Guest Speaker Mark Jones | 12-28-25

Well, morning you guys. As you've obviously figured out,

I'm not Pastor Nick and that's probably a bad thing, but we'll

get through today. Pastor Nick is wisely taken

today off. He's celebrating his anniversary

and seeing his daughter and they're celebrating their

anniversary together, which is always a good thing.

So he'll be back next week. I'm not sure where he's headed.

I talked to him a week or so ago and he wasn't sure, as far as,

you know, which book of the Bible, because we got through

James. And so I guess we'll all find

out together maybe next week when he comes back, but I know

it will be an anointed teaching. So he told me when he when he

asked me about talking today that he said whatever the Lord

leads you to talk about. And I said, OK, it's almost in

some ways easier to go through the the books of the Bible.

Will, the Lord gave me a very interesting passage and we're

going to talk about it. It's got a lot of applications

for us, but it's a crazy one and we're going to flush this thing

out. But I was really a little bit

concerned about it because I thought, why did you give me

this passage, Lord? And then I heard his message

last week and I heard his Christmas message when I wasn't

sleeping and he I think it's going to fit well.

So let's start by going to the Lord in in prayer and asking for

his presence here today. Father, we just we come here

today. We're seeking you and we're

seeking your presence, Lord, we ask you into this presence into

into our fellowship. Lord, I know that represented

today in this physical building and online are people that are

facing all sorts of trouble. Every trouble that can be said a

human being is probably representative word health

problems, marital problems, money problems.

Lord, I just ask that you would touch these people that you

would bless them that you would help them know that you were

here and that how much you you love them so much and you would

anoint this message. Lord, because I believe that

it's it's so important to understand what's going on in

this passage. We ask this in your name.

We thank you for today. Amen.

So we're going to read a long passage here and it's out of the

book of Daniel, but I'm not here to teach Daniel.

I'm probably not competent to teach Daniel, but we're going to

talk about it and probably I'm going to, it's really, it's an

amazing passage. So I'm going to read the entire

thing. And if you're new to the book of

Daniel or if you haven't had studies in it, it's crazy.

So let me just read it and we're going to come back and we're

going to break it down. This is Daniel 10, and we're in

the new King James. Thank you, Pastor Nick.

In the third year of Cyrus, King of Persia, a message was

revealed to Daniel whose name was called Belchesar.

The message was true, but the appointed time was long and he

understood the message and had understanding of the vision.

In the In those days I, Daniel was mourning 3 full weeks.

I ate no pleasant food, no meat or wine came into my mouth, nor

did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were

fulfilled. Now on the 24th day of the first

month, as I was by the side of the great river that is the

Tigris, I lifted my eyes and looked, and behold a certain man

clothed in linen, whose waist was girded with gold and up has.

His body was like barrel, his face like the appearance of

lightning, his eyes like torches of fire, his arms and feet were

burnished bronze in colour, and the sound of his words like the

voice of a multitude. And I, Daniel alone, saw the

vision, for the men were with me.

The men who were with me did not see the vision, but a great

terror fell upon him, so that they fled to hide themselves.

Nothing like good friends, huh? Therefore I was left alone when

I saw this great vision, and no strength remained in me, for my

vigor was turned to frailty in me, and I retained no strength.

Yet I heard the sounds of his words.

And while I heard the sounds of his words, I was in a deep sleep

on my face with my face on the ground.

Suddenly a hand touched me, which made me tremble on my

knees and on the palms of my hands.

And he said to me, Oh Daniel, man greatly beloved, understand

the words that I speak to you and stand upright, for I have

now been sent to you. While he was speaking to me, I

stood trembling. Then he said, and this is the

core of our our message. Do not fear, Daniel, for from

the first day that you set your heart to understand and humble

yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have

come because of your words. But the Prince of the Kingdom of

Persia withstood me 21 days. And behold, Michael, one of the

chief Princess, came to help me, for I had been left alone there

with the kings of Persia. Now I have come to make you

understand what will happen to your people in the latter days,

for the vision refers to many days yet to come.

