Matlock | 27/09/26 | Revelation 13 | Andy Townsend

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I just pray for that uh to be true of these words today that Andy will be speaking words from you, and then it'll come from his heart, and it'll come from your heart, or you want to uh uh expand to us today uh today from uh from the chapter.

Yes.

That was a big pressure moment there.

I just thought I was gonna turn it on again.

Brilliant, so it's good, thank you.

Great to be here today.

It's very autumn, and I was looking out at the weather, I thought summer's gone, hasn't it?

Look at that, wow.

But really good to be here.

So about five or six weeks ago, I I gave a word in a meeting.

It was just one verse out of Revelation 13, and Peter came up to me afterwards and said, Do you fancy doing the preach on that chapter?

And I said, Yeah.

And I was trying to remember what that chapter was, because you suddenly you know the the ones at the beginning, they're the letters to the various churches.

I thought I know those, I know the end is fantastic.

Revelation 21, 22.

I thought Revelation 13, I thought that's interesting.

I'd already committed, I'd already said yes.

I got back, I opened it up, and thought, ah, it's one of these.

They're very important, and it was it's interesting because I've never I've never preached on Revelation before.

Um, I obviously read it quite a few times, and there's lots of imagery, isn't there?

There's lots and lots of um pictures, symbolic, symbolism going on.

Um, and I was just remembering back actually, because I when I was first saved many years ago, I was I was 19, my friend who was a little bit more experienced than me, we were down the running track one day, and he was witnessing to another friend, and this other friend um they were talking about the Bible, and this other friend was saying, Yeah, I've read the Bible, read the read the New Testament, and my friend was saying, That's great.

Then the other chap paused and said, But I'm not reading Revelation.

And I said, I remember at the time because I don't think I'd even read it.

I was a very young Christian, I'd hardly ever been to church, and I said, Why is that?

He goes, It's way too scary.

He says you can't read Revelation.

But we were we were chatting this morning, weren't we?

We were saying that it's in the Bible, isn't it?

Revelation is there for a reason, and it's there to help us, it's there to show us, it's there to tell us the truth, isn't it?

Um so chapter 13, we're following on from obviously from chapter 12 last week, which Neil gave, and I wasn't here, but I listened to it a couple of times, so I know what Neil said.

It was very good.

Um now, just before I put it up on the screen, yeah, just before I put it up on the screen, just to say, just to give you some sort of context.

So this this chapter, like the previous one, most scholars think this took place, takes place during what we call the tribulation.

It's like an end times sort of thing.

Now it's very easy, I think, for us to look at all this imagery that almost looks like Lord of the Rings type imagery, and to think this is a time yet to come.

It's a story for the future, but not particularly relevant for us.

It is very relevant for us.

So those times probably haven't arrived yet.

I don't think we're in the tribulation yet, are we?

But there's things in there which I think are very, very important for us, which hopefully we can apply to ourselves, and also it gives us an idea of sort of what's what's happening and what's going on.

So is it possible, please, Richard, just to put up the first slide.

Now, just before the other thing I really loved about Neil's talk last week, he said, bear in mind when we're reading these chapters, that God is in a heavenly control room.

So when we read this chapter here, if you if you just read this chapter, it's very scary.

You look at it and you think, whoa, this is trouble, this is awful.

But remember that God is in the heavenly control room.

He knows the end from the beginning, he knows it all.

So I'll just read, we'll just do the first one for now.

It's quite a long chapter, so we'll do it in two halves.

The dragon stood on the shore of the sea.

So I think you might have discussed this last week, but in this symbolism, this imagery, the dragon represents Satan.

And I saw a beast coming out of the sea.

It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.

The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear, a mouth like that of a lion.

The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.

One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed.

The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast.

People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, Who is like the beast?

Who can wage war against it?

The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies, and to exercise its control for forty-two months.

It opened its mouth to blaspheme God and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven.

It was given power to wage war against God's holy people and to conquer them.

And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation.

