Podcasts about Takamatsu

Good Times Episode 10: Lost Without Japan Time To Buy Some Expensive Plastic 107 Lost Without Japan Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/lostwithoutjapan/  Please Consider Kindly Supporting Our Crowd Funded Show By Supporting Us Through Our Shows Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/paying-for-our-4-109129803?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link  As always, the link to our shows Google Resource doc can be found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WEVbRmvn8jzxOZPDaypl3UAjxbs1OOSWSftFW1BYXpI/edit#

 At just 24, Toru Takamatsu made history by becoming the youngest person to achieve the coveted Master Sommelier title — a distinction few can claim at any age. But his journey to this rarefied status was anything but easy. We explore what first ignited his passion for wine, the hurdles he faced along the way, and how his drive and determination propelled him to the top. Now, as he embarks on a new chapter at Domaine Takahiko, Toru is looking beyond the world of sommeliers and into the realm of winemaking. We discuss his work with Takahiko Soga, the philosophy behind the vineyard, and what kind of wine he hopes to produce in the future.Join us as we delve into the career of one of the wine industry's most promising talents, and gain insight into what it takes to master a craft, break boundaries, and shape the future of wine.Follow his journey on Instagram at @toru_95_ms Since 2016, Bottled in China brings you into the food and drink scene through conversations with the some of the most happening personalities. Hosted by Emilie Steckenborn, the show is your one spot for all things food, beer, wine and spirits from across the world. Connect with us on LinkedIn or Instagram @bottled.in.china Podcast available on iTunes, Spotify , online or wherever you listen to your episodes! Subscribe to Bottled in China to follow the journey!Check out our new website & find out more at https://www.thebottledshow.com

Happy Sake Day! Here is a list of events that are happening this month in Japan and around the world. Outside Japan (Sake Day Events) On October 1st in Melbourne, Australia. Tamura Sake Bar is celebrating World Sake Day 2024 from 6 to 9PM. https://www.tamurasakebar.com/ On October 4th from 4 to 10 pm, World Sake Day NYC 2024 will be happening at The W Loft Rooftop (240 Kent Ave, Williamsburg Brooklyn, NY)https://www.upstairsnyc.org/world-sake-day-nyc-2024 On October 5th from noon to 4 pm, the Queen City Sake Festival is happening in Denver Colorado. It will be held at Finn's Manor and 2 sake samurai will be attending.https://www.eventbrite.com/e/queen-city-sake-festival-tickets-1003066237117?aff=oddtdtcreatorAlso on October 5th in Long Beach the 2nd Annual LB Sake Day will be held from 1 to 4pm at Rancho Los Cerritos. https://aftontickets.com/lbsakeday Also on October 5th in Southern California, is the 8th Annual San Diego Sake Festival from 2 to 6 pm at Julep Venue.https://sandiegosakeclub.com/sake-festival Tuesday, October 1, 2024 AomoriA Toast with Local Sake from Around Japan & The Aomori Preliminary Round of the National Sake Tasting Competition5:00 pm - 6:00 pm (Reception: 4:30 pm - 5:00 pm): Preliminary Round of the National Sake Tasting Competition5:30 pm - 8:00 pm: A Taste of Local Sake from Around JapanLocationsA Taste of Local Sake from Around Japan: Machiniwa, 21-1 Mikkamachi, Hachinohe, Aomori PrefecturePreliminary Round of the National Sake Tasting Competition: Tsurutamachi Toyomeikan, 184-1 Hayase, Tsuruta, Kitatsugaru-gun, Aomori PrefectureOfficial Website: https://aomori-sake.or.jp/event KagawaThe 16th Sanuki Sake PR Mission3:00 pm - 4:45 pm: Preliminary Round of the National Sake Tasting Competition5:00 pm - 7:05 pm: A Toast with Sanuki Sake!LocationsKagawa Preliminary Round of the National Sake Tasting Competition: Marugamemachi Letts Hall Culture RoomA Toast with Sanuki Sake!: Dome Square in front of Takamatsu Marugamemachi Shopping Street, 1-1 Marugamemachi, Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture1-1 Marugamemachi, Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture 4F Takamatsu Marugamemachi Ichibangai East Bldg.Official Website: https://sanuki-sake.com/ EhimeNationwide Sake Toast & Horoyoi Festa 2024Reception: Starting at 6:00 pmToast: Starting at 7:00 pmLocationsYasuragi Hiroba, Shiroyama ParkHorinouchi, Matsuyama, Ehime PrefectureOfficial Website: https://www.ehime-syuzou.com/ KochiA Toast with Tosa Sake! Make Friends In Person and Online!6:30 pm - 8:00 pm (Reception starting at 6:00 pm)LocationsThe Crown Palais New Hankyu Kochi, 4-2-50 Honmachi, Kochi City, Kochi PrefectureOfficial Website: https://www.kbiz.or.jp/kumiai/sake/ NaraNara Sake: A Toast at World Heritage SitesTuesday, October 1, 2024 Toast from 5:00 pmSunday, October 13 12:00 - 5:00 pm*Sake will be served from 2:00 pmLocationOctober 1: Rooftop of Nara Park Bus Terminal, 76 Noboriojicho, Nara City, Nara PrefectureOctober 13: Kinpusen-ji Temple, Yoshinoyama, Yoshinocho, Yoshino-gun, Nara PrefectureOfficial Website: https://yamato-umazake.com/ Friday, October 4 to Sunday, October 6th, 2024 Kochi56th Tosa Hashiken All-Japan ChampionshipFriday, October 4, 1:00 pm - 4:00 pmLocationThe Crown Palais New Hankyu Kochi4-2-50 Honmachi, Kochi City, Kochi PrefectureOfficial Website: https://www.kbiz.or.jp/kumiai/sake/ ChibaChiba Sake Festival 2024Friday, October 4Part 1: 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm　(Reception: 2:15 pm)Part 2: 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm　(Reception: 5:15 pm)LocationTokyo Bay Makuhari Hall, 2-3 Hibino, Mihama-ku, Chiba City, Chiba PrefectureOfficial Website: https://chiba-sake.jp/ ItamiNationwide Sake Toast 2024 in Itami, the birthplace of sakeSaturday, October 5, 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm(Canceled in the case of inclement weather)LocationShirayuki Brewery Village Choujugura Parking Lot, 3-4-15 Chuo, Itami, Hyogo PrefectureOfficial Website: http://itamisake-kma.jp/ TokushimaA Toast with Awa Sake! 2024: The 24th Evening of Tokushima Sake and Snacks ...

