Podcasts about Desolation

With family: 2 Chronicles 3–4; 1 John 3 2 Chronicles 3–4 (Listen) Solomon Builds the Temple 3 Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the LORD1 had appeared to David his father, at the place that David had appointed, on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. 2 He began to build in the second month of the fourth year of his reign. 3 These are Solomon's measurements2 for building the house of God: the length, in cubits3 of the old standard, was sixty cubits, and the breadth twenty cubits. 4 The vestibule in front of the nave of the house was twenty cubits long, equal to the width of the house,4 and its height was 120 cubits. He overlaid it on the inside with pure gold. 5 The nave he lined with cypress and covered it with fine gold and made palms and chains on it. 6 He adorned the house with settings of precious stones. The gold was gold of Parvaim. 7 So he lined the house with gold—its beams, its thresholds, its walls, and its doors—and he carved cherubim on the walls. 8 And he made the Most Holy Place. Its length, corresponding to the breadth of the house, was twenty cubits, and its breadth was twenty cubits. He overlaid it with 600 talents5 of fine gold. 9 The weight of gold for the nails was fifty shekels.6 And he overlaid the upper chambers with gold. 10 In the Most Holy Place he made two cherubim of wood7 and overlaid8 them with gold. 11 The wings of the cherubim together extended twenty cubits: one wing of the one, of five cubits, touched the wall of the house, and its other wing, of five cubits, touched the wing of the other cherub; 12 and of this cherub, one wing, of five cubits, touched the wall of the house, and the other wing, also of five cubits, was joined to the wing of the first cherub. 13 The wings of these cherubim extended twenty cubits. The cherubim9 stood on their feet, facing the nave. 14 And he made the veil of blue and purple and crimson fabrics and fine linen, and he worked cherubim on it. 15 In front of the house he made two pillars thirty-five cubits high, with a capital of five cubits on the top of each. 16 He made chains like a necklace10 and put them on the tops of the pillars, and he made a hundred pomegranates and put them on the chains. 17 He set up the pillars in front of the temple, one on the south, the other on the north; that on the south he called Jachin, and that on the north Boaz. The Temple's Furnishings 4 He made an altar of bronze, twenty cubits11 long and twenty cubits wide and ten cubits high. 2 Then he made the sea of cast metal. It was round, ten cubits from brim to brim, and five cubits high, and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference. 3 Under it were figures of gourds,12 for ten cubits, compassing the sea all around. The gourds were in two rows, cast with it when it was cast. 4 It stood on twelve oxen, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east. The sea was set on them, and all their rear parts were inward. 5 Its thickness was a handbreadth.13 And its brim was made like the brim of a cup, like the flower of a lily. It held 3,000 baths.14 6 He also made ten basins in which to wash, and set five on the south side, and five on the north side. In these they were to rinse off what was used for the burnt offering, and the sea was for the priests to wash in. 7 And he made ten golden lampstands as prescribed, and set them in the temple, five on the south side and five on the north. 8 He also made ten tables and placed them in the temple, five on the south side and five on the north. And he made a hundred basins of gold. 9 He made the court of the priests and the great court and doors for the court and overlaid their doors with bronze. 10 And he set the sea at the southeast corner of the house. 11 Hiram also made the pots, the shovels, and the basins. So Hiram finished the work that he did for King Solomon on the house of God: 12 the two pillars, the bowls, and the two capitals on the top of the pillars; and the two latticeworks to cover the two bowls of the capitals that were on the top of the pillars; 13 and the 400 pomegranates for the two latticeworks, two rows of pomegranates for each latticework, to cover the two bowls of the capitals that were on the pillars. 14 He made the stands also, and the basins on the stands, 15 and the one sea, and the twelve oxen underneath it. 16 The pots, the shovels, the forks, and all the equipment for these Huram-abi made of burnished bronze for King Solomon for the house of the LORD. 17 In the plain of the Jordan the king cast them, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zeredah.15 18 Solomon made all these things in great quantities, for the weight of the bronze was not sought. 19 So Solomon made all the vessels that were in the house of God: the golden altar, the tables for the bread of the Presence, 20 the lampstands and their lamps of pure gold to burn before the inner sanctuary, as prescribed; 21 the flowers, the lamps, and the tongs, of purest gold; 22 the snuffers, basins, dishes for incense, and fire pans, of pure gold, and the sockets16 of the temple, for the inner doors to the Most Holy Place and for the doors of the nave of the temple were of gold. Footnotes [1] 3:1 Septuagint; Hebrew lacks the Lord [2] 3:3 Syriac; Hebrew foundations [3] 3:3 A cubit was about 18 inches or 45 centimeters [4] 3:4 Compare 1 Kings 6:3; the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain [5] 3:8 A talent was about 75 pounds or 34 kilograms [6] 3:9 A shekel was about 2/5 ounce or 11 grams [7] 3:10 Septuagint; the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain [8] 3:10 Hebrew they overlaid [9] 3:13 Hebrew they [10] 3:16 Hebrew chains in the inner sanctuary [11] 4:1 A cubit was about 18 inches or 45 centimeters [12] 4:3 Compare 1 Kings 7:24; Hebrew oxen; twice in this verse [13] 4:5 A handbreadth was about 3 inches or 7.5 centimeters [14] 4:5 A bath was about 6 gallons or 22 liters [15] 4:17 Spelled Zarethan in 1 Kings 7:46 [16] 4:22 Compare 1 Kings 7:50; Hebrew the entrance of the house (ESV) 1 John 3 (Listen) 3 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears1 we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. 4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's2 seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. Love One Another 11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers,3 that the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. 16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. 19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God,4 and God5 in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. Footnotes [1] 3:2 Or when it appears [2] 3:9 Greek his [3] 3:13 Or brothers and sisters. In New Testament usage, depending on the context, the plural Greek word adelphoi (translated “brothers”) may refer either to brothers or to brothers and sisters; also verses 14, 16 [4] 3:24 Greek him [5] 3:24 Greek he (ESV) In private: Nahum 2; Luke 18 Nahum 2 (Listen) The Destruction of Nineveh 2   The scatterer has come up against you.    Man the ramparts;    watch the road;  dress for battle;1    collect all your strength. 2   For the LORD is restoring the majesty of Jacob    as the majesty of Israel,  for plunderers have plundered them    and ruined their branches. 3   The shield of his mighty men is red;    his soldiers are clothed in scarlet.  The chariots come with flashing metal    on the day he musters them;    the cypress spears are brandished.4   The chariots race madly through the streets;    they rush to and fro through the squares;  they gleam like torches;    they dart like lightning.5   He remembers his officers;    they stumble as they go,  they hasten to the wall;    the siege tower2 is set up.6   The river gates are opened;    the palace melts away;7   its mistress3 is stripped;4 she is carried off,    her slave girls lamenting,  moaning like doves    and beating their breasts.8   Nineveh is like a pool    whose waters run away.5  “Halt! Halt!” they cry,    but none turns back.9   Plunder the silver,    plunder the gold!  There is no end of the treasure    or of the wealth of all precious things. 10   Desolate! Desolation and ruin!    Hearts melt and knees tremble;  anguish is in all loins;    all faces grow pale!11   Where is the lions' den,    the feeding place of the young lions,  where the lion and lioness went,    where his cubs were, with none to disturb?12   The lion tore enough for his cubs    and strangled prey for his lionesses;  he filled his caves with prey    and his dens with torn flesh. 13 Behold, I am against you, declares the LORD of hosts, and I will burn your6 chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers shall no longer be heard. Footnotes [1] 2:1 Hebrew gird your loins [2] 2:5 Or the mantelet [3] 2:7 The meaning of the Hebrew word rendered its mistress is uncertain [4] 2:7 Or exiled [5] 2:8 Compare Septuagint; the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain [6] 2:13 Hebrew her (ESV) Luke 18 (Listen) The Parable of the Persistent Widow 18 And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. 3 And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.' 4 For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.'” 6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7 And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8 I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” The Pharisee and the Tax Collector 9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed1 thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.' 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Let the Children Come to Me 15 Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. 16 But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 17 Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” The Rich Ruler 18 And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 19 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.'” 21 And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.” 22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 23 But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. 24 Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! 25 For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” 27 But he said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” 28 And Peter said, “See, we have left our homes and followed you.” 29 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers2 or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, 30 who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.” Jesus Foretells His Death a Third Time 31 And taking the twelve, he said to them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. 32 For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. 33 And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.” 34 But they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said. Jesus Heals a Blind Beggar 35 As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. 36 And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. 37 They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” 38 And he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 39 And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 40 And Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he came near, he asked him, 41 “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” 42 And Jesus said to him, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.” 43 And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God. Footnotes [1] 18:11 Or standing, prayed to himself [2] 18:29 Or wife or brothers and sisters (ESV)

https://slasrpodcast.com/     SLASRPodcast@gmail.com    Welcome to Episode 131 of the Sounds like a search and rescue podcast. This week we are joined by Ken Lindbloom from Texas Search and Rescue. Ken is a volunteer with TexSAR and has a background in emergency and disaster management, His particular area of interest is medical care for working K9 dogs. Ken has done two separate research projects on K9 operational medicine and is joining us tonight to explain the who, what, why, and how of developing a formal prehospital medical program for SAR K9s. To put this simply - when rescue dogs need medical help - how do SAR teams get enough medical training to make sure the dogs are treated until they can get to a medical facility. In addition to the K9 segment we will be ranking the AMC Huts, recapping our recent live episode at Reklis, we have follow ups on eye protection, a story about spite houses, a story about a very loyal jack russell terrier, recent hikes on the Belknaps, Kinsmans, a bushwhack on Mt. Deception, Winter hiking plans,    This weeks Higher Summit Forecast Welcome back to our sponsor - Fieldstone Kombucha   About Ken Lightning Talk Submission About TexSAR TexSAR Website   Topics Murder indictment - Body buried in Twin Mountain, NH Ranking the AMC Huts Stomp -  Carter Notch, Lonesome, Cloud, Greenleaf, Madison Spring, Galehead, Zealand, Mizpah Mike - Cloud, Zealand, Madison, Greenleaf, Galehead, Mizpah, Lonesome, Carter Notch  Mount Washington Road Race Selfies and Grizzly Bears The Pink House - Spite House of Newburyport Dog stays with deceased owner in wilderness for 70+ days Reklis Recap Gear Review - Sasquatch Call and Krapp Strap Pop Culture - Alpine Meadows Avalanche Documentary on Netflix Follow up on Eye Protection  Recent Hikes -Stomp on the Belknaps and Mt. Desolation Recent Hikes - Mike on the Kinsmans Welcome Ken - K9 Operational Medicine   Show Notes Apple Podcast link for 5 star reviews SLASR Merchandise SLASR LinkTree 5 men charged with murder, bury the body in Twin Mountain MWRR sets fundraising record Selfie taking now considered a public health risk - No, really??? plans to release 7 grizzly bears  near rural communities Pink house in Newburyport Spite House Legend and the truth behind it JRT watches body of owner for 70+ days Sasquatch Call Krapp Strapp Follow up from prior episode about eye protection Overview of Belknap Range Trail Sponsors, Friends  and Partners Mount Washington Higher Summits Forecast Fieldstone Kombucha Hiking Buddies  Vaucluse - Sweat less. Explore more. – Vaucluse Gear  

Visited by the spirit world, a Hopi woman, an Aborigine man, and a Rabbi are told the earth will soon undergo worldwide desolation. They are divinely united to reveal the message to all humans that live upon Mother Earth. It all begins with a thermonuclear war between India and China over greed, which starts the cataclysmic events that alter the entire planet. They were told that man's carelessness with his scientific technology will cause a cascade of events that will literally change the face of Mother Earth. Will Sarah, Yirawala, and Rabbi Raboy be able to warn all the humans in time to prepare themselves for these cataclysmic events? This book is part one of the Desolation trilogy. Mother Earth purifies herself and completes her rebirth in books two and three. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/steve-richards/support

Psalms and Wisdom: Psalm 120 Psalm 120 (Listen) Deliver Me, O Lord A Song of Ascents. 120   In my distress I called to the LORD,    and he answered me.2   Deliver me, O LORD,    from lying lips,    from a deceitful tongue. 3   What shall be given to you,    and what more shall be done to you,    you deceitful tongue?4   A warrior's sharp arrows,    with glowing coals of the broom tree! 5   Woe to me, that I sojourn in Meshech,    that I dwell among the tents of Kedar!6   Too long have I had my dwelling    among those who hate peace.7   I am for peace,    but when I speak, they are for war! (ESV) Pentateuch and History: Job 3 Job 3 (Listen) Job Laments His Birth 3 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. 2 And Job said: 3   “Let the day perish on which I was born,    and the night that said,    ‘A man is conceived.'4   Let that day be darkness!    May God above not seek it,    nor light shine upon it.5   Let gloom and deep darkness claim it.    Let clouds dwell upon it;    let the blackness of the day terrify it.6   That night—let thick darkness seize it!    Let it not rejoice among the days of the year;    let it not come into the number of the months.7   Behold, let that night be barren;    let no joyful cry enter it.8   Let those curse it who curse the day,    who are ready to rouse up Leviathan.9   Let the stars of its dawn be dark;    let it hope for light, but have none,    nor see the eyelids of the morning,10   because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb,    nor hide trouble from my eyes. 11   “Why did I not die at birth,    come out from the womb and expire?12   Why did the knees receive me?    Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?13   For then I would have lain down and been quiet;    I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,14   with kings and counselors of the earth    who rebuilt ruins for themselves,15   or with princes who had gold,    who filled their houses with silver.16   Or why was I not as a hidden stillborn child,    as infants who never see the light?17   There the wicked cease from troubling,    and there the weary are at rest.18   There the prisoners are at ease together;    they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.19   The small and the great are there,    and the slave is free from his master. 20   “Why is light given to him who is in misery,    and life to the bitter in soul,21   who long for death, but it comes not,    and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,22   who rejoice exceedingly    and are glad when they find the grave?23   Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,    whom God has hedged in?24   For my sighing comes instead of1 my bread,    and my groanings are poured out like water.25   For the thing that I fear comes upon me,    and what I dread befalls me.26   I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;    I have no rest, but trouble comes.” Footnotes [1] 3:24 Or like; Hebrew before (ESV) Chronicles and Prophets: Isaiah 24 Isaiah 24 (Listen) Judgment on the Whole Earth 24   Behold, the LORD will empty the earth1 and make it desolate,    and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants.2   And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest;    as with the slave, so with his master;    as with the maid, so with her mistress;  as with the buyer, so with the seller;    as with the lender, so with the borrower;    as with the creditor, so with the debtor.3   The earth shall be utterly empty and utterly plundered;    for the LORD has spoken this word. 4   The earth mourns and withers;    the world languishes and withers;    the highest people of the earth languish.5   The earth lies defiled    under its inhabitants;  for they have transgressed the laws,    violated the statutes,    broken the everlasting covenant.6   Therefore a curse devours the earth,    and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;  therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched,    and few men are left.7   The wine mourns,    the vine languishes,    all the merry-hearted sigh.8   The mirth of the tambourines is stilled,    the noise of the jubilant has ceased,    the mirth of the lyre is stilled.9   No more do they drink wine with singing;    strong drink is bitter to those who drink it.10   The wasted city is broken down;    every house is shut up so that none can enter.11   There is an outcry in the streets for lack of wine;    all joy has grown dark;    the gladness of the earth is banished.12   Desolation is left in the city;    the gates are battered into ruins.13   For thus it shall be in the midst of the earth    among the nations,  as when an olive tree is beaten,    as at the gleaning when the grape harvest is done. 14   They lift up their voices, they sing for joy;    over the majesty of the LORD they shout from the west.215   Therefore in the east3 give glory to the LORD;    in the coastlands of the sea, give glory to the name of the LORD, the God of Israel.16   From the ends of the earth we hear songs of praise,    of glory to the Righteous One.  But I say, “I waste away,    I waste away. Woe is me!  For the traitors have betrayed,    with betrayal the traitors have betrayed.” 17   Terror and the pit and the snare4    are upon you, O inhabitant of the earth!18   He who flees at the sound of the terror    shall fall into the pit,  and he who climbs out of the pit    shall be caught in the snare.  For the windows of heaven are opened,    and the foundations of the earth tremble.19   The earth is utterly broken,    the earth is split apart,    the earth is violently shaken.20   The earth staggers like a drunken man;    it sways like a hut;  its transgression lies heavy upon it,    and it falls, and will not rise again. 21   On that day the LORD will punish    the host of heaven, in heaven,    and the kings of the earth, on the earth.22   They will be gathered together    as prisoners in a pit;  they will be shut up in a prison,    and after many days they will be punished.23   Then the moon will be confounded    and the sun ashamed,  for the LORD of hosts reigns    on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem,  and his glory will be before his elders. Footnotes [1] 24:1 Or land; also throughout this chapter [2] 24:14 Hebrew from the sea [3] 24:15 Hebrew in the realm of light, or with the fires [4] 24:17 The Hebrew words for terror, pit, and snare sound alike (ESV) Gospels and Epistles: John 20 John 20 (Listen) The Resurrection 20 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. 4 Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, 7 and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus'1 head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples went back to their homes. Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene 11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic,2 “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her. Jesus Appears to the Disciples 19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews,3 Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” Jesus and Thomas 24 Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin,4 was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” 26 Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” The Purpose of This Book 30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. Footnotes [1] 20:7 Greek his [2] 20:16 Or Hebrew [3] 20:19 Greek Ioudaioi probably refers here to Jewish religious leaders, and others under their influence, in that time [4] 20:24 Greek Didymus (ESV)

