Morning. Yeah, that was good. Evening, ladies and gentlemen. Good to see you. And it's good to see the wall coming together, isn't it? Without a hole there anymore. Are we broadcasting? Okay, good. As he was leaving, I didn't want to get halfway through and find out who aren't. Welcome to those of you online. Always just turning on the lights. There we go. And now we're all fixed up there and good to go. So good to see everybody. And William is out sick, but doing much better. And Winnie Mae went to the emergency room today, but came home fine, so we're glad she's healthy. And I think, let's see, kay Ben Fossen has some infection, lung infection that she's on some long term and heavy antibiotics for. So we'll keep her in our prayers, too. And those were wonderful Polish tacos. I'm wondering about, I don't know, Polish hamburgers. Polish what could we do? Polish spaghetti? We could polish tamales. That would be good. Yes. And Gene told me she knows how to make tamales. Let's just keep the theme going. Let's have a Polish winter. Thanks, Frank and Gene, for cooking tonight. It was a blessing. Well, let's have a word of prayer and get started in the book of Jose. Heavenly Father, thanks for your watching care and Your blessing over us. We're grateful and for the opportunity we have to come tonight again in fellowship and to be in the Word. Thank you very much. And just pray for these we've mentioned in others and ask you, give us some insight into the Word here tonight. In Jesus name, amen. And hosea. Now we begin hosea, the fourth chapter. Nathan, I didn't know how to make that dark. I don't know if that comes through on the camera or not. You can check with that. But Jose, the fourth chapter, and when you get into chapter four, it really begins a new section that will go all the way through the end, which I think is chapter 13. If I remember right, chapters one, two and three were symbolic. Chapters four through the end are literal. So we're used to literal prophecy, but we're used to symbolic prophecy as well. So chapters one, two, three are Gomer and Hosea and the three kids. And every time we look at that, we say, I think there's more to it than just Gomer and Hosea and the three kids. This is symbolism of something, and it doesn't take a rocket science of a theologian to figure out this is symbol of something. Symbol of what? Well, if you read the Bible just a little bit, you become a pretty quick estimation that this is symbolic of Israel. And then when you get into chapter four and beyond, it quits the symbolism and gets into literal and you say, just as I suspected, it is symbolic, and it's symbolic of Israel, and it puts it together in a literal way. And we're going to look at verses, maybe verses one through six tonight, one through verses one through 07:00 tonight is what we're going to do. And it starts out, hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel. For the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. Now, I want to start right here, hear the word of the Lord. That phrase right there in Hosea, chapter four, verse one here the word of the Lord is an excellent marker. And there's some notes back there for you if you want Sasha so that you'll pass the test. So here the word of the Lord is an excellent marker in all of the minor prophets. And this is one of the Socalled minor prophets. I don't know if God would have called them minor prophets, but we call them minor prophets. I think the Jewish people have a better way of looking at it. They call them the lesser prophets, and it's really just because probably we should call them the shorter prophets, but I don't know, jose could have been very tall too, but they're just not as long as the others is the only difference. But all through the minor prophets, this phrase right here especially, you can give or take the word here, but the word of the Lord makes a much better chapter break than any of our modern chapter numerology. We sort of drew a line here and made it chapter four. Now here is right because it begins, the word of the Lord. But if you're reading in the minor prophets, this is also true in Jeremiah Ezekiel. By the way, the word of the Lord is, hey, here's something new here's a fresh word of the Lord. So that means it's not connected to chapters one, two and three, which I've already mentioned had symbolism here. We're going to something literal, so hear the word of the Lord. Now, I might also tell you that that's the last time we're going to see hear the word of the Lord in the book of Hosea. So therefore you could look at Hosea as basically two chapters, chapter one, two and three, and chapters four through 13, two parts to them, one, two, three. Again, the symbolic part. In verse two, you have the word of the Lord. Chapter one, verse two, you have the word of the Lord. And here you have it again in chapter four, verse one, hear the word of the Lord. So a new section, hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel. That's who he's talking to, is the children of Israel. And specifically, I think we already know from the context, the historical context, when you talk about Israel in the time of Hosea, that's the northern tribes, the ten tribes that broke off from Judah. And so by this time in the scripture, you have Israel and you have Judah, and he's talking to Israel. Israel is the renegades. Israel is the guys that decided they didn't really want to go with