Roman Catholic Church, the papacy would all be obliterated and that Christ was going to return in 1860.

So when that didn't happen, they have to try to redo their prophetic calendar and it didn't seem to work.

They screwed it all up. So even those that hold to a form of historicism today don't even hold to that type of prophetic calendar.

And the only people that you would see holding that to historicist view today, I think, would probably be the Seventh -day Adventists.

And they're a little kooky anyway. So you can understand how the beast, over the course of Christianity, the church age, the gospel age, will continue on.

Hey, we could go right out of the Holy Roman Empire. We could go right into the time of the Franks. We could go into the fall of Constantinople.

And you would see, raised up, in the time of each one of those, somebody that pointed as the false prophet to worship the political power.

If you're worshiping the political government, by necessity, what are you worshiping? The beast,

Satan, the dragon. Okay? I think we've said this before in here.

We could go around the room in everybody's room. We've got a wide range of generational time here.

Think of some beasts, over the course of your age.

Who? Certainly, I guess he could be.

I mean, he did legislate gay marriage. And the unhindered, he supported the unhindered killing of the unborn.

Sure. Is he a type of beast? Yes. Is he the beast? No. North Korea.

Yes, ma 'am. Taylor Swift. Who? Taylor Swift. She could be.

We might be. We might need to reel it back into the fringes of reality. She's hyper -feminist.

She is. And she has a gathering, but I don't think she would be the antichristess. But she could be the beastess.

She what now? That's pretty wacky.

That's pretty wacky. The satanic doctrine, the satanic church, just to let you know, doesn't say bow down and worship

Satan. It says bow down and worship yourself. Yeah. Yeah. I've read both books.

I've read the satanic Bible, the Satanae Bibliae, and none of them are actually bow down and worship

Satan. It's worship yourself. And if you go back to the garden, what did

Satan want? He didn't want them to worship him. He wanted them to serve himself. So don't get me wrong.

Sacrificing cats and pentagrams and all that have a connection to Satanism, but Satanism by and large is just worship yourself.

So it's not cut your mother's liver out and drink her blood and all that. So, at the end of the age, will we see a, like I said earlier, will we see a final manifestation of the beast, what he will do, and look, it's not going to be

Taylor Swift because it says he's called the man of lawlessness. Okay?

It will be a man. Who will it be? I don't know. Some people say it will be from the tribe of Dan.

Maybe. I doubt it. Will he be a Roman Catholic? I don't know.

Will he be a Presbyterian? I don't know. Will he be a reformed Baptist? I don't know.

Will he be a Methodist? Probably. Probably.

So we don't know, but we know over the course of the church age, this is what we're going to see in every generation.

Whether it be in North Korea right now. You can't buy or sell North Korea, or in China, if you don't have a picture of one of those individuals in your home or in the registered church.

So you do understand, even the registered church in China is having to capitulate to put up two pictures.

Let's just say this. They've got the Bible here, and you've got G .G. Ping here. They're not the same.

Okay? They're not the same. Now I'm all, I love my country, and those of you that come to my house next week, when you pull up in the driveway, you're going to see a flag standing in my driveway.

Okay? You'll see it. But we ain't putting one in the sanctuary, because that ain't the place for it.

Okay? The church is not a place for the flag. And I know there's some guys in here that probably serve in the church.

Look, the church is not about a single country. It's made up of every nation, tribe, and tongue.

And if you walked into a church in the time of the Second World War, and you saw a flag standing in the sanctuary, you know what

Hitler did? The same thing. He used the doctrine of the

Bible, twisted, along with the words of Luther, and men walking down in the

Reich with their flags to support his idea. That's why the church has no place for nationalism.

No place for it. Because it leads to beast worship. Beast worship.

Now, let's bring this to a close. Kingdoms will come and kingdoms will fall.

That's what Nebuchadnezzar even said that. Okay? When he got the vision, and he was made to...

He got the kingdoms of the world and the colossus. Then he got the vision that he was going to be eating grass on his back, walking around with feathers growing out of his back and his claws.

He even knew that God was going to raise up kingdoms and they were going to fall. But there was coming a kingdom that would be an everlasting kingdom that would never fall.

That everlasting kingdom is not made up of political power. That everlasting kingdom is made up of people like you and I that conquer through suffering.

That's why... Oh man, this is so hard to get into this. That's why the idea of Christian nationalism has a huge problem when it talks about wanting to take up arms and fight against those who don't believe in Christianity.

It's not in the Bible. That's what the crusaders did. And they killed thousands of people under the banner of Christianity.