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In this bone-chilling episode, we embark on a harrowing journey into the heart of horror as we dissect the intense and gruesome landscape of "The Hills Have Eyes" (2007). Join your hosts Aran and Tom, as we unravel the twisted narrative, explore the desolate terrain, and delve into the darkest corners of this cinematic nightmare.From the desiccated hills to the unnerving mutations that haunt the unsuspecting, we analyze the relentless terror that unfolds on screen. Get ready for a deep dive into the psychological horrors, relentless suspense, and the visceral fear that lingers long after the credits roll.As we navigate through the treacherous plot twists and confront the horrors that await, we'll discuss the film's impact on the horror genre and its chilling resonance with audiences. So, brace yourselves for an in-depth exploration of survival, fear, and the sinister secrets concealed within the hills that have eyes.Don't miss this gripping episode that peels back the layers of terror in "The Hills Have Eyes" (2007). Tune in, if you dare, for a spine-tingling experience that will leave you questioning the boundaries between humanity and monstrosity.If you enjoy the show don't forget to leave a rate/review to support the show!

1️⃣3️⃣5️⃣ En el programa 135 de Hadoken, Lázaro pasa de nosotros y su puesto lo ocupa un nuevo invitado: Señor Lobo. 🧟 Empezamos con el anuncio de The Last of Us Parte 2 para PS5, título que llegaría el 19 de enero. 🗡️ Seguimos con la confirmación de la llegada de Baldur’s Gate 3 en edición física, la llamada Deluxe Edition, que llegaría a PS5, Xbox Series y PC en el primer trimestre de 2024. 🚪 Después nos detenemos en Portal, el dispositivo de Sony que se ha agotado en dos días en muchas partes del mundo. Y, de paso, hacemos balance de PSVR2. 📺 Y para acabar, comentamos gameplays de juegos como The Desolation, Air Twister, InZoi o Blade Chimera. 🍒 Y de guinda, un Top con los juegos más relajantes y excitantes.

In this message we look at Yeshua's statement, "So when you see standing in the holy place the abomination that causes desolation spoken of through the prophet Daniel..." and then focus our attention on Daniel chapter 9 and the prophecy of the "Seventy Weeks" (Daniel 9:24). We particularly note the context, the proper meaning of the Hebrew word translated "weeks," the focus of Daniel's prophecy, and the six promises which will take place at the conclusion of the time period revealed to Daniel.Watch complete service on YouTube:https://youtube.com/live/TtjYZG-q2ho

“Dreams, Desires, Desolation was created out of our love for English Song. The album comprises a real mixture of very familiar songs, along with some relatively unknown ones, and a few which were very popular in their day but have fallen out of fashion. There are also three world premiere recordings. We believe, despite the mixture of styles, each song brings something valid to our concept.”Tracks George Butterworth: Is my team plowing? (3:47) Frank Bridge: Come to me in my dreams (3:37) Charles Marshall: I hear you calling me (3:35) Roger Quilter: Now sleeps the crimson petal (2:10) Clive Pollard: Go song of mine* (3:34) Richard Hageman: Do not go my love (2:58) Ralph Vaughan Williams: Silent Noon (4:07) Frederick Keel: Remembrance (2:56) Victor Hely-Hutchinson: Dream Song (2:09) Frank Bridge: What shall I your true love tell? (4:15) Haydn Wood: Love's garden of roses (4:04) Peter Gellhorn: Autumn** John Ireland: If there were dreams to sell (2:03) Cecil Armstrong Gibbs: Silver (2:52) Clive Pollard: The cloths of heaven* (2:41) Ralph Vaughan Williams: The sky above the roof (2:49) Cyril Scott: Lullaby (2:54) Amy Woodforde-Finden: Kashmiri Song (3:39) Roger Quilter: I arise from the dreams of thee (4:41) Frank Bridge: Journey's End (3:58) Lucy Simon: How could I ever know (The Secret Garden) (3:03) *First Recording**First Commercial RecordingsHelp support our show by purchasing this album  at:Downloads (classicalmusicdiscoveries.store) Classical Music Discoveries is sponsored by Uber. @CMDHedgecock#ClassicalMusicDiscoveries #KeepClassicalMusicAlive#CMDGrandOperaCompanyofVenice #CMDParisPhilharmonicinOrléans#CMDGermanOperaCompanyofBerlin#CMDGrandOperaCompanyofBarcelonaSpain#ClassicalMusicLivesOn#Uber#AppleClassical Please consider supporting our show, thank you!Donate (classicalmusicdiscoveries.store) staff@classicalmusicdiscoveries.comThis album is broadcast with the permission of Sean Dacy from Rosebrook Media.