God's plan. They kind of wanted to go with God's plan. And so he's talking to the Northern Kingdom. Israel, ye children of Israel. He is talking to them directly, hey, listen up, ye children of Israel. But he's going to do something interesting here in a moment because he starts talking ye children of Israel direct, and then he talks indirectly from there on, for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. Well, the inhabitants of the land are ye children of Israel. So it's kind of an interesting turn that he takes, and I don't know exactly why he takes it, but it's kind of like he were to say, hey, if I was doing this, I might say I want to talk to the congregation of Tao's First Baptist Church. I have a controversy to pick with people who eat too many Polish tacos. Okay, you know who he's talking about is that kind of back off a little step. For whatever reason he does this, and I don't know exactly the reason, but I'm convinced that I have a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. Well, who's the inhabitants of the land? It is the children of Israel. So why he makes that switch, I don't know. My best guess is because it is, and I think we had this when we were talking about Abraham last sermon. It's a little bit of a legal document that's about to come. And so, I don't know, I suppose I've never had this experience. Some of you could testify to it. When the sheriff shows up at the door to serve you papers, he says, Are you Richmond withrow you live at? Yes. Well, hereby the state brings charges against Richmond withdrawal of 220 Paso del Pueblo and begin talking in the legal sense, kind of in the third person, just checking to make sure you're paying attention at first. That's my best guess on why you have this switch here. You guys know that I'm persnickety about pronouns here, and so that one caught me. Okay, why does it switch here, you children of Israel? So then it says, for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. Now, you could take the word, see if I can highlight it there. It doesn't work as good in the black screen, but I got it. There you go. I got a controversy now that can be taken very much like you and I would talk about it and say, hey, he and I got odds with one another. We got this controversy going. You could take it like that, and it certainly would be true. But the actual Hebrew word here is a little more again, a legal word. I've got a controversy is sort of I've got a lawsuit against you. I am bringing this one to the court. It's very much a judicial kind of word here. So the Lord comes and says, I've got a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. And then he tells them why he's got this controversy, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. Now, this remember, of course, which land did they live in? It is different from our land because it was the promised land. And the promised land was given, of course, to the chosen people, and the chosen people lived on the promised land. But part of the requirement go back to, I don't know, the book of numbers or something. Sasha and I were talking about the book of numbers, and he said he fell asleep. I'm not supposed to tell everything, am I? What's going on and all this. So you get into the book of numbers and deuteronomy all that. It really does sort of lay out the legal criteria for the people of Israel. God says, this is the promised land I'm given, but for you to keep it, this is what you got to do. This is the requirements for you to be tenants on the land, so to speak. And so he says, I've got a controversy. I've got a lawsuit against the inhabitants of the land. They aren't living up to their end of the bargain. And part of the bargain or the requirement for living on the land is you got to be a people of truth, a people of mercy, and a people of the knowledge of God. And my controversy is there's no truth, there's no mercy. There's no knowledge of God in the land. Now, especially we can understand truth and mercy, but let's a little bit take truth and mercy as a given anywhere in the world. You got problems if you don't have a world that has some kind of truth and mercy. The word mercy there we've talked about before. It's the Hebrew word hessid, and it's the word for which we don't really have a good English equivalent, hazard. Often it's translated mercy. Sometimes it's translated lovingkindness. Sometimes it's translated grace. Sometimes it's translated just love or affection. It's one of these really broad words that has a lot in fact, hazard is the word bait. Hesit is the house of Hessid, and in the United States, we pronounce bait. Hesit Bethesda. Bethesda, like Bethesda, Maryland. The Bethesda Medical Center. It's the house of mercy. But let's just say, even in Japan or China or Russia or Poland or wherever it be, it's only a good country if you got some degree of hessid and some degree of truth. But you can live other places and inhabit that land with no knowledge of God. But imagine living on God's land with no knowledge of God. That doesn't really make sense. So I think that's the big deal here is no knowledge of God in the land. And the knowledge of God in the land was might I say the sign of being God's. Covenant people. You know about God. In fact, to prove that, let me go up here and let's go to everything got moved around. I got to get it all in the right spot there. Let's go to Exodus chapter where is it? Chapter