Kings and Harlots - Part 3

Well, hello, glad to see you again, or at least for you to see me. This is the third session on the conference on church and state. If you haven't watched the first two sessions, then I would suggest that you do watch them before you watch this session, unless obviously you're watching live. Because they do lay the doctrinal foundation for what we're going to speak about in this third and last session. So let's open in prayer. Father, we come to you again in the name of the Lord Jesus, and we do pray for your help again. We pray that you would help me to deliver this very difficult message, but Lord, that you'd also help each one of us to understand and to receive the Word without prejudice. Lord, it is so easy to come to your Word with preconceived ideas as to what it says and what it means. Lord, we pray, Lord, that you'd help us, that we might be able to take a fresh look at your Word again. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right, so I'm going to begin with a reading again as usual, and I'm going to read from the book of Hosea, and chapter 2, verses 1 through 13, or actually chapter 2, verse 2 through 13. Hosea is not a hard book to find. It is the first of the minor prophets. And so you have the major prophets ending with Daniel, and then the next book is Hosea. And I'm going to begin reading in verse 2. It is a long reading, and you'll see the significance of this as we go along. God is obviously speaking to Israel. And slay her with thirst. I will not have mercy on her children, for they are the children of Harlotry. For their mother has played the harlot. She who conceived them has behaved shamefully. For she said, I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink. Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns and wall her in, so that she cannot find her paths. She will chase her lovers, but not overtake them. Yes, she will seek them, but not find them. Then she will say, I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better for me than now. For she did not know that I gave her grain, new wine and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal. Therefore, I will return and take away my grain in its time, my new wine in its season, and will take back my wool and my linen, given to cover her nakedness. Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall deliver her from my hand. I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, her Sabbaths, all her appointed feasts. And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, of which she has said, These are my wages that my lovers have given me. So I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field will eat them. I will punish her for the days of the Baals, to which she burnt incense. She decked herself with her earrings and jewelry, and went after her lovers. But me she forgot, says the Lord." A very, very harsh statement of God concerning Israel. And obviously he is dealing here with the concept of Israel, who really was his wife. And he says, you're no longer my wife, I'm not your husband. He deals with the issue of adultery and harlotry. And we're going to touch on some of these issues in the session. And so the title of the session is The Kings and the Harlot. And we're going to go a long way around through various scriptures, and again through history, because I want us to understand the context, in the context of our modern world, and how this applies to the church. Now, the first principle that we need to understand is that Satan has his counterfeits. He very much wants to be God. Remember the problem in the very beginning, I will be like the Most High. And so he has built his own counterfeit trinity. And he has counterfeits for so much else of the things of God. The counterfeit trinity, of course, instead of the Father, you have Satan taking the place of God. Instead of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, you have the Antichrist. Remember the word anti is not just against, but also means in the place of. And so in the place of Christ, the second person of the trinity. And then instead of the Holy Spirit, you have the false prophet. But in addition to those, you also have the church. The church is the bride of Christ. And again, we're not specifically dealing with Israel in this session. But the church is the bride of Christ. And so Satan has his counterfeit to the bride of Christ, the great harlot. And we're going to end up in the book of Revelation, and we're going to look at the great harlot when we come to Revelation. Now, the moment I mention the great harlot, immediately we say, well, this is the church of Rome. And I will deal with that later. But let's not just fixate on Rome. Let me just tell you at this point, so that we can try and clarify this as we move along, that the great harlot does not just represent Rome, of which Rome probably is the great harlot, but she also has daughters, those who come out of her illicit relationship. And that includes all false churches. So any form of false church, and I don't include Islam or other things like that in this, because they are clearly not in the place of the church. But every church that is not a true, genuine church is part of the great harlot. All right, so let's get back to the foundation that I want to lay. And probably I'm going to spend 60 or 70 percent of the time that we have in laying a foundation and then getting to the real point. So forgive me for that. So we have these concepts of adultery, fornication and holotry. I'm not going to deal with the difference between adultery and fornication. Clearly they are two different things. Fornication is the overarching thing. Fornication includes things like pornography and bestiality and all sorts of perversions. But a subset of fornication, and the New King James uses the word sexual immorality, which is actually quite a good... When I first saw that, I really struggled with that concept. It was so different to fornication. But it really does encompass all. Pornia