 Father, we hear many sermons, we've received a lot of instruction, we are not strangers to your word, to your truth, but there's something you want us to hear. There's an opportunity here with God for you to speak to us. We want to pause before we begin this message to prepare our hearts. We want to pause to humble ourselves before you. We want to humble ourselves to God before the Holy One of Israel. We need to hear your words. We need this to be impressed upon our lives and minds. We need to make commitments here this morning, Father. We need to see this not in light of history, but in light of the present. We are here, the blanks must yet be filled in, the chapter is not yet finished. And dear God, take the faith that's in these dear women as they demonstrated it and lived in debt and suffered and hoped and prayed and lived and put that into our hearts, our mother's hearts, our grandmothers, our dear sisters, our youth, girls, all of us. Fill us, dear God, with this message this morning and bless the dear brothers he shares it and give him liberty and freedom. Give him, dear Father, conviction and let his words move us to bow down. May we worship and make the complete sacrifice, the utter sacrifice, so that death, the one day might overtake us, begins in this tabernacle today as we surrender ourselves to God and we pray this special blessing in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. I've been asked to tell you the stories of some ladies of faith, women of faith. In Hebrews 11, there are several, a couple of women mentioned, Sarah, whose name means princes or mother of a multitude. What other lady of faith do you remember in that chapter? Well, it's Rahab the harlot, quite a contrast between those two. Anymore? Well, women receive their dead rates of life. In this next sentence, I believe, is a reference to history that is not well known that I like to tell you about later in the message. Stories were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. I have four stories today of ladies of faith. I'm going to tell those stories with little commentary, the stories speak for themselves and I suppose that anything I could say would only detract. The last story particularly has some graphic descriptions of torture. I'm just going to read them as they're recorded in history without comment, but I will give you this warning. If you have children who are troubled by things like this and have sensitive hearts and spirits and might have nightmares, you might want to just exit when we get to the story of the mother of seven. My first story is about a woman named Perpetua and her maid, Felicitus. How many of you know the story? A few of you do. Great. Ladies of faith. They were faithful ladies, Christian martyrs, early in the third century. Perpetua was a woman of about 22 years of age, resident in North Africa, probably Carthage, preparing for baptism. It's amazing. This woman left us a diary of her days in prison. Britannica Encyclopedia says her text is one of the rare surviving documents written by a woman in the ancient world. I'll be quoting some of that diary this morning, letting her tell her story. Perpetua's maid Felicitus was a slave. She was captured and imprisoned by, along with her mistress. She was expecting a child in Roman law for batter execution until she gave birth to that child. My sources for this story are Martyrs Meir, page 127, Christianity Today and their website. But especially, you can read this story in the Antionising Fathers set, volume 3, near the end of the book, pages 699 through 706. There you can read Perpetua's own diary, her own words with a commentary by a contemporary, probably written by Tritulian. An amazing reading. I had never read it in full until I prepared for this message. So here's what I read, some of the things. I'm going to make it quite brief this morning from Perpetua's own words. After her arrest, her pagan father immediately came to her in prison and told her, just deny you are a Christian. Father, she said, do you see this vase here? Could I, could it be called by any other name than what it is? No, he replied. Well, neither can I be called anything other than what I am a Christian. In her trial, her father burst into the courtroom carrying Perpetua's son in his arms. He embraced his daughter, pleading, perform the sacrifice, have pity on your baby. The governor probably wanting to void executing a mother of a child added, have pity on your father's gray head, have pity on your infant son. Offer the sacrifice. That's all you have to do. Just offer the sacrifice on the welfare of the emperor. Perpetua replied simply, I will not. Are you a Christian then asked the governor, yes I am. Perpetua replied. The eyewitness wrote, the prisoners proceeded from the prison into the amphitheater, joyous and a brilliant countenance. I'm abbreviating this story a lot. I got to move quickly today. The people demanded Perpetua saying some songs as they were exiting into the amphitheater. The people demanded that they should be tortured, tormented with scourges. The martyrs rejoiced that they should have incurred any one of their Lord's passions. They could suffer like Jesus. For the young women, the devil prepared a very fierce cal, provided especially for that purpose, contrary to custom, matching their sex to that of the beast. And so stripped and closed with nets, they were led forth. She and the other five martyrs, there were a group of them led forth that day to be martyred, were all attacked by beasts, some by a leopard, some by a bear. And finally, all were killed by the sword. This happened around AD 203. This next picture is not an etching of Felicia of Perpetua's martyrdom, but of