six, verse seven. And here it says, I will take you, the Lord speaking. I will take you to me for a people. I will be to you a God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God. Okay? That is the striking characteristic about the Jewish people. You will know that I am the Lord your God. So he comes in hosea and says, there's no knowledge of God. Are you even my people? You're living here on the land, and you forgot all about me. And the sign of our relationship to one another is, you know me, I know you. You shall know that I am the Lord your God. And so he basically is coming to say the way I'm interpreting it anyway, he's basically coming to say, you guys aren't paying your rent. There should be truth. There should be mercy. There should be knowledge of God. You all have left all of that, and you are not there at all. And so this controversy or by the way, I didn't mention the word controversy right there. The first time you see it in the Bible is when the servants of Abraham and the servants of Lot got into a controversy with one another about there's not enough land to feed all. We did that number of weeks ago in the life and times of Abraham, and that was a legal issue there. It's that kind of a legal word. So there's this controversy, okay? No truth, no mercy, no knowledge of God in the land. And then in verse two, he lists a list of things that I would say just kind of come about. When you have a society of no truth, no mercy, and no love of God in the land, what can you expect next? Well, what you would expect next is by swearing and lying and killing and stealing and committing adultery, they break out and blood touches blood. That almost if you read any history books at all, we could have filled in the blank on verse two if they had just said, there's no truth, no mercy, no knowledge of God. Now describe that society. Okay, I can spell it for you. A-L-B-U-Q-U-E-R-Q-U-E that was pretty good, wasn't it? Not my first time around the block. You go, okay, here's this land, and it's swearing, it's lying, it's killing, it's stealing, it's committing adultery. All of that makes so much total sense that we don't even have to begin to explain it. There's just no care for anyone. No care for anybody. But self is basically what all those things are, and they break out. I looked into that a little bit. That phrase, I think it just means there's no boundaries. They're running loose here. They break out and blood touches blood. I would look at this as what did I say? Murder follows murder or death follows death. This is to say, every night when you turn on the evening news, you're going to find out the latest murder and it's going to be from murder to murder to murder. What's the murder stats now? So blood touches blood. It just really kind of describes this society. Now again, I've already hinted to that sounds an awful lot like a society that we know we would have to say. Yeah, that does sound like any society that has no truth, no mercy, no knowledge of God. This is where it's going to go. I don't have time to completely go there, but we've been studying Romans on our online Bible study on Thursday nights and we're in chapter one, and that's the chapter that talks about God gave them over, god let them go, let them loose. And it also says the reason that God let them loose has three categories. But the worst category in God gave them over, God let them loose is that they had no room in their minds for God, for the knowledge of God. They just abandoned the knowledge of God. And what do you come up with, in fact, in that online Bible study I mentioned that any society that has some view of God kind of holds itself together. Even if they have the wrong view of God, they still have a deity of some sort that kind of keeps them in check in line. But you get a society that becomes secular and just has no place for God at all in it. What happens? Verse two is what happens and that's this is really where they had come to in the Northern Kingdom. And just in case you're not sure that that's descriptive of the Northern Kingdom, just go back and read first and second kings and you'll see that it's one news event after another of swearing, line killing, stealing, committing adultery, breaking out blood, touching blood. That's the summary of first and second kings. Saved you that time, didn't I? And so he goes on again. God is still so speaking. He says, therefore shall the land mourn and everyone that dwelleth therein shall anguish. Let's stop right there in the middle of the verse. Up to this point, we could say this just kind of sounds like a prescription for how to ruin society. Get rid of truth, mercy and the knowledge of God. You end up with this crime infested world that you live in. Good luck staying alive. I hope you do, because blood touches blood and the land will mourn and everyone therein will languish. In that kind of society, there's not really the safe zone, the right side of town, all that kind of stuff, it's just everybody who lives there ends up in trouble. So it sounds to that point like, okay, that could just be general description of the United States or pick your country that abandoned God. There it is. As we read on, however, we're reminded that this is to the children of Israel and to those who live on that land, not just a general prescription of all mankind, because he says, not only everyone that liveth therein shall languish, but they shall