encompasses all sexual immorality. And adultery is part of that. Now we're not going to deal with that so much today, but we're going to speak about adultery and then holotry. Prostitution, if you will, in modern language, but using the biblical term holotry. There is a difference between the two. Obviously they are both sexual sins. Both of them involve an illicit relationship. And we're not going to be dealing today so much with the issue of illicit sex. We're going to deal with illicit relationships. Because that really is what adultery and holotry is. The difference between the two, really in the context of what we're speaking today, is adultery is an illicit relationship outside of the marriage. Holotry is selling yourself for money. Selling yourself for money. So there are two. The one, adultery, may be based on so-called love or whatever it is. Holotry clearly is a selling of oneself. And so we'll come back to that. So we're dealing then with illicit relationships outside of marriage. Now in the context of Hosea, and let's look very quickly at a couple of verses. I'm just going to look at two verses there, verses 5 and verse 8. And I want us to see how this now plays out. For their mother, that's Israel really, has played the holot. She has conceived them. Now we're going to speak about illicit children. Because an illicit relationship produces illicit children. Or as the old King James says, bastards. I will have, sorry, verse 5. For their mother has played the holot. She who has conceived them has behaved shamefully. For she said, I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink. So she goes after her illicit lovers, because they give her certain things. This is cardinal to the whole message this afternoon. They give her certain things in exchange for her favors. But the Lord says in verse 8, She did not know that I gave her grain, new wine and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold. So instead of receiving the gifts and being grateful for the gifts that she receives from her husband, she forsakes that because her illicit lovers are giving her something different. And here is the heart of this whole thing. And if you can keep that in mind as we now go through the rest of the study, and particularly as we look at the examples in a few moments. Now the second thing that we need to understand is that as much as Israel committed adultery, against the Lord, was unfaithful to the Lord, by entering into illicit relationships with all sorts of things, but amongst other things the idols. And so instead of cleaving to the Lord, they leave the Lord and they go back to idols and to those weak and beggarly elements. And I'm just taking out of context a statement from the book of Galatians. Now this is also true of the church. It is possible for Christians to commit adultery in a spiritual sense. In James chapter 4 and verse 4, James says adulterers, now he's writing to Christians, adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? They committed adultery because they entered into an illicit relationship with the world. And then he says, whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. So Christians commit adultery against the Lord when they forsake Him, and they enter into a relationship with the world. Now remember in the previous sessions we said that there are only these two things, the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the world, or God's kingdom and the world. If we leave God's kingdom and we enter into a relationship with the world, we are committing adultery the same way as Israel committed adultery when Israel forsook the Lord and got into a relationship with the Baals. Now just incidentally, very quickly, it's interesting that we generally tend to think that Israel forsook the Lord, and I should maybe not have used that term, that they turned their backs on God and followed Baal. But in fact most of the times they cleaved to the Lord and they worshipped Baal at the same time. Many times the altars would be next to each other. Many times the worship would happen almost simultaneously. So they didn't entirely leave God. They didn't entirely turn their backs on God. No, they worshipped Him together with the idols. And you remember that the command says that you shall not have other gods besides me, not instead of me, but next to me. And so that is adultery. The church can and does commit adultery when it enters into an illicit relationship. Now, let's have a look at a few examples from Scripture and also from history. And I've just taken, I don't know how many I have here, it looks like about ten, and there are many, many, many more. I've just selected a few that just came to the top of my head as I was writing these things down. The first one I want to look at very briefly is Balaam and Balak. You remember Balaam was the prophet to whom the donkey spoke. And Balaam goes and enters into an illicit relationship with Balak. Balak, the king, pays him money to curse Israel. And remember that he fails in cursing Israel. And so he then goes to the king and says, Well, look, what you need to do is get your daughters to seduce the Israelite men, and when they then seduce them and get them to worship the idols, God will turn against Israel and God will punish Israel. And so, of course, that worked, and we have the warning in the New Testament that we need to be careful that there is not someone like Balaam amongst us who seduces and teaches the church to enter into an illicit relationship with something outside and something that has been forbidden by the Lord. And I trust that you can see how this begins to fit together. We have Israel and their kings. Remember, God said, I want to be your God. I want to be your king. He wanted them to be what we call a theocracy. He wanted them to be under His governance. And Israel says, No, we want to be like the other nations. We want our own king. This was a form of adultery. Solomon and his many wives and concubines. And we can say, Well, you know, it was permissible to