All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast, all whose names have not been written in the Lamb's Book of Life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

Whoever has ears, let him hear.

If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity they will go.

If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword they will be killed.

This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God's people.

Quite a dramatic chapter, isn't it?

It's out something out of a film almost.

So for the for the readers of this book, the the Jewish people who are reading this, this imagery, this symbolism would have been very real for them.

There's um echoes in the in the Old Testament in books like Daniel, and they would be very, very familiar with this imagery.

In fact, I'd I'd read somewhere something like 360 out of the 404 verses in Revelation, either directly referred to or allude to stuff from the New Test from the Old Testament.

So the Jewish readers would be very familiar with this imagery.

Um and I was when the imagery, I've got a I've got an image I'm going to show you later on of what it possibly could look like.

But the imagery for the Jews in particular, this would have been particularly scary.

So the dragon represents Satan here, the beast coming out of the sea.

Most scholars think this is the Antichrist, which is, it only gets mentioned a few times in the in the New Testament, in uh 1 John and 2 John, the Antichrist is mentioned in there.

But that is that is most scholars think that is the beast who's coming out of the sea.

And you see, so it's interesting because I was reading, because you tend to think of anti-like as being opposite counter forces, good and evil, like the devil and the antichrist on this side, Jesus on this side, and they're battling away like that.

But it's not an equal battle, because what we've got to bear in mind is though it's antichrist, it doesn't mean that he's as powerful as God.

There's only one God, one Lord over it all.

What it means is, in terms of Antony, it means uh Antichrist is instead of, like a counterfeit, if you like.

And you can see see from these verses, there's it has a it has a massive influence over a lot of people over the whole world, doesn't it?

It's got people to worship the Antichrist, and it has it has quite a lot of influence.

So the image as well, just say it's coming from the sea.

So for the Jewish people who were generally speaking, they were they were a desert nomad sort of people, they weren't really seafarers at all.

And this image of this beast coming from the sea would have been particularly meaningful to them.

They would have seen they saw threats as things that came from the sea.

And its image, if you look, think about its image, it's got how many how many horns has he got?

It's got something like is it ten heads?

I've lost track of it, yeah.

So difficult to kill.

It's almost like this hydra-type thing, isn't it?

So in their minds, this image is something that is pretty, pretty tough, pretty, pretty strong.

Um, and the verse seven as well, if you that was when I was reading this through, it says, It was given power to wage war against God's holy people and to conquer them.

Now, an interesting thing, so most scholars again believe that the rapture, if you know what that is, has happened already by this point.

So the rapture is when effectively the believers are taken up, and the tribulation is meant to take place afterwards.

But within the tribulation, people can still come to Christ, and they're thinking that this verse here, verse 7, is referring to the people who've committed their lives to Christ post-rapture.

That's what they're basically saying.

And he's saying, The beast was given power to wage war against God's holy people and to conquer them.

Now that is in a physical sense because these people who've given their souls to Christ, they are eternally saved.

They're saved by grace and they're saved eternally.

But things can happen physically.

People can die, can't they?

And that's quite clear there that there's going to be, there's going to be casualties.

But people who who die in Christ, of course, they have they have eternal life.

Um gonna read the next the next half in a in a minute, Richard.

But yeah, just the last one is the sorry, just go back a minute, Richard.

Is that alright?

Sorry.

So just look at the end of line 10 there.

There's all this dramatic scene of this monster coming out, and you know, it talks about if anyone goes into captivity, into captivity, they'll go, if anyone's killed with a sword, with a sword they will be killed.

It sounds very dramatic.

And then there's an instructive line on the bottom.

This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God's people.

Now, I'm saying this is this is a time yet to come, but I think this applies to us now as well.

Because these people, these believers at the end there, they're actually living counter-culturally to what is going on in the world during the tribulation.

It talks about earlier on, doesn't it?

About um the inhabitants of the world, verse 8, all the inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast.

So there's culturally, people are giving in.

They're giving in to this thing, they're giving in to the culture, um, the culture of the beast.

