The Church at Pergamos - Doctrinal Compromise - Revelation: The Apocalypse

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Men and women, when we stand for Christ, it often feels like we're standing against all.

And in so doing, what I want us to know is that God notices you.

That's what we see in every one of the churches in the book of Revelation is the incredible persecution.

And the Lord always says, I see that.

I notice that.

I know your name.

Today, Pastor Steve continues his series on the book of Revelation.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up whole-hearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We're in the Book of Revelation, the most controversial book in the Bible.

We are in the Book of Revelation, the only book of the Bible that promises a blessing.

Now we get a blessing from all the books of the Bible.

Every time you're in the Word, you're going to get a blessing.

But the book of Revelation specifically says that you receive a blessing, which is interesting that a book would say seven times that you receive a blessing, and then everybody's scared of it.

So we are in the book of Revelation, and the first part of Revelation deals with churches, actual churches, local churches that were in Asia Minor.

And the order in which these letters come in this cyclical letter, this was a cyclical letter.

And a cyclical letter was that they didn't have a printing press back then.

The Gutenberg press would be some 15 centuries later when it would be developed out of Germany.

And so you have one parchment, and you have one letter, and it went out to a cycle, and it was on the postal route there in Asia Minor.

And so we looked at Ephesus.

And if you remember about Ephesus, the criticism of the church in Ephesus, you've lost your first love.

Now there was a great commendation there of what they had put up with in the way of persecution, but there was this criticism that, you know, in spite of all your labor and all of your hard work and all of your wonderful, heartfelt endurance, you're not doing it for the right reasons.

You've lost your love for me.

And so they were challenged on that.

And then last week we looked at the church in Smyrna.

And Smyrna, it comes from the word myrrh.

And myrrh was a fragrance, a spice that was used for the dead.

And it was crushed.

It would be dried out and it would be crushed.

And coming forth from myrrh was this extravagant fragrance that they used for embalming.

And we talked about last week that that's what was happening in Smyrna.

They were being crushed by the iron heel of Rome.

And yet there's no criticism for Smyrna.

Because he saw in the Smyrnian church a people under the persecution of Rome, but enduring with passionate love for the Lord.

And we talked about last week that the Lord knows you.

And he knows your name.

And he is with you in suffering.

And we all go through suffering, and we all go through times in our life where it's not fair.

It's not fair what you're going through.

It's actually times of injustice.

And if you have experienced being stabbed in the back, if you've experienced betrayal from someone you loved, if you've been fired unjustly, God's with you.

And we talked about that and how much he cares for you.

And he's there because Jesus knows what you're feeling, because he was fully God, but also fully man, and a man of sorrows, nonetheless.

So here tonight I want to talk about the church at Pergamos.

The church at Pergamos is struggling with what I think the church in America is largely struggling with.

And it's a struggle of moral, doctrinal, and spiritual compromise.

That when we compromise spiritually, we will compromise morally.

When we compromise morally, we often end up beginning to compromise doctrinally.

You know why?

Because we want to justify our behavior.

And so the church at Pergamos is struggling with compromise morally, spiritually, and doctrinally.

So turn to chapter 2, verse 12.

The uh let me just say this about Pergamus.

Pergamus was about 100 miles north of Ephesus.

Some of you have Bibles, and I've noticed that some of you are using them.

You got Bibles there in your Bible, and you can see the route there of these churches.

About 100 miles north is Pergamos of Ephesus, 50 miles north of Smyrna, and about 15 miles inland from the Aegean Sea.

Now listen to this: 200,000 volume library at Pergamos at this time.

At the writing of this, they have the largest library outside of Alexandria in the entire world.

200,000 volumes.

So this is a very intellectual city.

It is a very cosmopolitan city.

And to the angel, remember we talked about Angelos means messenger, so it's to the church, it's to the pastor of the church in Pergamos, right?

And watch how he begins.

It's really important you get this because this is the key to moral, spiritual, and theological decadence and compromise.

These things, remember, this is Jesus speaking.

Some of your Bibles have it in red.

This is Jesus speaking.

I mentioned this last week.

It's the only book of the Bible that you could actually argue that a portion of it was actually written by Jesus.

I mean, this is straight from the mouth of Jesus to John, John writes it down.

These things, says he, meaning Jesus, who has the sharp, two-edged sword.

Now, Pergamous literally means elevated through marriage.