Blandina who was martyred just a few decades later up in France. But I think it shows very well what happened to Perpetua and matches the description that you can read there of her martyrdom. I'd like to tell you next the story of Anakin Jones, a 16th century lady of faith. This story is told in Martyr's Mirror, where she is called Anna of Rotterdam. And it's told by Peter Hoover in The Secret of the Strength and some of that retelling, I quote. Many years later, this woman was a contemporary of Manusimus, a contemporary of Casiodora de Reina that I talked about yesterday. She lived in the same time period, right in the early times of the Anabaptists when there were many martyrs in Holland. She was an only child, the heiress of a considerable fortune. She married young to a young man named Arendt. They should have been happy, but money and parties and nice dresses and expensive wines and all that they had of the world. Things that we have, my friend, did not meet the longings of their hearts. When she was 24, she was baptized with her husband by a visiting Anabaptist preacher whom they hosted in their home. And she says that she sacrificed everything for her faith. She gave everything up because she knew what happened to Anabaptists. She and her husband actually moved to London for a season to escape persecution. He died there. I'm not sure why, but she returned to Holland. And there she and a travel companion, Christina, were on a wagon one early one morning singing quietly some Christian songs as they traveled. Because they sang, they were suspected of being Anabaptists, reported to the authorities at the city when they arrived there, captured and imprisoned and sentenced to death. There are more details to this story, but I'm not going to tell them. Just say this much. On the morning of the planned execution day, Anakin awoke from her sleep, wrote a letter to her 15-month-old son. She folded it, tied it in a piece of cloth along with a few coins she had. She dressed her son, Isaiah Isaias, and at 9 o'clock they led her and Christina down the street toward the city gates and the river outside. Crowds of people lined the streets on the way Anakin called out, I have a baby, five quarters of a year old, who will take him? Who will raise him for me? A baker and father of six reached out and took him. Anakin gave him the folded piece of cloth with the coins and the letter. Then they tied the women up, broke the ice, and threw them into the river to drown. How many of you are the age of that mother today? How many of you have a 15-month-old son or a child like Perpetua? How many of you are women of faith? How many of us are men of faith? Here's a little leaching from the martyrs' mirror that shows Anakin handing her son, you maybe can't see him real well, to this baker and this little pouch with the coins that she had and the letter inside giving her son on the way into the door of eternity. She went gladly. And I'd like to just read to you, I don't know how you can understand these words best. If you can follow along and hear and see both, that's great. Maybe you want to just close your eyes and listen, depending what kind of a person you are. I'd like to just read to you the letter that this mother wrote. I think it's a powerful letter. If it doesn't touch your heart, ask God to soften your heart. Listen, my son, to the instructions of your mother. I am now going the way of the prophets, apostles, and martyrs, to drink from the cup from which they drank. I am going the way of Christ who had to drink from that cup himself. Since he, the shepherd, has gone this way, he calls his sheep to come after him. It is the way to the water spring of life. This is the way the kings from the land of the rising sun came to enter the holy age. It is the way of the dead who cry from beneath the altar, Lord, how long? It is the way of those who are sealed in their foreheads by God. See all these had to drink from the cup of bitterness, like the one who rescues us has said, the servant is not greater than his Lord. These are the words of the Lord Jesus. Here it is good enough for him to be made equal to his Lord. No one comes to life except through this way. She understood that, do we? So she wrote to her son, he was only 15 months, and I suppose that he read this letter later in life, I don't really know. She wrote to him, so go through this narrow gate. My son, be thankful for the Lord's chastening. If you want to enter the holy world and the inheritance of the saints, follow them. The way to true life is only one step wide. On one side is the fire, and on the other side is the river. How shall you make it through? Look, my son, there are no shortcuts. There is no easier option. Every alternate route leads to death. The way of life is found by few, and walked upon by fewer yet. My child, don't follow the crowd. Keep your feet from the way of the majority, because it leads to hell. But if you hear of a poor, needy, and rejected little group that everyone makes fun of and hates, go there. When you hear of the cross, there is Christ. I don't think I really need to comment about us Christians in America. I think we have something to learn. And the lessons are just around the corner. It's coming to us. I read on, don't draw back from the cross. Flee the world, hold to God, and fear Him alone. Keep His commandments. Remember His words. Write them on your heart. Bind them on your forehead. Speak of them day and night, and you will become a fruitful plant. Keep your body holy for the Lord's service, though so that His name will be made great in you. Do not be ashamed to confess Him before men. Do not be afraid of men. Rather, have your life, rather leave your life than