But it says at the bottom there that we're to live, like they're to live, we're to live now, counter-culturally.

So we don't just go along with what's going on in the world.

Because there's a narrative, isn't there, in the world.

There's a narrative, there's a, you know, if you listen to the news, um, it's very scary, isn't it?

You listen to the news just this week, I was listening thinking, oh no.

Then I had to remind myself, we've got a God, a great big God, in the control room of heaven.

So I had a friend, our uh, so I've got a friend actually, and I was he's not a Christian.

And he's he he really believes that there's a great big conspiracy going on between the world's elite to really destroy us all, to take us all out.

And he was telling me this story, it's made him very, very depressed for several years, and he absolutely will not listen to it.

He he he he just believes it, he won't listen to other arguments at all.

Well, he does listen, but he doesn't believe them.

Um, and I was listening to him as we were going along in the car, and I said, What you're saying might be true, it could be true that there's a great big thing going on, you know, in the with the authorities of the world.

I said, however, says, I really do believe there's a great big God who's bigger than any authority in the world, and they can take my life, they can take your life away, they can destroy us all, but nobody can take us out of God's hand.

That's what I told him.

I said, because there is there's a lot of fear out there at the moment, isn't it?

If you listen to the news, if you you know talk about AI this week, if you listen to that, that was pretty scary, and it can make you think, what's going on?

But we've got to remember that we have a great big God in the heavenly control room.

And although there's going to be casualties, say in the tribulation, it looks like it's all been ramped up, it's all escalated, but even now it's happening, isn't it?

There's stuff happening now, as we're building, because we are building towards an end time, aren't we?

Good right to go on, Richard, to the next one.

So, similar tone.

So then I saw a second beast coming out of the earth.

It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon.

It exercised all the authority of the first beef on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast whose fatal wound had been healed, and it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people.

Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth.

And we go, Satan is a deceiver.

Okay, so these are mirages, these are things to trick.

It ordered them to be set up against set up set it ordered them to set up an image in honour of the first beast of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived.

The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.

It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast, or the n or the or the number of its name.

This calls for wisdom.

Let the person who was inside calculate the number of the beast, for it is number the number of a man.

The number is six, six, six.

Sounds like a scene out of the omen, doesn't it, or something like that.

But uh so the the the uh but the the second beast, again the scholars believe this is the false prophet who gets referred to later on, actually.

Those who are covering the uh chapters 16, I think it is.

Yeah, 16, 19, and 20, that gets a reference of the false prophet.

So, yeah, if the first beast wasn't enough, we get a second beast.

Um, and you get with this one as well, there's like devilish, devilish supernaturalism, isn't there?

You know, causing fire to come down from heaven, great signs, and you know, to wow the people.

And it gets their attention.

It reminded me actually a little bit, you know, the in Exodus when Moses goes to Pharaoh and there's some there's some great he he he this various miracles goes on, his staff becomes a snake and things like that.

Do you remember the the magicians who worked for Pharaoh?

They did counter-miracles, didn't they?

And it did several times in that in that story.

And it reminded me of that.

So there can be miraculous, if you like, or magical things happen that are actually counterfeit as well.

And that's what this is suggesting here.

There's counterfeit stuff going on.

Now then, Cordera Richard, is it all right just to show the the next slide?

So I don't know if you can see that.

So I asked AI, Chat GPT, I just typed in, it's amazing, it is amazing, said, could you create an image of Revelation 13?

And you know, within 30 seconds it had done this.

And looked at it and thought, wow, that's amazing.

There's some things that are wrong on it, which I told it it was wrong, and it still couldn't correct it, like it hasn't got the right number of crowns.

It's wrong, they've miscounted the crowns.

Um but the general gist is there, it's a terrifying image, isn't it?

I don't know if you can see, but you've got the the people down here with the a code on their hands and the 666, and this that's obviously the second beast.

But it's a pretty scary image, isn't it?