Night 4 of the G1 Climax 34 was pretty good, but completely skippable, even if the main event was tremendous. Let's break it down! Night 4: July 25, 2024 from the Sunmesse Kagawa in Takamatsu, Kagawa, Japan. B BLOCK MATCHES Boltin Oleg vs Hirooki Goto Jeff Cobb vs Ren Narita El Phantasmo vs Yota Tsuji David Finlay vs HENARE Konosuke Takeshita vs Yuya Uemura

For the first time since the pandemic, St. Petersburg restores the Sister Cities student exchange program with Takamatsu, Japan. Students from St. Petersburg are going over to Takamatsu the weekend of July 5th. They'll stay for ten days and then students from Takamatsu will head to St. Petersburg. We speak with one of the program organizers and the mother of one of the exchange students. 

Every day's a little more colorful when Mitsumi's around! Misaki Takamatsu's Skip and Loafer is a love story, in that it is a story that you will fall in love with, unless you have a heart of stone. Come and listen to us gush about our sparkly darling.Get in touch with us!Email: mangaroospodcast@gmail.comEverywhere else: @mangaroos

Welcome to a very special episode of Lost Without Japan, where we sit down with Toto from Megijima Island Guest House and Cafe Megino as we discuss what services are offered to you, the Lost Without Japan Listener. Website: http://megijima-megino.com/  Address:   4531-2 Megicho, Takamatsu, Kagawa 760-0092, Japan Email: megijima.guesthouse@gmail.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/megijima.guesthouse/  Tripadvisor:  https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g298232-d16797657-Reviews-Megijima_Guesthouse_Cafe_Megino-Takamatsu_Kagawa_Prefecture_Shikoku.html Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Megino.Megijimaislandguesthouse Song Of The Show: One Piece Opening 1~Die Legende~(Deutsch-German) https://youtu.be/A1Xw31qQRGo?si=WtavIu6by2IAc4NE  As always, the link to our shows Google Resource doc can be found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WEVbRmvn8jzxOZPDaypl3UAjxbs1OOSWSftFW1BYXpI/edit#  Lost Without Japan Email:  lostwithoutjapan@gmail.com Instagram For Lost Without Japan:  https://www.instagram.com/lostwithoutjapan/   

Good Times Bar David Maurice and I Season 3 Ep 18 Welcome to a very special episode of Lost Without Japan, where Maurice David and I kick back at Good Times and discuss Japan.   Follow the link to share your own story of Japan or our show for the three year celebration this summer :). Link available on my story and in the show's resource document :). https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdP0PK6DsDTo3HFXxxlICFsEF91c-Wr10CeKeREdrqWjg9BrA/viewform?usp=sf_link    Follow the link to share your own story of Japan or our show for the three year celebration this summer :). Link available on my story and in the show's resource document :). Lost Without Japan Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/lostwithoutjapan/  Ganbatte Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/ganbatte.the.photobook?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==  KG Plus Photobook Fair: https://www.instagram.com/kg_plus_photobookfair/  Please Consider Kindly Supporting Our Crowd Funded Show By Supporting Us Through Our Shows Patreon: https://patreon.com/lostwithoutjapanpodcast?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator https://soranews24.com/2024/04/05/cashiers-given-chairs-as-japanese-companies-reconsider-if-its-ok-for-workers-to-sit-during-their-shifts/  https://soranews24.com/2024/04/04/this-stylish-turd-from-two-japanese-companies-will-really-tie-your-room-together/ https://soranews24.com/2024/04/02/the-fake-burger-really-returns-to-burger-king-japan/ https://soranews24.com/2024/04/02/the-fake-burger-really-returns-to-burger-king-japan/ As always, the link to our shows Google Resource doc can be found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WEVbRmvn8jzxOZPDaypl3UAjxbs1OOSWSftFW1BYXpI/edit#

Bonjour à vous cher auditeurs. Cet épisode est un peu spécial car c'est le dernier avant une pause de 6 mois, le temps d'un congé maternité. Pour l'occasion, et en cette saison de pleine floraison, nous avons la joie d'inviter Sophie Le Berre, spécialiste de botanique et plus spécifiquement de fleurs japonaises. Après des études de Japonais, et plusieurs années passées au Japon en tant que chargée des relations internationales pour la ville de Takamatsu, Sophie Le Berre s'est prise de passion pour les plantes japonaises, et plus particulièrement les fleurs de la période d'Edo, lorsque que les seigneurs utilisaient les jardins comme outils d'apparat. Aujourd'hui, Sophie prépare sur ce thème un doctorat à l'Université de Paris et organise des voyages au Japon au fil des floraisons et des saisons. Dans cet épisode d'avril, nous allons donc évidemment parler sakura, le fameux cerisier japonais, et la raison pour laquelle les Japonais en sont si fous. Nous allons parler aussi d'ikebana, et de cérémonie du thé, qui ont tous deux beaucoup contribué au déploiement du goût japonais pour les fleurs. Enfin, Sophie vous parlera de ces fameux jardins de la période d'Edo et vous donnera des conseils d'itinéraires de voyage au Japon en fonction des saisons, ainsi que des sites à visiter en France.Pour toutes les références, nous vous invitons à consulter notre article dédié : https://www.maisondumochi.fr/magazine/le-podcast-tsukimi-episode-31-sophie-le-berre-specialiste-des-jardins-japonais/Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Aujourd'hui nous avons eu plusieurs Osettai dont du Amazaké, boisson à base de riz fermenté. Nous arrivons à Takamatsu à la guest house Wakabaya où Takeshi nous parle de ces voyages.

