Participants: Chris Holland
Series Code: IIWC
Program Code: IIWC201601A
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00:01 IIW-2016-1 --- What in the world is going on #1
00:05 IIW-2016-1 --- What in the world is going on #1 00:11 IIW-2016-1 --- What in the world is going on #1 00:16 IIW-2016-1 --- What in the world is going on #1 00:21 IIW-2016-1 --- What in the world is going on #1 00:25 IIW-2016-1 --- What in the world is going on #1 00:30 IIW-2016-1 --- What in the world is going on #1 00:34 IIW-2016-1 --- What in the world is going on #1 01:31 >>Announcer: It has stood the test of time. 01:35 God's book, The Bible 01:38 Still relevant in today's complex world 01:44 It Is Written 01:46 Sharing messages of hope around the world! 01:59 On July 14 2016, the headlines broke across the screen of major news outlets.tragedy strikes 02:07 Nice, France. The horrific details of that day, once again drew attention to the terrorist 02:15 organization ISIS. Mohamed LahouaiejBouhlel, a Tunisian resident of France drove his 02:23 cargo truck into the crowds celebrating Bastille Day. 86 people were killed and over 300 02:31 people were injured. Just one day later there was an attempted coup in Turkey. Over 300 were 02:39 killed and thousands were injured. It seems that there is not a day that goes by without 02:47 some type of calamity unfolding. Many wonder, what is to happen next? Some believe that these 02:57 stirrings are merely part of a grand plan in the closing events of earth's history. Some are 03:04 waiting for Jerusalem's temple to be rebuilt? Many wonder will earth's last war, Armageddon, 03:12 begin somewhere in the Middle East and should we be focusing our attention there? 03:22 Today we begin a series of teachings that will help answer those questions because I am 03:27 quite concerned friends that we are living at a time when many Bible teachers and students are 03:33 looking the wrong direction and will miss out on one of the most fundamental Bible teachings. I 03:40 am afraid that we may just be missing out on one of the most hopeful teachings as well. As we 03:48 have studied the various prophecies of the Bible. We have found that the prophecy of 03:54 Daniel chapter 2 is vital to understanding the overarching prophetic timeline of the Bible. 04:01 In fact Daniel chapter 2 is a foundational prophecy that helps the reader understand, not only 04:10 the rest of the book of Daniel, but also to understand the entire book of Revelation. Now 04:15 we don't have time to go into the details of that dream, but as a reminder Nebuchadnezzar, 04:24 the king of Babylon, had a dream. And in that dream, what did he see? That is right, he 04:32 saw an image. It was a metal image, and a particularly interesting metal image, because 04:39 the metal image had the highest-value metal at the top, the lowest-value metal at the 04:46 bottom. However, it had the metal of the least-strength at the top, and the strongest metal 04:53 at the bottom. So it was in decreasing value, but increasing strength. As a reminder, in 05:01 Daniel 2, as Nebuchadnezzar had this dream, he could not interpret the dream. In fact, he 05:07 could not even remember the dream, so he called together his astrologers, his soothsayers, 05:11 his psychics, and asked them, "Tell me the dream and its interpretation." And they could 05:16 not tell him the dream and they could not give him the interpretation. The prophet 05:22 Daniel was among the wise men of the empire, Daniel prayed to the God of heaven, and God gave him 05:29 the dream and its interpretation. As a brief overview of that image that was 05:36 in the dream, the head of gold represented the empire of Babylon. The chest and arms of 05:40 silver were the empire of Medo-Persia, or Persia. The midsection of bronze or brass 05:47 was the empire of Greece; the legs of iron, Rome; and then the feet of iron mixed with clay was 05:55 a divided Roman empire. 05:59 Later in the book of Daniel in Daniel chapter 7, there is another vision. However in this 06:05 prophecy. Daniel is the one that has the dream, and when Daniel has this dream, there isn't a 06:10 metal image, but rather, we have animals, animals that you wouldn't find at the zoo, 06:18 animals you would not find in the wild. There was a lion with wings; a bear that is humped up 06:27 on one side with three ribs in its mouth; a leopard with four heads and four wings; and then a 06:33 beast that Daniel said was an indescribable beast. Once again, God gave to Daniel the history 06:40 of the world empires. This idea of having a prophecy that describes the same time period 06:48 is a principle called "repeat and enlarge" or the larger word for it is, "recapitulation." 06:55 Recapitulation is the idea that you tell someone something, and then you tell it to them again 07:02 with a little bit greater detail. And so in Daniel chapter 7, God provides greater detail, 07:09 but the same empires are represented: the lion with wings being Babylon; the bear humped 07:16 up on one side being the Persian empire; the leopard with four heads and four wings 07:21 representing Greece and its rapid, rapid advancement and conquering of the world; and 07:27 then its four heads representing the four divisions of the Greek empire; and then this 07:32 indescribable beast that had ten horns representing the Roman Empire and the eventual 07:38 fracturing of the Roman empire into ten major divisions. 