depart from the truth. She wrote on, my son, struggle for what is right. This battleground, this world as a battleground, tozer said, not a playground. You better take that to heart. My son, struggle for what is right. Put on the armor of God. Be a true Israelite. Kick injustice away with your feet. The world and all that is in it, and love what is from above. Remember that you do not belong to the world, just like your father and mother did not belong to the world. Be a true disciple of Christ, and have no community with the world. O my child, remember my instructions. Do not leave them. May God let you grow up to fear Him. May the light of the gospel shine in you. And notice what she writes. Take it to heart. I don't think we understand, maybe we don't believe this kind of thing, but this is what she said. It's her testimony, not my words. Love your neighbors. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Do not keep two of anything, because others are sure to need what you do not. Share everything God gives you as a result of the sweat of your brow. Distribute what He gives to you. Give it to those who love God, and hoard nothing, not even until the next morning. Then God will bless you. O my son, she concludes, leading life that fits the gospel. And may the God of peace make you holy in body and soul, amen. And then a prayer, O holy Father, sanctify the son of your maid servant. Keep him from evil for your name's sake. That's her letter. You can read it in martyr's mirror for yourself. I cannot add to that. Next I'd like to tell you very briefly about Aisha. From this book, I have it here, The Insanity of God, A Strange Title, True Stories of Faith Resurrected. The author of the book, you see his name there. It's not his real name. Aisha is not her real name. None of those names dare be shared. These people still live in a very dangerous world. We live in a very dangerous world. I like to read that whole story, but I'm going to abbreviate it. You can find it in that book. In Aisha's hometown, there was a medical clinic where Christians provided quality medical care in a large Islamic country. Most of the people of the city appreciated the care and the caring attitude of these Christians in their city. And they just ignored the religion of the staff. But a few radical Muslims opposed the clinic, including Mahmoud, a shopkeeper just across the street. Every Friday, he went down to the mosque just down the street a bit and stirred up the crowd by denouncing those Christians in that medical clinic. Well, this antagonist contracted incurable cancer. And the Christians in the clinic were more than non-resistant. They demonstrated active love. When the Muslims who had shopped in his little store there stopped coming because they feared being, they feared the contagion of cancer, they just quit doing business with him and his business died. The Christians picked up, went over and did their business in his store. They showed him Christ's love. They prayed for him many times. And you know what? It's an amazing little story. He became a Christian and he died in peace at the age of 57. Aisha was his youngest wife. He had several. She was 24 years old when her husband died, the mother of four children. And just before he died, she also became a follower of Jesus. And like those women that brother Dean told us about yesterday, they should have just changed her inside. She became an outspoken witness, a very powerful, effective evangelist. And though they threatened her and threatened her, she would not be silenced. Now they did not normally persecute women in this culture and place, but they finally arrested her and threw her into a cellar under the prison, the police station. That cellar had a dirt floor. She was down there with pits black and there were spiders and critters and rats. And there she was, trapdoor closed, and she opened her mouth to scream in fear. But a melody of praise rose out of her soul. She sang, what was in her soul came out, my friend, what's in your heart comes out. Surprised and strengthened by the sound of her own voice, I'm quoting directly from the book, an overwhelmed by the renewed sense of God's presence beside and within her, she began to sing her praise and worship to Jesus even more loudly. And as she sang, she noticed that office by office in the police station above her head became quiet. Little after midnight, the chief of police opened the trapdoor and spoke down into the darkness. He said, I'm going to release you and let you go home. Please not. She said, she thought it was a trick. She knew that it was unlawful for a woman to be on the streets after dark. Then they would have some pretext to arrest her. No, he said, don't be afraid. I'm going to personally escort you to your house on one condition. She imagined the worst, but he had nothing sinister in mind. He went on to tell her, I don't understand. You are not afraid of anything. My wife, my daughters, and all the women of my family are afraid of everything. I'm going to take you safely home tonight, three days from now. And she caught her breath. And I'm just going to tell you what he said. I didn't write it all out to quote it. Three days from now, he said, I'm going to come to your house and I'm going to take you to my house. And I want you to tell my wife and my daughters and the women of my house what it is in you that has taken all fear out of your heart. I want them to be like you. Now that is a powerful testimony. I cannot comprehend my friend. I cannot comprehend that lady of faith. She lives, I think, yet today. That's a very current story from some Muslim country where multitudes of Christians suffer today. Open doors ministry in their