Day Trip to the Islands off of Shikkoku in the  Kagawa prefecture LWJ Season 3 Ep 14 TimeStamp for start of our talk on the islands off of Takamatsu is: 6:00 Follow the link to share your own story of Japan or our show for the three year celebration this summer :). Link available on my story and in the show's resource document :). https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdP0PK6DsDTo3HFXxxlICFsEF91c-Wr10CeKeREdrqWjg9BrA/viewform?usp=sf_link    Lost Without Japan Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/lostwithoutjapan/  Please Consider Kindly Supporting Our Crowd Funded Show By Supporting Us Through Our Shows Patreon: https://patreon.com/lostwithoutjapanpodcast?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator Google Shared Maps For This Episode:  https://maps.app.goo.gl/HqwWKZBmzk8DeMiB6 JR Hotel Clement Takamatsu: https://advance.reservation.jp/jr_clement/stay_pc/rsv/index.aspx?hi_id=1&lang=en-US  Heisei Car Rental:  https://www.heisei-car.jp/global/en/camping-cars/  Shikoku Ferry: (There are multiple ferries in the area, make sure the one you choose will take you to where you want to go before purchasing a ticket) http://www.shikokuferry.com/  Megijima CampGround:  https://www.my-kagawa.jp/point/381/  女木島野営場 Megijima Campsite:  女木島野営場 Google Map Link Megijima Guest House & Cafe Megino:  女木島ゲストハウス&カフェ Megino:  https://book.checkinn.jp/en/b26ca9cc1b323f89a0eb1c5a9d2681957227953c3a4a553f4d8fb7b321431907/pkg?from=2024-02-19&to=2024-02-20&ep=61&er=2&people=2&tab=room  Ogijima Lighthouse Campground and Food Services: https://ogijima.site/camp/  Sunset and Cat House (Cafe) https://ogi-sunset-cat-house.business.site/?utm_source=gmb&utm_medium=referral#gallery Song of the Show:  Is truly fitting for today's talk: Private Beach by the Japanese band SOFFet https://youtu.be/Yi12Dpok9aI?si=6gvo7O0xyiAajlfb  Link to Google Doc that includes Google maps for all cities covered on Lost Without Japan, as well as the link to Amazon for travel purchase recommendations and other useful information for your travel to Japan can be found at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WEVbRmvn8jzxOZPDaypl3UAjxbs1OOSWSftFW1BYXpI/edit?usp=sharing   

Day Trip to Takamatsu Japan in the Shikoku Prefecture LWJ Season 3 Ep 12 TimeStamp for start of our talk on Takamatsu is: 9:17 Please Consider Kindly Supporting Our Crowd Funded Show By Supporting Us Through Our Shows Patreon: https://patreon.com/lostwithoutjapanpodcast?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator Google Shared Maps For This Episode:  https://maps.app.goo.gl/5vAdRhNo2ChNidcLA  Tokubus.co.jp (Bus from Tokushima to Takamtsu): https://www.tokubus.co.jp/highwaybus/takamatsu/ Shikoku Ferry: (There are multiple ferries in the area, make sure the one you choose will take you to where you want to go before purchasing a ticket) http://www.shikokuferry.com/  Hanajuki 1st Lodging Choice:  https://reserve.489ban.net/client/hanajyukai/0/plan/search?date=2024%2F02%2F14&numberOfNights=1&roomCount=1&utm_content=mapresults_14-02-2024_1_5269496838986406461H9421430763382689042_US_desktop_selected__&is_ad=false  Tully's Coffee Menu:  https://www.tullys.co.jp/menu/drink/  Komeda Coffee:  https://www.komeda.co.jp/menu/?brand=1 Sanuki Udon Ueharaya:  https://ueharayahonten.com/  New Yashima Aquarium:  https://r.goope.jp/new-yashima-aq/free/price  Shikoku Village:  https://www.shikokumura.or.jp/information/   https://machi.takexp.com/contents/udontown/  Takamatsu Marugame-machi Shopping District:   https://www.kame3.jp/  Takamatsu Tamachi Shopping Street:https://machi.takexp.com/contents/udontown/  Reveur Massage: https://beauty.hotpepper.jp/kr/slnH000238963/  Dormy Inn: https://www.hotespa.net/hotels/chuotakamatsu/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=gbp&utm_campaign=gbpurl  Australian International Drivers License:  https://kart.st/en/drivers-license/australia.html United States International Drivers License:  https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/before-you-go/driving-and-road-safety.html  Lost Without Japan Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/lostwithoutjapan/  Link to Google Doc that includes Google maps for all cities covered on Lost Without Japan, as well as the link to Amazon for travel purchase recommendations and other useful information for your travel to Japan can be found at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WEVbRmvn8jzxOZPDaypl3UAjxbs1OOSWSftFW1BYXpI/edit?usp=sharing   

A central article of faith of Christianity is that Jesus will return visibly and powerfully to end this era and bring in a world of eternal life and glory. - SERMON TRANSCRIPT - Turn in your Bibles to Mark 13 as we consider the Second Coming of Christ. And as I do this morning, my mind goes back 29 years, my wife and I were missionaries in Japan. I went regularly on Saturdays to a different city, taking a train from Tokushima to Takamatsu. In that city I would teach English and the Bible. On one particular day, a Saturday, I was walking through the streets of Takamatsu, and praying about the ministry I was about to have. I looked overhead, and there was a spectacular cloud formation. You know what I'm talking about, one of those clouds that just heap up like a pile, like a mountain up to the sky. Very, very dramatic. It was especially dramatic in that there was a small peephole of sunlight coming through and there were rays that were streaming down. I was just overwhelmed. I began singing the hymn we're going to close with today, It Is Well With My Soul, because I really felt that it was well with my soul. I was especially thinking about the fourth stanza which says, "And Lord haste the day when our faith will be sight, the clouds be rolled back like a scroll. The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend. Even so, it is well with my soul." Think about that when we sing at the end. But I was thinking about that myself, and how dramatic and how awesome that day was going to be. As I was contemplating this sermon, I was thinking about that day, the day that is yet to come, and our understanding of all that will happen on that day. I would say easily the most dramatic moment in the history of sin-cursed humanity. I can't actually imagine a more spectacular and dramatic day than that, and we are going to understand it and effectively see it today by faith. My prayer