languish with the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven. Yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away. Well, you take a society that just has no room for God, and it gets all crime ridden, and everybody becomes impoverished and sick and they die and all the bad things that go with it. But it doesn't usually affect the birds, right? I mean, birds kind of do their own thing. Society falling apart, inflation is terrible, and the birds are happy, they sing in the morning. It doesn't affect the birds. Well, here, this affects, okay, the fowls of the heaven, the fishes of the sea, the beast of the field, which makes me think the only thing to do with this is to say this is not just some kind of normal charge that's given against a Godless society, even though that would be the same. This is actually talking, I would say, about the last days of Israel, when God says, this is the punishment that I'm going to bring on. You read the Book of Revelation and you'll see that the beasts of the field, the fowls of the heaven, the fishes of the sea, also are included in that lawsuit God brings in the end of days. So this is a book of prophecy. We know that. I think it's a prophecy here, beginning with the end times and what is going to happen. And so then, with that in mind, I think that helps us in verse three, four, excuse me, where he gives this instruction in verse four. Yet let no man strive nor reprove one another. Reprove another. Again, let's stop in the middle of the verse and talk about what's going on there. Let no men strive nor approve one another. Now, you would think in a society like this, hey, if you have truth and mercy and the knowledge of God, then why not strive with another? Why not reprove one another? Why not tell your neighbor, hey, wake up and smell the coffee and try to straighten it out? And yet he comes and says, don't do it. I'm going to take it. I'll jump ahead because it's going to leak out in a minute anyway. I'm going to take it as saying, don't waste your breath. There's no sense at this point. Basically, put a fence around your chickens and hope you get some eggs and take care of it and don't even go out there at this point. Now, again, we're talking in the end days, and it's not necessarily for today. I think this is where we go wrong in interpreting the Bible. If we were to take this just as a general statement for all mankind everywhere, when everything's get bad, then we would have to say, okay, we're never to strive with one another or reprove one another. And if you take that as a commandment for all time, then become an island to yourself. Move off. Never strive with one another or recruit one another. And yet we can find other places of scripture which tell us to strive with one another and reprove one another. So what's going on here? Again, you got to go in the context here. In those last days, he's telling Israel, don't bother. Now, I think it's also interesting that the word strive right there, yet let no man strive nor reprove. That word happens to be the same word we all already saw in verse. Was it one or verse two? Verse one where God said, I have a controversy with you. Well, that is a noun controversy. Here is a verb, strive, but it's the same Hebrew word in verse verse four, it's a verb strive. In verse one, it's a noun controversy. But they're both that legal word. And in addition to that, reprove. If you were to look that up in Hebrew, you would find that it in the form it's in here actually means to make a adjudication or a judgment against someone. So what this says is not just the general don't strive or reprove. It is saying, don't bother with the courts, don't bother taking a lawsuit, don't bother looking to the judicial system to take care of the problem here. Whereas in a normal society, this is what you might do. If there's an issue with someone in the community or some neighbor or business or whatever, they're cheating, stealing and all that kind of stuff, what would you do? Well, you'd take a lawsuit, you go to the court, the court would fix it, and all would be well, right? But what if you're in a society with no truth and no mercy and no knowledge of God? Well, it depends on who got paid off on the court. Why are you even going to bother here? And in the last days that this is talking about for the Jew, especially in those last days, first of all, you go through the whole court process. You're probably going to die before it's over with. There's not that much time, and they're after you. Forget about it, walk away, get out of there. As Jesus said on Mount of Olives when he was talking about the last days, he says, when you see the abomination of desolation, you who are in Judea, flee to the mountains. So don't stop and say, well, wait a minute, he owes me $20. I got to just get out of there. And furthermore, you go to the court. You're either just wasting your time and money or maybe you're putting your own life at risk. You just got to swallow hard and give that one up and get out of there. So I think again he's saying to Israel, to those who want to stop and listen and say, okay, the Lord's got to charge against us and he is not going to be kind. By the time this is over. We're about to go into some really rough days. But she owes me $40 and I'm taking this to small claims court. No, this is the time to forget about it, move on. Your $40 doesn't matter. Whatever you're striving