In fact, if you were at Skegness on the beach, enjoying the day in the sun, and that happened, your reaction would be to run for the hills, wouldn't it?

You'd be straight off.

In Greece.

If happened anywhere, Simon, I'm running.

So it's quite intimidator, isn't it?

And it's um and I think that is the devil's tactic, isn't it?

To intimidate, to frighten, to scare.

And it can can be very, you know, it can be very scary.

We but we we have to remember who's in control.

So is it possible to put the next slide on, please, Richard?

So I've just got some scriptures here because as I was reading this chapter, I I just remembered the verse.

If you remember the verse, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.

In fact, there it is, the top one there.

Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.

Then Ephesians 6.

This is um, in fact, I think you brought a word on this this morning, Matt, in the prayer meeting.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in the high places.

Ephesians 6, verse 12.

Ephesians 6:12

Submit your souls then to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

You did, this is from one John, you dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you, that's Jesus, is greater than the one who is in the world.

So this is this imagery is not in Revelation 13, it's backed up by the rest of Scripture in the New Testament.

And we're told clearly, aren't we, that we're not to run for the hills, you know, it's not a, you know, although we're not in the tribulation now, there are scary times, aren't they?

And I I just um I was going to say that for us, for Jane and I, the last couple of years, just with things going on in the, particularly in the family, been very, very difficult.

Um there's been there's been death, there's been some pretty traumatic events going on.

And about this time last year, I was in a meeting here one Sunday morning, and and God gave me the word reset.

And at the time I thought, that's not to bring now for everybody else, that's for me.

I just thought put it on the back burner.

Then some things happened over the next few days, and I and I was going along in the car with Jane, and I said, I think I need to reset we need to reset some things.

And it and the word it sort of broke the word in my mind, and I thought that's from the Lord.

And we then we had to reset some things, we had to look at what we were doing with our time and had to look at things again because it was important to re-prioritize things.

And one of the great temptations, because there was a lot of, if I'm honest with you, was there was a lot of spiritual attack going on.

There's a huge amount of spiritual attack, which we all have.

I appreciate the folk here who have got things going on right now that are very, very difficult, and it's a very real thing.

So there's there's there's lot, there's lots, lots going on, and there's lots going on in the spiritual realms as well, which affects us personally.

Um I said to Jane, so the important thing is although you do have to take time out sometimes and you do have to recover, assess what's going on, you don't you don't back away from church, you don't back away from God, because that's what the devil once wanted us to do.

He wanted to intimidate us to the point where we say, We're not going to provoke you anymore, devil.

We're gonna we're gonna sit down quietly in a chair and not do anything else.

Um, but that that's obviously not not the way to do it.

So Jane, what's important is it's important we fellowship, we pray, we read God's word every day.

That's what we do.

So we get the basics right, do those things because that way, and reading the word of God actually is so critically important because if you don't, you become unanchored, and you can start to believe all sorts of lies about yourself, and that because that's that's what the devil wants you to believe, it would distort the truth.

Yeah, that's what the Antichrist is just a distorter, a liar.

And you can start to think those things yourself if you don't stay rooted in the word, rooted in prayer, and rooted in fellowship as well, because that's the other thing.

So you you can't just pray and read the Bible on your own at home, but you can, but things go wrong if you're not in fellowship, you have to stay.

And I said to Jennifer, it's very important we get back to church, it's very important we start meeting up with people, you know, you're held accountable, um, and that you you do the things that the the New Testament tells you to do.

Because although obviously we're talking this is tribulation stuff, this is very this is when it's reaching the end time.

So we are in a spiritual battle now, but I was thinking in the in the New Testament, it's not a defensive posture that Jesus takes tells us to take, is it?

He doesn't say at any point, hide away in your house when bad things happen, keep your head down, because the devil he's always rocking roaring line.

Jesus at no point says that at all.

In fact, he says, I was just remembering this scripture this morning.

He says, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

That's in Matthew.

That's the truth, isn't it?

So though the spiritual battles going on, and you know, we've got the tribulation, the end time, the end times obviously uh coming up, we're living in a battle now.