  The Haunter of the Dark By H. P. Lovecraft (Dedicated to Robert Bloch) I have seen the dark universe yawning Where the black planets roll without aim— Where they roll in their horror unheeded, Without knowledge or lustre or name. —Nemesis. Cautious investigators will hesitate to challenge the common belief that Robert Blake was killed by lightning, or by some profound nervous shock derived from an electrical discharge. It is true that the window he faced was unbroken, but Nature has shewn herself capable of many freakish performances. The expression on his face may easily have arisen from some obscure muscular source unrelated to anything he saw, while the entries in his diary are clearly the result of a fantastic imagination aroused by certain local superstitions and by certain old matters he had uncovered. As for the anomalous conditions at the deserted church on Federal Hill—the shrewd analyst is not slow in attributing them to some charlatanry, conscious or unconscious, with at least some of which Blake was secretly connected. For after all, the victim was a writer and painter wholly devoted to the field of myth, dream, terror, and superstition, and avid in his quest for scenes and effects of a bizarre, spectral sort. His earlier stay in the city—a visit to a strange old man as deeply given to occult and forbidden lore as he—had ended amidst death and flame, and it must have been some morbid instinct which drew him back from his home in Milwaukee. He may have known of the old stories despite his statements to the contrary in the diary, and his death may have nipped in the bud some stupendous hoax destined to have a literary reflection. Among those, however, who have examined and correlated all this evidence, there remain several who cling to less rational and commonplace theories. They are inclined to take much of Blake's diary at its face value, and point significantly to certain facts such as the undoubted genuineness of the old church record, the verified existence of the disliked and unorthodox Starry Wisdom sect prior to 1877, the recorded disappearance of an inquisitive reporter named Edwin M. Lillibridge in 1893, and—above all—the look of monstrous, transfiguring fear on the face of the young writer when he died. It was one of these believers who, moved to fanatical extremes, threw into the bay the curiously angled stone and its strangely adorned metal box found in the old church steeple—the black windowless steeple, and not the tower where Blake's diary said those things originally were. Though widely censured both officially and unofficially, this man—a reputable physician with a taste for odd folklore—averred that he had rid the earth of something too dangerous to rest upon it. Between these two schools of opinion the reader must judge for himself. The papers have given the tangible details from a sceptical angle, leaving for others the drawing of the picture as Robert Blake saw it—or thought he saw it—or pretended to see it. Now, studying the diary closely, dispassionately, and at leisure, let us summarise the dark chain of events from the expressed point of view of their chief actor. Young Blake returned to Providence in the winter of 1934–5, taking the upper floor of a venerable dwelling in a grassy court off College Street—on the crest of the great eastward hill near the Brown University campus and behind the marble John Hay Library. It was a cosy and fascinating place, in a little garden oasis of village-like antiquity where huge, friendly cats sunned themselves atop a convenient shed. The square Georgian house had a monitor roof, classic doorway with fan carving, small-paned windows, and all the other earmarks of early nineteenth-century workmanship. Inside were six-panelled doors, wide floor-boards, a curving colonial staircase, white Adam-period mantels, and a rear set of rooms three steps below the general level. Blake's study, a large southwest chamber, overlooked the front garden on one side, while its west windows—before one of which he had his desk—faced off from the brow of the hill and commanded a splendid view of the lower town's outspread roofs and of the mystical sunsets that flamed behind them. On the far horizon were the open countryside's purple slopes. Against these, some two miles away, rose the spectral hump of Federal Hill, bristling with huddled roofs and steeples whose remote outlines wavered mysteriously, taking fantastic forms as the smoke of the city swirled up and enmeshed them. Blake had a curious sense that he was looking upon some unknown, ethereal world which might or might not vanish in dream if ever he tried to seek it out and enter it in person. Having sent home for most of his books, Blake bought some antique furniture suitable to his quarters and settled down to write and paint—living alone, and attending to the simple housework himself. His studio was in a north attic room, where the panes of the monitor roof furnished admirable lighting. During that first winter he produced five of his best-known short stories—“The Burrower Beneath”, “The Stairs in the Crypt”, “Shaggai”, “In the Vale of Pnath”, and “The Feaster from the Stars”—and painted seven canvases; studies of nameless, unhuman monsters, and profoundly alien, non-terrestrial landscapes. At sunset he would often sit at his desk and gaze dreamily off at the outspread west—the dark towers of Memorial Hall just below, the Georgian court-house belfry, the lofty pinnacles of the downtown section, and that shimmering, spire-crowned mound in the distance whose unknown streets and labyrinthine gables so potently provoked his fancy. From his few local acquaintances he learned that the far-off slope was a vast Italian quarter, though most of the houses were remnants of older Yankee and Irish days. Now and then he would train his field-glasses on that spectral, unreachable world beyond the curling smoke; picking out individual roofs and chimneys and steeples, and speculating upon the bizarre and curious mysteries they might house. Even with optical aid Federal Hill seemed somehow alien, half fabulous, and linked to the unreal, intangible marvels of Blake's own tales and pictures. The feeling would persist long after the hill had faded into the violet, lamp-starred twilight, and the court-house floodlights and the red Industrial Trust beacon had blazed up to make the night grotesque. Of all the distant objects on Federal Hill, a certain huge, dark church most fascinated Blake. It stood out with especial distinctness at certain hours of the day, and at sunset the great tower and tapering steeple loomed blackly against the flaming sky. It seemed to rest on especially high ground; for the grimy facade, and the obliquely seen north side with sloping roof and the tops of great pointed windows, rose boldly above the tangle of surrounding ridgepoles and chimney-pots. Peculiarly grim and austere, it appeared to be built of stone, stained and weathered with the smoke and storms of a century and more. The style, so far as the glass could shew, was that earliest experimental form of Gothic revival which preceded the stately Upjohn period and held over some of the outlines and proportions of the Georgian age. Perhaps it was reared around 1810 or 1815. As months passed, Blake watched the far-off, forbidding structure with an oddly mounting interest. Since the vast windows were never lighted, he knew that it must be vacant. The longer he watched, the more his imagination worked, till at length he began to fancy curious things. He believed that a vague, singular aura of desolation hovered over the place, so that even the pigeons and swallows shunned its smoky eaves. Around other towers and belfries his glass would reveal great flocks of birds, but here they never rested. At least, that is what he thought and set down in his diary. He pointed the place out to several friends, but none of them had even been on Federal Hill or possessed the faintest notion of what the church was or had been. In the spring a deep restlessness gripped Blake. He had begun his long-planned novel—based on a supposed survival of the witch-cult in Maine—but was strangely unable to make progress with it. More and more he would sit at his westward window and gaze at the distant hill and the black, frowning steeple shunned by the birds. When the delicate leaves came out on the garden boughs the world was filled with a new beauty, but Blake's restlessness was merely increased. It was then that he first thought of crossing the city and climbing bodily up that fabulous slope into the smoke-wreathed world of dream. Late in April, just before the aeon-shadowed Walpurgis time, Blake made his first trip into the unknown. Plodding through the endless downtown streets and the bleak, decayed squares beyond, he came finally upon the ascending avenue of century-worn steps, sagging Doric porches, and blear-paned cupolas which he felt must lead up to the long-known, unreachable world beyond the mists. There were dingy blue-and-white street signs which meant nothing to him, and presently he noted the strange, dark faces of the drifting crowds, and the foreign signs over curious shops in brown, decade-weathered buildings. Nowhere could he find any of the objects he had seen from afar; so that once more he half fancied that the Federal Hill of that distant view was a dream-world never to be trod by living human feet. Now and then a battered church facade or crumbling spire came in sight, but never the blackened pile that he sought. When he asked a shopkeeper about a great stone church the man smiled and shook his head, though he spoke English freely. As Blake climbed higher, the region seemed stranger and stranger, with bewildering mazes of brooding brown alleys leading eternally off to the south. He crossed two or three broad avenues, and once thought he glimpsed a familiar tower. Again he asked a merchant about the massive church of stone, and this time he could have sworn that the plea of ignorance was feigned. The dark man's face had a look of fear which he tried to hide, and Blake saw him make a curious sign with his right hand. Then suddenly a black spire stood out against the cloudy sky on his left, above the tiers of brown roofs lining the tangled southerly alleys. Blake knew at once what it was, and plunged toward it through the squalid, unpaved lanes that climbed from the avenue. Twice he lost his way, but he somehow dared not ask any of the patriarchs or housewives who sat on their doorsteps, or any of the children who shouted and played in the mud of the shadowy lanes. At last he saw the tower plain against the southwest, and a huge stone bulk rose darkly at the end of an alley. Presently he stood in a windswept open square, quaintly cobblestoned, with a high bank wall on the farther side. This was the end of his quest; for upon the wide, iron-railed, weed-grown plateau which the wall supported—a separate, lesser world raised fully six feet above the surrounding streets—there stood a grim, titan bulk whose identity, despite Blake's new perspective, was beyond dispute. The vacant church was in a state of great decrepitude. Some of the high stone buttresses had fallen, and several delicate finials lay half lost among the brown, neglected weeds and grasses. The sooty Gothic windows were largely unbroken, though many of the stone mullions were missing. Blake wondered how the obscurely painted panes could have survived so well, in view of the known habits of small boys the world over. The massive doors were intact and tightly closed. Around the top of the bank wall, fully enclosing the grounds, was a rusty iron fence whose gate—at the head of a flight of steps from the square—was visibly padlocked. The path from the gate to the building was completely overgrown. Desolation and decay hung like a pall above the place, and in the birdless eaves and black, ivyless walls Blake felt a touch of the dimly sinister beyond his power to define. There were very few people in the square, but Blake saw a policeman at the northerly end and approached him with questions about the church. He was a great wholesome Irishman, and it seemed odd that he would do little more than make the sign of the cross and mutter that people never spoke of that building. When Blake pressed him he said very hurriedly that the Italian priests warned everybody against it, vowing that a monstrous evil had once dwelt there and left its mark. He himself had heard dark whispers of it from his father, who recalled certain sounds and rumours from his boyhood. There had been a bad sect there in the ould days—an outlaw sect that called up awful things from some unknown gulf of night. It had taken a good priest to exorcise what had come, though there did be those who said that merely the light could do it. If Father O'Malley were alive there would be many the thing he could tell. But now there was nothing to do but let it alone. It hurt nobody now, and those that owned it were dead or far away. They had run away like rats after the threatening talk in '77, when people began to mind the way folks vanished now and then in the neighbourhood. Some day the city would step in and take the property for lack of heirs, but little good would come of anybody's touching it. Better it be left alone for the years to topple, lest things be stirred that ought to rest forever in their black abyss. After the policeman had gone Blake stood staring at the sullen steepled pile. It excited him to find that the structure seemed as sinister to others as to him, and he wondered what grain of truth might lie behind the old tales the bluecoat had repeated. Probably they were mere legends evoked by the evil look of the place, but even so, they were like a strange coming to life of one of his own stories. The afternoon sun came out from behind dispersing clouds, but seemed unable to light up the stained, sooty walls of the old temple that towered on its high plateau. It was odd that the green of spring had not touched the brown, withered growths in the raised, iron-fenced yard. Blake found himself edging nearer the raised area and examining the bank wall and rusted fence for possible avenues of ingress. There was a terrible lure about the blackened fane which was not to be resisted. The fence had no opening near the steps, but around on the north side were some missing bars. He could go up the steps and walk around on the narrow coping outside the fence till he came to the gap. If the people feared the place so wildly, he would encounter no interference. He was on the embankment and almost inside the fence before anyone noticed him. Then, looking down, he saw the few people in the square edging away and making the same sign with their right hands that the shopkeeper in the avenue had made. Several windows were slammed down, and a fat woman darted into the street and pulled some small children inside a rickety, unpainted house. The gap in the fence was very easy to pass through, and before long Blake found himself wading amidst the rotting, tangled growths of the deserted yard. Here and there the worn stump of a headstone told him that there had once been burials in this field; but that, he saw, must have been very long ago. The sheer bulk of the church was oppressive now that he was close to it, but he conquered his mood and approached to try the three great doors in the facade. All were securely locked, so he began a circuit of the Cyclopean building in quest of some minor and more penetrable opening. Even then he could not be sure that he wished to enter that haunt of desertion and shadow, yet the pull of its strangeness dragged him on automatically. A yawning and unprotected cellar window in the rear furnished the needed aperture. Peering in, Blake saw a subterrene gulf of cobwebs and dust faintly litten by the western sun's filtered rays. Debris, old barrels, and ruined boxes and furniture of numerous sorts met his eye, though over everything lay a shroud of dust which softened all sharp outlines. The rusted remains of a hot-air furnace shewed that the building had been used and kept in shape as late as mid-Victorian times. Acting almost without conscious initiative, Blake crawled through the window and let himself down to the dust-carpeted and debris-strown concrete floor. The vaulted cellar was a vast one, without partitions; and in a corner far to the right, amid dense shadows, he saw a black archway evidently leading upstairs. He felt a peculiar sense of oppression at being actually within the great spectral building, but kept it in check as he cautiously scouted about—finding a still-intact barrel amid the dust, and rolling it over to the open window to provide for his exit. Then, bracing himself, he crossed the wide, cobweb-festooned space toward the arch. Half choked with the omnipresent dust, and covered with ghostly gossamer fibres, he reached and began to climb the worn stone steps which rose into the darkness. He had no light, but groped carefully with his hands. After a sharp turn he felt a closed door ahead, and a little fumbling revealed its ancient latch. It opened inward, and beyond it he saw a dimly illumined corridor lined with worm-eaten panelling. Once on the ground floor, Blake began exploring in a rapid fashion. All the inner doors were unlocked, so that he freely passed from room to room. The colossal nave was an almost eldritch place with its drifts and mountains of dust over box pews, altar, hourglass pulpit, and sounding-board, and its titanic ropes of cobweb stretching among the pointed arches of the gallery and entwining the clustered Gothic columns. Over all this hushed desolation played a hideous leaden light as the declining afternoon sun sent its rays through the strange, half-blackened panes of the great apsidal windows. The paintings on those windows were so obscured by soot that Blake could scarcely decipher what they had represented, but from the little he could make out he did not like them. The designs were largely conventional, and his knowledge of obscure symbolism told him much concerning some of the ancient patterns. The few saints depicted bore expressions distinctly open to criticism, while one of the windows seemed to shew merely a dark space with spirals of curious luminosity scattered about in it. Turning away from the windows, Blake noticed that the cobwebbed cross above the altar was not of the ordinary kind, but resembled the primordial ankh or crux ansata of shadowy Egypt. In a rear vestry room beside the apse Blake found a rotting desk and ceiling-high shelves of mildewed, disintegrating books. Here for the first time he received a positive shock of objective horror, for the titles of those books told him much. They were the black, forbidden things which most sane people have never even heard of, or have heard of only in furtive, timorous whispers; the banned and dreaded repositories of equivocal secrets and immemorial formulae which have trickled down the stream of time from the days of man's youth, and the dim, fabulous days before man was. He had himself read many of them—a Latin version of the abhorred Necronomicon, the sinister Liber Ivonis, the infamous Cultes des Goules of Comte d'Erlette, the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt, and old Ludvig Prinn's hellish De Vermis Mysteriis. But there were others he had known merely by reputation or not at all—the Pnakotic Manuscripts, the Book of Dzyan, and a crumbling volume in wholly unidentifiable characters yet with certain symbols and diagrams shudderingly recognisable to the occult student. Clearly, the lingering local rumours had not lied. This place had once been the seat of an evil older than mankind and wider than the known universe. In the ruined desk was a small leather-bound record-book filled with entries in some odd cryptographic medium. The manuscript writing consisted of the common traditional symbols used today in astronomy and anciently in alchemy, astrology, and other dubious arts—the devices of the sun, moon, planets, aspects, and zodiacal signs—here massed in solid pages of text, with divisions and paragraphings suggesting that each symbol answered to some alphabetical letter. In the hope of later solving the cryptogram, Blake bore off this volume in his coat pocket. Many of the great tomes on the shelves fascinated him unutterably, and he felt tempted to borrow them at some later time. He wondered how they could have remained undisturbed so long. Was he the first to conquer the clutching, pervasive fear which had for nearly sixty years protected this deserted place from visitors? Having now thoroughly explored the ground floor, Blake ploughed again through the dust of the spectral nave to the front vestibule, where he had seen a door and staircase presumably leading up to the blackened tower and steeple—objects so long familiar to him at a distance. The ascent was a choking experience, for dust lay thick, while the spiders had done their worst in this constricted place. The staircase was a spiral with high, narrow wooden treads, and now and then Blake passed a clouded window looking dizzily out over the city. Though he had seen no ropes below, he expected to find a bell or peal of bells in the tower whose narrow, louver-boarded lancet windows his field-glass had studied so often. Here he was doomed to disappointment; for when he attained the top of the stairs he found the tower chamber vacant of chimes, and clearly devoted to vastly different purposes. The room, about fifteen feet square, was faintly lighted by four lancet windows, one on each side, which were glazed within their screening of decayed louver-boards. These had been further fitted with tight, opaque screens, but the latter were now largely rotted away. In the centre of the dust-laden floor rose a curiously angled stone pillar some four feet in height and two in average diameter, covered on each side with bizarre, crudely incised, and wholly unrecognisable hieroglyphs. On this pillar rested a metal box of peculiarly asymmetrical form; its hinged lid thrown back, and its interior holding what looked beneath the decade-deep dust to be an egg-shaped or irregularly spherical object some four inches through. Around the pillar in a rough circle were seven high-backed Gothic chairs still largely intact, while behind them, ranging along the dark-panelled walls, were seven colossal images of crumbling, black-painted plaster, resembling more than anything else the cryptic carven megaliths of mysterious Easter Island. In one corner of the cobwebbed chamber a ladder was built into the wall, leading up to the closed trap-door of the windowless steeple above. As Blake grew accustomed to the feeble light he noticed odd bas-reliefs on the strange open box of yellowish metal. Approaching, he tried to clear the dust away with his hands and handkerchief, and saw that the figurings were of a monstrous and utterly alien kind; depicting entities which, though seemingly alive, resembled no known life-form ever evolved on this planet. The four-inch seeming sphere turned out to be a nearly black, red-striated polyhedron with many irregular flat surfaces; either a very remarkable crystal of some sort, or an artificial object of carved and highly polished mineral matter. It did not touch the bottom of the box, but was held suspended by means of a metal band around its centre, with seven queerly designed supports extending horizontally to angles of the box's inner wall near the top. This stone, once exposed, exerted upon Blake an almost alarming fascination. He could scarcely tear his eyes from it, and as he looked at its glistening surfaces he almost fancied it was transparent, with half-formed worlds of wonder within. Into his mind floated pictures of alien orbs with great stone towers, and other orbs with titan mountains and no mark of life, and still remoter spaces where only a stirring in vague blacknesses told of the presence of consciousness and will. When he did look away, it was to notice a somewhat singular mound of dust in the far corner near the ladder to the steeple. Just why it took his attention he could not tell, but something in its contours carried a message to his unconscious mind. Ploughing toward it, and brushing aside the hanging cobwebs as he went, he began to discern something grim about it. Hand and handkerchief soon revealed the truth, and Blake gasped with a baffling mixture of emotions. It was a human skeleton, and it must have been there for a very long time. The clothing was in shreds, but some buttons and fragments of cloth bespoke a man's grey suit. There were other bits of evidence—shoes, metal clasps, huge buttons for round cuffs, a stickpin of bygone pattern, a reporter's badge with the name of the old Providence Telegram, and a crumbling leather pocketbook. Blake examined the latter with care, finding within it several bills of antiquated issue, a celluloid advertising calendar for 1893, some cards with the name “Edwin M. Lillibridge”, and a paper covered with pencilled memoranda. This paper held much of a puzzling nature, and Blake read it carefully at the dim westward window. Its disjointed text included such phrases as the following: “Prof. Enoch Bowen home from Egypt May 1844—buys old Free-Will Church in July—his archaeological work & studies in occult well known.” “Dr. Drowne of 4th Baptist warns against Starry Wisdom in sermon Dec. 29, 1844.” “Congregation 97 by end of '45.” “1846—3 disappearances—first mention of Shining Trapezohedron.” “7 disappearances 1848—stories of blood sacrifice begin.” “Investigation 1853 comes to nothing—stories of sounds.” “Fr. O'Malley tells of devil-worship with box found in great Egyptian ruins—says they call up something that can't exist in light. Flees a little light, and banished by strong light. Then has to be summoned again. Probably got this from deathbed confession of Francis X. Feeney, who had joined Starry Wisdom in '49. These people say the Shining Trapezohedron shews them heaven & other worlds, & that the Haunter of the Dark tells them secrets in some way.” “Story of Orrin B. Eddy 1857. They call it up by gazing at the crystal, & have a secret language of their own.” “200 or more in cong. 1863, exclusive of men at front.” “Irish boys mob church in 1869 after Patrick Regan's disappearance.” “Veiled article in J. March 14, '72, but people don't talk about it.” “6 disappearances 1876—secret committee calls on Mayor Doyle.” “Action promised Feb. 1877—church closes in April.” “Gang—Federal Hill Boys—threaten Dr. —— and vestrymen in May.” “181 persons leave city before end of '77—mention no names.” “Ghost stories begin around 1880—try to ascertain truth of report that no human being has entered church since 1877.” “Ask Lanigan for photograph of place taken 1851.” . . . Restoring the paper to the pocketbook and placing the latter in his coat, Blake turned to look down at the skeleton in the dust. The implications of the notes were clear, and there could be no doubt but that this man had come to the deserted edifice forty-two years before in quest of a newspaper sensation which no one else had been bold enough to attempt. Perhaps no one else had known of his plan—who could tell? But he had never returned to his paper. Had some bravely suppressed fear risen to overcome him and bring on sudden heart-failure? Blake stooped over the gleaming bones and noted their peculiar state. Some of them were badly scattered, and a few seemed oddly dissolved at the ends. Others were strangely yellowed, with vague suggestions of charring. This charring extended to some of the fragments of clothing. The skull was in a very peculiar state—stained yellow, and with a charred aperture in the top as if some powerful acid had eaten through the solid bone. What had happened to the skeleton during its four decades of silent entombment here Blake could not imagine. Before he realised it, he was looking at the stone again, and letting its curious influence call up a nebulous pageantry in his mind. He saw processions of robed, hooded figures whose outlines were not human, and looked on endless leagues of desert lined with carved, sky-reaching monoliths. He saw towers and walls in nighted depths under the sea, and vortices of space where wisps of black mist floated before thin shimmerings of cold purple haze. And beyond all else he glimpsed an infinite gulf of darkness, where solid and semi-solid forms were known only by their windy stirrings, and cloudy patterns of force seemed to superimpose order on chaos and hold forth a key to all the paradoxes and arcana of the worlds we know. Then all at once the spell was broken by an access of gnawing, indeterminate panic fear. Blake choked and turned away from the stone, conscious of some formless alien presence close to him and watching him with horrible intentness. He felt entangled with something—something which was not in the stone, but which had looked through it at him—something which would ceaselessly follow him with a cognition that was not physical sight. Plainly, the place was getting on his nerves—as well it might in view of his gruesome find. The light was waning, too, and since he had no illuminant with him he knew he would have to be leaving soon. It was then, in the gathering twilight, that he thought he saw a faint trace of luminosity in the crazily angled stone. He had tried to look away from it, but some obscure compulsion drew his eyes back. Was there a subtle phosphorescence of radio-activity about the thing? What was it that the dead man's notes had said concerning a Shining Trapezohedron? What, anyway, was this abandoned lair of cosmic evil? What had been done here, and what might still be lurking in the bird-shunned shadows? It seemed now as if an elusive touch of foetor had arisen somewhere close by, though its source was not apparent. Blake seized the cover of the long-open box and snapped it down. It moved easily on its alien hinges, and closed completely over the unmistakably glowing stone. At the sharp click of that closing a soft stirring sound seemed to come from the steeple's eternal blackness overhead, beyond the trap-door. Rats, without question—the only living things to reveal their presence in this accursed pile since he had entered it. And yet that stirring in the steeple frightened him horribly, so that he plunged almost wildly down the spiral stairs, across the ghoulish nave, into the vaulted basement, out amidst the gathering dusk of the deserted square, and down through the teeming, fear-haunted alleys and avenues of Federal Hill toward the sane central streets and the home-like brick sidewalks of the college district. During the days which followed, Blake told no one of his expedition. Instead, he read much in certain books, examined long years of newspaper files downtown, and worked feverishly at the cryptogram in that leather volume from the cobwebbed vestry room. The cipher, he soon saw, was no simple one; and after a long period of endeavour he felt sure that its language could not be English, Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, or German. Evidently he would have to draw upon the deepest wells of his strange erudition. Every evening the old impulse to gaze westward returned, and he saw the black steeple as of yore amongst the bristling roofs of a distant and half-fabulous world. But now it held a fresh note of terror for him. He knew the heritage of evil lore it masked, and with the knowledge his vision ran riot in queer new ways. The birds of spring were returning, and as he watched their sunset flights he fancied they avoided the gaunt, lone spire as never before. When a flock of them approached it, he thought, they would wheel and scatter in panic confusion—and he could guess at the wild twitterings which failed to reach him across the intervening miles. It was in June that Blake's diary told of his victory over the cryptogram. The text was, he found, in the dark Aklo language used by certain cults of evil antiquity, and known to him in a halting way through previous researches. The diary is strangely reticent about what Blake deciphered, but he was patently awed and disconcerted by his results. There are references to a Haunter of the Dark awaked by gazing into the Shining Trapezohedron, and insane conjectures about the black gulfs of chaos from which it was called. The being is spoken of as holding all knowledge, and demanding monstrous sacrifices. Some of Blake's entries shew fear lest the thing, which he seemed to regard as summoned, stalk abroad; though he adds that the street-lights form a bulwark which cannot be crossed. Of the Shining Trapezohedron he speaks often, calling it a window on all time and space, and tracing its history from the days it was fashioned on dark Yuggoth, before ever the Old Ones brought it to earth. It was treasured and placed in its curious box by the crinoid things of Antarctica, salvaged from their ruins by the serpent-men of Valusia, and peered at aeons later in Lemuria by the first human beings. It crossed strange lands and stranger seas, and sank with Atlantis before a Minoan fisher meshed it in his net and sold it to swarthy merchants from nighted Khem. The Pharaoh Nephren-Ka built around it a temple with a windowless crypt, and did that which caused his name to be stricken from all monuments and records. Then it slept in the ruins of that evil fane which the priests and the new Pharaoh destroyed, till the delver's spade once more brought it forth to curse mankind. Early in July the newspapers oddly supplement Blake's entries, though in so brief and casual a way that only the diary has called general attention to their contribution. It appears that a new fear had been growing on Federal Hill since a stranger had entered the dreaded church. The Italians whispered of unaccustomed stirrings and bumpings and scrapings in the dark windowless steeple, and called on their priests to banish an entity which haunted their dreams. Something, they said, was constantly watching at a door to see if it were dark enough to venture forth. Press items mentioned the long-standing local superstitions, but failed to shed much light on the earlier background of the horror. It was obvious that the young reporters of today are no antiquarians. In writing of these things in his diary, Blake expresses a curious kind of remorse, and talks of the duty of burying the Shining Trapezohedron and of banishing what he had evoked by letting daylight into the hideous jutting spire. At the same time, however, he displays the dangerous extent of his fascination, and admits a morbid longing—pervading even his dreams—to visit the accursed tower and gaze again into the cosmic secrets of the glowing stone. Then something in the Journal on the morning of July 17 threw the diarist into a veritable fever of horror. It was only a variant of the other half-humorous items about the Federal Hill restlessness, but to Blake it was somehow very terrible indeed. In the night a thunderstorm had put the city's lighting-system out of commission for a full hour, and in that black interval the Italians had nearly gone mad with fright. Those living near the dreaded church had sworn that the thing in the steeple had taken advantage of the street-lamps' absence and gone down into the body of the church, flopping and bumping around in a viscous, altogether dreadful way. Toward the last it had bumped up to the tower, where there were sounds of the shattering of glass. It could go wherever the darkness reached, but light would always send it fleeing. When the current blazed on again there had been a shocking commotion in the tower, for even the feeble light trickling through the grime-blackened, louver-boarded windows was too much for the thing. It had bumped and slithered up into its tenebrous steeple just in time—for a long dose of light would have sent it back into the abyss whence the crazy stranger had called it. During the dark hour praying crowds had clustered round the church in the rain with lighted candles and lamps somehow shielded with folded paper and umbrellas—a guard of light to save the city from the nightmare that stalks in darkness. Once, those nearest the church declared, the outer door had rattled hideously. But even this was not the worst. That evening in the Bulletin Blake read of what the reporters had found. Aroused at last to the whimsical news value of the scare, a pair of them had defied the frantic crowds of Italians and crawled into the church through the cellar window after trying the doors in vain. They found the dust of the vestibule and of the spectral nave ploughed up in a singular way, with bits of rotted cushions and satin pew-linings scattered curiously around. There was a bad odour everywhere, and here and there were bits of yellow stain and patches of what looked like charring. Opening the door to the tower, and pausing a moment at the suspicion of a scraping sound above, they found the narrow spiral stairs wiped roughly clean. In the tower itself a similarly half-swept condition existed. They spoke of the heptagonal stone pillar, the overturned Gothic chairs, and the bizarre plaster images; though strangely enough the metal box and the old mutilated skeleton were not mentioned. What disturbed Blake the most—except for the hints of stains and charring and bad odours—was the final detail that explained the crashing glass. Every one of the tower's lancet windows was broken, and two of them had been darkened in a crude and hurried way by the stuffing of satin pew-linings and cushion-horsehair into the spaces between the slanting exterior louver-boards. More satin fragments and bunches of horsehair lay scattered around the newly swept floor, as if someone had been interrupted in the act of restoring the tower to the absolute blackness of its tightly curtained days. Yellowish stains and charred patches were found on the ladder to the windowless spire, but when a reporter climbed up, opened the horizontally sliding trap-door, and shot a feeble flashlight beam into the black and strangely foetid space, he saw nothing but darkness, and an heterogeneous litter of shapeless fragments near the aperture. The verdict, of course, was charlatanry. Somebody had played a joke on the superstitious hill-dwellers, or else some fanatic had striven to bolster up their fears for their own supposed good. Or perhaps some of the younger and more sophisticated dwellers had staged an elaborate hoax on the outside world. There was an amusing aftermath when the police sent an officer to verify the reports. Three men in succession found ways of evading the assignment, and the fourth went very reluctantly and returned very soon without adding to the account given by the reporters. From this point onward Blake's diary shews a mounting tide of insidious horror and nervous apprehension. He upbraids himself for not doing something, and speculates wildly on the consequences of another electrical breakdown. It has been verified that on three occasions—during thunderstorms—he telephoned the electric light company in a frantic vein and asked that desperate precautions against a lapse of power be taken. Now and then his entries shew concern over the failure of the reporters to find the metal box and stone, and the strangely marred old skeleton, when they explored the shadowy tower room. He assumed that these things had been removed—whither, and by whom or what, he could only guess. But his worst fears concerned himself, and the kind of unholy rapport he felt to exist between his mind and that lurking horror in the distant steeple—that monstrous thing of night which his rashness had called out of the ultimate black spaces. He seemed to feel a constant tugging at his will, and callers of that period remember how he would sit abstractedly at his desk and stare out of the west window at that far-off, spire-bristling mound beyond the swirling smoke of the city. His entries dwell monotonously on certain terrible dreams, and of a strengthening of the unholy rapport in his sleep. There is mention of a night when he awaked to find himself fully dressed, outdoors, and headed automatically down College Hill toward the west. Again and again he dwells on the fact that the thing in the steeple knows where to find him. The week following July 30 is recalled as the time of Blake's partial breakdown. He did not dress, and ordered all his food by telephone. Visitors remarked the cords he kept near his bed, and he said that sleep-walking had forced him to bind his ankles every night with knots which would probably hold or else waken him with the labour of untying. In his diary he told of the hideous experience which had brought the collapse. After retiring on the night of the 30th he had suddenly found himself groping about in an almost black space. All he could see were short, faint, horizontal streaks of bluish light, but he could smell an overpowering foetor and hear a curious jumble of soft, furtive sounds above him. Whenever he moved he stumbled over something, and at each noise there would come a sort of answering sound from above—a vague stirring, mixed with the cautious sliding of wood on wood. Once his groping hands encountered a pillar of stone with a vacant top, whilst later he found himself clutching the rungs of a ladder built into the wall, and fumbling his uncertain way upward toward some region of intenser stench where a hot, searing blast beat down against him. Before his eyes a kaleidoscopic range of phantasmal images played, all of them dissolving at intervals into the picture of a vast, unplumbed abyss of night wherein whirled suns and worlds of an even profounder blackness. He thought of the ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at whose centre sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a daemoniac flute held in nameless paws. Then a sharp report from the outer world broke through his stupor and roused him to the unutterable horror of his position. What it was, he never knew—perhaps it was some belated peal from the fireworks heard all summer on Federal Hill as the dwellers hail their various patron saints, or the saints of their native villages in Italy. In any event he shrieked aloud, dropped frantically from the ladder, and stumbled blindly across the obstructed floor of the almost lightless chamber that encompassed him. He knew instantly where he was, and plunged recklessly down the narrow spiral staircase, tripping and bruising himself at every turn. There was a nightmare flight through a vast cobwebbed nave whose ghostly arches reached up to realms of leering shadow, a sightless scramble through a littered basement, a climb to regions of air and street-lights outside, and a mad racing down a spectral hill of gibbering gables, across a grim, silent city of tall black towers, and up the steep eastward precipice to his own ancient door. On regaining consciousness in the morning he found himself lying on his study floor fully dressed. Dirt and cobwebs covered him, and every inch of his body seemed sore and bruised. When he faced the mirror he saw that his hair was badly scorched, while a trace of strange, evil odour seemed to cling to his upper outer clothing. It was then that his nerves broke down. Thereafter, lounging exhaustedly about in a dressing-gown, he did little but stare from his west window, shiver at the threat of thunder, and make wild entries in his diary. The great storm broke just before midnight on August 8th. Lightning struck repeatedly in all parts of the city, and two remarkable fireballs were reported. The rain was torrential, while a constant fusillade of thunder brought sleeplessness to thousands. Blake was utterly frantic in his fear for the lighting system, and tried to telephone the company around 1 a.m., though by that time service had been temporarily cut off in the interest of safety. He recorded everything in his diary—the large, nervous, and often undecipherable hieroglyphs telling their own story of growing frenzy and despair, and of entries scrawled blindly in the dark. He had to keep the house dark in order to see out the window, and it appears that most of his time was spent at his desk, peering anxiously through the rain across the glistening miles of downtown roofs at the constellation of distant lights marking Federal Hill. Now and then he would fumblingly make an entry in his diary, so that detached phrases such as “The lights must not go”; “It knows where I am”; “I must destroy it”; and “It is calling to me, but perhaps it means no injury this time”; are found scattered down two of the pages. Then the lights went out all over the city. It happened at 2:12 a.m. according to power-house records, but Blake's diary gives no indication of the time. The entry is merely, “Lights out—God help me.” On Federal Hill there were watchers as anxious as he, and rain-soaked knots of men paraded the square and alleys around the evil church with umbrella-shaded candles, electric flashlights, oil lanterns, crucifixes, and obscure charms of the many sorts common to southern Italy. They blessed each flash of lightning, and made cryptical signs of fear with their right hands when a turn in the storm caused the flashes to lessen and finally to cease altogether. A rising wind blew out most of the candles, so that the scene grew threateningly dark. Someone roused Father Merluzzo of Spirito Santo Church, and he hastened to the dismal square to pronounce whatever helpful syllables he could. Of the restless and curious sounds in the blackened tower, there could be no doubt whatever. For what happened at 2:35 we have the testimony of the priest, a young, intelligent, and well-educated person; of Patrolman William J. Monahan of the Central Station, an officer of the highest reliability who had paused at that part of his beat to inspect the crowd; and of most of the seventy-eight men who had gathered around the church's high bank wall—especially those in the square where the eastward facade was visible. Of course there was nothing which can be proved as being outside the order of Nature. The possible causes of such an event are many. No one can speak with certainty of the obscure chemical processes arising in a vast, ancient, ill-aired, and long-deserted building of heterogeneous contents. Mephitic vapours—spontaneous combustion—pressure of gases born of long decay—any one of numberless phenomena might be responsible. And then, of course, the factor of conscious charlatanry can by no means be excluded. The thing was really quite simple in itself, and covered less than three minutes of actual time. Father Merluzzo, always a precise man, looked at his watch repeatedly. It started with a definite swelling of the dull fumbling sounds inside the black tower. There had for some time been a vague exhalation of strange, evil odours from the church, and this had now become emphatic and offensive. Then at last there was a sound of splintering wood, and a large, heavy object crashed down in the yard beneath the frowning easterly facade. The tower was invisible now that the candles would not burn, but as the object neared the ground the people knew that it was the smoke-grimed louver-boarding of that tower's east window. Immediately afterward an utterly unbearable foetor welled forth from the unseen heights, choking and sickening the trembling watchers, and almost prostrating those in the square. At the same time the air trembled with a vibration as of flapping wings, and a sudden east-blowing wind more violent than any previous blast snatched off the hats and wrenched the dripping umbrellas of the crowd. Nothing definite could be seen in the candleless night, though some upward-looking spectators thought they glimpsed a great spreading blur of denser blackness against the inky sky—something like a formless cloud of smoke that shot with meteor-like speed toward the east. That was all. The watchers were half numbed with fright, awe, and discomfort, and scarcely knew what to do, or whether to do anything at all. Not knowing what had happened, they did not relax their vigil; and a moment later they sent up a prayer as a sharp flash of belated lightning, followed by an earsplitting crash of sound, rent the flooded heavens. Half an hour later the rain stopped, and in fifteen minutes more the street-lights sprang on again, sending the weary, bedraggled watchers relievedly back to their homes. The next day's papers gave these matters minor mention in connexion with the general storm reports. It seems that the great lightning flash and deafening explosion which followed the Federal Hill occurrence were even more tremendous farther east, where a burst of the singular foetor was likewise noticed. The phenomenon was most marked over College Hill, where the crash awaked all the sleeping inhabitants and led to a bewildered round of speculations. Of those who were already awake only a few saw the anomalous blaze of light near the top of the hill, or noticed the inexplicable upward rush of air which almost stripped the leaves from the trees and blasted the plants in the gardens. It was agreed that the lone, sudden lightning-bolt must have struck somewhere in this neighbourhood, though no trace of its striking could afterward be found. A youth in the Tau Omega fraternity house thought he saw a grotesque and hideous mass of smoke in the air just as the preliminary flash burst, but his observation has not been verified. All of the few observers, however, agree as to the violent gust from the west and the flood of intolerable stench which preceded the belated stroke; whilst evidence concerning the momentary burned odour after the stroke is equally general. These points were discussed very carefully because of their probable connexion with the death of Robert Blake. Students in the Psi Delta house, whose upper rear windows looked into Blake's study, noticed the blurred white face at the westward window on the morning of the 9th, and wondered what was wrong with the expression. When they saw the same face in the same position that evening, they felt worried, and watched for the lights to come up in his apartment. Later they rang the bell of the darkened flat, and finally had a policeman force the door. The rigid body sat bolt upright at the desk by the window, and when the intruders saw the glassy, bulging eyes, and the marks of stark, convulsive fright on the twisted features, they turned away in sickened dismay. Shortly afterward the coroner's physician made an examination, and despite the unbroken window reported electrical shock, or nervous tension induced by electrical discharge, as the cause of death. The hideous expression he ignored altogether, deeming it a not improbable result of the profound shock as experienced by a person of such abnormal imagination and unbalanced emotions. He deduced these latter qualities from the books, paintings, and manuscripts found in the apartment, and from the blindly scrawled entries in the diary on the desk. Blake had prolonged his frenzied jottings to the last, and the broken-pointed pencil was found clutched in his spasmodically contracted right hand. The entries after the failure of the lights were highly disjointed, and legible only in part. From them certain investigators have drawn conclusions differing greatly from the materialistic official verdict, but such speculations have little chance for belief among the conservative. The case of these imaginative theorists has not been helped by the action of superstitious Dr. Dexter, who threw the curious box and angled stone—an object certainly self-luminous as seen in the black windowless steeple where it was found—into the deepest channel of Narragansett Bay. Excessive imagination and neurotic unbalance on Blake's part, aggravated by knowledge of the evil bygone cult whose startling traces he had uncovered, form the dominant interpretation given those final frenzied jottings. These are the entries—or all that can be made of them. “Lights still out—must be five minutes now. Everything depends on lightning. Yaddith grant it will keep up! . . . Some influence seems beating through it. . . . Rain and thunder and wind deafen. . . . The thing is taking hold of my mind. . . . “Trouble with memory. I see things I never knew before. Other worlds and other galaxies . . . Dark . . . The lightning seems dark and the darkness seems light. . . . “It cannot be the real hill and church that I see in the pitch-darkness. Must be retinal impression left by flashes. Heaven grant the Italians are out with their candles if the lightning stops! “What am I afraid of? Is it not an avatar of Nyarlathotep, who in antique and shadowy Khem even took the form of man? I remember Yuggoth, and more distant Shaggai, and the ultimate void of the black planets. . . . “The long, winging flight through the void . . . cannot cross the universe of light . . . re-created by the thoughts caught in the Shining Trapezohedron . . . send it through the horrible abysses of radiance. . . . “My name is Blake—Robert Harrison Blake of 620 East Knapp Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. . . . I am on this planet. . . . “Azathoth have mercy!—the lightning no longer flashes—horrible—I can see everything with a monstrous sense that is not sight—light is dark and dark is light . . . those people on the hill . . . guard . . . candles and charms . . . their priests. . . . “Sense of distance gone—far is near and near is far. No light—no glass—see that steeple—that tower—window—can hear—Roderick Usher—am mad or going mad—the thing is stirring and fumbling in the tower—I am it and it is I—I want to get out . . . must get out and unify the forces. . . . It knows where I am. . . . “I am Robert Blake, but I see the tower in the dark. There is a monstrous odour . . . senses transfigured . . . boarding at that tower window cracking and giving way. . . . Iä . . . ngai . . . ygg. . . . “I see it—coming here—hell-wind—titan blur—black wings—Yog-Sothoth save me—the three-lobed burning eye. . . .”