07:47 Today, however, we take a journey into Daniel, the 8th chapter. And it is in Daniel 07:52 chapter 8 that there is a key that unlocks the answers to the crisis that we are facing today 07:59 in the 21st century.And in this the 8th chapter of Daniel, we have an extraordinary prophecy. 08:08 The prophet Daniel once again has a dream and this is what the Bible says in Daniel 8:1: 08:37 So Daniel has this other dream. This dream took place in the third year of the reign of king 08:43 Belshazzar. And what did he see in the dream? The Bible continues: 09:06 So Daniel's dream once again has animals, and the first animal was a ram. The simple questionwe 09:13 must ask is, "What does that mean?" Well, in this prophecy in particular, we don't need to 09:20 turn to the pages of history to get the answer, the Bible supplies further details of this 09:27 ram to clue us in. 09:49 Who is this ram? What does a ram represent? Now, a beast in Bible prophecies represents either a 09:57 king or a kingdom. And so, to help Daniel and to help us to clearly understand th angel 10:03 visitor who has been giving the message to Daniel, tells him what this ram is: 10:21 As I explained earlier this is a perfect example of recapitulation, or repeating and 10:26 enlarging. In Daniel 2, the metal image represented the history of world empires, 10:32 Babylon, Medo-Persia or Persia, Greece, Rome, and then the division of Rome. Then Daniel 10:39 chapter 7 once again represents the empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia or Persia, Greece, 10:45 Rome, and divided Rome through animal representations. 10:55 Now, in Daniel chapter 8, Daniel has a dream, and so what would be the expectation? Well, of 11:05 course the expectation would be, if it is repeating and enlarging, that you would once 11:11 again find Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, divided Rome. But we have something interesting 11:17 here. The first beast is the ram, and that ram represents Medo-Persia. Babylon seems to 11:26 have been left off. Why would Babylon be left off? Well, my dear friends, because although 11:35 Belshazzar was the current king and a Babylonian king, the Babylonian kingdom was in its 11:45 final years and fading from the scene. And so no longer was Babylon critical to the 11:51 prophetic outline. And so God does not have an animal or a beast to represent Babylon, 11:59 because Babylon was simply going off the scene. Now God's concern is beyond Babylon, and so the 12:07 first beast now starts at the chest and arms of silver of Daniel 2, or with the bear 12:13 humped up on one side of Daniel 7. And now we have a ram. Now, the ram has interesting 12:20 characteristics to it. The ram represents theMedo-Persian empire, and Medo-Persia reigned 12:26 from 539 to 331 B.C. And what you will notice is that Daniel 8 will now give us more details. 12:36 First, the prophecy gives us an indication of its conquering westward, northward, and 12:45 southward. What a fitting symbol, because there in modern-day Iran is where the 12:51 Medo-Persian empire would have existed. And that is the way they conquered: they went to the 12:58 west, they went to the north, they went to the south. The book of Daniel records that the 13:04 Medo-Persian empire conquered the Babylonians in a most spectacular fashion. 13:14 The Babylonian empire, and particularly, the city of Babylon, had a walled city with 13:21 three actual walls, and those walls were so wide, according to historians, that a chariot could 13:27 ride on the top of it. And on the interior of the city of Babylon, historians record that 13:33 they had an over 20 years supply of food. At that time Babylon was considered an unconquerable 13:42 city and an unconquerable empire. The River Euphrates flowed through the centre of 13:48 Babylon, so they had an unlimited supply of water. You have water, you have food, and 13:55 you can exist for a very long time by simply just not leaving your city. However, Cyrus, the 14:07 generalof the Medo-Persian army, came from the west. And along his journey, one of his 14:14 treasured horses was killed. He was infuriated by that and so he began to dig channels along the 14:23 Euphrates River. And as he'd begun to dig these channels along the Euphrates River, the 14:29 levels of the Euphrates River went down. And the armies of Cyrus marched toward Babylon. On 14:36 one particular evening, as the Babylonian king, Belshazzar, along with those who served in 14:43 his empire, partied and had festivities, the Persian army advanced, they finally arrived 14:52 at the Euphrates River, where it passed under the walls of Babylon. Normally, there would 14:59 have been a gate that would have closed that would still have prevented them from entering the 15:05 city. However, that evening, the gate had been left up. Exactly as predicted, in Isaiah chapter 15:14 45 and verse 1. Isaiah chapter 45 and verse 1 predicted 150 years before Cyrus was born, 15:22 that Cyrus would be the conqueror and that he would enter under a raised gate. And 15:32 so the Persians entered into Babylon on that fateful night and completely decimated Babylon 15:38 and conquered it.The Persian soldiers took the impregnable city by force. 