However, Jesus says, the church is being built.

People are being brought into the kingdom, aren't they?

We've had friends and family brought into the kingdom, and the church is growing.

Although there's we're going to have casualties, we're going to have things happen to us, ultimately, God is in the control room and he will build his church.

That's what he's promised.

Okay, so just would like to focus on.

It's alright, to go back to the very first slide, please, if that's alright.

So this was this was the the word I gave in the meeting a few weeks ago, which uh Peter said after after reading this out, he said, Oh, could you do a preach on that?

So if we just go back to so the the picture that Chat GPT did for me was very scary and had all the big imagery in, but there was one very, very important detail.

In fact, it's the most important detail of all that was completely missing.

I did check over the picture, I thought it's not there, because I thought he might have crowbared it in somewhere, but it hadn't done.

And it's to do with um verse 8.

If you look at verse 8, about halfway down, it says, All the inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast.

Now we saw that in the imagery.

Then it says, All whose names have not been written in the Lamb's book of life.

And this was the bit the lamb who was slain before the creation of the world.

That's crucial, that's vital.

This whole, not just this chapter, but the whole of the Bible, the whole of human history hinges on the lamb who was slain before the creation of the world.

It's quite a mysterious sort of thing, because you think, well, hang on a minute.

I thought the lamb, obviously Jesus, the lamb who was slain, that was 2,000 years ago, it wasn't it?

It wasn't at the creation of the world.

But if you just can you just click on to think it's slide five, Richard.

Because I started to think about, are there other it's always good, a good top tip, by the way.

If ever you have a scripture and you think, am I interpreting this right?

Always look for think about other scriptures, because scripture is the best interpreter of scripture.

So I started when I read that that verse from Revelation 13, I thought, are there other scriptures that that we know that refer to this?

And I found these.

And I've not I've read these, obviously read these verses before, but it'd not really registered.

So Paul, a servant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of truth that leads to godliness, in the hope of eternal life, which God who cannot lie, promised before the beginning of time.

So God had made a promise before time, before we existed, he'd given us the promise, the hope of eternal life.

2 Timothy 1.9, he has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we have done, but because of his own purpose and grace.

Isn't that good news?

It's amazing.

This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.

Then he says, For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves.

That's in Ephesians.

So the rest of Scripture, the rest of the New Testament ties in with Revelation 13, that he was the lamb who was slain before the beginning of time.

So just a little bit about the imagery.

So we know symbolically here the lamb represents Jesus.

Um if you know your Old Testament, you'll know that they sacrificed animals as what we call atonement to make up for sin.

And lambs were sacrificed, pure, unblemished lambs, as Jesus lived a pure, unblemished life, sacrificed for the sins of the Israelites.

Um in the same way, when it was the Passover and the just before the Israelites were delivered out of Egypt, if you remember, but they above their doorposts, they painted, it was using the blood of a lamb.

They painted their doorposts so that as the angel flew over, they were saved.

This imagery of salvation and atonement through sacrifice of a lamb.

Um, and the New Testament tells us, tells us early on in Revelation as well, that Jesus was that lamb who was sacrificed for us.

So this was just a picture I had.

I hope this is helpful.

So the promise of eternal life on the left hand side, that was before anybody existed, before the creation of time, creation of the world, and then you've got eternal life, goes on forever and ever.

And it's certain and it's sure.

And two very important things it's not originating from anything historical, so there's nothing that's happened in history that we've done that can affect that.

That was always God's design, was to save his people.

And secondly, it doesn't depend on any human activity.

You know, we can mess up, can't we?

Israel messed up many, many times, so have we.

But that does not affect God's plan for humanity.

He was the lamb who was slain before the foundation.

It was always on God's heart to rescue people.

I was listening to um a debate.

Have you heard of the very um well-known atheist called Richard Dawkins?

Have you heard of him?

Yeah.

I was listening to a debate, it was a brilliant debate, with a chap called John Lennox, who is a brilliant Christian apologist and theologian, very, very gifted man, very knowledgeable.