When he had spoken such words to me, I turned my face towards the

ground and became speechless. And suddenly one having the

likeness of sons of men touched my lips.

Then I opened my mouth and spoke, saying to him who stood

before me. My Lord, because of the vision

my sorrows have overwhelmed me and I have regained I've

retained those St. strength. For how can this servant of my

Lord talk with you, my Lord, As for me, no strength remains in

me, nor is any breath left in me.

Then again, the one having the likeness of a man touched me and

strengthened me. And he said, Oh man greatly

beloved, you're not peace, be with you.

Be strong. Yes, be strong.

So then when he spoke to me, I was strengthened and said, Let

my Lord speak, for you have strengthened me.

Then he said, Now listen to this.

Then he said, do you know why I've come to you?

And now I must return to fight with the Prince of Persia.

And when I have gone forth, indeed the Prince of Greece will

come. But I tell you what is noted in

the scriptures of truth, no one upholds me against these except

Michael, your Prince. OK, let's let's go ahead and go

back to prayer again. Father God, we just ask you

would anoint this message again and, and help me to explain

this, this crazy passage. And this is one of these

passages that's maybe a block long, but it's miles deep.

Or please anoint this, we ask this in your name, Amen.

Well, if you're not a little confused, you've either had a

lot of good training or you weren't listening, which I

wouldn't blame you, but this is a crazy, crazy passage.

I mean, what in the world is going on when what's happening

here is we've got a lifting of the veil and one of the passages

into the spiritual battle that's occurring in the world, And this

passage has a great amount of information in it.

We're going to go back in and we're going to take a look at

it. Now people tend to get really

uncomfortable about this and just thought that there's this

battle going on and there is, there has been, it's going on

now and it's going to continue until the Lord says yet we're

done. But what's going on with this

spiritual battle is that there, there's these forces at work and

we're involved in it, although we can't see them.

And I think probably the fact that we can't see this going on,

it is probably the most unnerving part of it or the part

that causes most people not to want to deal with it.

But the fact is it's going on and it's going to continue to go

on. So what, what's going on here?

Well, in its simplest form, this is the forces of good and the

forces of evil in the spiritual world fighting.

And they're they're battling over us.

And that's, that's literally what's going on.

And, and we're going to, we're going to break this down so that

we can come to the this is not the actual point of the message,

but you have to have this understanding to get to where

we're headed. So we've got this battle going

on yet you have to remember that Satan was, you know, he's one of

God's angels. I mean, he sounded like he had

great authority before he fell and he actually got to the point

where he started to think that he could be like God.

He never, as far as I can see, ever thought he could be God,

but he thought he could be like God.

He got pretty full of himself and he's still full of himself

and now he's delusional. And So what happened was he

revolted, as you guys know, and he took, I think it was a third

of the angels with him and, and they were cast out.

And so you've got these two warring factions, that is the,

the angels and the, the people of God and the Lord.

And you've got Satan and his demons and the, and the people,

the human beings that are there in this background doing this

battle. And that's what this passage is

telling us is that this is going on.

So, you know, I, I suspect that you know, you, you've heard this

before. Satan absolutely hates humanity.

He hates every one of us. And I suspect what he's happened

with him is that at the time of the crucifixion of Christ, he

probably thought he had it made because he had killed the Son of

God. He knew he had killed the Son of

God. And I just, I, I mean, this is

just me. I'm weird.

But I mean, I'm thinking on the night of the crucifixion, I just

have this vision of some dark place where these demons hang

out that, I mean, Satan's up there.

He's in an elevated little, little area.

And these guys, these demons, they're making toast to him and

telling him about he's just the smartest dude ever.

And they're all, you know, worse than a company picnic, you know,

and they're just, oh, you're so the smartest guy.

And that went on for 36 hours. But I also have this vision of

this demon kind of creeping in through the back door with his

head down, and he goes to whoever he's subject to and

whispers in his ear. And that message kind of gets

up, starts heading towards Satan.