15:50 However, there is a detail that many miss, that I want you to notice. That detail is found in 15:56 Daniel chapter 8 and verse 3 and it says this: 16:07 Here's the interesting note of history, I don't want you to miss. The Medes were initially a 16:12 very powerful entity, who gave the Assyrian empire considerable difficulty from the ninth to the 16:19 seventh century BC. So what am I saying here? I have often referred to this empire as the 16:25 Medo-Persian empire. But if you go to the history books today, history books typically will not 16:30 call it the Medo-Persian empire; they will simply call it the Persian empire, because the 16:36 Persians would envelop or take over the Medes. However initially, when these empires of 16:43 the Medes and Persians came together in unity to defeat the empires around them, it was in 16:52 absolute precision, according to the prophetic word of Daniel The Medes in the original 16:56 composition were the stronger of the two. However, as history continued, eventually under 17:04 Cyrus, the Persians became the stronger of the two. The royal houses of the Medes and the 17:10 Persians intermarried, and under Cyrus' leadership, the Persians became the stronger. When Cyrus 17:18 conquered Media, he simpy incorporated it into his kingdom, which is why we have 17:23 the combined name of the Medo-Persian empire. You see, Daniel said, through the 17:29 prophetic word, that the ram would have two horns representing the kings of Media 17:35 and Persia, the Medo-Persian empire, and one would be higher, or greater than the other, but 17:41 it would come up last. Daniel saw, because God gave it to him in vision, that the Medes would 17:48 be the stronger of the two, and then the Persians would come in and be the strongest, so much so 17:55 that it would simply envelop the empire. 18:03 And so, you have the Medo-Persian empire,what history calls the Persian empire, which 18:08 conquered Babylon. The major conquest of the Persians toward the north was the kingdom of 18:14 Lydia, which is near ancient Turkey. Cyrus conquered it in 548 B.C. To the west, Persia 18:21 under Cyrus conquered Babylon. And the south, Cyrus' son Cambyses conquered Egypt. And so 18:30 just as the prophetic word would say, just as Daniel 8 predicted, Medo-Persia would conquer to the 18:36 north, to the west, and to the south. Furthermore, the Ram is such a fitting symbol of the 18:43 Medo-Persian empire. Ancient Persian seals, that have been found in archaeological 18:49 excavations, have an animal depicted on them. That animal is none other than the ram. What a 18:56 fitting symbol. What a fitting symbol God would use to represent the Medo-Persian 19:01 empire, a ram, a symbol that they would use in their own empire. But the prophecy 19:09 continues, and Daniel is receiving more information, and it says this: 19:58 Imagine the scene that unfolds before Daniel. He sees this ram with two horns, one higher than 20:03 the other. And then out of the west, there comes a goat, and this goat is charging, and it 20:09 seems to be charging so fast that its feet are not even touching the ground. And it 20:14 attacks the ram, it tramples the ram, until there is no more. Who is this power that would trample 20:21 down the Medo-Persians? Who is this power that would conquer the Medo-Persians? Well we are 20:29 all out of time. Next time, however, we will answer that question and continue to answer 20:36 the questions that we began with. The most important principle that I want to leave 20:42 you with today is taught over and over again in the Bible and is found in Daniel 2:21 and it 20:49 says this, 20:59 My dear friends, we need not fear for the future. God has the future of this world in His 21:07 hands. We must never forget this. No election, no governmental coup, no terrorist 21:13 attack should cause us to lose sight of the hope that we have in Jesus Christ, that He has 21:21 this whole world and its future in His hands. 21:29 Heavenly Father, we are so thankful that You have this world and its future in Your 21:34 hands. We are thankful that although there are many calamities, many terrorist 21:40 attacks, many wars, many rumours of war, that the future is in Your hands, that we can place 21:49 our faith and trust in You, that we can experience peace and security, knowing that You are 21:56 coming again soon, and that when You come, You will make all wrongs right. You will bring 22:02 this world and its problems to an end. And we will reign with You for eternity in heaven. 22:10 Thank You so much, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. 22:37 Bev: Hi Everyone. Plagued for some time with pain first in her heel, then in her hip, then in 22:43 her knee, Angie wasn't sure exactly what to do, but the answer came one day in an 22:48 unlikely form. She knew all about the health benefits of eating more plant-based foods, 22:54 but found it difficult sometimes with her schedule and her young daughter's food preferences. 