And they're having this debate and they were talking about grand things like um the start of the universe, the big bang.

They were talking about evolution and how and all the miracle of how things change over time.

They were talking about how the universe is finely tuned, and that um, you know, this the so it's so magnificently complicated, and how it's how it's all been, and of course, John Lenx was saying this is part of design, this is part of creation, this is God who's who's done this, and and Dawkins was trying to push back on this.

Then at the end, the most interesting part for me is because they were they were they wanted to always talk longer, and the guy in the middle who was adjudicating kept stopping them.

Then at the end, he said to John Lennox, right, you've got two minutes, sum up what's most important about your argument.

And he said, Right, most important thing about my argument is Jesus.

He says, I want to talk about the man who died on the cross for us.

God became flesh, died on the cross, took on our sins, was raised to life, and is now sitting at the right hand of God.

He said, He is the most important thing in all this discussion.

And as he was saying it, Richard Dawkins was sort of shaking his head like this.

And he and he came on and said, Right, Richard, how would you like to respond?

They're very gracious that gave Richard the last word because he said, Oh, I knew it'd come to this.

You've shown your true colours.

He said, How petty, how petty and insignificant.

This is what he said.

I'm only reporting what he said here.

That our great discussion that we've had about these amazing things in the cosmos has come down to this.

You've really shown your true colours here.

And he goes, Oh, that is so petty.

Um, and I thought, and of course, it's you know, at the time I thought that's really blasphemous, that's really awful, isn't it, that someone would think that and say that.

He was just saying obviously what was on his mind.

Um, in fact, the first thought that came to mind was that that scripture, I don't think you're 1 Corinthians 1, where it says, We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, but foolishness to the Gentiles.

And of course, we'd be classed as the Gentiles, so to speak, the um the non-Jews, and so would would Dawkins.

And I thought, yeah, he thinks it's foolish, doesn't he?

He's saying it's petty, it's insignificant.

He thinks it's foolish, but it's only what uh Paul wrote uh uh a couple of thousand years ago.

In fact, uh what we uh what we do need to understand is that the uh Jesus' death and resurrection isn't just for our salvation, it's m it's it's it is it is that, of course it is that, and that's amazing for us.

And during the tribulation, it was going to be incredibly significant for the people who are going through all of that trauma, let's face it.

But the Bible actually says this about the cross.

It's in one in I've not got it on the screen, sorry, but Colossians 1, 19 and 20, it says, For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself, not just the people, everything to himself.

He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth, how by means of Christ's blood on the cross.

So it's not just it's completely opposite of what Dawkins said about it being petty and insignificant.

God actually says that that image of a lamb that looks so frail, so small, actually in the person of Jesus, contain God.

And he's not only saving us, but he's reconciling everything that is broken through the cross.

Um that's where I'd like to leave it, really.

I mean, I just thinking about how would I sum it up?

I just think when I think of God's plan, it's almost like it's the it's almost like the greatest true love story ever told, isn't it?

Do you think so?

It is, isn't it?

It's like a it's a it's an incredible love story.

Because one of the things that sorry, talk about Dorkin too much, one of the things he said was that um he can't believe that if there is a God who created all these great big things, he would be that bothered about us and this little speck of dust in the universe, that's what the phrase phrases it, um, and about our sin and our redemption.

He's because he wouldn't be bothered if he's that big to create the universe.

And I thought, you're completely 100% wrong.

He is bothered about us.

It's the greatest love story ever, isn't it?

That God should love us so much that he would right from the beginning of time think, how am I going to how am I going to love these people?

I'm going to step in to the theatre of the world and I'm going to die for them and take on their sins.

It's amazing, isn't it, that God would do that.

But yeah, so we'll leave it just there.

So there's some good chapters to come, by the way.

These are quite dramatic chapters, but you probably know, but there's a great ending.

And just remember that in all this, God, God is in control, is a heavenly control room, he knows all about this.

Thank you.