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End Times – When Will These Things Be                                                                                              Habakkuk 2:14 (ESV)"For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Matthew 24:3 (ESV)“Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”Question 1:             When will these things be (happen)?Question 2:            What will be the sign of your coming?Question 3:            What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?___Question 1:             When will these things be (happen)? Matthew 24:4-28 (reference only)1.      Many claiming to be Christ. 2.      Wars and Rumors of wars.3.      Famines. Matthew 24:7 (ESV)…and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.Acts 11:28 (ESV)“Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world [this took place in the days of Claudius].” 4.      Earthquakes.Matthew 24:9 (ESV)”All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.” 5.       Persecution.Matthew 24:9 (ESV)“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake.”Acts 8:1 (ESV)“there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” 6.      Many will fall way and be deceived by false prophets.Matthew 24:10-13 (ESV)“And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”John 1:14 (ESV)“the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”2 Peter 2:1 (ESV)"False profits also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies.” 7.      The gospel will be preached to the whole world.Matthew 24:14 (ESV)“And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”Romans 1:8 (ESV)“I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.”Romans 10:18 (ESV)“But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for ‘Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.'”  Romans 16:25-26 (ESV)“Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—“Colossians 1:5-6 (ESV)“the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing…”Colossians 1:23 (ESV)“if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.”Matthew 24:14 (ESV)“And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”Isaiah 66:18-20 (ESV)“For I know their works and their thoughts, and the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory, and I will set a sign among them. And from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away, that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations.”Acts 13:46-47 (ESV)“we are turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.'”Eusebius (300 AD)“The teaching of the new covenant was borne to all nations, and at once the Romans besieged Jerusalem and destroyed it and temple.”John Chrysostom (The Ancient Christian Commentary, 2002, Ib:191)“You will preach everywhere…Then he added. ‘This gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all Nations, and then will come.' The sign of this final end will be the downfall of Jerusalem."Justin Martyr (The Ante-Nicene Father, 1989, First Apology, XXXIX) “From Jerusalem, there went out into the world, men, twelve in number… By the power of God, they proclaim to every race of men that they were sent by Christ to teach to all the word of God.”Charles Spurgeon (Exposition of Matthew, 1979, p211) “There was a sufficient interval for the full proclamation of the gospel by the apostles and evangelist of the early Christian Church, and for the gathering out of those who recognize the crucified Christ, as the true Messiah. Then came the awful end, which the Savior foresaw and fortold, and the prospect of which wrung from his lips and heart the sorrow-full lament that followed his prophecy of the doom awaiting his guilty capital.”8.      The Abomination of Desolation. Matthew 24:15-20 (ESV)“So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath.”Luke 21:20-21 (ESV)“But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains”John Chrysostom (Early church father 400AD)“The abomination of desolation means the army by which the holy city of Jerusalem was made desolate”Daniel 9:26 (ESV)“the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.” 9.      Counterfeit Christ's Matthew 24:23-26 (ESV)“At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!' or, ‘There he is!' do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you ahead of time. So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,' do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,' do not believe it.”Hebrews 8:13 (ESV)“In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.” 