has been that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened, that you would be able to see the invisible, the future. And that you would see the glories of the greatness and the majesty and the power and the terror, indeed the terror, of that day in which everything on earth will come to an end. To see it by faith and understand it by faith, that's my desire. How different is the circumstance of Jesus' Second Coming from that of his First Coming. Think of the Christmas hymn, A Little Town of Bethlehem, “how silently the wondrous gift is given.” We know that an army of angels came and appeared, but just to a very small number of shepherds on the hills outside Bethlehem, no one else got to see that. It was just a pregnant couple, a pregnant woman, no room in the inn, and then Jesus born in the natural way. Very quiet. But the Second Coming of Christ will not be so. and we need to understand it. We need to understand it biblically. We need to understand the reasons for it. This morning, as I was thinking about that, the reasons for the Second Coming, I listed out a series of them. Why is Christ coming back to Earth? First and foremost, for the glory of God, for the open, clear, plain, visible display of the greatness and majesty of almighty God. Secondly, to be praised and marveled at by the saints, stimulating us in worship such as we have never experienced before, and that, even for all eternity. Third, to rescue His persecuted people from imminent deadly danger. Fourthly, to bring about justice for them as they are crying out for justice day and night. To bring about justice and, indeed, vindication for His people. Fifth, to punish evildoers, idolaters, blasphemers and wicked people who have not fled to Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. Sixth, to end the open reign of Satan and antichrist and that final government which we have described recently. Seventh, to establish the kingdom of God in righteousness and purity in answer to the prayers that have been prayed in every generation, "May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." To usher in the new heaven and the new earth, the perfect world free from all death, mourning, and crying, and pain. To be with His people forever and to end the reign of sin and death for all eternity. These are the reasons and many others. I. The Absolute Certainty of the Second Coming It's beneficial for us today to walk through this biblically, to understand it, to understand what Mark reveals about it. I begin with the absolute certainty of the Second Coming of Christ. The Second Coming of Christ is taught many, many times throughout the Scriptures. This is one of the central articles of the Christian faith, that Jesus Christ will return visibly and powerfully to end this era of human history and bring in a world of eternal life and radiant glory. We believe this as Christians. Now, Paul speaks of the purpose of Jesus's first coming like this in Galatians 1:3 and 4, "The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age." To rescue us from this present evil age. What is this present evil age, and what world of eternal blessedness did Christ come to usher in? No text captures it better than Revelation 21:4, "He'll wipe every tear from their eyes. There'll be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain for the old order of things has passed away." This present evil age in Galatians 1 and the old order of things that is passing away are the same, they're just different ways of talking about the same thing. The present evil age is characterized by the reign of sin, sin reigning in death, and mourning and crying and pain. That's this present evil age from which Jesus has come to rescue us. The new heavens and the new earth that Jesus will bring in at His Second Coming will be forever free from those enemies, forever free from sin, and Satan, and death, mourning, crying, and pain. Therefore, the Second Coming of Christ is a central aspect of the Christian hope. We are looking forward to it. We're longing for it. We're yearning for it to come. We're seeking to speed its coming by service to God and by the proclamation of the gospel. The Second Coming is therefore taught in many places in Scripture. First, historically, by a man named Enoch, seventh from Adam. We learned this in the book of Jude. Enoch, seventh from Adam, that's a long, long, long, long, long time ago, said these words, prophesied about these wicked men, "Behold the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones, angels, to judge everyone and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against Him." Enoch said that. How in the world did Enoch know about the Lord coming with thousands of angels the same way we do? The Lord revealed it to him prophetically. "The Second Coming of Christ is a central aspect of the Christian hope. We are looking forward to it. We're longing for it. We're yearning for it to come. We're seeking to speed its coming by service to God and by the proclamation of the gospel." It started with Enoch, then many other places. I zero in into my mind to Daniel 7, the vision that Daniel the prophet had at night, a night vision. The centerpiece of it was a vision of the Son of Man, Daniel 7: 13 and 14, "In my vision at night, I looked and there before me was one like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. And He approached the ancient of days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power. All people's nations and men of every language worshiped Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed." It's taught there in Daniel 7. It's taught in Matthew 24 and 25, and here also in Mark 13, and we'll walk through it carefully today, but there are many other passages on the Second Coming. Jesus, for example, in John 14, spoke to his apostles the night before He was crucified, saying, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my father's house or many rooms. If it were not so I would've told you, for I'm