And what was happening in Pergamos was a marriage of the world and worldly Roman, worldly Jewish culture and Christianity.

And so it's interesting that it means elevated by marriage, because men and women, it never works.

If you try to marry yourself to Jesus and marry yourself to the world, something's going to be lost.

And it's the most frustrating people in the world.

If you're compromising morally, if you're compromising in your heart with the world and the Lord, you're one of the most miserable people around.

I mean, people are happier just being all in the world because they don't even know any better.

I didn't.

I mean, my uh in high school, I'm getting ready to go to my 40th anniversary celebration of graduation.

Never been to any of them.

We are all going to be all so fat and so gray, and I I don't know why I'm doing it, but I can't, I'm excited to see some of the folks.

But we just did the craziest stuff, and I had no moral conscience whatsoever.

It was just, and we did some really bad stuff.

I mean, really bad.

You don't even want to know what I did.

I don't even think Liz knows everything that I did.

But we did stuff, and I'm thinking about going to someone, oh no, I know these people are gonna come up to me.

Remember Holt when we did da-da-da-da-da.

I'm gonna be like, shut up, man, it's my wife right there.

I need to go go meet someone, you know.

But but I had no moral conscience.

And then when I got saved as a freshman, I just dove into Jesus.

All the way.

And it was exciting, and it has been for all these years.

And I want to encourage you, go all the way, get on fire for the Lord.

If you're not on fire, get around some other people who are on fire and get on fire.

Because if you're not on fire, it's a big, big bummer.

Because the reality is you've now got a spirit-led conscience.

But you're still trying to do what you were doing before you met Christ.

And it's a super big drag.

It's a super because now you've got the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and now you're inviting demons back.

It's just kind of a bummer.

I just let you know that.

So Jesus says, here, I'm the one with a two-edged sword.

Hebrews 4 12.

The word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Men and women, don't miss this.

Because it's important as we go through the rest of the verse.

He's saying, Look, I come as one with a two-edged sword, the word of God, which they didn't have yet, so understand that.

They have the Old Testament, they don't have the New Testament yet.

It's being written as it's spoken.

I'm the one, and where's it coming forth from?

Coming forth from his mouth.

It's the word of God.

It is the spoken word of God coming as a two-edged sword, Old Testament on one side, New Testament on the other side.

The Old Testament representing the legal code and the law, the New Testament edge representing the beauty of the Spirit, mercy, and grace.

Now don't miss this.

I'm not saying there wasn't mercy and grace in the Old Testament.

I'm not saying that.

And I'm not saying that there's no sense of righteous judgment in the New Testament.

But here's what I've found in parenting.

In parenting is that we have kids in our home that sometimes need the edge of the law.

And others who need the edge of loving grace.

And where those are living their life in license, we come, the holts come with the law.

And those that are living their life under the overbearing sense of self-condemnation, we come with grace.

The word of God's a two-edged sword.

And the reason that's important is because we're going to see a church that doesn't get it.

The Pergamous church doesn't understand the anointing, the power, and the work of the Word of God.

Now let's be careful and realize that in reality they didn't have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans yet.

It was being written, it was being formed.

It would be another 200 years before it was actually put into what we call the finished canon or the Bible and became the 66 books.

But the reality is they had apostolic teaching, and that apostolic teaching was still, at this point, with John in Ephesus, one who had walked with Jesus, and who would even write the Gospel of John in 1st and 2nd and 3rd John, and now the book of Revelation.

I know your works and where you dwell, where Satan's throne is.

Huge statement in Scripture.

Satan's throne in Pergamus.

A thousand feet above the city was the Pergamos Acropolis, with, listen now, the largest altar believed to be in the world at that time.

So not the largest temple, don't miss this, but the largest altar giving sacrifices, sometimes human sacrifices, to the god Zeus.

Now, by the time this is written, they're giving sacrifices to Domitian the emperor.

So many believe that that altar, because of the idolatry involved in it, and maybe even the zeal in which the Pergamous people came and brought these sacrifices, might have been the throne of Satan.

Because Satan loves worshipers.

Remember we went through our spiritual warfare class.

We went through the series on war, which you guys can look it up and listen to it online.

But in that war series, I shared with you that Lucifer became Satan, was a worshiping, maybe the lead-worshiping angel in heaven, and then rebelled against God.

And in rebelling against God, was cast out of heaven, which is going to be covered in the book of Revelation in the months ahead, taking with him a third of the angels, which was a third of the angels that became demons.