We're not to do that. You know what we're supposed to do? We're to pick up the sword of the spirit and we're to go and we're to preach the gospel and let

God do what he's going to do through the power of the spirit and fight against the beast, not by, hey, get your

ARs, let's strap up and let's go fight. It's about preaching the word. Now, if they come knocking on your door and they're going to come in and hurt your family,

I say blow them away. Okay? But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about living in this world which is wanting us to capitulate through the teaching of the false prophet to worship the beast.

We don't do that. We live our lives in such a way that we proclaim the gospel where we go as we go and in doing that let the world get worse but the gospel proclamation get better.

You go, well, those two don't work together. Well, that's not how the New Testament shows it. The New Testament shows it that as the church grew, what happened?

Did it take over the political powers? What did it do? It actually got persecuted more. The more it got persecuted, the further the church went and the more people got saved.

That's the model. Were you raising your hand or no? No. Okay. Now, I got to shut up. We got to go.

Mike, would you pray us out? Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time of study.

We thank you for our brother as he is prepared. We pray that we would not be drawn into repeating the past.

Our eyes toward a heavenly future.

We pray now that you would be with us as we go into the worship service.

We pray that everything that's said there and everything that's done there would point us to Christ. In his name we pray.

Amen. There's a lot of people who

I would agree with who call themselves pretty nationalists, but it's not in the sense of sacralism.

It's just as opposed to globalism. Do you think the two can be separate, Angelo? I think what happens at the end of the day, it's a natural conclusion.

It's a logical conclusion. You then have to have someone who sets themselves up to run the show.

That person then becomes the person that calls the shot. That person calls the shot, and then we have the differences between pagan baptism and baptism.

That's what led to the killing of our Baptist school college. I think that's the logical conclusion. For sure.

Do I think that we should try to evangelize and influence the political powers through the gospel and through the preacher of the word?

Yeah, but I don't think our job is to overtake politics. You don't think we should be perhaps first -hand involved or should we be second -hand involved?

I don't think you can be a politician and be a Christian. Opinion. I was probably going to lie. I was about to say, it's a dirty game.

I've got to have him for just a second. You're good. I was just curious. Okay. I know, but here's the package that was approved at the church.

It was $2 ,500. So the $900 plus $1 ,500?

$1 ,500. That pays his package. Do you understand? I don't understand.

Well, he's... Okay, so... Is he just trying to...

Not exercise what he's been guaranteed already? That's what we agreed to pay him.

And I think if that's what we agreed to pay him, that's what we should do. That's just me and him. That's what we've agreed. This isn't him, this is me and him.

That's what we've agreed to pay him. So where do we pull that money out of as far as just that? It's in the budget.

It got approved last year. That's why if we agree to pay him... I'm just using his number. I don't have to actually...

Right. What is this?

The new budget? Yeah, go ahead. My problem...

He's wanting to lump now. And see, that's how, honestly, this is what I think should have been done from the beginning.

But that's not... I can't make those executive decisions. Right. I think we should give him his money.

And let him... Because here's... Let's say this. I think it would be shrewd, okay, in this bar if we give him $2 ,500 for insurance, if he can find somebody to give him better insurance...

And pocket the rest. Yeah. And that's me, okay? I can't make those decisions on my own.

And I have, one, the support of y 'all. But that's what we agreed to pay him.

And if we don't, I feel bad if we don't pay him what we agreed to pay him. Now he's getting a lump sum.

Whatever he does with it, that's his business. That's what should have been done. All right, so...

And? Right now he's asked me... He texted me and asked me to cut him a check this week for $900.

So you're... I'm trying to... I want the check to be $2 ,500. I mean, yeah, to bring $1 ,500.

Go back and look at the line item. I don't care how you write the checks. If you want to put the reimbursement for that amount, the $990 or whatever it was.

And then a payment for the rest.

I think it would be easier for the budget looking, is attach at the memo, attach the $990 or whatever it is.

Okay? But make the total amount for insurance and in the memo, reimbursement.

So give him a lump, the $1 ,500 and the $900. Or whatever that check is.

$2 ,500. Yeah, it's $2 ,500 the total. All right. On the budget that we approved to give him.

If you need me to stay with you afterwards, no problem. Okay.

Well, I'm gone. Okay. I leave Tuesday morning. You want to write that? Who else can write that?

I'll get to write it today. Kelly, Dale. Okay. They just can't write for themselves.

Okay. However you want to word that on there, that's how

I would do it. I would put it on the memo. Make the check out.

For the total. For the total. But that was what was allotted to him in his package.

Now, however he does it, kind of moving forward, I think it would be shrewd if he could chop that down. Sure, sure. If we were paying, in the sense of we were taking care of that,

I think it would be a little different. But we're giving that to him to pay. And that responsibility goes to him, too.

Yeah, that's right. Yep. Did I overwhelm you with historical documents today?

Is that still on? It should be on. Okay. Did I overwhelm you with... There's always a fire hose of information that...