22:59 Help came, though, in the form of her daughter's one week away at summer camp. Having the week 23:05 all to herself for the first time since her daughter was born, Angie took the opportunity 23:10 to cleanse her body by drinking only smoothies all week. Dark leafy greens, a greens powder, 23:18 and fruit comprised the bulk of her smoothies. She also drank lots of water. She continued 23:24 thereafter by adding nice, big salads in her every day eating Do you think there was any 23:31 change in her health? You know it! Absolutely there was! She soon noticed that she was able 23:36 to walk up and down stairs without much pain. Excited by this discovery, Angie is feeling 23:43 encouraged to keep eating more plant-based foods and continue with her smoothies to help gain 23:48 control of her weight. Remember, when you're making a salad, make it robust. Fill it 23:55 up with good, yummy ingredients, like different greens, tomatoes, red or yellow peppers, 23:59 cucumbers, celery, bean sprouts, the list is endless! And, a really yummy way to spice up 24:05 your salads is with Seasoned Seeds. They're so easy to make. Now, this recipe is really for 24:11 those of you who have a dehydrator at home. The health benefit of using a dehydrator is 24:17 that because you are simply drying out the water, slightly warming and not cooking the 24:22 food, you are still left with all the nutrition intact as well as all the food's natural 24:27 enzymes. I know that most people don't have a dehydrator, though, so using an oven at the very 24:33 lowest setting can also work, but the health benefits won't quite be the same. Here's my 24:39 recipe for Seasoned Seeds. Bev: Taking two cups of pumpkin or sunflower seeds, soaking them 24:44 for four to seven hours, kind of like overnight, draining them and then rinsing them. And then 24:50 about a quarter cup of tamari. Tamari is a thicker, less salty, fermented soy sauce that 24:56 contains less or no wheat. And also using about half a tablespoon of onion powder, a 25:02 quarter teaspoon of garlic powder, a quarter teaspoon of smoked paprika or just regular 25:07 paprika, and a quarter teaspoon of cayenne to just kick it up a notch. So what we're going to do 25:13 here, we've got our pumpkin seeds, and gentlemen, these are really good for you, good for 25:19 your prostate. And then we're going to add the tamari. Then we're just going to throw in all 25:29 the other spices. And then we're going to mix it. And then I'll show you that final product. 25:37 Okay, so we're mixing this all up just to coat it really nicely. And then you're going to 25:47 spread it onto either your dehydrator sheet or your baking sheet. And if it's in the 25:53 dehydrator, you're going to just let it dry out, so that's going to be, oh, could be overnight, 25:59 upwards of 18 to 24 hours, depending on your dehydrator. You want them to be nice and dry 26:04 and crisp. And if you're putting it in the oven, you want to set it at the lowest setting in the 26:10 oven and just leave it until the seeds are dry and really crisp. They need to be very dry. Now, 26:16 stored in a sealed glass container in the refrigerator, the seasoned seeds will keep for 26:20 six months. And this is what they're going to look like: nice and yummy and crispy and they've 26:28 got the nice colouring on there. They really are delicious. Just sprinkle those on your salad and 26:33 add whatever salad dressing you're going to use and you're good to go. Try these; they're 26:39 easy, they're good for you, and so yummy. I'll see you next time. 26:50 Friends, the study of prophecy is a thrilling adventure, because as we study prophecy, it 26:56 confirms and affirms the reliability of the Bible. Today I'd like to offer you the "Focus 27:05 on Prophecy" lessons. The "Focus on Prophecy" lessons take a detailed look at the books of 27:11 Daniel and Revelation. As you work through the "Focus on Prophecy" lessons, you will see 27:17 God demonstrate that His Word is reliable. It will help you increase your faith, and it will 27:25 draw you nearer to Jesus. Now, in addition to the "Focus on Prophecy" lessons, I'd like to 27:31 offer you today, for any size donation, one of the It Is Written Canada classic books. It 27:38 was a book written by our founder Henry Feyerabend. That book is titled Daniel Verse by 27:44 Verse. As you read its pages, you will be thrilled on the adventure that you will take in 27:50 learning more about God and the reliability of His Word. Here's the information that you need 28:54 Dear friends, there's nothing better than a relationship with Jesus. 28:57 There's no more security that can be found in knowing that He has our future in His hands. At 29:05 It Is Written, we are committed to helping people find hope in Jesus. I want to invite you to 29:12 go to our website, www.itiswrittencanada.ca, and there you'll find a number of 29:18 resources to build your spiritual library and to draw nearer to Jesus. I'd also invite 29:25 you to go to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/iiwcanada, and there you can find an 29:31 archive of all of our programs. You can like us on Facebook. You can follow us on Twitter. And 29:37 you can actually follow me on Twitter as well; @PastorHolland is my address. Friends, I hope 29:44 you enjoyed today's program. I invite you to join us again next week. But until then, remember, 29:49 it is written: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from 29:56 the mouth of God." 29:59 ########## |
Revised 2016-10-27