And so today, a third of the angels from heaven, and they can't reproduce, it's the same ones, are on the earth.

And they're affecting us.

They're in our world.

And Satan's here.

And so I remember when I was in missiology, when I was in graduate school, we were in a missiology class, and one of the questions came up in a class, where do you think Satan dwells?

Because he's a real entity, he's a created being.

Where does he dwell on the globe?

And my professor was a guy named C.

Peter Wagner, and he said, I believe where you have the strongest idol worship, that's where Satan will be found.

And so what he's saying here is that it seems as though, and this is coming from Jesus, that the throne of Satan is at Pergamos.

Well, here's what's interesting about the temple.

What's interesting about the altar is this was the worship of the God, the mythological God, and I hope I'm pronouncing this right, Asclepius.

Asclepius.

Just let me give you a little hint.

Asclepius is on all of our medical symbols in America today.

That is the medical symbol of the pole with the snake wrapped around it.

That's where it came from.

On the top, in this temple area of the gods, was a hospital, and it was the largest hospital in the world.

Five acres.

So the Asclepius God, the temple of Asclepius was a hospital.

It is believed that millions came there, and that is on top of the Acropolis, and it had cutting-edge medical care.

When I was researching this, it said the temple taught that healing occurs through diet, stress relief, exercise, sacred water, and medicine of herbs and spices, and it was remarkably modern at that time.

And so people would come to this hospital to be healed.

What's interesting about Asclepius is he had daughters.

It's believed, by the way, I'm not believing this, I'm just explaining what they believed.

Asclepius was one of Apollos' sons in Greek mythology.

And one of his daughters was Hygia, which is where we get the word hygiene, and Panacea, which is where we get the word Panacea, the goddess of universal remedies.

So this is a significant city, gang, and we still have that.

And it's in that in that pole with the serpent, and how would you like to go to this hospital?

So before you complain next time about your doctor or your surgery and all that kind of stuff, and maybe having to wait in the waiting room for a while to get into the ER, here's what they did at Asclepius is you went in and you laid five acres now, you laid on the floor at night, and serpents were released to crawl over you as you lay there to get your healing.

So it's not that bad.

You don't have it that bad.

You know, our doctors may not be jolly on the spot every time, but there's no serpents in most of our hospitals.

And so it's believed that this snake on a pole, which was called soder, S-O-T-E-R, the pole with the serpent, this is where it came from.

Soder means savior.

So to the Greeks, Romans, probably to many of the Christians that were compromising at that time, their savior was a serpent.

You know where that comes from?

It comes from the idea of a snake shedding its skin.

It's the idea of death and resurrection.

So it was an early form of a misplaced understanding of demonic theology that believed that the snake should be worshipped.

And so they worship the soder.

They worshiped this snake on a pole, which was their savior.

And Jesus says to John in his vision in the apocalypse, he says, This is the throne of Satan.

This is the throne of Satan.

And you hold fast to my name.

So he's complimenting them.

He commends them.

You hold fast to my name.

You did not deny my faith, even in the days in which Antipas was my faithful martyr who was killed among you where Satan dwells.

Now we don't know much about Antipas, but the belief, the narrations that we do have, extra-biblical sources, was that he was probably the first martyr in Asia, and that the way he was killed was he was put in a cast iron pot with no water in it, and was put in it, and then the fire torched him as he burned to death in that pot.

Here's what's interesting, though.

It's the word Antipas, it's the name Antipas.

Antipas means against all.

Antipas stood against all here in a city called the throne of Satan.

Men and women, when we stand for Christ, it often feels like we're standing against all.

And in so doing, what I want us to note is that God notices you.

That's what we see in every one of the churches in the book of Revelation is the incredible persecution.

And the Lord always says, I see that, I notice that.

I know your name.

You're an overcomer.

God loves to be with those who are suffering and going through difficulties.

I was in Omaha two weeks ago.

I wasn't here, and um I sat down at this table, a sports banquet at University of Nebraska, Omaha with Isaac, and we were there, and this uh black man sat next to me, and I didn't know anybody at the table, and so I just started making conversation with him and found out he was a medical doctor who had fled southern Sudan during that genocide.

Over a million Christians were killed by Muslims in that genocide in the 80s and 90s.

And now he's got a clinic.

So he goes back, he's got a clinic there in southern Sudan.