have many wives those days. But remember that it was not permissible to have wives of foreign nations. And so, Solomon enters into illicit relationships. They may have been sanctified by the culture at the time in the sense that he could have more than one wife, although God never sanctifies that. But the fact that they are a heathen woman, that they are women who worship false gods, is clearly forbidden by the Lord. So he enters into those illicit relationships. And that results in Israel being divided into the northern and the southern tribes. That is the beginning. And while Solomon rode the crest of the wave, and Israel achieved greatness like at no other time, this was the end of the great days, and Israel declined from that moment on. We have Ahab and Jezebel. Jezebel was a Gentile woman. And Ahab enters into a relationship with her. And she seduces Israel again to worship Baal. So we have the same principle. And we have a warning in Revelation 2, verse 20, that there are Jezebels. Now, I'm not going to get into the whole Jezebel spirit. The Bible doesn't speak about a Jezebel spirit. But it speaks about those who are like Jezebel, who are teaching the children of God to commit adultery. The whole principle between Jezebel teaching Israel to worship Baal is brought into the church, and brought into the book of Revelation, the messages to the seven churches, worshipping idols being taught by so-called Jezebel. Israel often entered into illicit relationships with other nations when they felt that the enemy was too big. They didn't trust God. They didn't rely on the Lord's ability to deliver them, as He had delivered them so many times. And so, instead of trusting the Lord, they trust in illicit alliances with foreign kings, and with Gentile nations. And the Lord judges them for that. But you can see the same principle. While it's not called adultery, it's the same principle of an illicit relationship in order to get something out of that relationship, and that brings the judgment of God. In the New Testament, we have the temple, and we have the Sadducees. And I'm really going to just cut to the chase here. But the Sadducees had entered into a relationship with Rome, whereby they were appointed to be the high priest and to run the temple. Rome would then collect the temple tax and then hand some of that over back to the Sadducees. And so the Caiaphas, the high priest, who hands Jesus back over to Rome, is one of the Sadducees. And so they had set up a thriving business, sold Israel, effectively, for money. And so they would keep Israel under control, they would keep Israel in check, make sure there were no problems, and in exchange, they would receive position and power and money from the Roman government. And this led directly to the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. Because remember that Caiaphas said, it is better for one man to die for the nation. Now, he didn't mean that in an atoning way, as we like to understand it. He simply meant that Jesus needs to die, because if he doesn't die, there's going to be an uproar, and then the Romans are going to come down on us, and then we're going to have real trouble. And so they sacrificed Jesus for political expediency. That's what happens when we enter into these illicit relationships. Now, if we go beyond Scripture, I'm going to take a few examples quickly. We have Constantine in A.D. 300. Constantine becomes the emperor of Rome, and I was blessed to be in York, and probably our friends from York are watching today, or from Yorkshire are watching today, and it was quite something to see the York Minster, where in the original building, Constantine was crowned. But when Constantine became emperor, he married church and state. And in fact, the very first church councils, particularly the Council of Nicaea, Constantine chaired that meeting. Here is an unbeliever. I know some people like to think he was a Christian. No, he was far from a Christian. But here is this unbeliever, a Roman, who for political expediency married the church and the state. And so he sits in the chair, and he chairs the meeting of the Council of Nicaea. And in fact, he had tremendous influence on the final creed that the council produced. Now, you need to think about that, because many people put their total trust of their doctrine in the Nicaean creed. But remember that this was produced, and remember what these relationships produce. They produce illegitimate children. They produce bastards. And so the council produces this document, and he has a casting vote, and he changes some significant things in the Nicaean creed. And of course, out of that we know comes the Church of Rome. And so we're going to talk about that again a little later. Later on, we have the Reformation. And we say, well, this is a great, wonderful thing. And I'm not going to get into the Reformation. But we spoke earlier in one of the previous sessions, we spoke about the relationship between the magistrates in Geneva and Calvin, this relationship between the church and the state. And in Calvin's Geneva, the church and the magistrates, or the state, they empowered one another. The one gave power to the other, and the other one looked after the interests of the other. And so we have exactly the same thing operating at that time. And this continued for a long, long time. This was common in Europe at that time. So that Arminius, who opposed some of the teachings of Calvin and many modern Christians like to call themselves Arminians. I'm not an Arminian because I don't follow Arminius. I follow the scriptures. But during Arminius' time, and one of the things that Arminius stood against the Calvinists on was that Arminius perpetuated the popular idea at that time that the civil government would appoint the church officers. In other words, pastors and whatever other important officers they had in the church at that time, these were appointed by the civil government. And you'll find a modern representation of that still in the United Kingdom today. And