Old Testament: Jeremiah 48 Jeremiah 48 (Listen) Judgment on Moab 48 Concerning Moab. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel:   “Woe to Nebo, for it is laid waste!    Kiriathaim is put to shame, it is taken;  the fortress is put to shame and broken down;2     the renown of Moab is no more.  In Heshbon they planned disaster against her:    ‘Come, let us cut her off from being a nation!'  You also, O Madmen, shall be brought to silence;    the sword shall pursue you. 3   “A voice! A cry from Horonaim,    ‘Desolation and great destruction!'4   Moab is destroyed;    her little ones have made a cry.5   For at the ascent of Luhith    they go up weeping;1  for at the descent of Horonaim    they have heard the distressed cry2 of destruction.6   Flee! Save yourselves!    You will be like a juniper in the desert!7   For, because you trusted in your works and your treasures,    you also shall be taken;  and Chemosh shall go into exile    with his priests and his officials.8   The destroyer shall come upon every city,    and no city shall escape;  the valley shall perish,    and the plain shall be destroyed,    as the LORD has spoken. 9   “Give wings to Moab,    for she would fly away;  her cities shall become a desolation,    with no inhabitant in them. 10 “Cursed is he who does the work of the LORD with slackness, and cursed is he who keeps back his sword from bloodshed. 11   “Moab has been at ease from his youth    and has settled on his dregs;  he has not been emptied from vessel to vessel,    nor has he gone into exile;  so his taste remains in him,    and his scent is not changed. 12 “Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I shall send to him pourers who will pour him, and empty his vessels and break his3 jars in pieces. 13 Then Moab shall be ashamed of Chemosh, as the house of Israel was ashamed of Bethel, their confidence. 14   “How do you say, ‘We are heroes    and mighty men of war'?15   The destroyer of Moab and his cities has come up,    and the choicest of his young men have gone down to slaughter,    declares the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts.16   The calamity of Moab is near at hand,    and his affliction hastens swiftly.17   Grieve for him, all you who are around him,    and all who know his name;  say, ‘How the mighty scepter is broken,    the glorious staff.' 18   “Come down from your glory,    and sit on the parched ground,    O inhabitant of Dibon!  For the destroyer of Moab has come up against you;    he has destroyed your strongholds.19   Stand by the way and watch,    O inhabitant of Aroer!  Ask him who flees and her who escapes;    say, ‘What has happened?'20   Moab is put to shame, for it is broken;    wail and cry!  Tell it beside the Arnon,    that Moab is laid waste. 21 “Judgment has come upon the tableland, upon Holon, and Jahzah, and Mephaath, 22 and Dibon, and Nebo, and Beth-diblathaim, 23 and Kiriathaim, and Beth-gamul, and Beth-meon, 24 and Kerioth, and Bozrah, and all the cities of the land of Moab, far and near. 25 The horn of Moab is cut off, and his arm is broken, declares the LORD. 26 “Make him drunk, because he magnified himself against the LORD, so that Moab shall wallow in his vomit, and he too shall be held in derision. 27 Was not Israel a derision to you? Was he found among thieves, that whenever you spoke of him you wagged your head? 28   “Leave the cities, and dwell in the rock,    O inhabitants of Moab!  Be like the dove that nests    in the sides of the mouth of a gorge.29   We have heard of the pride of Moab—    he is very proud—  of his loftiness, his pride, and his arrogance,    and the haughtiness of his heart.30   I know his insolence, declares the LORD;    his boasts are false,    his deeds are false.31   Therefore I wail for Moab;    I cry out for all Moab;    for the men of Kir-hareseth I mourn.32   More than for Jazer I weep for you,    O vine of Sibmah!  Your branches passed over the sea,    reached to the Sea of Jazer;  on your summer fruits and your grapes    the destroyer has fallen.33   Gladness and joy have been taken away    from the fruitful land of Moab;  I have made the wine cease from the winepresses;    no one treads them with shouts of joy;    the shouting is not the shout of joy. 34 “From the outcry at Heshbon even to Elealeh, as far as Jahaz they utter their voice, from Zoar to Horonaim and Eglath-shelishiyah. For the waters of Nimrim also have become desolate. 35 And I will bring to an end in Moab, declares the LORD, him who offers sacrifice in the high place and makes offerings to his god. 36 Therefore my heart moans for Moab like a flute, and my heart moans like a flute for the men of Kir-hareseth. Therefore the riches they gained have perished. 37 “For every head is shaved and every beard cut off. On all the hands are gashes, and around the waist is sackcloth. 38 On all the housetops of Moab and in the squares there is nothing but lamentation, for I have broken Moab like a vessel for which no one cares, declares the LORD. 39 How it is broken! How they wail! How Moab has turned his back in shame! So Moab has become a derision and a horror to all that are around him.” 40   For thus says the LORD:  “Behold, one shall fly swiftly like an eagle    and spread his wings against Moab;41   the cities shall be taken    and the strongholds seized.  The heart of the warriors of Moab shall be in that day    like the heart of a woman in her birth pains;42   Moab shall be destroyed and be no longer a people,    because he magnified himself against the LORD.43   Terror, pit, and snare    are before you, O inhabitant of Moab!      declares the LORD.44   He who flees from the terror    shall fall into the pit,  and he who climbs out of the pit    shall be caught in the snare.  For I will bring these things upon Moab,    the year of their punishment,      declares the LORD. 45   “In the shadow of Heshbon    fugitives stop without strength,  for fire came out from Heshbon,    flame from the house of Sihon;  it has destroyed the forehead of Moab,    the crown of the sons of tumult.46   Woe to you, O Moab!    The people of Chemosh are undone,  for your sons have been taken captive,    and your daughters into captivity.47   Yet I will restore the fortunes of Moab    in the latter days, declares the LORD.”  Thus far is the judgment on Moab. Footnotes [1] 48:5 Hebrew weeping goes up with weeping [2] 48:5 Septuagint (compare Isaiah 15:5) heard the cry [3] 48:12 Septuagint, Aquila; Hebrew their (ESV) New Testament: Revelation 3:1–13 Revelation 3:1–13 (Listen) To the Church in Sardis 3 “And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: ‘The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. “‘I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. 2 Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. 3 Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. 4 Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. 5 The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. 6 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.' To the Church in Philadelphia 7 “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: ‘The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens. 8 “‘I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. 9 Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie—behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you. 10 Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth. 11 I am coming soon. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown. 12 The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. 13 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.' (ESV) Psalm: Psalm 119:17–24 Psalm 119:17–24 (Listen) Gimel 17   Deal bountifully with your servant,    that I may live and keep your word.18   Open my eyes, that I may behold    wondrous things out of your law.19   I am a sojourner on the earth;    hide not your commandments from me!20   My soul is consumed with longing    for your rules1 at all times.21   You rebuke the insolent, accursed ones,    who wander from your commandments.22   Take away from me scorn and contempt,    for I have kept your testimonies.23   Even though princes sit plotting against me,    your servant will meditate on your statutes.24   Your testimonies are my delight;    they are my counselors. Footnotes [1] 119:20 Or your just decrees; also verses 30, 39, 43, 52, 75, 102, 108, 137, 156, 175 (ESV) Proverb: Proverbs 27:14 Proverbs 27:14 (Listen) 14   Whoever blesses his neighbor with a loud voice,    rising early in the morning,    will be counted as cursing. (ESV)

In this episode, Satsunami and Andrew discuss the contentious Hobbit trilogy. But what was it that made this set of films so bad within the Tolkien fanbase? And are there any redeeming qualities to be had here? Without any further ado, let's find out!Check out all of our content here: https://linktr.ee/chatsunamiWebsite: chatsunami.comTwitter/X: https://twitter.com/ChatsunamiPodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/chatsunami/TikTok: tiktok.com/@chatsunamiPatrons:Battle ToasterSoniaUse my special link zen.ai/chatsunami and use chatsunami to save 30% off your first three months of Zencastr professional. #madeonzencastrStay safe, stay awesome and most importantly, stay hydrated!

Old Testament: Jeremiah 48 Jeremiah 48 (Listen) Judgment on Moab 48 Concerning Moab. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel:   “Woe to Nebo, for it is laid waste!    Kiriathaim is put to shame, it is taken;  the fortress is put to shame and broken down;2     the renown of Moab is no more.  In Heshbon they planned disaster against her:    ‘Come, let us cut her off from being a nation!'  You also, O Madmen, shall be brought to silence;    the sword shall pursue you. 3   “A voice! A cry from Horonaim,    ‘Desolation and great destruction!'4   Moab is destroyed;    her little ones have made a cry.5   For at the ascent of Luhith    they go up weeping;1  for at the descent of Horonaim    they have heard the distressed cry2 of destruction.6   Flee! Save yourselves!    You will be like a juniper in the desert!7   For, because you trusted in your works and your treasures,    you also shall be taken;  and Chemosh shall go into exile    with his priests and his officials.8   The destroyer shall come upon every city,    and no city shall escape;  the valley shall perish,    and the plain shall be destroyed,    as the LORD has spoken. 9   “Give wings to Moab,    for she would fly away;  her cities shall become a desolation,    with no inhabitant in them. 10 “Cursed is he who does the work of the LORD with slackness, and cursed is he who keeps back his sword from bloodshed. 11   “Moab has been at ease from his youth    and has settled on his dregs;  he has not been emptied from vessel to vessel,    nor has he gone into exile;  so his taste remains in him,    and his scent is not changed. 12 “Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I shall send to him pourers who will pour him, and empty his vessels and break his3 jars in pieces. 13 Then Moab shall be ashamed of Chemosh, as the house of Israel was ashamed of Bethel, their confidence. 14   “How do you say, ‘We are heroes    and mighty men of war'?15   The destroyer of Moab and his cities has come up,    and the choicest of his young men have gone down to slaughter,    declares the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts.16   The calamity of Moab is near at hand,    and his affliction hastens swiftly.17   Grieve for him, all you who are around him,    and all who know his name;  say, ‘How the mighty scepter is broken,    the glorious staff.' 18   “Come down from your glory,    and sit on the parched ground,    O inhabitant of Dibon!  For the destroyer of Moab has come up against you;    he has destroyed your strongholds.19   Stand by the way and watch,    O inhabitant of Aroer!  Ask him who flees and her who escapes;    say, ‘What has happened?'20   Moab is put to shame, for it is broken;    wail and cry!  Tell it beside the Arnon,    that Moab is laid waste. 21 “Judgment has come upon the tableland, upon Holon, and Jahzah, and Mephaath, 22 and Dibon, and Nebo, and Beth-diblathaim, 23 and Kiriathaim, and Beth-gamul, and Beth-meon, 24 and Kerioth, and Bozrah, and all the cities of the land of Moab, far and near. 25 The horn of Moab is cut off, and his arm is broken, declares the LORD. 26 “Make him drunk, because he magnified himself against the LORD, so that Moab shall wallow in his vomit, and he too shall be held in derision. 27 Was not Israel a derision to you? Was he found among thieves, that whenever you spoke of him you wagged your head? 28   “Leave the cities, and dwell in the rock,    O inhabitants of Moab!  Be like the dove that nests    in the sides of the mouth of a gorge.29   We have heard of the pride of Moab—    he is very proud—  of his loftiness, his pride, and his arrogance,    and the haughtiness of his heart.30   I know his insolence, declares the LORD;    his boasts are false,    his deeds are false.31   Therefore I wail for Moab;    I cry out for all Moab;    for the men of Kir-hareseth I mourn.32   More than for Jazer I weep for you,    O vine of Sibmah!  Your branches passed over the sea,    reached to the Sea of Jazer;  on your summer fruits and your grapes    the destroyer has fallen.33   Gladness and joy have been taken away    from the fruitful land of Moab;  I have made the wine cease from the winepresses;    no one treads them with shouts of joy;    the shouting is not the shout of joy. 34 “From the outcry at Heshbon even to Elealeh, as far as Jahaz they utter their voice, from Zoar to Horonaim and Eglath-shelishiyah. For the waters of Nimrim also have become desolate. 35 And I will bring to an end in Moab, declares the LORD, him who offers sacrifice in the high place and makes offerings to his god. 36 Therefore my heart moans for Moab like a flute, and my heart moans like a flute for the men of Kir-hareseth. Therefore the riches they gained have perished. 37 “For every head is shaved and every beard cut off. On all the hands are gashes, and around the waist is sackcloth. 38 On all the housetops of Moab and in the squares there is nothing but lamentation, for I have broken Moab like a vessel for which no one cares, declares the LORD. 39 How it is broken! How they wail! How Moab has turned his back in shame! So Moab has become a derision and a horror to all that are around him.” 40   For thus says the LORD:  “Behold, one shall fly swiftly like an eagle    and spread his wings against Moab;41   the cities shall be taken    and the strongholds seized.  The heart of the warriors of Moab shall be in that day    like the heart of a woman in her birth pains;42   Moab shall be destroyed and be no longer a people,    because he magnified himself against the LORD.43   Terror, pit, and snare    are before you, O inhabitant of Moab!      declares the LORD.44   He who flees from the terror    shall fall into the pit,  and he who climbs out of the pit    shall be caught in the snare.  For I will bring these things upon Moab,    the year of their punishment,      declares the LORD. 45   “In the shadow of Heshbon    fugitives stop without strength,  for fire came out from Heshbon,    flame from the house of Sihon;  it has destroyed the forehead of Moab,    the crown of the sons of tumult.46   Woe to you, O Moab!    The people of Chemosh are undone,  for your sons have been taken captive,    and your daughters into captivity.47   Yet I will restore the fortunes of Moab    in the latter days, declares the LORD.”  Thus far is the judgment on Moab. Footnotes [1] 48:5 Hebrew weeping goes up with weeping [2] 48:5 Septuagint (compare Isaiah 15:5) heard the cry [3] 48:12 Septuagint, Aquila; Hebrew their (ESV) Psalm: Psalm 119:17–24 Psalm 119:17–24 (Listen) Gimel 17   Deal bountifully with your servant,    that I may live and keep your word.18   Open my eyes, that I may behold    wondrous things out of your law.19   I am a sojourner on the earth;    hide not your commandments from me!20   My soul is consumed with longing    for your rules1 at all times.21   You rebuke the insolent, accursed ones,    who wander from your commandments.22   Take away from me scorn and contempt,    for I have kept your testimonies.23   Even though princes sit plotting against me,    your servant will meditate on your statutes.24   Your testimonies are my delight;    they are my counselors. Footnotes [1] 119:20 Or your just decrees; also verses 30, 39, 43, 52, 75, 102, 108, 137, 156, 175 (ESV) New Testament: 2 Corinthians 1–2 2 Corinthians 1–2 (Listen) Greeting 1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the church of God that is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. God of All Comfort 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.1 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. 8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers,2 of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. 11 You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. Paul's Change of Plans 12 For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity3 and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. 13 For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand—14 just as you did partially understand us—that on the day of our Lord Jesus you will boast of us as we will boast of you. 15 Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace. 16 I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. 17 Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? 18 As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. 19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. 20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 21 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.4 23 But I call God to witness against me—it was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth. 24 Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith. 2 For I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you. 2 For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? 3 And I wrote as I did, so that when I came I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice, for I felt sure of all of you, that my joy would be the joy of you all. 4 For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you. Forgive the Sinner 5 Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure—not to put it too severely—to all of you. 6 For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, 7 so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. 8 So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. 9 For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. 10 Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, 11 so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs. Triumph in Christ 12 When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, 13 my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia. 14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? 17 For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. Footnotes [1] 1:5 Or For as the sufferings of Christ abound for us, so also our comfort abounds through Christ [2] 1:8 Or brothers and sisters. In New Testament usage, depending on the context, the plural Greek word adelphoi (translated “brothers”) may refer either to brothers or to brothers and sisters [3] 1:12 Some manuscripts holiness [4] 1:22 Or down payment (ESV)