So here was a man that would have understood this better than any of us here, the persecution and the in the tremendous amount of loss that he felt.

And I asked him, so did you lose family members?

And he said, Man, and he wanted to keep avoiding my questions.

He said, Everybody has lost family members.

Did you lose anybody?

Everybody in Southern Sudan has a tale to tell of torture, of maimings.

And I went back and I built that shelter and then that medical center, and it's going to be a seven-story building facility medical center, and I go back there every year because we're still dealing with what happened during that genocide.

It's across the world today, men and women in Iraq and Iran, um, in places in Israel, in places in Jordan, in places in Egypt, and Saudi Arabia and Morocco and across North Africa and then down into Ethiopia, there's tremendous persecution against believers.

And it's coming here.

It's coming here.

And this is our warning as we go through Revelation that.

You will have, listen, you will have what it takes to endure.

God will give you the grace that you need to endure.

That you are, does everybody here have two ears?

Just wonder, is everybody here?

Okay, everybody's got two ears.

You all have ears to hear.

And you are an overcomer.

You will be an overcomer.

You'll be prepared when it comes.

Verse 14 is an interesting verse because he's talking about the doctrine of Balaam.

But I have a few things against you.

So now he moves from commendation to criticism.

Because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block, circle, underline a stumbling block before the children of Israel to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality.

Now I don't know, I've asked this question many times, and I've taught Revelation before.

People don't know the story of Balaam.

They don't understand it.

So I'm going to take you really quickly through the story of Balaam to help you understand something that is actually a stumbling block even in our churches today.

Let me look at 2 Peter 2.15.

You don't have to turn there, I'll just read it to you.

They have forsaken the right way and gone astray, following the way of Balaam, the son of Boar, who love the wages of unrighteousness.

That's 2 Peter 2.15.

Then Jude 11 says this: Woe to them, for they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.

So if you're taking notes, just write down Numbers 22 through 25.

Numbers 22 through 25.

And you can look it up and read the whole story of Balaam.

But here it is in a nutshell.

Basically what happened is there's this guy, he's the king of Moab, and his name is Balak.

And Balak is looking out and he sees Israel coming.

And every nation that Israel deals with, they just, they kick butt.

And they and they just move through and they're destroying these nations.

And he starts thinking, if I don't figure out something, we're dead meat.

And so there's this guy, he's a prophet, I've heard about him, and his name is Balaam.

So what I need him to do is I'll pay him to prophesy against Israel.

Everybody believes in Balaam.

He hears from God.

So if he curses Israel, then Israel will get scared to run away.

And also, my people and Moab will really get strengthened and empowered by this prophecy.

So he goes, he says to Balaam, he says, Okay, yeah, how much will you pay me?

He pays him some stuff.

He goes to the high ground there to prophesy against Israel, and when he starts to prophesy a curse, a blessing comes out.

So he's getting ready, he's getting, he's really ready, you know.

You, God's with you, and he loves you, and he's going to bless you.

So he runs back to Balak and he gets, I heard you.

You can give a curse and you can give a blessing.

I don't know.

I just I messed up.

Well, okay, you know, here's some more stuff.

Go do it.

So he goes back again and he and he goes, and I I I I just love you.

You're my beloved, you know.

Three times he tries to curse him, and actually a blessing comes out.

And so Balaam's getting really frustrated.

And so is Balaam because he wants to keep getting paid.

So Balaam comes up with an idea.

Look, I can't curse him because God just uses me to bless them.

So here's what you do.

And this is the, and this is this is the temptation gang.

Don't miss this.

This is the curse of Balaam.

He says, look, I can't curse them because God's blessing them so much.

But here's what we can do.

Why don't you send some of your foxiest women dressed in bikinis and go out and show them how you worship in Moab, which was sexual immorality.

That's how they did it, because they have prost they had temple prostitutes.

So the so the women came out and said, Hey, big boy, you know, the Jews, you want to, you know, you want to have a whatever?

And we'll show you how we worship, it's way better than the way you guys worship.

And they were drawn in to sexual immorality and drawn away, and at that point um they lost the anointing of the Lord, and um, and that's the curse of Balaam.

Because here's the deal, and don't miss this.

If you stay under the Lord, you can't be cursed.

If you stay under the blessing of the Lord, you can't be cursed.

I don't care who curses you.

I've been cursed.

And if you follow Jesus very long, you're gonna be cursed by people, but the curse won't land if you stay under the blessing of the Lord.