And he finds out Satan maybe asked what's going on.

And they said, well, we just left the tomb and the stones

rolled open. And Satan says, well, where's

the body? And they said, there isn't a

body. And at that moment he had to

realize that he had failed. And from that point on, he has

literally brought hell against the Lord and his people.

And that's what this passage is telling us in here.

And I suspect it's it's based in large part over jealousy,

jealousy of humanity. I mean, he literally hates us

and we can't lose the fact that the first killing, the first

homicide in the Bible was over jealousy, the Cain and Abel.

So, you know, this is this is there's a lot of stuff going on

here. So just to kind of understand

who these these people are in this passage in Daniel 10, we

got the forces of good and evil. And, you know, I've discussed

who they were God's people versus team Satan.

They have better jerseys, but they're they're going to lose.

And then we've got Daniel. Now a lot of people know about

Daniel. I mean, he's taught me, if you

were a little kid that was brought up in in Bible school,

you know, you have the felt pictographs or whatever they

call those things. And you know, he's taught.

But just so you understand, this is about 600 years before the

birth of Christ. And what we know about him is

that he was a Jewish noble. And I would say, well, who cares

except for he was probably very well educated.

And I think it's pretty obvious he was pretty sharp and he was

living in Jerusalem when he was taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar.

And so, you know, they came and they cleaned out most of of

Jerusalem and Israel. And at some point Daniel got

identified as being a pretty sharp guy.

And he ended up acquiring great status within Nebuchadnezzar's

Kingdom. And we all know about his

ability to to interpret these dreams that that he was having

and other people were having. But Daniel had a, a huge

problem. He was a good Jew following the

edicts that he had been taught as a good Jew.

And he had a heart for the Lord. And he was stuck in probably the

one, one of the most hedonistic, horrible societies that you can

imagine. And so we know the story and I'm

not here to teach Daniel, but we know that he ended up getting

thrown in alliance Dan because of his refusal to worship an

idol. And he had a lot of other

problems. There was a lot of people that

were out after him, the, the non Jewish people that the members

of the, the court were always looking to trance and, and cause

him harm. But we know that the Lord

protected him and we know that he was faithful to the Lord.

He is faithful to the, the faith that he, he kept the diet and he

kept, he had a, he just had a heart for the Lord and he had a

heart for the Lord's business. And so what's so important about

this is that we know and at least one at one time, Daniel

was faithful even to the point of death being thrown in a

lion's pen. And and the Lord greatly loved

him for that. And so here we have him.

You know, there's speculation, Daniel, at the time that that

this passage I wrote was written, he was around 90.

My suspicion is that he was in pretty good shape and certainly

his mind was very, very sharp. But so we have this Daniel, this

character that's been through a lot, faithful to God up to the

point of death, and he's about the Lord's business.

And then we have the messenger. Now it's not actually the

messenger is not actually named the one who's talking to Daniel

in this passage, but it's generally considered to be

Gabriel because he's in a chapter Daniel and he's

identified there. I mean, it just makes sense that

that's him. But in any case, he's obviously

a spiritual being and he's doing the delivering a message for the

Lord. And then we've got another guy

mentioned, Michael the Archangel.

And you know, we know that Michael was God's warrior and

protector of God's people. He is literally God's right hand

man and his Angel warrior. He's not a guy to be messed

with. And I suspect now this again is

my weirdness, just my weirdness. But I imagine that Michael is

just like every time he has to be near or around Satan or his

people, he just wants to take that sword and and wank them.

But he's gotten told by God, not yet.

And that's got to be just grinding him.

And, you know, Gabriel knows who these people are, who these evil

spirits, they, you know, they, who knows how long they were

together before the fall, the, the angelic bodies.

I mean, so the, everybody knows everybody.

And there's got to be, there's got to be some strong feelings

there. So what in the world is going on

in this particular passage? So he's Daniel said in those

days, I, Daniel was mourning 3 full weeks.