and your reproof is, it doesn't matter now. It goes on. Let no men strive or retrofit. Again, I'm taking that all in a legal sense before I say it goes on. Let me stop one more time. One corinthians chapter Six Do you remember Paul said he chastised the people, and I think the people he was talking to, by the way, were Jews in Corinth. He was meeting at the synagogue and he chastised them. He said, you take brother against brother, you take them before the courts in a lawsuit. He says, shame on you, just work it out with each other. And from that some people have built the doctrine or the theology that Christians should never sue each other. And I can see where they get it. And it's worth having the argument to whether that's exactly what it says. But I kind of think Paul is talking to a Jewish synagogue and Paul at that point does not know how long the age of grace is going to be. He knows it started, but he doesn't know that it's going to be 2000 years. As far as he knows at that point, from what's been revealed, as far as he knows at that point, the Jewish people are still being offered the kingdom. They could accept it any time now. In other words, it's the last days. And so he's going back perhaps to Hosea and picking this up, yet let no man have a lawsuit with one another, taking them to the courts. He's using that and telling the Corinthians, don't bother with the courts right now, this is not the time for that. Is he saying this is a universal principle for anybody who's a Christian? I'm not convinced he's saying that because his context is certainly in the kingdom. In fact, if you look that's one Corinthians six, six, maybe four six somewhere in there. If you go just a couple of verses more, he's talking all about the kingdom, which is the future messianic kingdom. That's the context of what he's talking about. And I think that there's a decent worthy connection that goes with all of that. So there it is, that no man strive nor reprove one another. And then he gives a reason. He says, for thy people are as they that strive with the priest. Now, this is where the Baptist preacher should say, well, I'm no priest, but I'm the closest thing you got to it, and you should never disagree with me. See, it says right there, don't be people that strive with the priest. But that's not at all what it means. The people of Israel strive with the priest. Remember that they lived in a theocracy. And in the theocracy at the time they were living, it was a theocracy expressing itself in a monarchy. They had a king, but the king, if you think about the Old Testament, Israel and their government, they had a king. They did not have a legislative branch. But you wouldn't necessarily expect that in a monarchy anyway. They didn't have a legislative branch, but there was a judicial branch. The judicial branch was the priesthood. So the priest you can't just take it in a religious sense. The priest had a civic role. Remember in the law, they had the cities of refuge and the cities of refuge, if you accidentally killed someone and it wasn't murder, but you didn't want to be hung by sundown, run to the city of refuge. The Levites, the priests, they were to put a court together and give you a fair trial. So the Levites were the priest and the judge. So basically, when it says they are as people that strive with the priests, what it says is, your judicial system is so sunk, you know, nobody is going to whatever the decree is, nobody's going to go buy it anyway, and so why bother? Does it really matter? And so the second part I think we have to read in the historical setting. And striving with the priest is not the same thing as disagreeing with the preacher today. It is really much more of saying your judicial system has no teeth to it. It can't do anything anyway. You're whistling Dixie. Is that how you use that term? I don't know. Nobody here. We're not in Dixieland. You're from West Virginia. That's not really Dixiegar, is it? Okay, we don't know what that means. Spitting in the wind. How's that? You're spitting in the wind. It's just gonna come back right at you. So that was not good to give right after supper. Okay, let's move to the next verse. What do you say here? So let no man strive. Verse five. Therefore shalt out fall in the day, and the prophet also shall fall with thee in the night, and I will destroy thy mother. Okay, what have we got there? I think thou shalt fall. We get that in the day. Normally in prophetic literature, and I would say almost anywhere in the Bible, if it just talks about the day and it doesn't tell you which day it is, it's talking about the great and terrible day of the Lord, that coming day when God is going to judge you're, going to fall in the. Day. The day or that day? Again, if it's not defined in context, you can almost always put your money on it. That's that day of judgment. So we get that, okay, God is bringing a lawsuit. He's basically saying, you're not going to make it. You're going to fall in the day, and the prophet also shall fall with thee in the night. Now, this is one that stumps you a little bit, because there's no prophetic equivalent to the night. We know what the day is, but what is the night? You almost put it, okay, you can put it. These people are going to fall in the daylight, and these people are going to fall after sundown. But what sense does that make? It doesn't really make any sense. So I don't think you can really