going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you," listen now, "I will come back and take you to be with me so you also may be where I am." It's a clear prediction of the Second Coming of Christ. Then that very night after Jesus was arrested, and early the next morning when He was on trial, He quoted Daniel 7, and I'm not going to read it now because I'll read it later in the sermon, but He referred to the Second Coming at that point. It got Him killed. It got Him condemned by the Jewish authorities. Then after His death on the cross, and after His physical resurrection from the dead, and after He had spent forty days instructing His disciples and giving many convincing proofs that He was alive, after all of that training was over, He gave them His final word, "You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria to the ends of the earth.” [Acts 1:9-11] "After He said this, He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid Him from their sight. They were looking intently into the sky as He was going when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 'Men of Galilee,' they said, 'why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you've seen Him go into heaven.'" It’s a clear prediction of the Second Coming of Christ. The Apostle Paul, wrote of it often. He spoke of the Parousia, the coming of Christ. He spoke of it many times, most dramatically in 1 Thessalonians 4: 16-18, "The Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with a voice of the archangel, with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." That's the rapture. Caught up midair, mid-heaven to meet the Lord as He descends from heaven to earth, to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore, encourage one another with these words. I hope you're encouraged with these words. This is the future. This is what Paul taught in 1 Thessalonians 4, and in 2 Thessalonians 2, "Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ [the Parousia] and our being gathered to Him, we ask you brothers not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, reporter, or letter supposed to have come from us saying the day of the Lord has already come. You didn't miss it.” That ship has not sailed," et cetera. But he talked about the Parousia, the coming of the Lord. The Apostle Peter talked about it in 2 Peter 3: 3-4, "First of all, you must understand that in the last day, scoffers will come scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, 'Where is this coming he promised?” What coming? That's the Second Coming of Christ. “Where is it? We don't see it. Where is this coming He promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” Peter goes on to talk about how the generation of Noah before the flood were saying the same thing, Jesus made that same connection. They were saying, "There's no flood. We don't see any flood," until that flood came. Then later in 2 Peter 3 : 10 he said, "The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar. The elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare." Also the Second Coming of Christ is taught many times in the Book of Revelation, such as Revelation 1:7, "Behold He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced him, and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of Him, so shall it be on men." We'll return to that passage a number of times. Then of course in Revelation 19, it openly depicts and describes the Second Coming of Christ with an angelic army, and Jesus coming with a sword coming out of His mouth with which He will slay the wicked. Then in the final chapter, Revelation 22:7, Jesus said, "Behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy in this book." Again, Revelation 22:12 and 13, "Behold, I am coming soon. My reward is with me, and I'll give to each person according to what he has done. I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." We believe in linear history. We believe in an unfolding history. We don't believe in reincarnation and cyclical history that goes around. No, we believe in a beginning, a middle, and an end. We believe in an alpha and omega, and Jesus is that letter and that letter and every letter in between. We believe in a purpose to history, and we believe it's going to end, this phase, this present evil age will end with the Second Coming of Christ. Then again, Revelation 22:20, the second to last verse of the Bible, "He who testifies to these things says, 'Yes, I am coming soon.'" That's three times in Revelation 22 He says, "I'm coming soon." Then John replies, "Amen. Come Lord Jesus." It seems then that looking forward to the Second Coming, yearning for the Second Coming, crying out for it as John does, is essential to our healthy lives in this present evil age. This is a major theme taught many times in the Bible. II. The Heavenly Bodies Darkened, Shaken, and Removed What aspects does Jesus give here in Mark 13, that's our purpose now, as we look through Mark 13:24-27. It begins with the heavenly bodies darkened, shaken, and removed. Look at verse 24 and 25, "But in those days, following that distress, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.” The context here, as we remember, is in those days following that distress. We're right in the middle now of Mark 13. The last sermon was entitled, as you remember, “Run For Your Lives.” Look at verses 14-19, "When you see the abomination that causes desolation standing where it does not belong, let the reader understand, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down or enter the house to take anything out. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers? Pray that this will not take place in winter because those will be days of distress unequal from the beginning when God created the world until now, and never to be equaled again." The Abomination of Desolation, we walked through that, devoting a whole sermon to that. The Abomination of Desolation is the defiling of a sacred space by a blasphemous Gentile power. Concerning the destruction of the temple, Jesus talked about the Gentile army surrounding the city ready to destroy it. But the Abomination of Desolation, per se, is the antichrist finally setting himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God. Jesus clearly warned his church that would be living in that geographical region, both at the destruction of the temple, but then as it foretold the final events. When you see that, when you see these things spoken of by the prophet Daniel, run for your lives, get away as fast as you can. This is what the Bible calls the Great Tribulation. The Book of Revelation gives many more details about what life on earth will be like at that time, and how terrifying and terrible it will be. Seven seals broken, seven trumpets sounded, seven bulls poured out. Those seven, seven, sevens give heaven's response to the wickedness and sinfulness of man on earth, and they will ravage the surface of the earth. Ecological disaster such as has never been seen before, a clear link between human sin and the ecology as we saw from the beginning when Adam sinned and the earth was cursed, and it produced only thorns and thistles for him. We learned in Romans 8 that the whole world has been cursed with the bondage of decay; there's a link between human sin and the ecology. The ecological disasters described specifically in Revelation 8, have never, however, been seen before. A burning up of green grass, a burning up of a third of the trees on earth, a turning of a third of the ocean waters to blood, a killing of a third of the living creatures in the sea. What effect would that have on human commerce and life itself? Then even worse, a third of the drinking water is fouled, made undrinkable. But what effect will that have on national boundaries when some parts of the world have drinking water and other parts don't? You can't live longer than a certain number of days without water, a terrifying, terrible rending of the planet because of the judgments of God. It's not an accident, but it's something God is pouring out. The unleashing of plagues on mankind resulting in painful sores and an agony so great that the people, the inhabitants of the earth, will long for death, but they will not find it. An unleashing of demonic powers billowing up from the deepest resources of the pit and coming to bring agonies and torments on people, [Revelation 9]. It's a terrifying time. Then the coming of the beast from the sea, the antichrist, the one-world government, the one-world religion, all of those things that culminate in the Abomination of Desolation. Those are terrible days. Mark 13:19-20, "Those will be days of distress unequal from the beginning when God created the world until now, and never to be equaled again. If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive," think about that, "but for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened." Immediately after the distress of those days, the Second Coming happens, and it's described here as the shaking and rending and destruction of the cosmos. Look up into the night sky. Look up into the sky and see the lights that God put there. Verse 24 and 25, "In those days following that distress, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.” The heavens will be rent, similar to Isaiah's prayer concerning the wickedness of man. He said in Isaiah 64:1-2, "Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you as when fire sets twigs, ablaze and causes water to boil. Come down and make your name known to your enemies. Cause the nations to quake before you." Isaiah 64, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down." It's interesting, this idea of rending the heavens, it creates a sense of a membrane or barrier between us and the heavenly realms. A rending is a tear and a rip, and out of it, Isaiah wants God almighty to come and bring judgment. What's interesting is, this is the language used at Jesus' baptism. When Jesus was baptized, the heavens were torn, but out came a dove, a symbol of peace, a symbol of reconciliation with God. That's the First Coming, peace on earth, goodwill to man. That's the first rending happening. The second will not be so. It'll be more like Isaiah 64, the wrath of God coming out of that rending of the heavens, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken and removed. I need to bring up the Polish astronomer, Copernicus. Some of you I'm sure are thinking about Copernicus. Maybe not, but I am, anyway. Until Copernicus, most people on earth thought that the stars, the sun, the moon revolved around the earth, the earth was the center of everything. They moved in concentric spheres, earth is center, and they moved across, so the sun would make it circuit across the sky in this sort of pattern. But along came Copernicus, and he wasn't the only one, but he led the way to teach us that actually the earth revolves around the sun, physically. That is true, physically. However, the Bible does give an earthbound purpose to the heavenly bodies. The reason they exist is found on planet Earth. We get that from Genesis chapter one, "And God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years. And let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light to the earth, and it was so. God made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, that's the sun, and the lesser light to govern the night, that's the moon. He also made the stars." One of the great understatements in the entire Bible, "Oh, by the way, He also made the stars." But God made them all, and God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light to the earth. That's twice we have an earthbound statement for the sun, the moon, and the stars. Let the earth physically revolve around the sun, that's fine. But when events come to their conclusion on the surface of the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars will end their career. There's an earthbound purpose to these, to give light to the earth and to mark time, seasons, and days, and years. This proves also to me, there are no