I ate no pleasant food, no meat or wine came into my mouth

during the night. I anoint myself at all until

three whole weeks were fulfilled.

So why what was going on? Well, I'll tell you what was

happening was Daniel was grieving over Jerusalem and the

fact that Jerusalem was not being reoccupied and the temple

was not being fixed. And when I this is again another

example of his concern for the business of God.

He just could not stand. And he talks about it here and

I'm going to read what he says. He just cannot stand the fact

that Jerusalem's in disrepair and and nobody wants to go back

to Jerusalem. I mean, by this time these

people have kind of gotten into the culture.

I imagine a lot of them are not following the the dietary edicts

or, you know, doing what they should be doing, what the Lord's

commanded them to do. And most of them have probably

fallen away. And so we see it in the chapter

before Daniel says, Oh Lord, according to your righteousness,

I pray, let your anger and your fury be turned away from your

city, Jerusalem, your holy mountain, because for our sins

and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your

people are a reproach to all those around us.

Now, therefore, our God, hear the prayer of your servant and

his supplications, and for the Lord's sake cause your face to

hear or shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate.

It's referring to the temple, obviously.

Oh my God, incline your ear and hear.

Open your eyes and see our desolations and the city which

is called by your name. For we do not present our

supplications before you because of our righteous deeds, but

because of your great mercies, Oh Lord, here, oh Lord, forgive.

Oh Lord, listen and act. Do not delay for your own sake,

my God, for your city and your people are called by your name.

So this is a guy who is pouring his heart out and and you can

tell that he's pleading with God to in grieving over the city and

over the fact that the temple hasn't been rebuilt.

And he's, he's about the guy, he's about the Lord's business.

And, you know, obviously it looks like the people lost their

love for the Lord and, and don't have a fire for the Lord.

And So what is this telling us? Well, it's telling us that first

of all, the Lord heard Daniel's prayer on the first day, Amen.

But that there were spiritual beings that prevented Gabriel

from coming and giving the prophecy and the information

that he was charged to give to him for 21 days, which of course

matches what Daniel tells us in this passage.

And as Daniel says, the Gabriel says.

But the Prince of the Kingdom of Persia withstood me 21 days.

And behold, Michael, one of the chief Princess came to help me.

So what's going on here in this spiritual battle is that

Gabriel's trying to get the message that he was given he was

charged with to Daniel, but that because of the forces of evil,

this spiritual battle that we can't see, he got delayed for 21

days and it took Michael to come in and help him get away.

The take away point from this, and none of you are going to be

shocked by this, is that there are spiritual beings and evil

men that are involved in frustrating God's plans on this

earth and specifically with each or with countries.

And so we have the Prince of Persia and then later he talks

about the Prince of Greece. I mean, what Gabriel's saying is

I'm going to go do battle with the Prince of Persia and I got

to go fight the OR deal with the Prince of, of Greece.

And that hasn't changed. And if you think that there

aren't entities, demonic entities and men, humans that

are involved in this along willingly, then you're you're

mistaken because it's still going on.

And I mean, look, look at our country, but look at 2025.

I mean, here we've got the, you know, this Epstein thing and we,

you know, all these revelations and, and all these things that

are coming out where there's allegations of different, you

know, this deviant sexual activity by our world lever

leaders and that, you know, some, some pictures are

appearing. It tells you that this, if

anything, it hasn't gotten better.

It's gotten worse. But we also know that there are

those godly angels and and the people who are supportive of the

Lord humans who are also involved in this battle.

So there's there's just a tremendous amount that's

happening here. And so we know that Satan is

here to continue to frustrate us until the very end.

But then we have a mess, a passage from Paul, and it's

Ephesians 610. Do you mind throwing that up?

Finally, this is Paul, the New Testament back of the book.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand

against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against

flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, against

the dark or the powers of The Dark World, and against the

spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

This is spiritual warfare. This is it.

True, it's here in this world, this dimension that we see, but

there's a whole lot going on in the other dimension.

Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of

evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you

have done everything to stand. Stand firm then with the belt of

truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of of

righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the

readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

In addition to this, take up the shield of faith with which you

can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil 1 Take the

helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is

the word of God. And then here's here's where

we're at and and what's going to be the main take away point

today. And pray in the Spirit on all

occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.

With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all

the Lord's people. Pray also for me that whenever I

speak, words may be given to me so that I will fiercely make

known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in

chains. Pray that I may declare

fearlessly, as I should. So I'm not here to teach Daniel,

but I'm here to tell you that there's a spiritual battle

that's going on that we can't see.

And it involves, as crazy as it sounds, demonic forces and

angelic forces of the Lord. And the whole battle is over us.

And it's for our hearts, it's for our minds, and ultimately

it's for our souls. Because at this point, Satan has

nothing, nothing that he's going to do that's going to change

anything other than bring some more people into hell.

And so my, my whole point in giving this message is if we

look at what Daniel was doing at this time, he first of all was

about the Lord's business. He had a heart for the Lord.

Secondly, he was in fervent prayer for three weeks.

And he was, you know, he, he makes sure, he tells us 3 weeks,

3 weeks. He tells us twice.

It was 3 weeks. OK, Daniel, we get it.

It's three weeks. But he also wasn't eating it,

you know, his normal food. He was, he was, he was in

fervent prayer about the about God's business and what

happened. He's told first of all that he's

favoured he's Lord loves him. You know, imagine having the

Lord say that about you. Isn't that amazing?

Can you imagine that? Secondly, we know that the Lord

heard his prayer the first day he made it, but this passage has

been at times used to raise the question of whether or not

people or whether the Lord is more strong than Satan.

But the the take away point here is that it's all in God's time.

Satan has lost this battle. There are people that have

actually questioned their own faith.

Well, if if Satan was able to delay him, well, there's a

spiritual battle going on. But that doesn't mean that God

is not all powerful. And it's in God's time that this

happens. And So what we see is we see

that the fervent prayers of a righteous man, even though it

took three years or three weeks, were answered.

And So what does that tell us as, as Christians, first of all,

we need to understand at this spiritual battle is going on and

it's going on for our, our, our minds, our hearts and our souls.

And that if, if we're truly disciples of Christ, we need to

be praying fervently all the time for each other, for our

country, for our leaders. And recognise that, especially

me, because I, I get really wound up when I see this stuff.

You know, knowing the evil that's going on, that this is,

this is spiritual warfare, that that's actually what we're

seeing and that this has been going on.

And that the weapon that we used to fight this is not flesh and

blood. It's not going and punching

somebody as much as that might be satisfying for a moment.

It's prayer because that is the weapon.

Fervent prayer is the weapon that we can defeat Satan with.

And so in in concluding that I all I can tell you is if you are

a believer, you need to be praying all the time and you

need to be about God's business. I'm, I'm telling you, if you

start praying, the Lord is going to lay people on your heart and

you're going to have to have a, a, a list of people unless you

got a really good memory. I mean, because you're going to

just think when you go to prayer.

Now, I'll tell you something right now.

A lot of times when you go to prayer, you know, you're, you're

about to have some effective prayer because the dog will barf

up on the couch, you know, or the worst distractor of all,

your phone will go off or you'll get a text.

You need to go to a quiet place where you can't hear the dog

barf or your phone going off and, and get that time with the

Lord. I think the mornings are

probably the best. I mean, that's just me, but so I

would encourage you, don't be discouraged by what's going on

in the world. We're heading into a new year.

More bad stuff is coming, but you know what, God's got it, and

we can be a positive factor in all this and we can actually

make a difference by our fervent prayers.

All right, Father, I just, I pray a blessing upon these

people. I know that Sherry is going to

come back up and sing again. I just pray that you would grant

them comfort, that you would know that you are here and that

you are the Lord and you are in charge.

We just ask this in your name. Amen.