say before Sunday and you're going to fall and after that, the prophets are going to fall. So I think still we're talking even though it says the night. And there just is. When you let Scripture interpret Scripture, you look through and you find there's not really a general reference to the night, except for this one. But it seems that the day and the night are the same thing. And the reason I say that is thou shalt fall in the day and the prophet shall fall with thee in the night. Well, if I'm already fallen, then how is he going to fall with me if I fall in the day, how does he fall with me in the night? It seems that the day and the night is talking about the same thing. So perhaps it's broadening it out just a little bit and saying in the day of Jacob's trouble, which is, you know, the night of distress, kind of putting it in that sense that both are going to fall and I will destroy thy mother. Well, first off, I think it's a reference to Jerusalem, but likely in the poetic nature that we had in verses one, two and three. Thy mother remember is gomer. Gomer the adulterous wife that represented the generation of Israel that turned their back. So the mother is going to be destroyed. There is going to be some hope for the children. That's what we saw in one, two and three. And that this is probably the picture that we have there. And then I want to do one more verse because it's a verse that we have heard many times before. And before we leave here tonight, I suspected I would have six minutes left, so I saved this one verse here. When we get one through five, I kind of drew a line in the outline there, as you can see, and one through five, I was moving from the symbolic to the literal, and it's sort of an introduction to verses four through the end of the chapter, which I think is 13. And so verses five excuse me, verses six. Verses six through onward is where after verse five, you draw the line and verse verses six and onward. Verse six through eleven, anyway, is a charge against the priest. And then after that, in verse twelve, he's going to have a charge against the people. So here's sort of a general condemnation. Hey, we're going to court. Let me give you some advice about what's happening, really advice about the last days, even though there's so many things we could take and say, yeah, that fits for today and that fits for today, and that fits for today, and that fits for today. But it's not really completely about today. It's just incidentally fits for today. And then you begin this new section here that begins in verse six, and that is this charge against the priest. Let's read verse six, which maybe is the most familiar book that there is in Hosea. Now, Hosea is not at the top of the list of everybody's favorite Bible book, right? Most people are like Jose, I remember something about his wife. That's about it. But this verse is fairly well known, the beginning of it anyway. My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. Stop right there. He comes directly and he's speaking to the priesthood. We don't know that here, but let's keep reading. My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge because thou hast rejected knowledge. I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me, saying, thou hast forgotten the law of God. I will also forget thy children. Okay, so this thy, thou the guy I'm talking to, you are a priest. And you, thou shalt be no priest to me. The word priest right there, by the way, the Hebrew word is Cohen. You've perhaps heard it before. Sometimes in our American society we might pronounce it Colin, and it even goes in a number of varieties. It morphed a lot of different ways, but it means priest. The Kohanim is the priesthood. And here's the singular, the Cohen, you will be no Cohen, you're not going to be a priest to me. Now, again, remember, the priest has kind of a judicial role as well, beyond just the religious role that you and I would associate with. And the Lord is speaking to him and he gives us this condemnation and six through twelve is going to fulfill all that. But he says, hey, you're no longer going to be a priest for me. This again, I think is in the last days. That's the context that we set ourselves in and says, okay, there's going to be a priesthood. That is going to very much change. As a matter of fact, seeing thou hast forgotten the law of God, who is this? It's in the singular. You are not going to be a priest. Well, who are we talking about? Are we talking about the high priest? And if so, are we talking about the high priest in Hosea's day? And if so, are we talking about? The one in Jerusalem down in Judea when Jose is up here in Israel, and I don't even think that Israel, the northern kingdom, had a high priest. They took Judaism and kind of morphed it into their own thing and they didn't even have a single temple. They built two places of worship, if you will. They probably call them temples, but very different from the temple in Jerusalem. So who is this priest here? I kind of suspect, and I could be wrong, but I did write a book about it once, so I couldn't be wrong, could I? I kind of suspect thou shalt be no priest to me is talking about the one when you get to the book of Revelation, who is called the false prophet. You, false prophet, are going to lose your position, especially with my people. You've stood as if you were someone who is knowledgeable of the law of God, but you