other planet earths out there having an unfolding redemptive history; that Jesus is doing that saving thing that He did here in planet after planet, after planet like some traveling roadshow. That is false. It is not true. When events come to an end here, the stars will fall from the sky. Literally, the sun will be dark and the moon will not give its lights. Either the sun's light will be blocked or reduced or ceased to give it altogether, because the sun will no longer exist. The sun and the moon, we are told, will not be needed in the new heavens and the new earth, the new Jerusalem, because the glory of God will illuminate that new universe and that new Jerusalem. It doesn't mean they don't exist, it just says they won't be needed, so maybe they won't exist at all. The sixth seal of Revelation speaks of the same thing. Revelation 6:12-14, "I watched as he opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair. The whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to the earth as late figs dropped from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place." Isaiah 64, "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down and make the mountains shake before you like boiling water." The fourth trumpet in Revelation correlates, Revelation 8:12, "The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon and a third of the stars. So a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, also a third of the night." Isaiah had also predicted this, Isaiah 34:4, "All the stars of the heavens will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like a scroll. All the starry hosts will fall like withered leaves from a vine like shrill figs from a fig tree." We have this image again and again and again. I'm aware that in the Book of Isaiah, it's sometime linked to cataclysmic events that happen on earth such as the end of an empire, like Babylonian empire, when it doesn't literally happen that the stars fall from the sky, but it's like the events will be so big, it'll be like that. I understand that language. But since the language is used again and again and again and again, that may be just a poetical connection to what actually will physically happen at the end of the world. Now you wonder how could God do this? It's because God is sovereign over every created thing in the universe. Isaiah 40:26 says, "Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name because of His great power and His mighty understanding, not one of them is missing.” They continue to exist, according to Isaiah 40:26, because God wills that they continue to exist. God sustains the stars. A new heaven, a new earth will have a new cosmos as well. III. Jesus Comes With the Clouds Next, Jesus comes with the clouds. Look at verse 26, "At that time, men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with power and great glory." This was predicted by Daniel and then cited by Jesus at his trials. The very thing that Daniel saw in the Son of Man vision that I’ve already read for you, Daniel 7:12-13, he saw the Son of Man coming into the presence of almighty God on the clouds, and receiving from Him power and great glory. The angels and then all peoples on earth worshiping Him and serving Him. That's the Son of Man vision. Jesus cited that on the trial for His life before the Jewish authorities. Think of the boldness of Jesus, He knew they wouldn't be able to accept it, but He still proclaimed it, referred to it. in Mark 14:62-64, they asked Him, “'I charge you under oath by the living God, tell us if you're the Christ the Son of God.’Jesus said, ‘I am.’" Period. That's a claim to deity, "I am.” Then He quotes or alludes to Daniel 7, "And you'll see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the mighty one and coming on the clouds of heaven." Now that's a clear prediction to his enemies, "You will see this. You're going to see this whether you believe in me or not. It will not take faith to see this. You will see it." “The high priest tore his clothes,'Why do we need any more witnesses?’ he asked. ‘You've heard the blasphemy. What do you think?’ And they all condemned him as worthy of death.” Jesus predicting his own Second Coming is what officially got him killed, quoting Daniel 7. The clouds, Jesus coming with the clouds, I believe are both physical like I saw in Takamatsu that day, but they're also symbolic. Clouds are referred to again and again in connection with the great power of God. Clouds are awesome and dramatic. I think all of us who have flown have been above the clouds and then seen a carpet of clouds dramatically. And you can see, especially at sunset, they're all glowing, they're very dramatic things. Clouds literally hid Jesus when He ascended from the earth. It's reasonable for them to be a feature on his return. But the clouds also symbolize the wrath of God, again and again, the wrath of God. Like at Mount Sinai, Moses said to the Jews, in retrospect, looking back on the day at Mount Sinai, Moses said, "You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while at blaze with fire to the very heavens with black clouds and deep darkness." God surrounded Mount Sinai with terrifying black clouds as though a lightning strike could come out of that cloud at any moment. Psalm 18 is probably the strongest connection here. Psalm 18:7-13, "The earth trembled and quaked. The foundations of the mountain shook, they trembled because he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils. Consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down. Dark clouds were under his feet. He mounted the cherub him and flew. He soared on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him. The dark rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of His presence, clouds advanced with hailstones and bolts of lightning. The Lord thundered from heaven, the voice of the most high resounded." It's terrifying. What's going on in Psalm 18? What is David talking about? What happens is David is in trouble on a battlefield, and cries out to God