so Arminius, and then the other states in Europe, until very recently, and I think in fact still some of the Scandinavian countries still take the church tax, which is then paid over to the church. And so you can see this relationship between church and state. Now because we're speaking mainly to, or not mainly, but from an English base in the sense that the conference is hosted in the United Kingdom, we have to speak about the Church of England. Now just think about what we spoke about yesterday. There's the church, and there's the state. When you have a church and state even married in their name, the Church of England or Anglican Church, and for my American friends here it's called the Episcopalian Church, so it's all the same thing. And we know the history, how that Henry VIII couldn't get an annulment of his marriage from the Pope, and so he broke from Rome, and he said we're going to have our own church, and he was self-appointed, appointed himself the head of the church, and we know that that is even true today, that the Queen still is the head of the church, and that the senior bishops are appointed by the government rather than by the church. Now obviously the church advises the government, but the appointments come from the government. The Archbishop of Canterbury, when he retires, becomes a lord and sits in the House of Lords. So you have this relationship, and forgive me if I have the history a little bit wrong. As I said yesterday, my perspective is from an American and South African one, but you have this intimate relationship between the church and the state, and we're going to come back to that again in a few minutes. In South Africa, we spoke about that yesterday, this relationship between the Dutch Reformed Church and the nationalist government in South Africa, ruled for many years, the same relationship. The church empowered the government, the church kept the people behind the government, and the government protected the church. The church, in fact, created a theology that would support the government's agenda and the whole apartheid system. They designed a complete, total theology around that. And so again, you see this illicit relationship. I said to you in the earlier session that any major event would be opened in prayer, and we'd say, well, this is a wonderful thing, look how religious we are. But in fact, it is more than that. It's a statement of this relationship between the church and the state, between the church and the government. And then we come to the United States of America, and this is where it gets really, really hairy. And I know that there's a certain percentage of those who are watching right now who are going to turn off at the end of this, and who will probably send me all sorts of nasty emails and stuff. But in America, in the last six years, the church, the evangelical church, has entered into a relationship with the government, with the Republican Party. Anyone will tell you, doesn't matter which side of the fence they're on, will tell you that Trump was brought to power as a result of the religious right. The so-called religious right, particularly the evangelical church. The evangelical leaders crowned him at his inauguration. They were there to put the seal on his inauguration, to pray for him, to bless him, and to prophesy to the nation that this man is the man of God. Now, I'm not going to get into the whole issue of whether he's saved or not. That's not the point. But we have a relationship now between the government and the religious right, and the church. It's a symbiotic relationship. Because what happens is that the church empowers and gives power to Trump. And Trump, in exchange, gives favors to the church. Can you see this? Can you see how this is the same pattern that we have seen right from the beginning, from Balaam right up to where we are today? Now, I know people say, well, you know, we want a government that will protect the church. We want a government that will stand against abortion, that will stand against homosexual marriage. We want a government that will restore the rights of the church. But here's the problem. Who is it that protects the church? Who protects the church? Jesus said, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And the day that the church entered into a relationship with the government, whether it's in America or in England or wherever it is, the day that happens, you are committing adultery. Because you are saying, the Lord cannot protect His church. The Lord cannot keep us. The Lord cannot promote our agenda and our cause. The Lord cannot promote righteousness. We have to enter into a relationship with the Gentiles and with the heathen, so that we may be preserved and that we may preserve our values. Folks, this is incredibly serious. This is incredibly serious. This has nothing to do with who you vote for, whether you're Republican or Democrat. I'm not getting into that. But the moment we begin to enter into a tacit relationship with the government, and we receive favors from the government, and the government receives our support and our vote, we have an illicit relationship. Now I'm not saying that you can't vote according to your conscience. And if you want to vote for a conservative candidate, whether it be conservative in England or Republican here, that's fine. But there's a difference between performing your civic duty and entering into a relationship and beginning to look to that man, and beginning to promote that man as the Savior, as the man who's going to save America, and particularly who's going to save the church. Because in that process, you're committing adultery against the Lord Jesus Christ. And so here's the principle. We've established this over and over. I want us to get this. The principle is that the woman looks to the man, the false man, for help, for protection, for promotion, and sometimes for finances. In exchange, he looks to her for favors, for support, and for affirmation. Now just by the way, I want to just take a little detour