On Wednesday nights, Trinity Lutheran Church(Herrin, IL) offers to both children and adults an opportunity for teaching with Learn-by-Heart at 6:30 PM and a catechetical service at 7:00 PM. This service is designed to prepare God's people for the theme of the upcoming Sunday Divine Service. The dialog sermon explains "The Abomination of Desolation" (St. Matthew 24:15-28), which is the Holy Gospel for Third Last Sunday in the Church Year(Trinity 25). Learn-by-Heart will include “When in the Hour of Utmost Need”   (The Augustana Service Book and Hymnal #63, LW 428, TLH 522), Small Catechism, Lord's Prayer, Second Petition and meaning, and 1 Thessalonians 4:14. --Michael D. Henson, Pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church (Herrin, IL). Service Bulletin: Catechesis-3rd-Last-Sunday-11-08-2023-On-line.pdf Recite Word by Word:  Recite-Word-by-Word.pdf Insert for Hymn: Third-Last-Sunday-Insert-11-12-2023-ASBH.pdf https://vimeo.com/880345967?share=copy

Morning: Jeremiah 46–48 Jeremiah 46–48 (Listen) Judgment on Egypt 46 The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the nations. 2 About Egypt. Concerning the army of Pharaoh Neco, king of Egypt, which was by the river Euphrates at Carchemish and which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon defeated in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah: 3   “Prepare buckler and shield,    and advance for battle!4   Harness the horses;    mount, O horsemen!  Take your stations with your helmets,    polish your spears,    put on your armor!5   Why have I seen it?  They are dismayed    and have turned backward.  Their warriors are beaten down    and have fled in haste;  they look not back—    terror on every side!      declares the LORD. 6   “The swift cannot flee away,    nor the warrior escape;  in the north by the river Euphrates    they have stumbled and fallen. 7   “Who is this, rising like the Nile,    like rivers whose waters surge?8   Egypt rises like the Nile,    like rivers whose waters surge.  He said, ‘I will rise, I will cover the earth,    I will destroy cities and their inhabitants.'9   Advance, O horses,    and rage, O chariots!  Let the warriors go out:    men of Cush and Put who handle the shield,    men of Lud, skilled in handling the bow.10   That day is the day of the Lord GOD of hosts,    a day of vengeance,    to avenge himself on his foes.  The sword shall devour and be sated    and drink its fill of their blood.  For the Lord GOD of hosts holds a sacrifice    in the north country by the river Euphrates.11   Go up to Gilead, and take balm,    O virgin daughter of Egypt!  In vain you have used many medicines;    there is no healing for you.12   The nations have heard of your shame,    and the earth is full of your cry;  for warrior has stumbled against warrior;    they have both fallen together.” 13 The word that the LORD spoke to Jeremiah the prophet about the coming of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon to strike the land of Egypt: 14   “Declare in Egypt, and proclaim in Migdol;    proclaim in Memphis and Tahpanhes;  say, ‘Stand ready and be prepared,    for the sword shall devour around you.'15   Why are your mighty ones face down?    They do not stand1    because the LORD thrust them down.16   He made many stumble, and they fell,    and they said one to another,  ‘Arise, and let us go back to our own people    and to the land of our birth,    because of the sword of the oppressor.'17   Call the name of Pharaoh, king of Egypt,    ‘Noisy one who lets the hour go by.' 18   “As I live, declares the King,    whose name is the LORD of hosts,  like Tabor among the mountains    and like Carmel by the sea, shall one come.19   Prepare yourselves baggage for exile,    O inhabitants of Egypt!  For Memphis shall become a waste,    a ruin, without inhabitant. 20   “A beautiful heifer is Egypt,    but a biting fly from the north has come upon her.21   Even her hired soldiers in her midst    are like fattened calves;  yes, they have turned and fled together;    they did not stand,  for the day of their calamity has come upon them,    the time of their punishment. 22   “She makes a sound like a serpent gliding away;    for her enemies march in force  and come against her with axes    like those who fell trees.23   They shall cut down her forest,      declares the LORD,    though it is impenetrable,  because they are more numerous than locusts;    they are without number.24   The daughter of Egypt shall be put to shame;    she shall be delivered into the hand of a people from the north.” 25 The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, said: “Behold, I am bringing punishment upon Amon of Thebes, and Pharaoh and Egypt and her gods and her kings, upon Pharaoh and those who trust in him. 26 I will deliver them into the hand of those who seek their life, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and his officers. Afterward Egypt shall be inhabited as in the days of old, declares the LORD. 27   “But fear not, O Jacob my servant,    nor be dismayed, O Israel,  for behold, I will save you from far away,    and your offspring from the land of their captivity.  Jacob shall return and have quiet and ease,    and none shall make him afraid.28   Fear not, O Jacob my servant,      declares the LORD,    for I am with you.  I will make a full end of all the nations    to which I have driven you,    but of you I will not make a full end.  I will discipline you in just measure,    and I will by no means leave you unpunished.” Judgment on the Philistines 47 The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the Philistines, before Pharaoh struck down Gaza. 2   “Thus says the LORD:  Behold, waters are rising out of the north,    and shall become an overflowing torrent;  they shall overflow the land and all that fills it,    the city and those who dwell in it.  Men shall cry out,    and every inhabitant of the land shall wail.3   At the noise of the stamping of the hoofs of his stallions,    at the rushing of his chariots, at the rumbling of their wheels,  the fathers look not back to their children,    so feeble are their hands,4   because of the day that is coming to destroy    all the Philistines,  to cut off from Tyre and Sidon    every helper that remains.  For the LORD is destroying the Philistines,    the remnant of the coastland of Caphtor.5   Baldness has come upon Gaza;    Ashkelon has perished.  O remnant of their valley,    how long will you gash yourselves?6   Ah, sword of the LORD!    How long till you are quiet?  Put yourself into your scabbard;    rest and be still!7   How can it2 be quiet    when the LORD has given it a charge?  Against Ashkelon and against the seashore    he has appointed it.” Judgment on Moab 48 Concerning Moab. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel:   “Woe to Nebo, for it is laid waste!    Kiriathaim is put to shame, it is taken;  the fortress is put to shame and broken down;2     the renown of Moab is no more.  In Heshbon they planned disaster against her:    ‘Come, let us cut her off from being a nation!'  You also, O Madmen, shall be brought to silence;    the sword shall pursue you. 3   “A voice! A cry from Horonaim,    ‘Desolation and great destruction!'4   Moab is destroyed;    her little ones have made a cry.5   For at the ascent of Luhith    they go up weeping;3  for at the descent of Horonaim    they have heard the distressed cry4 of destruction.6   Flee! Save yourselves!    You will be like a juniper in the desert!7   For, because you trusted in your works and your treasures,    you also shall be taken;  and Chemosh shall go into exile    with his priests and his officials.8   The destroyer shall come upon every city,    and no city shall escape;  the valley shall perish,    and the plain shall be destroyed,    as the LORD has spoken. 9   “Give wings to Moab,    for she would fly away;  her cities shall become a desolation,    with no inhabitant in them. 10 “Cursed is he who does the work of the LORD with slackness, and cursed is he who keeps back his sword from bloodshed. 11   “Moab has been at ease from his youth    and has settled on his dregs;  he has not been emptied from vessel to vessel,    nor has he gone into exile;  so his taste remains in him,    and his scent is not changed. 12 “Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I shall send to him pourers who will pour him, and empty his vessels and break his5 jars in pieces. 13 Then Moab shall be ashamed of Chemosh, as the house of Israel was ashamed of Bethel, their confidence. 14   “How do you say, ‘We are heroes    and mighty men of war'?15   The destroyer of Moab and his cities has come up,    and the choicest of his young men have gone down to slaughter,    declares the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts.16   The calamity of Moab is near at hand,    and his affliction hastens swiftly.17   Grieve for him, all you who are around him,    and all who know his name;  say, ‘How the mighty scepter is broken,    the glorious staff.' 18   “Come down from your glory,    and sit on the parched ground,    O inhabitant of Dibon!  For the destroyer of Moab has come up against you;    he has destroyed your strongholds.19   Stand by the way and watch,    O inhabitant of Aroer!  Ask him who flees and her who escapes;    say, ‘What has happened?'20   Moab is put to shame, for it is broken;    wail and cry!  Tell it beside the Arnon,    that Moab is laid waste. 21 “Judgment has come upon the tableland, upon Holon, and Jahzah, and Mephaath, 22 and Dibon, and Nebo, and Beth-diblathaim, 23 and Kiriathaim, and Beth-gamul, and Beth-meon, 24 and Kerioth, and Bozrah, and all the cities of the land of Moab, far and near. 25 The horn of Moab is cut off, and his arm is broken, declares the LORD. 26 “Make him drunk, because he magnified himself against the LORD, so that Moab shall wallow in his vomit, and he too shall be held in derision. 27 Was not Israel a derision to you? Was he found among thieves, that whenever you spoke of him you wagged your head? 28   “Leave the cities, and dwell in the rock,    O inhabitants of Moab!  Be like the dove that nests    in the sides of the mouth of a gorge.29   We have heard of the pride of Moab—    he is very proud—  of his loftiness, his pride, and his arrogance,    and the haughtiness of his heart.30   I know his insolence, declares the LORD;    his boasts are false,    his deeds are false.31   Therefore I wail for Moab;    I cry out for all Moab;    for the men of Kir-hareseth I mourn.32   More than for Jazer I weep for you,    O vine of Sibmah!  Your branches passed over the sea,    reached to the Sea of Jazer;  on your summer fruits and your grapes    the destroyer has fallen.33   Gladness and joy have been taken away    from the fruitful land of Moab;  I have made the wine cease from the winepresses;    no one treads them with shouts of joy;    the shouting is not the shout of joy. 34 “From the outcry at Heshbon even to Elealeh, as far as Jahaz they utter their voice, from Zoar to Horonaim and Eglath-shelishiyah. For the waters of Nimrim also have become desolate. 35 And I will bring to an end in Moab, declares the LORD, him who offers sacrifice in the high place and makes offerings to his god. 36 Therefore my heart moans for Moab like a flute, and my heart moans like a flute for the men of Kir-hareseth. Therefore the riches they gained have perished. 37 “For every head is shaved and every beard cut off. On all the hands are gashes, and around the waist is sackcloth. 38 On all the housetops of Moab and in the squares there is nothing but lamentation, for I have broken Moab like a vessel for which no one cares, declares the LORD. 39 How it is broken! How they wail! How Moab has turned his back in shame! So Moab has become a derision and a horror to all that are around him.” 40   For thus says the LORD:  “Behold, one shall fly swiftly like an eagle    and spread his wings against Moab;41   the cities shall be taken    and the strongholds seized.  The heart of the warriors of Moab shall be in that day    like the heart of a woman in her birth pains;42   Moab shall be destroyed and be no longer a people,    because he magnified himself against the LORD.43   Terror, pit, and snare    are before you, O inhabitant of Moab!      declares the LORD.44   He who flees from the terror    shall fall into the pit,  and he who climbs out of the pit    shall be caught in the snare.  For I will bring these things upon Moab,    the year of their punishment,      declares the LORD. 45   “In the shadow of Heshbon    fugitives stop without strength,  for fire came out from Heshbon,    flame from the house of Sihon;  it has destroyed the forehead of Moab,    the crown of the sons of tumult.46   Woe to you, O Moab!    The people of Chemosh are undone,  for your sons have been taken captive,    and your daughters into captivity.47   Yet I will restore the fortunes of Moab    in the latter days, declares the LORD.”  Thus far is the judgment on Moab. Footnotes [1] 46:15 Hebrew He does not stand

We return to Middle-Earth for a Late Nights at Blockbuster on the second entry in the The Hobbit Trilogy, The Desolation o Smaug. Troy brings up a well-known name in Great Names in Casting because it's just too good to ignore. He was also incredibly disappointed in the internet. We said we weren't going to be too negative and then fell into a long list of plot holes and quibbles. #sorrynotsorry Intro/Outro music by friend of the podcast Seth Gilbertson. Find more music at iTunes (https://music.apple.com/us/artist/seth-gilbertson/1155231950) and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/user/sethgilbertson/videos)

This week we take a look at The Antichrist. What is the historical view and perspective? Is the Antichrist real? Is he here today? What will the Antichrist do? How will you know when he has arrived?Email us at: downtherh@protonmail.comThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4656375/advertisement

“We are to be anchoring our lives on the revelation of the mystery of godliness, as that gives us the strength and the ability to withstand what's coming: the mystery of ungodliness.” - @andoryuutam Andrew wrapped up our 3-week series on the book of Daniel by expounding on Daniel 8 to 12. He expounded on the Abomination of Desolation, and provided more detail on the mystery of godliness in contrast with the mystery of lawlessness because at the end of the age, we would need to make a choice between either serving the Son of Man as king, or his alternative, the Antichrist. In Daniel 9 and 10, we are told how we are to respond - to intercede and come into agreement with God's will. When we intercede, we drive the divine timeline by releasing angelic activity. We pray that as we have gone through the book of Daniel over the past 3 weeks, that it has helped to shed more light and bring more understanding on the topic of the end time church. May we remain faithful in worship, anchored on the hope of the eternal kingdom.