The only way you can come under the cursings of the enemy is if you come out from the blessings of the Lord.

If you come out from the blessings of the Lord and the covering of the Lord, you're gonna get into trouble.

And that's your choice.

Because God gives you free will.

He does.

And so what had happened here, you guys, in Pergamos, is here was a people that were, they couldn't be cursed by Satan, but by coming out from the blessings of the Lord, they were beginning, what we believe is they were beginning to worship with, I mean, small W worship with the temple prostitutes through sexual immorality in the temple on the Acropolis there and still calling themselves believers.

So they were, they were dabbling in idolatry, dabbling in sexual immorality and still calling themselves believers.

And Jesus is calling them out, and there's now a judgment upon the church at Pergamos.

Now we think, well, I'm not going to any temples, and I don't have any idols.

I mean, I may I may have been to Japan, and some of you in the military, I've been to Korea, but I didn't bring any idols back or anything like that.

No.

The idols in America are sexual, greed, those areas of our life in our business and in our corporate work that we do, wherein we abuse people, we do things injustly, and in so doing it becomes an idol in our life.

God's not going to bless that.

Many of you have your own businesses here in this church, a lot of entrepreneurs in this church.

If you stay under the blessings of the Lord, you can't be cursed.

You will grow.

God will use you in a mighty and powerful way.

And so He's warning them, and it's a warning to us.

We've had a number of young men here in the church that have struggled with drugs, have struggled with sexual immorality.

Some who are living with their girlfriends and boyfriends and stuff.

And you, what you when you see when you do that, what's a bummer about that is that you're not under the blessing of the Lord.

And then sometimes you come to me and want me to marry you.

And my thing is, look, okay, this is where you've been.

I'm going to ask you now to repent of that.

And then I want to get you back to where you can be blessed.

Because, you know, the biggest mistake we can make is marrying the wrong person.

And the biggest mistake we can do is not preparing for marriage to the right person.

And so the blessing of the Lord is ours.

And so, church, be under God's blessing.

It's awesome.

It's wonderful, and it's a real drag to fall out from under that.

And that's where we get STD.

That's where you have so many issues with AIDS and sexually transmitted stuff that's happening because many believers who love the Lord at one point in their life have decided to compromise and they come out from that blessing of the Lord.

I happen to believe this.

I believe that there is coming.

It's not complete yet.

It's sort of a crack right now.

But I believe God's going to bring in the days ahead an open heaven over the road.

That there's going to be an outpouring of the Spirit.

Now we're getting little glimpses of it.

Last week, in the 24-hour war room, and then the kids, there's glimpses of an open heaven.

I want to open heaven over the church.

I want to open heaven over my family, and I want to open heaven over each one of you.

And that's where God can work.

And so some of us are in what I would call brassy heaven times.

And it feels like your prayers are just bouncing off a brassy heaven.

Well, listen, if you continue to walk with the Lord, to abide with Him day after day, following Him, worshiping Him, becoming a worshiper and a warrior, you know what you're doing?

You're just putting a big, huge crack in the brass to an open heaven where the blessings of the Lord are going to be poured out on your life.

And it's awesome.

Verse 15.

Thus you also believe those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.

It's not a cartoon channel, by the way, which thing I hate.

So, second time in the New Testament, Jesus says he hates something, and both times it's the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.

Very similar to the doctrine of Balaam.

Iranius, the great church father, said that Nicholas was a deacon of the church who was a false believer.

Now you say, who is Nicholas?

He's found in Acts 6.5.

So in Acts 6.5, when they pick seven deacons there, Nicholas is one of them.

And so Iranius, one of the church fathers in history, tells us that that guy was actually a false believer.

Clement of Alexandria, another one of the great church fathers, wrote that, quote, they abandoned themselves to pleasure like goats, leading a life of self-indulgence.

He's speaking of the Nicolaitans.

The name Nicholas means one who conquers the people.

And I explained, remember a few weeks ago in Ephesus, I explain that God hates anyone who gets between him and his people, his church.

And that includes pastors.

And that includes priests.

Because when Jesus died and said it was finished at Calvary, if you recall in the temple, the curtain was ripped from where?

From top to bottom, and that was an 80-foot curtain.

No man got a huge pair of scissors and cut that curtain.

That curtain was ripped from the top by God Himself because He wants an intimate, loving, merciful, caring relationship with each one of you, and you do not need me to get in the way.