for a moment here. Because of what the church has done, the church has ruined its testimony in the face of the world. The church can no longer preach the gospel to a Democrat. And I'm speaking in general terms. Because when you speak to a Democrat about the gospel, they say, no, that is the religion of the Republican Party. Can you see how that you have married into a relationship which now closes the door and the opportunity to speak prophetically, and to preach the gospel to those who are not of your political party. For that reason, the church must always be independent of the state. Independent of either parties, or whatever parties there are in your particular country. Because the gospel is to everyone. It is not just for Republicans or for Conservatives. It is for Labor, and it is for Democrats, and for whatever parties are in your particular country. The church must remain independent in order to retain its witness, and in order to retain its right to speak prophetically in the time in which we are living. Now let's have a look at the fruit. And I want to look quickly at, because we've spoken about the fruit of these relationships, and the fruit is always very, very clear. You see, because we've, particularly in America, put so much confidence in the present government, and hoping that this is going to turn America back to greatness, is going to make the church great again, is going to restore morality, is going to get everything, is going to be great. But folks, here's the problem. This relationship between church and state has in various shapes and forms been there for 250 years. And if it hasn't been there explicitly in 250 years, it's been there explicitly in the last 50, 70 years. And what has it produced? Has the church grown? No, the church is dying in America, and we have to face the facts. Has it made society more moral? No, society in America has become more immoral. Has it turned people to God? No, people have turned more and more away from God. And we can speak about the United Kingdom the same way. This relationship between the king and the church has existed for 450 years. And what has it produced? It hasn't produced a more moral and just society. In fact, on the contrary. It hasn't produced a healthy church. In fact, the contrary. And so we can go on and on. You see, and all that comes out of that are illicit children. And so in a so-called Christian country, like America or the United Kingdom or Zimbabwe, any of the Western countries, you have millions of illicit children. People who grow up believing that they are born again, that they are saved because they were born in England or in Scotland or wherever. They are half-baked. They are half-Christian and half-not-Christian. That's all it produces. In fact, here's the other side of the coin, and then I'm going to turn to the book of Revelation. The church only thrives in difficult times. Because in difficult times, when the church is being persecuted by the government, when the church is being persecuted by its society, it knows where to run. It knows that its help comes from the Lord, that He is the only one who can keep. He is the only one who can protect. And there is no compromise. And it's under those conditions that the church does well. We have a wrong understanding of this whole thing because we don't want... I don't want persecution. I want to live in a civil society where Christians can... where we can meet openly and where we don't have to meet in secret, where we don't have to go to prison. But it's changing. And it has to change if the church is going to be purified before the coming of the Lord Jesus. All right. Let's go to Revelation chapter 17 and now let's see how this whole thing comes together in Revelation and in the end. So, Revelation chapter 17 and I'm just going to look... The whole chapter is relevant as much as Revelation chapter 13 and part of chapter 18. But we don't have the time to go there. So I'm going to look at the first six verses and I'm going to look at them... I'm going to touch on some of them as we go through. I'm not going to read it through and then come back because that's going to take too much time. We have limited time left. So, verse 1 of Revelation 17. Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me saying to me, Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters. Now if you go down to verse 15 he says, Then he said to me, The waters which you saw where the harlot sits are peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues. Now, the harlot is a religious figure. She sits on nations. Verse 2, With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication. Can you see this idea? You can see the same pattern running right through Scripture from Balaam and Balak to the end. So the kings of the earth have committed fornication. They've entered into an illicit relationship with her. Now, think Rome. And I didn't use Rome as one of those examples because I want to focus on that. But we know that this relationship between Rome and the church, the church of Rome and the governments has always existed right from the beginning. The kings needed the blessing of the Pope and the Pope needed the finances and everything else that came from the government. And remember that the reformers did exactly the same thing. Luther was protected by the princes and so on. And so, the kings of the earth committed fornication with her and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with a wine of her fornication. They were put into an altered state of consciousness. Their thinking was affected. And so, he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. Now, I'm sure that you've heard many messages speak about this as being Rome and the purple of the cardinals and the scarlet of the cardinals and the gold cup of the abomination of the Eucharist and all of those things. And I think there may be truth in that. But she is sitting on a scarlet beast, the Antichrist. We don't have time to go there. You can make the connections for