recent newsletter had a little paragraph. I had copied it and then I lost it and didn't have time to dig it up again. But it said women in today's world are often especially targeted for persecution contrary to much of history where women were respected a little more. They're targeted first because they're women and then they're targeted because they are Christians. And it's impossible to know and to count and to comprehend the suffering of women of faith in our generation. Just a little note struck my heart. Oh God, why don't we just stop and pray. Lord, Lord God, Father of all faithful men and women, have mercy on those who suffer today. We do not comprehend what women suffer in the Muslim world, in the Hindu world and many places in our time and generation. Many places Lord, we live so far from that. Our hearts are often, we confess, so caught up in the things of this world. We have so little vision for the needs of the world beyond our doorstep. Oh God, right in our hearts, a deep compassion, a sense of responsibility and help us to hear the words of Anakin of Rotterdam to give what we have to bless those who have nothing. They need it. We have it. Oh God, forgive us for our selfishness, our love of pleasure, our love of the world, our love of ease, our love of wealth, our love of so many things. Oh God, have mercy upon us and have mercy upon them, those who suffer in our generation. Preserve us all for your heavenly kingdom. Now I'd like to tell you about the mother of seven. I took you through history from the third century to the Reformation time, right up to modern times. This time I'm taking you back before Christ. I think this mother and her sons are referenced in Hebrews 11, 35, where it says women receive their dead race to life again, and you can think some stories in the Old Testament where that happened. Amazing stories they are. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. And I just ask you, can you think of any Old Testament story, any Old Testament saint of God, a hero of faith to whom that really applies or that fit exactly that description? People who were tortured who had opportunity to be delivered, well they all did in one sense, but they refused because they had in view a better resurrection. This story is the mother, is the story of such a woman and her seven sons. It's found in 2 Maccabees chapter seven. And you can find that, I have a copy of it right here, I could read the whole account. One chapter long, but in chapter six it tells a little bit more, Antiochus the fourth epiphanies determined to force the Jewish people to Hellenize, that is to adopt Greek culture and customs. And he pursued that aim, I mean with wicked ferocity. He said, you must forsake the Torah, the law of your God, and all this about circumcision and the Sabbath laws and the dietary laws and offering sacrifices here in the temple. He desecrated the temple, I think he was one fulfillment of the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, maybe not the only fulfillment but certainly one. And he decreed death to those who resisted him, including to all who refused to have their son circumcised death to both mother and son. And it was relentless and heartless and tenacious and persistent. It was horrible. There was a terrible time for Jews, men and women of faith, and it led directly into the Maccabees, in revolt of which you can read in the book of Maccabees. There's some beautiful stories there, but I'm just going to tell this one. In chapter six we have the story of Eleazar the aged high priest, a true man of faith, a true man of God, who refused deliverance, though it was offered him and they pled with him to accept it. They said just eat a little of this swine's flesh and we'll set you free. I'd love to tell the story, but you go read it. I'm going to just read from chapter seven some selections. That's all I'm going to do. Seven brothers with their mother were arrested to be bound and tortured with whips and cords until they partook of unlawful swine's flesh. One of them, acting as spokesmen, said, we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our fathers. The king became enraged and commanded that the pans and cauldrons be heated. These were heated immediately and he commanded them to cut the spokesman's tongue out, to scalp him and cut off his hands and his feet, while the rest of the brothers and the mother watched. When he was utterly helpless, the king ordered them to take him to the fire and to fry him in a pan. After the first brother died in this manner, they brought forward the second for their sport. They tore away the skin of his head with the hair and asked him, will you eat pork rather than have your body punished limb by limb? He replied, no. Therefore this brother underwent the same torture as the first, and it describes a bit more. The fourth, the fifth, the sixth all died heroically as their mother watched the gory scenes, exhorting them to be faithful. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? Can you imagine? The fourth son spoke these words to the king before they tortured him to death. One may be chosen to die at the hands of men and to look for the hope that God gives of being raised again by him, but for you there shall be no resurrection to life. The writer says, the mother was especially admirable. Though she saw her seven sons perish in the span of a single day, I think the tortures lasted all day long. She bore it courageously because of her hope in the Lord, filled with a noble spirit. She stirred her womanly reasoning with manly courage, saying to them, I do not know how you came into being in my womb. She spoke this to her sons. It was not I who gave you breath and life. Therefore the Creator who formed man will give you breath and life back. Again, in his mercy, since you now disregarded yourselves for the sake of his laws, a woman of faith, a faithful woman. The very end of the story goes into more detail. This is second Maccabees chapter 7. The king took pity on the last son and it tells the conversation between the king and the mother and the king and the son. And the king said to this young lad, just a young lad, I'll give you position. I'll make you a friend of the king, a very high position. I will give you all you can imagine, all you want of this world's goods. I offer it to you if you will but forsake the laws of your God and eat this swine's flesh. Such a simple act. He refused. Then he appealed to the mother and said, Mother, have mercy on your son. All the rest of your sons have perished. Just have mercy on this one. You tell him, you plead with him to give up his stubbornness and his folly. And she spoke to him in a language I'm not sure. I guess it was Hebrew that he did not understand. She spoke to her son. And instead of pleading with him, she encouraged him to be faithful to the end. And when the king saw what was happening, he became bitterly enraged at the son and his contempt for his offer and treated him worse than the others. I can't imagine. It doesn't give a lot of details in that description. The chapter just ends with these words. So putting his trust completely in the Lord, he died in his innocence. And then it says, last of all, the mother died after her son. And it doesn't tell us how she died. There's some conjecture in history of how she died. Maybe she died of a broken heart. I don't know. Maybe she was martyred. I don't know. But the writer says, let this be enough then about the eating of sacrifices and the extreme tortures. It is enough. It's horrible to read. My friend, brother's sister, these were ladies of faith, four little stories from history. And as we've heard, this history is happening today. It's still being written. There were more martyrs, Christian martyrs in the 20th century than there were in the 19 preceding centuries of Christian history. And if we live to the end of the 21st century, I doubt we will, God knows. That number will be multiplied. Hebrews 11, 35, speaks of women who received their dead raised to life again, and of those who were tortured, not accepting deliverance, men and women, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Did you notice a clear testimony to the hope of the resurrection in that account? A clarity and power that is not seen in the Old Testament Scriptures, though it's there, it's a little more disguised. So clear. So clear. They understood a resurrection and they added living hope. Do we understand? Will we be men and women of faith? And I'd like to just talk to you from my heart a little bit. I do not know what I should say. I do not have this figured out in advance. Let's just pray a minute. Heavenly Father, please, Lord God, control my tongue. Protect me to say what I should say and keep me from saying what I should not say. And please, Lord, let it not be a stunning block to anyone or misunderstood. For Jesus' sake, the Lamb of God and for His glory, amen. I talked about forced Hellenization, and this was pre-Christian world. It was before Christ ever came. But the same thing, my friend, is happening today. Not Hellenization, but the pressures, the forcing of people to abandon the laws of God and the ways of God and to be pushed and forced into the mold and thinking of the world. It's happening today right before our eyes. I don't know what examples I should give. I don't really know what I should say. I don't know how much you pay attention to the news or even how much you should pay attention to the news of what's going on, but it's probably good for at least some of us to be a little bit informed. I did a little bit of reading in preparation for this message, reading that I don't recommend that we immerse ourselves in because most of the information we have or that comes readily to us comes from sort of the right camp of the political world who oppose the agenda of the elitist world, the leftists, the socialists, the communists, whatever label you put on it, and the pressures that are coming to force us into the mold. I think there's a great danger in us reading that kind of rightist literature because we'll soon be swept if we're not careful into thinking that their proposed solutions to resist this in the political world is a solution and it's not the solution. It's a deception from the devil to think that. I want to be very clear. I don't recommend that we spend much time there, but I did read a little. The background is not between the right and the left in the political world. The battleground is between the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of light, and all the works of darkness. And there is no place for us to be involved in the political arena and think that salvation is in President Trump and his policies. We can appreciate some things and we wonder about many. We'll just leave that all with God and pray for the man. There is salvation in President Obama on the other side of the political spectrum. There's no salvation there. Salvation is in Jesus Christ and I call us to follow him. Let's read a few verses here. This is from the book of Revelation. I saw another beast coming about of the earth and he had two horns like a lamb and he spoke like a dragon. Well, you know what the dragon is in the scriptures. He performs great signs. So he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth and the sight of men. He deceives. Notice that. He deceives. He deceives. He deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do. He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast is both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. There's a lot of ways people interpret all of that, but I know that it pictures the grand battle between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness, between the Lamb of God and the dragon of this world. I could talk a long time about all of that, but I don't really have much time here this morning. I just want to get down to a few points. When I ask this question, what thinking must we accept to be acceptable to the elitist pressures of this world? I'm just going to name a couple of things. If you don't believe today that children in the womb can be murdered without conscience, you will be labeled a, all kinds of labels. I don't even need to use them. You'll just be labeled by those who are pushing that agenda. You will be hated by them. You will be woman haters. You'll be all kinds of wicked things in their description because you don't believe that women should have full freedom to kill their unborn infants. And the next step is infanticide. It's all coming. If you don't believe in the LBTG agenda of today, if you listen to the news of all, you know what kind of labels are put on people like that. You know how hatred is spewed from the mouths of those who are pressuring us to conform to the mark of the beast. He causes all both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave to receive a mark on their right hand and on their foreheads. Now I don't know what all that means. I don't know how it's going to be fulfilled, but I am fully convinced that one fulfillment one very real fulfillment is that those people want us to think like they think. And they are going to put all kinds of pressure on us in our world to accept that mark in our foreheads. It's happening today. And then no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast and the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666. Well again, lots of ways to understand this, lots of differences. Probably there's a wide range of differences right here. You know, when is this happening? When is this going to happen? When are we going to be there? I think we're there already. But if not already, I'm just going to spell two letters at a time. What I see, maybe you see something better, why don't you just repeat, I'll give you two letters, you repeat them to me and then tell me what the word is, T-O-M-O-R-R-O-W. What is that word? Tomorrow. It's tomorrow. It's right around the corner. And it's happening today. If you read just a little bit what's going on in China today. People who do not accept the agenda that the Chinese government is pushing upon them, similar to the agenda here, they are being marked. They're using facial recognition technology. They're using the sites they visit online. They're keeping track of all these things. And if those people who don't think the right way and follow the agenda that's being imposed upon them go to buy a plane ticket to travel to another city, they can't buy a train ticket or a plane ticket. They could not do business. They're marked. The technology is here. The mark of the beast, mind control is coming upon us. How? I'm going to tell you how, at least some of how it's going to happen, Mr. Google and Ms. Facebook. I just read an article in a news magazine. It's a writer's news magazine. I don't recommend it. How Mr. Google and Ms. Facebook are being used to control the thoughts of all Americans who use them. There have been hearings in United States Congress about what's happening in this media world. They're talking about it at the highest levels of our government. Some people are calling it treason. It's mind control. It's a political agenda that's being forced upon us by suppressing information that does not fit the agenda and elevating information that fits the agenda of those you want to control our minds and put the mark of the beast upon us. What's happening to Mr. Google, Ms. Facebook, with all their siblings and cousins? You have a cell phone in your pocket to use that technology, to use GPS, you understand about face recognition technology like it's being used in China, cameras placed in the street corners watching where people go. It's all possible in today's world and it's going to be with us tomorrow. I'm not a prophet. I don't want tomorrow. It's exactly. I don't know what all the Lord's going to allow. I have no special wisdom. I'm not a researcher. I read very little about all of these things, but I am a man deeply concerned. Are we men of faith? Are we women of faith? Can we say I am a Christian? Will we stand the tests that are coming? What's happened to our brother, Ken Miller, who is here with us, I think? Brother Timo Miller, good friend of mine, Mr. Philip Zodiatis, who still is in prison. What's happened to them is just a harbinger of what awaits all of us. I'm afraid, but we need not fear. We need not fear, my friend. We need not fear salvation and strength in the kingdom of our God and the power of His Christ have come. He rules in heaven and on earth, and the accusers of our brethren who accuse them before our God day and night has been cast down, and He has been cast down. And we can be those who overcome Him by the blood of the Lamb and by the Word of our testimony if we, like those women of faith, those men of faith, like Michael Sattler and many like him, will not love our lives to the death. God have mercy upon us in our generation. Let us pray. Oh God, have mercy. We pray. Oh God, have mercy. We pray. On your people in this generation, preserve a people for yourself through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.