I am not your intercessor.

I am not your intermediary.

Christ and the Holy Spirit.

You can have a personal relationship with Christ right now.

I'm an equipper, I'm a guide, I'm an under-shepherd of the chief shepherd.

But the chief shepherd has ripped that curtain open so that you can now have intimacy with him.

Every one of you in this room.

And I believe that when you look at cults and you look at cult groups that rise up in false religions, there's always a leader.

There's always some kind of a leader that begins to work like God among the people.

And God hates that.

And I believe what was happening was this cult was beginning to rise up called the Nicolaitans, that was possibly led, some say, by this guy named Nicholas, who was a false believer who had been one of the first deacons in Jerusalem at that time.

Repent.

Repent, or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

Remember a few verses ago?

What's that?

It's a two-edged sword.

So listen, don't miss this.

Always the solution to false doctrine, cultish tendencies, immoral behavior is the word of God.

Be a people of the word.

Teach your children to be in the word.

One of our responsibilities at the road, one of your responsibilities as parents is to train your kids to go to God's word.

Position yourself, men and women.

Before you go to work.

Where your kids can see you in the word when they come down those steps or they come out of their room to see it, mom and dad are a people of the word.

I'm not saying do it for show.

I'm saying do it as a model, an example to them that you put the word preeminent in your life.

Be in the word.

Because it's the two-edged sword.

It's what works against doctrinal heresies.

There were two types of governors in Rome.

There was the Evas Gladia.

The Evis Gladia.

The Evis Gladia, this type of governor, carried the sword.

And the sword meant that he could pronounce the death penalty.

The sword, by this time in the writing of Revelation, had been taken from the Jews, and they were not allowed to execute the death penalty.

Only the Romans could do that.

Thus, the reason the Jewish elders and leaders came to Pontius Pilate.

So the Evis Gladius was given to Rome, which was the death penalty, and he saying, No, I have the two-edged sword.

I have the gladiah.

And that two-edged sword pronounces life and death.

He who has an ear.

Everybody got an ear?

Okay.

Let him hear.

What the Spirit says to the churches.

To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna to eat.

Interesting phrase.

And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written, which no one knows, except him who receives it.

Now here's what's interesting.

When you came to the hospital slash altar slash temple on the Acropolis, the throne of Satan, and you quote unquote worship there, or you threw your manna on the fire, you received a white stone.

Now is that what he's talking about?

No.

He's using a metaphor that the people understood, but listen, a white stone in a court of appeal was thrown into an urn if you were found not guilty.

Every one of you in this room that have given your heart to Christ have a white stone.

You are not guilty.

You are forgiven.

And if you've never given your heart to Christ, do it.

Do it tonight.

And God will give you, listen, the white stone, which means you're acquitted.

You're fully righteous.

You're forgiven.

And then he says, you get the hidden manna of heaven.

What is that?

Well, tradition says that Jeremiah took the manna with the ark and hid it somewhere.

And we don't know where that is.

That's why if you saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, and if and if you're ever watching any of those movies, there's actually a lot of truth to it that there's many today, and I've met with one of them here in Colorado Springs.

He's probably the, he's called the modern-day Indiana Jones, who is looking for the Ark of the Covenant.

Because this manna and the rod that budded is in that.

We don't know where that is, but there's also a tradition that angels took the manna from the Ark of the Covenant in Jeremiah's time up to heaven.

And he's saying there is a hidden manna, obviously speaking to what would have been Jewish apocryphal literature, to eat.

And in our context, what he really means is that there is only one hidden manna to eat, and that's Jesus Christ.

And he wants to feed you, and he's with you, and he loves you.

You are fully equipped.

No matter what you've done in the past, no matter what you're involved in now, if you'll repent, and that means turn around, change, you can come into the victory of Christ.

Because there was one other thing that the white stone was used for.

In the Olympics, in the Greek Olympics, they didn't give trophies.

They gave a white stone to the victor.

So you're not only acquitted, but you're giving that at Victorious Stone.

Church, you can walk in victory.

You can walk in that victory in your life, but you can't walk in victory until you're acquitted.

So come to Christ.

Invite you tonight as we take communion, we worship together.

If you've never given your heart to Christ, invite him into your heart tonight.

Ask him to come in and begin the wonderful discovery of knowing Christ in a personal and vital and dynamic way.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

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