don't have a place in the coming kingdom. After the day of the judgment, you're going to be out. That's my speculation. Now we'll take that under advisement. How's that? That the priest of six through eleven is the false prophet in the last days. I'm not ready to fully commit myself, but I am ready to put it out there as a proposal and see what happens as we continue to study on. But let's go back again when he says then this is what is going to happen. And the reason is going to be that I'm kind of working from the bottom of the verse up. The reason that he's going to be rejected is this right here. Thou hast rejected knowledge. Okay? So let's just assume for a moment, play pretend that the false prophet is a good Jew in Israel in the last days and he trusts a little too much in the guy that we would call the Antichrist and he becomes his right hand man, so to speak. And there was all the evidence speaking against him. Like even for instance, let him who has wisdom calculate the number of the beasts. The number is six. Six. But this guy rejects all that. He's not going to listen to it, he's not going to hear it. He's made up his mind, he trusts the science. And so what happens? He rejected knowledge. Now when he rejects knowledge, then what happens? Backing up that chain a little bit. Then my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Sorry about that. That issue right there comes to be what God is. I think the Hebrew word is ticked off. What God is ticked off about is my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. If they just knew what was going on, then things would not have been this way for my people. I think this OK destroyed for lack of knowledge. I would suspect if you went down through world history that most mass destruction came because of lack of knowledge. But then you might be able to say most lack of knowledge came because too many people put their head in the sand. It wasn't that the knowledge was totally unavailable, it's that they didn't trust it when they smelled a rat and someone said, no, this is Polish tacos. Is that what's really in those? No, they didn't trust it all. They didn't trust their own sense of discernment and follow through, and they begin to be ultimately destroyed for lack of knowledge. But it's both sad and shocking how easy it is to get a massive people like this. Here are my people to get a massive people who are destroyed by lack of knowledge because they're just not all that interested. We, as humanity, become way too trusting. They said this, they said that, and there it is, and we go for it and end up being destroyed for lack of knowledge. And again, this is really talking about Israel in its last days. I think that's my premise anyway. My assumption, israel in the last days. But there's just so much there that strikes close to home that we ought to say, well, you know what? I may be destroyed for some other reason, but it's not going to be lack of knowledge. I may be destroyed for knowledge. If you know Hillary Clinton and her friends, that was free, you don't have to pay for that, but you may be destroyed for something. But at least we ought to come and say, it's not going to be a lack of knowledge. It might be hit by a bus or whatever, but I'm not going to be destroyed by a lack of knowledge because it's so easy to educate ourselves, and especially in today's world, it's easy to educate ourselves. It might have been more difficult in, I don't know, the Middle Ages or something like that, where you couldn't read and you didn't have a book, and everything was so far off limits from you, and you had to get food on the table that night. It made it more challenging. But for heaven's sake, you and I can Google it, and that's where all the right answers are. Okay, maybe not, but we can dig out the truth and get there. So I give that as a teaser for next time. Is next week Thanksgiving, so we will not meet next week. It will be two weeks from tonight before we meet again. We'll take off the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and we'll pick back up there with my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge and be ready to go from that point on. This Sunday we have our Hermeneutics class on 945. If you wanted to learn how to interpret the Bible, this is either the next to the last or the last. I haven't figured it out yet. Study in Hermeneutics, then we'll lead in something else. And then at 1045, we're back to Abraham Abram, as he is at this point in the life of times of Abraham and we'll have a good time and there's no food on Sunday. Sorry about that. With that, let me lead us in the word prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word to us. And it's about an ancient people a long time ago and their life. Then, if I'm right in my speculation here and interpretation, it's about people in the future, and we're neither of those people. And yet here we can see so much application that hits to us in just very obvious ways in any kind of society, and especially one like ours that is lacking truth and mercy and the knowledge of God. And so we pray that not only in our knowledge, but with our kids and our grandkids and our neighbors and our friends, we can help expand that truth, mercy and knowledge of God for the care of those around us. And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. God bless. Ladies and gentlemen, you're dismissed. Thanks online for joining us.