yourself. But she sits on the Antichrist. In other words, he carries her. The government carries the false religion. Same principle that we've seen all along. Now I want you to look at verse 5. And on her forehead a name was written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth. You see, even if the great harlot is Rome, and I'm not saying it is. I lean in that direction, but I'm not saying it is. But even if that is Rome, what you have is that she has daughters. The mother of harlots. So she produces children. And those children are prostitutes. Those children are harlots. Because they're entering into the same relationship. Now just think about that. Unfortunately, many churches today tie themselves back to Rome through the Reformation. They are daughters of the Church of Rome even though they may be Protestant today. And I know that opens a whole can of worms. I'm not going to develop that thought. You can go there for yourself. And then verse 6. I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement. You see, here's the other thing that happens. And that is that the great harlot, the false woman, will always persecute the true woman, the bride of Christ. Don't we have examples of that in Scripture? Isn't there a principle that runs right through Scripture that the false persecutes the true, even beginning with Cain and Abel. And then there are several examples of women where the imposter persecutes the true wife. And folks, today we are not quite seeing this yet, but I believe it's begun. There's been a persecution that has been unleashed against true Bible-believing, born-again, God-fearing Christians by other Christians of all sorts and all kinds. This is what the book of Revelation is speaking about. When we begin to persecute one another, and when some of us are not the real thing, because we've been born out of adultery, we've been born out of an illicit relationship. And I'm particularly concerned about Christians who defend civil governments and become uncivil in their attack on Christians who say what I've been saying in these last three sessions. We stand on the Word of God. Our relationship is with Jesus Christ and with Him alone. He is the only one who can save. He is the only one who can protect us. He is the only one who can promote us. And unless we get it at the hand of the Lord, we have entered into an adulterous relationship. When you're looking to man, when you're looking to business, or when you're looking to politics or to politicians to help the church in whichever way, it is adultery. And I'm going to close with Revelation chapter 18 because this is the continuation. Do you remember she's called the Babylon and verse 2 says, and he cried mightily with a loud voice saying, Babylon the great is fallen and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit and a cage for every unclean and hated bird. That's terrible. But that's the conclusion. Those who will enter into illicit relationships and become part of the daughters of the harlot will become a habitation for demons, foul spirits and a cage for every unclean and hated bird. For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. The kings of the earth have committed fornication with her and the merchants of the earth, you see business gets into it. It's all big business today. The merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury. And here's the bottom line. And I heard another voice from heaven saying, come out of her my people. Come out of her my people lest you share in her sins and lest you receive her plagues. The Lord is preparing for himself a bride that is without spot and without blemish, that is pure, that is devoted to him and loves him and trusts in him alone for everything they need. Now we've spoken about the church and I'm a couple of minutes over time. But I want to ask you personally, who are you looking to for your help, for your promotion, for your salvation? Are you looking to money, business, the world? Are you hoping that the next government will be a righteous government that will do the things that you want them to do? Or are you looking to the Lord? Come out of the world. Forget about the world. Turn to the Lord Jesus with all your heart. Build your hope and your confidence and your faith on him and him alone. We're living in a time of sifting and God is purifying for himself a people. But in this process, many are proving to be tares. Many are proving to not be real children of God. And they're falling by the wayside, left, right and center. Oh, may the Lord help us that we may remain true and faithful to him, that we may come out of the world, that we may cleave to him. Remember this principle right back in the book of Genesis, that we leave, we cleave. Let's leave the world. Let's leave Babylon. Let's leave false religion. Let's leave whatever it is that we're finding comfort in out there. And let's cleave to the Lord Jesus Christ with all of our heart. Father, I pray that you'd help us. Lord, that we may not put our trust and our confidence in princes or in horses or in the legs of a man. But Lord, that we may put our trust wholly and totally in you. Lord, I pray that you'd help us. Lord, that we may get our thinking straight. Lord, forgive us for promoting. And Lord, there are those who may be watching today who've been promoting some political party or some politician. Forgive us, Lord, that we may be those who are known that we promote the Lord Jesus Christ and the gospel of salvation. And that is what we are known as. We're Christians. We're followers of Jesus. We're not conservatives or liberals or democrats or republicans. We are born again. We are his children and his people. And we receive from his hand alone. We pray that you'd help us, Lord. Pray that you'd burn this message into our hearts. Lord, that you would change the attitude and the mind of so many Christians who've been caught up in the politics of this time. And Lord, that we may be caught up in our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.