Old Testament: Jeremiah 4–5 Jeremiah 4–5 (Listen) 4   “If you return, O Israel,      declares the LORD,    to me you should return.  If you remove your detestable things from my presence,    and do not waver,2   and if you swear, ‘As the LORD lives,'    in truth, in justice, and in righteousness,  then nations shall bless themselves in him,    and in him shall they glory.” 3 For thus says the LORD to the men of Judah and Jerusalem:   “Break up your fallow ground,    and sow not among thorns.4   Circumcise yourselves to the LORD;    remove the foreskin of your hearts,    O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem;  lest my wrath go forth like fire,    and burn with none to quench it,    because of the evil of your deeds.” Disaster from the North 5 Declare in Judah, and proclaim in Jerusalem, and say,   “Blow the trumpet through the land;    cry aloud and say,  ‘Assemble, and let us go    into the fortified cities!'6   Raise a standard toward Zion,    flee for safety, stay not,  for I bring disaster from the north,    and great destruction.7   A lion has gone up from his thicket,    a destroyer of nations has set out;    he has gone out from his place  to make your land a waste;    your cities will be ruins    without inhabitant.8   For this put on sackcloth,    lament and wail,  for the fierce anger of the LORD    has not turned back from us.” 9 “In that day, declares the LORD, courage shall fail both king and officials. The priests shall be appalled and the prophets astounded.” 10 Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD, surely you have utterly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ‘It shall be well with you,' whereas the sword has reached their very life.” 11 At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem, “A hot wind from the bare heights in the desert toward the daughter of my people, not to winnow or cleanse, 12 a wind too full for this comes for me. Now it is I who speak in judgment upon them.” 13   Behold, he comes up like clouds;    his chariots like the whirlwind;  his horses are swifter than eagles—    woe to us, for we are ruined!14   O Jerusalem, wash your heart from evil,    that you may be saved.  How long shall your wicked thoughts    lodge within you?15   For a voice declares from Dan    and proclaims trouble from Mount Ephraim.16   Warn the nations that he is coming;    announce to Jerusalem,  “Besiegers come from a distant land;    they shout against the cities of Judah.17   Like keepers of a field are they against her all around,    because she has rebelled against me,      declares the LORD.18   Your ways and your deeds    have brought this upon you.  This is your doom, and it is bitter;    it has reached your very heart.” Anguish over Judah's Desolation 19   My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain!    Oh the walls of my heart!  My heart is beating wildly;    I cannot keep silent,  for I hear the sound of the trumpet,    the alarm of war.20   Crash follows hard on crash;    the whole land is laid waste.  Suddenly my tents are laid waste,    my curtains in a moment.21   How long must I see the standard    and hear the sound of the trumpet? 22   “For my people are foolish;    they know me not;  they are stupid children;    they have no understanding.  They are ‘wise'—in doing evil!    But how to do good they know not.” 23   I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void;    and to the heavens, and they had no light.24   I looked on the mountains, and behold, they were quaking,    and all the hills moved to and fro.25   I looked, and behold, there was no man,    and all the birds of the air had fled.26   I looked, and behold, the fruitful land was a desert,    and all its cities were laid in ruins    before the LORD, before his fierce anger. 27 For thus says the LORD, “The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. 28   “For this the earth shall mourn,    and the heavens above be dark;  for I have spoken; I have purposed;    I have not relented, nor will I turn back.” 29   At the noise of horseman and archer    every city takes to flight;  they enter thickets; they climb among rocks;    all the cities are forsaken,    and no man dwells in them.30   And you, O desolate one,  what do you mean that you dress in scarlet,    that you adorn yourself with ornaments of gold,    that you enlarge your eyes with paint?  In vain you beautify yourself.    Your lovers despise you;    they seek your life.31   For I heard a cry as of a woman in labor,    anguish as of one giving birth to her first child,  the cry of the daughter of Zion gasping for breath,    stretching out her hands,  “Woe is me! I am fainting before murderers.” Jerusalem Refused to Repent 5   Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,    look and take note!  Search her squares to see    if you can find a man,  one who does justice    and seeks truth,  that I may pardon her.2   Though they say, “As the LORD lives,”    yet they swear falsely.3   O LORD, do not your eyes look for truth?  You have struck them down,    but they felt no anguish;  you have consumed them,    but they refused to take correction.  They have made their faces harder than rock;    they have refused to repent. 4   Then I said, “These are only the poor;    they have no sense;  for they do not know the way of the LORD,    the justice of their God.5   I will go to the great    and will speak to them,  for they know the way of the LORD,    the justice of their God.”  But they all alike had broken the yoke;    they had burst the bonds. 6   Therefore a lion from the forest shall strike them down;    a wolf from the desert shall devastate them.  A leopard is watching their cities;    everyone who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces,  because their transgressions are many,    their apostasies are great. 7   “How can I pardon you?    Your children have forsaken me    and have sworn by those who are no gods.  When I fed them to the full,    they committed adultery    and trooped to the houses of whores.8   They were well-fed, lusty stallions,    each neighing for his neighbor's wife.9   Shall I not punish them for these things?      declares the LORD;    and shall I not avenge myself    on a nation such as this? 10   “Go up through her vine rows and destroy,    but make not a full end;  strip away her branches,    for they are not the LORD's.11   For the house of Israel and the house of Judah    have been utterly treacherous to me,      declares the LORD.12   They have spoken falsely of the LORD    and have said, ‘He will do nothing;  no disaster will come upon us,    nor shall we see sword or famine.13   The prophets will become wind;    the word is not in them.  Thus shall it be done to them!'” The Lord Proclaims Judgment 14   Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of hosts:  “Because you have spoken this word,  behold, I am making my words in your mouth a fire,    and this people wood, and the fire shall consume them.15   Behold, I am bringing against you    a nation from afar, O house of Israel,      declares the LORD.  It is an enduring nation;    it is an ancient nation,  a nation whose language you do not know,    nor can you understand what they say.16   Their quiver is like an open tomb;    they are all mighty warriors.17   They shall eat up your harvest and your food;    they shall eat up your sons and your daughters;  they shall eat up your flocks and your herds;    they shall eat up your vines and your fig trees;  your fortified cities in which you trust    they shall beat down with the sword.” 18 “But even in those days, declares the LORD, I will not make a full end of you. 19 And when your people say, ‘Why has the LORD our God done all these things to us?' you shall say to them, ‘As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve foreigners in a land that is not yours.'” 20   Declare this in the house of Jacob;    proclaim it in Judah:21   “Hear this, O foolish and senseless people,    who have eyes, but see not,    who have ears, but hear not.22   Do you not fear me? declares the LORD.    Do you not tremble before me?  I placed the sand as the boundary for the sea,    a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass;  though the waves toss, they cannot prevail;    though they roar, they cannot pass over it.23   But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart;    they have turned aside and gone away.24   They do not say in their hearts,    ‘Let us fear the LORD our God,  who gives the rain in its season,    the autumn rain and the spring rain,  and keeps for us    the weeks appointed for the harvest.'25   Your iniquities have turned these away,    and your sins have kept good from you.26   For wicked men are found among my people;    they lurk like fowlers lying in wait.1  They set a trap;    they catch men.27   Like a cage full of birds,    their houses are full of deceit;  therefore they have become great and rich;28     they have grown fat and sleek.  They know no bounds in deeds of evil;    they judge not with justice  the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper,    and they do not defend the rights of the needy.29   Shall I not punish them for these things?      declares the LORD,    and shall I not avenge myself    on a nation such as this?” 30   An appalling and horrible thing    has happened in the land:31   the prophets prophesy falsely,    and the priests rule at their direction;  my people love to have it so,    but what will you do when the end comes? Footnotes [1] 5:26 The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain (ESV) Psalm: Psalm 105:1–25 Psalm 105:1–25 (Listen) Tell of All His Wondrous Works 105   Oh give thanks to the LORD; call upon his name;    make known his deeds among the peoples!2   Sing to him, sing praises to him;    tell of all his wondrous works!3   Glory in his holy name;    let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice!4   Seek the LORD and his strength;    seek his presence continually!5   Remember the wondrous works that he has done,    his miracles, and the judgments he uttered,6   O offspring of Abraham, his servant,    children of Jacob, his chosen ones! 7   He is the LORD our God;    his judgments are in all the earth.8   He remembers his covenant forever,    the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations,9   the covenant that he made with Abraham,    his sworn promise to Isaac,10   which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute,    to Israel as an everlasting covenant,11   saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan    as your portion for an inheritance.” 12   When they were few in number,    of little account, and sojourners in it,13   wandering from nation to nation,    from one kingdom to another people,14   he allowed no one to oppress them;    he rebuked kings on their account,15   saying, “Touch not my anointed ones,    do my prophets no harm!” 16   When he summoned a famine on the land    and broke all supply1 of bread,17   he had sent a man ahead of them,    Joseph, who was sold as a slave.18   His feet were hurt with fetters;    his neck was put in a collar of iron;19   until what he had said came to pass,    the word of the LORD tested him.20   The king

Old Testament: Jeremiah 4–5 Jeremiah 4–5 (Listen) 4   “If you return, O Israel,      declares the LORD,    to me you should return.  If you remove your detestable things from my presence,    and do not waver,2   and if you swear, ‘As the LORD lives,'    in truth, in justice, and in righteousness,  then nations shall bless themselves in him,    and in him shall they glory.” 3 For thus says the LORD to the men of Judah and Jerusalem:   “Break up your fallow ground,    and sow not among thorns.4   Circumcise yourselves to the LORD;    remove the foreskin of your hearts,    O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem;  lest my wrath go forth like fire,    and burn with none to quench it,    because of the evil of your deeds.” Disaster from the North 5 Declare in Judah, and proclaim in Jerusalem, and say,   “Blow the trumpet through the land;    cry aloud and say,  ‘Assemble, and let us go    into the fortified cities!'6   Raise a standard toward Zion,    flee for safety, stay not,  for I bring disaster from the north,    and great destruction.7   A lion has gone up from his thicket,    a destroyer of nations has set out;    he has gone out from his place  to make your land a waste;    your cities will be ruins    without inhabitant.8   For this put on sackcloth,    lament and wail,  for the fierce anger of the LORD    has not turned back from us.” 9 “In that day, declares the LORD, courage shall fail both king and officials. The priests shall be appalled and the prophets astounded.” 10 Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD, surely you have utterly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ‘It shall be well with you,' whereas the sword has reached their very life.” 11 At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem, “A hot wind from the bare heights in the desert toward the daughter of my people, not to winnow or cleanse, 12 a wind too full for this comes for me. Now it is I who speak in judgment upon them.” 13   Behold, he comes up like clouds;    his chariots like the whirlwind;  his horses are swifter than eagles—    woe to us, for we are ruined!14   O Jerusalem, wash your heart from evil,    that you may be saved.  How long shall your wicked thoughts    lodge within you?15   For a voice declares from Dan    and proclaims trouble from Mount Ephraim.16   Warn the nations that he is coming;    announce to Jerusalem,  “Besiegers come from a distant land;    they shout against the cities of Judah.17   Like keepers of a field are they against her all around,    because she has rebelled against me,      declares the LORD.18   Your ways and your deeds    have brought this upon you.  This is your doom, and it is bitter;    it has reached your very heart.” Anguish over Judah's Desolation 19   My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain!    Oh the walls of my heart!  My heart is beating wildly;    I cannot keep silent,  for I hear the sound of the trumpet,    the alarm of war.20   Crash follows hard on crash;    the whole land is laid waste.  Suddenly my tents are laid waste,    my curtains in a moment.21   How long must I see the standard    and hear the sound of the trumpet? 22   “For my people are foolish;    they know me not;  they are stupid children;    they have no understanding.  They are ‘wise'—in doing evil!    But how to do good they know not.” 23   I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void;    and to the heavens, and they had no light.24   I looked on the mountains, and behold, they were quaking,    and all the hills moved to and fro.25   I looked, and behold, there was no man,    and all the birds of the air had fled.26   I looked, and behold, the fruitful land was a desert,    and all its cities were laid in ruins    before the LORD, before his fierce anger. 27 For thus says the LORD, “The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. 28   “For this the earth shall mourn,    and the heavens above be dark;  for I have spoken; I have purposed;    I have not relented, nor will I turn back.” 29   At the noise of horseman and archer    every city takes to flight;  they enter thickets; they climb among rocks;    all the cities are forsaken,    and no man dwells in them.30   And you, O desolate one,  what do you mean that you dress in scarlet,    that you adorn yourself with ornaments of gold,    that you enlarge your eyes with paint?  In vain you beautify yourself.    Your lovers despise you;    they seek your life.31   For I heard a cry as of a woman in labor,    anguish as of one giving birth to her first child,  the cry of the daughter of Zion gasping for breath,    stretching out her hands,  “Woe is me! I am fainting before murderers.” Jerusalem Refused to Repent 5   Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,    look and take note!  Search her squares to see    if you can find a man,  one who does justice    and seeks truth,  that I may pardon her.2   Though they say, “As the LORD lives,”    yet they swear falsely.3   O LORD, do not your eyes look for truth?  You have struck them down,    but they felt no anguish;  you have consumed them,    but they refused to take correction.  They have made their faces harder than rock;    they have refused to repent. 4   Then I said, “These are only the poor;    they have no sense;  for they do not know the way of the LORD,    the justice of their God.5   I will go to the great    and will speak to them,  for they know the way of the LORD,    the justice of their God.”  But they all alike had broken the yoke;    they had burst the bonds. 6   Therefore a lion from the forest shall strike them down;    a wolf from the desert shall devastate them.  A leopard is watching their cities;    everyone who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces,  because their transgressions are many,    their apostasies are great. 7   “How can I pardon you?    Your children have forsaken me    and have sworn by those who are no gods.  When I fed them to the full,    they committed adultery    and trooped to the houses of whores.8   They were well-fed, lusty stallions,    each neighing for his neighbor's wife.9   Shall I not punish them for these things?      declares the LORD;    and shall I not avenge myself    on a nation such as this? 10   “Go up through her vine rows and destroy,    but make not a full end;  strip away her branches,    for they are not the LORD's.11   For the house of Israel and the house of Judah    have been utterly treacherous to me,      declares the LORD.12   They have spoken falsely of the LORD    and have said, ‘He will do nothing;  no disaster will come upon us,    nor shall we see sword or famine.13   The prophets will become wind;    the word is not in them.  Thus shall it be done to them!'” The Lord Proclaims Judgment 14   Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of hosts:  “Because you have spoken this word,  behold, I am making my words in your mouth a fire,    and this people wood, and the fire shall consume them.15   Behold, I am bringing against you    a nation from afar, O house of Israel,      declares the LORD.  It is an enduring nation;    it is an ancient nation,  a nation whose language you do not know,    nor can you understand what they say.16   Their quiver is like an open tomb;    they are all mighty warriors.17   They shall eat up your harvest and your food;    they shall eat up your sons and your daughters;  they shall eat up your flocks and your herds;    they shall eat up your vines and your fig trees;  your fortified cities in which you trust    they shall beat down with the sword.” 18 “But even in those days, declares the LORD, I will not make a full end of you. 19 And when your people say, ‘Why has the LORD our God done all these things to us?' you shall say to them, ‘As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve foreigners in a land that is not yours.'” 20   Declare this in the house of Jacob;    proclaim it in Judah:21   “Hear this, O foolish and senseless people,    who have eyes, but see not,    who have ears, but hear not.22   Do you not fear me? declares the LORD.    Do you not tremble before me?  I placed the sand as the boundary for the sea,    a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass;  though the waves toss, they cannot prevail;    though they roar, they cannot pass over it.23   But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart;    they have turned aside and gone away.24   They do not say in their hearts,    ‘Let us fear the LORD our God,  who gives the rain in its season,    the autumn rain and the spring rain,  and keeps for us    the weeks appointed for the harvest.'25   Your iniquities have turned these away,    and your sins have kept good from you.26   For wicked men are found among my people;    they lurk like fowlers lying in wait.1  They set a trap;    they catch men.27   Like a cage full of birds,    their houses are full of deceit;  therefore they have become great and rich;28     they have grown fat and sleek.  They know no bounds in deeds of evil;    they judge not with justice  the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper,    and they do not defend the rights of the needy.29   Shall I not punish them for these things?      declares the LORD,    and shall I not avenge myself    on a nation such as this?” 30   An appalling and horrible thing    has happened in the land:31   the prophets prophesy falsely,    and the priests rule at their direction;  my people love to have it so,    but what will you do when the end comes? Footnotes [1] 5:26 The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain (ESV) New Testament: 1 Peter 3:13–4:19 1 Peter 3:13–4:19 (Listen) 13 Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? 14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, 15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, 16 having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil. 18 For Christ also suffered1 once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which2 he went and proclaimed3 to the spirits in prison, 20 because4 they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. Stewards of God's Grace 4 Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh,5 arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. 3 For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. 4 With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; 5 but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does. 7 The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. 8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. 9 Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: 11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Suffering as a Christian 12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory6 and of God rests upon you. 15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. 16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. 17 For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And   “If the righteous is scarcely saved,    what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”

Mark 12–13 Mark 12–13 (Listen) The Parable of the Tenants 12 And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant1 to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.' 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' 8 And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this Scripture:   “‘The stone that the builders rejected    has become the cornerstone;211   this was the Lord's doing,    and it is marvelous in our eyes'?” 12 And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away. Paying Taxes to Caesar 13 And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to trap him in his talk. 14 And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances,3 but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?” 15 But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius4 and let me look at it.” 16 And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar's.” 17 Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” And they marveled at him. The Sadducees Ask About the Resurrection 18 And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question, saying, 19 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man5 must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. 21 And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. 22 And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died. 23 In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.” 24 Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26 And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? 27 He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.” The Great Commandment 28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions. Whose Son Is the Christ? 35 And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? 36 David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared,   “‘The Lord said to my Lord,  “Sit at my right hand,    until I put your enemies under your feet.”' 37 David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?” And the great throng heard him gladly. Beware of the Scribes 38 And in his teaching he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces 39 and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, 40 who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” The Widow's Offering 41 And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny.6 43 And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. 44 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” Jesus Foretells Destruction of the Temple 13 And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” 2 And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” Signs of the End of the Age 3 And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?” 5 And Jesus began to say to them, “See that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!' and they will lead many astray. 7 And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the end is not yet. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. These are but the beginning of the birth pains. 9 “But be on your guard. For they will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them. 10 And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations. 11 And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. 12 And brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death. 13 And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. The Abomination of Desolation 14 “But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 15 Let the one who is on the housetop not go down, nor enter his house, to take anything out, 16 and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. 17 And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! 18 Pray that it may not happen in winter. 19 For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be. 20 And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he shortened the days. 21 And then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!' or ‘Look, there he is!' do not believe it. 22 For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. 23 But be on guard; I have told you all things beforehand. The Coming of the Son of Man 24 “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. The Lesson of the Fig Tree 28 “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30 Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. No One Knows That Day or Hour 32 “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Be on guard, keep awake.7 For you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants8 in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. 35 Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows,9 or in the morning—36 lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.” Footnotes [1] 12:2 Or bondservant; also verse 4 [2] 12:10 Greek the head of the corner [3] 12:14 Greek you do not look at people's faces [4] 12:15 A denarius was a day's wage for a laborer [5] 12:19 Greek his brother [6] 12:42 Greek two lepta, which make a kodrantes; a kodrantes (Latin quadrans) was a Roman copper coin worth about 1/64 of a denarius (which was a day's wage for a laborer) [7] 13:33 Some manuscripts add and pray [8] 13:34 Or bondservants [9] 13:35 That is, the third watch of the night, between midnight and 3 a.m. (ESV)

Mark 12–13 Mark 12–13 (Listen) The Parable of the Tenants 12 And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant1 to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.' 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' 8 And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this Scripture:   “‘The stone that the builders rejected    has become the cornerstone;211   this was the Lord's doing,    and it is marvelous in our eyes'?” 12 And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away. Paying Taxes to Caesar 13 And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to trap him in his talk. 14 And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances,3 but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?” 15 But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius4 and let me look at it.” 16 And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar's.” 17 Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” And they marveled at him. The Sadducees Ask About the Resurrection 18 And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question, saying, 19 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man5 must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. 21 And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. 22 And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died. 23 In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.” 24 Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26 And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? 27 He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.” The Great Commandment 28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions. Whose Son Is the Christ? 35 And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? 36 David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared,   “‘The Lord said to my Lord,  “Sit at my right hand,    until I put your enemies under your feet.”' 37 David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?” And the great throng heard him gladly. Beware of the Scribes 38 And in his teaching he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces 39 and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, 40 who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” The Widow's Offering 41 And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny.6 43 And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. 44 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” Jesus Foretells Destruction of the Temple 13 And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” 2 And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” Signs of the End of the Age 3 And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?” 5 And Jesus began to say to them, “See that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!' and they will lead many astray. 7 And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the end is not yet. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. These are but the beginning of the birth pains. 9 “But be on your guard. For they will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them. 10 And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations. 11 And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. 12 And brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death. 13 And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. The Abomination of Desolation 14 “But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 15 Let the one who is on the housetop not go down, nor enter his house, to take anything out, 16 and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. 17 And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! 18 Pray that it may not happen in winter. 19 For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be. 20 And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he shortened the days. 21 And then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!' or ‘Look, there he is!' do not believe it. 22 For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. 23 But be on guard; I have told you all things beforehand. The Coming of the Son of Man 24 “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. The Lesson of the Fig Tree 28 “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30 Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. No One Knows That Day or Hour 32 “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Be on guard, keep awake.7 For you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants8 in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. 35 Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows,9 or in the morning—36 lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.” Footnotes [1] 12:2 Or bondservant; also verse 4 [2] 12:10 Greek the head of the corner [3] 12:14 Greek you do not look at people's faces [4] 12:15 A denarius was a day's wage for a laborer [5] 12:19 Greek his brother [6] 12:42 Greek two lepta, which make a kodrantes; a kodrantes (Latin quadrans) was a Roman copper coin worth about 1/64 of a denarius (which was a day's wage for a laborer) [7] 13:33 Some manuscripts add and pray [8] 13:34 Or bondservants [9] 13:35 That is, the third watch of the night, between midnight and 3 a.m. (ESV)

Morning: Jeremiah 3–4 Jeremiah 3–4 (Listen) 3   “If1 a man divorces his wife    and she goes from him  and becomes another man's wife,    will he return to her?  Would not that land be greatly polluted?  You have played the whore with many lovers;    and would you return to me?      declares the LORD.2   Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see!    Where have you not been ravished?  By the waysides you have sat awaiting lovers    like an Arab in the wilderness.  You have polluted the land    with your vile whoredom.3   Therefore the showers have been withheld,    and the spring rain has not come;  yet you have the forehead of a whore;    you refuse to be ashamed.4   Have you not just now called to me,    ‘My father, you are the friend of my youth—5   will he be angry forever,    will he be indignant to the end?'  Behold, you have spoken,    but you have done all the evil that you could.” Faithless Israel Called to Repentance 6 The LORD said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? 7 And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,' but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. 8 She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. 9 Because she took her whoredom lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree. 10 Yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, declares the LORD.” 11 And the LORD said to me, “Faithless Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah. 12 Go, and proclaim these words toward the north, and say,   “‘Return, faithless Israel,      declares the LORD.  I will not look on you in anger,    for I am merciful,      declares the LORD;  I will not be angry forever.13   Only acknowledge your guilt,    that you rebelled against the LORD your God  and scattered your favors among foreigners under every green tree,    and that you have not obeyed my voice,      declares the LORD.14   Return, O faithless children,      declares the LORD;    for I am your master;  I will take you, one from a city and two from a family,    and I will bring you to Zion. 15 “‘And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding. 16 And when you have multiplied and been fruitful in the land, in those days, declares the LORD, they shall no more say, “The ark of the covenant of the LORD.” It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed; it shall not be made again. 17 At that time Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the LORD, and all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the LORD in Jerusalem, and they shall no more stubbornly follow their own evil heart. 18 In those days the house of Judah shall join the house of Israel, and together they shall come from the land of the north to the land that I gave your fathers for a heritage. 19   “‘I said,    How I would set you among my sons,  and give you a pleasant land,    a heritage most beautiful of all nations.  And I thought you would call me, My Father,    and would not turn from following me.20   Surely, as a treacherous wife leaves her husband,    so have you been treacherous to me, O house of Israel,      declares the LORD.'” 21   A voice on the bare heights is heard,    the weeping and pleading of Israel's sons  because they have perverted their way;    they have forgotten the LORD their God.22   “Return, O faithless sons;    I will heal your faithlessness.”  “Behold, we come to you,    for you are the LORD our God.23   Truly the hills are a delusion,    the orgies2 on the mountains.  Truly in the LORD our God    is the salvation of Israel. 24 “But from our youth the shameful thing has devoured all for which our fathers labored, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. 25 Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us. For we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day, and we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.” 4   “If you return, O Israel,      declares the LORD,    to me you should return.  If you remove your detestable things from my presence,    and do not waver,2   and if you swear, ‘As the LORD lives,'    in truth, in justice, and in righteousness,  then nations shall bless themselves in him,    and in him shall they glory.” 3 For thus says the LORD to the men of Judah and Jerusalem:   “Break up your fallow ground,    and sow not among thorns.4   Circumcise yourselves to the LORD;    remove the foreskin of your hearts,    O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem;  lest my wrath go forth like fire,    and burn with none to quench it,    because of the evil of your deeds.” Disaster from the North 5 Declare in Judah, and proclaim in Jerusalem, and say,   “Blow the trumpet through the land;    cry aloud and say,  ‘Assemble, and let us go    into the fortified cities!'6   Raise a standard toward Zion,    flee for safety, stay not,  for I bring disaster from the north,    and great destruction.7   A lion has gone up from his thicket,    a destroyer of nations has set out;    he has gone out from his place  to make your land a waste;    your cities will be ruins    without inhabitant.8   For this put on sackcloth,    lament and wail,  for the fierce anger of the LORD    has not turned back from us.” 9 “In that day, declares the LORD, courage shall fail both king and officials. The priests shall be appalled and the prophets astounded.” 10 Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD, surely you have utterly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ‘It shall be well with you,' whereas the sword has reached their very life.” 11 At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem, “A hot wind from the bare heights in the desert toward the daughter of my people, not to winnow or cleanse, 12 a wind too full for this comes for me. Now it is I who speak in judgment upon them.” 13   Behold, he comes up like clouds;    his chariots like the whirlwind;  his horses are swifter than eagles—    woe to us, for we are ruined!14   O Jerusalem, wash your heart from evil,    that you may be saved.  How long shall your wicked thoughts    lodge within you?15   For a voice declares from Dan    and proclaims trouble from Mount Ephraim.16   Warn the nations that he is coming;    announce to Jerusalem,  “Besiegers come from a distant land;    they shout against the cities of Judah.17   Like keepers of a field are they against her all around,    because she has rebelled against me,      declares the LORD.18   Your ways and your deeds    have brought this upon you.  This is your doom, and it is bitter;    it has reached your very heart.” Anguish over Judah's Desolation 19   My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain!    Oh the walls of my heart!  My heart is beating wildly;    I cannot keep silent,  for I hear the sound of the trumpet,    the alarm of war.20   Crash follows hard on crash;    the whole land is laid waste.  Suddenly my tents are laid waste,    my curtains in a moment.21   How long must I see the standard    and hear the sound of the trumpet? 22   “For my people are foolish;    they know me not;  they are stupid children;    they have no understanding.  They are ‘wise'—in doing evil!    But how to do good they know not.” 23   I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void;    and to the heavens, and they had no light.24   I looked on the mountains, and behold, they were quaking,    and all the hills moved to and fro.25   I looked, and behold, there was no man,    and all the birds of the air had fled.26   I looked, and behold, the fruitful land was a desert,    and all its cities were laid in ruins    before the LORD, before his fierce anger. 27 For thus says the LORD, “The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. 28   “For this the earth shall mourn,    and the heavens above be dark;  for I have spoken; I have purposed;    I have not relented, nor will I turn back.” 29   At the noise of horseman and archer    every city takes to flight;  they enter thickets; they climb among rocks;    all the cities are forsaken,    and no man dwells in them.30   And you, O desolate one,  what do you mean that you dress in scarlet,    that you adorn yourself with ornaments of gold,    that you enlarge your eyes with paint?  In vain you beautify yourself.    Your lovers despise you;    they seek your life.31   For I heard a cry as of a woman in labor,    anguish as of one giving birth to her first child,  the cry of the daughter of Zion gasping for breath,    stretching out her hands,  “Woe is me! I am fainting before murderers.” Footnotes [1] 3:1 Septuagint, Syriac; Hebrew Saying, “If [2] 3:23 Hebrew commotion (ESV) Evening: 2 Thessalonians 3 2 Thessalonians 3 (Listen) Pray for Us 3 Finally, brothers,1 pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored,2 as happened among you, 2 and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men. For not all have faith. 3 But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.3 4 And we have confidence in the Lord about you, that you are doing and will do the things that we command. 5 May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ. Warning Against Idleness 6 Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. 7 For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, 8 nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. 9 It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. 10 For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. 11 For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. 12 Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.4 13 As for you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good. 14 If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. 15 Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother. Benediction 16 Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way. The Lord be with you all. 17 I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the sign of genuineness in every letter of mine; it is the way I write. 18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Footnotes [1] 3:1 Or brothers and sisters; also verses 6, 13 [2] 3:1 Or glorified [3] 3:3 Or evil [4] 3:12 Greek to eat their own bread (ESV)

We return to Holdenshire to face haunted castles, the madness of a faerie queen, the lost secrets of dwarven ruins, and the greatest threat of all: the dreaded dragon Cirothe, ruler of Skull Mountain and tyrant of The Desolation.

Matthew 24–25 Matthew 24–25 (Listen) Jesus Foretells Destruction of the Temple 24 Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. 2 But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” Signs of the End of the Age 3 As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” 4 And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. 5 For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. 6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. 9 “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. 10 And then many will fall away1 and betray one another and hate one another. 11 And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. The Abomination of Desolation 15 “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, 18 and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. 19 And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! 20 Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. 22 And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short. 23 Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!' or ‘There he is!' do not believe it. 24 For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you beforehand. 26 So, if they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the wilderness,' do not go out. If they say, ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms,' do not believe it. 27 For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 28 Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. The Coming of the Son of Man 29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. The Lesson of the Fig Tree 32 “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. 33 So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 34 Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. No One Knows That Day and Hour 36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son,2 but the Father only. 37 For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, 39 and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. 42 Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. 45 “Who then is the faithful and wise servant,3 whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? 46 Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. 47 Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. 48 But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,' 49 and begins to beat his fellow servants4 and eats and drinks with drunkards, 50 the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know 51 and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The Parable of the Ten Virgins 25 “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps5 and went to meet the bridegroom.6 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.' 7 Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. 8 And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' 9 But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.' 10 And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. 11 Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.' 12 But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.' 13 Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. The Parable of the Talents 14 “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants7 and entrusted to them his property. 15 To one he gave five talents,8 to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. 17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. 18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. 19 Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.' 21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.9 You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.' 22 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.' 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.' 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.' 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' The Final Judgment 31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,10 you did it to me.' 41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' 44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?' 45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Footnotes [1] 24:10 Or stumble [2] 24:36 Some manuscripts omit nor the Son [3] 24:45 Or bondservant; also verses 46, 48, 50 [4] 24:49 Or bondservants [5] 25:1 Or torches [6] 25:1 Some manuscripts add and the bride [7] 25:14 Or bondservants; also verse 19 [8] 25:15 A talent was a monetary unit worth about twenty years' wages for a laborer [9] 25:21 Or bondservant; also verses 23, 26, 30 [10] 25:40 Or brothers and sisters (ESV)