to deliver him, and then God does. He comes to rescue David in the midst of his trouble. Do you not see how that applies to the Second Coming? I believe the Second Coming is a rescue mission. I believe that the bridegroom is coming to rescue the bride because she's about to become exterminated by the antichrist, and He's filled with rage over it. Psalm 18 describes that. Would God do all that for one person, King David? We know that God protected David in every battlefield he ever fought on. He never died in battle, so God did deliver him, and rescued him, and crushed his enemies under his feet. David himself is a symbol of Christ. But ultimately, I think this idea of God rending the heavens, coming with the clouds to rescue his people is consummated at the Second Coming. It's a rescue mission where the people of God are rescued from their enemies, and from imminent death. Isaiah 30:27, "Behold the name of the Lord comes from afar with burning anger and dense clouds of smoke. His lips are full of wrath in his tongue of consuming fire.” Jesus comes with the literal clouds, the physical clouds, but also metaphorically, He comes in the wrath of God. "This idea of God rending the heavens, coming with the clouds to rescue his people is consummated at the Second Coming. It's a rescue mission where the people of God are rescued from their enemies, and from imminent death" IV. The Mourning of the Nations Next, the mourning of the nations. It's not mentioned in Mark, but I want to bring it up. It's mentioned in Matthew, and it's also mentioned in Revelation 1 and Revelation 18. Matthew 24:30, "At that time, the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn." Think about that, they’re all going to mourn. "They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.” Again, Revelation 1:7, "Behold, He's coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him. Even those who pierced Him. And all the people of the earth will mourn because of Him. So shall it be. Amen." A mourning. Why are the nations mourning? “It’s not the end of the world.” No, it will be the end of the world. That's it. All of the things that those unbelievers had been living for will instantly come to an end. This is depicted with the fall of Babylon in Revelation 18:9-11, “When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with [Babylon] and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: "'Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!' The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more.” The party is over. All the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life is done that day. It's over. It's judgment day for them, and so they will mourn. The righteous wrath of the Lord is being poured out on them for their sins, especially because they have not loved Christ or his people. As it says in 2 Thessalonians 2:10, “They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” Revelation 18:18-20 says, "When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim, 'Was there ever a city like this great city?' And they'll throw dust on their heads, and with weeping and mourning, cry out, 'Woe, woe, Oh great city where all who had ships of the sea became rich through her wealth. In one hour she has been brought to ruin. Rejoice over her, oh heaven. Rejoice saints and apostles and prophets for God has judged her for the way she treated you.'" That's the justice of God, but there is mourning and grieving. Let me just stop right now and say the best thing we can do is believe all of these things, and the judgment day that follows, and even more, the hell that follows that, and mourn and grieve now by faith. Grieve over sin now and flee to Christ. That's the best thing we can do is believe these things now when there's still time. At that point, the tears will mean nothing. V. The Gathering of the Elect Then there's the gathering of the Elect. Look at verse 27, "And He will send His angels and gather His elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens." This is, I believe, the primary reason, other than the glory of God, the primary reason for the Second Coming. He's come to gather His bride together, His people. The antichrist will be bearing down on them with great power, great hatred. He'll be hunting them down to force them to blaspheme by receiving the mark of the beast. Jesus said if those days had not been cut short, no one would survive. That's how bad it's going to be, but for the sake of the Elect, those days will be shortened. Everyone has their limit. There's only so much temptation we can face. No matter how courageous, no matter how faith-filled, no matter how much we are willing to suffer and die as martyrs, there is a limit to what we can endure. Remember, as I talked about last week, the night that Jesus was arrested, He made them say twice who they were there to arrest so that He could say concerning the rest of his followers, "If you're looking for me, then let these men go." John said Jesus said this so that the saying Jesus had stated would come true, "Of all those you have given me, I have not lost one." There is a time to run away. But if that antichrist power is spreading over the earth with so much domination, and if those days had not been cut short or counted as in Daniel 12, He would say, "When the Son of Man comes, will there be any believers left on earth?" So He intervenes. Furthermore, I think He just wants to be with us. Ultimately, isn't that it? Isn't that the point of His death on the cross? He wants to spend eternity with us. He wants to feast with us in heaven. He wants to walk with us in the new heaven, new earth. He wants fellowship with us. He earnestly desires to be with us. Isn't that amazing? Doesn't it blow your mind? We're pathetic, and yet He loves us and wants to be with us. And guess what? We're not going to be pathetic in heaven. Praise God. We'll be really pretty amazing. We'll be glorified. He loves us. He says in John 14:3, "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me.” Why? “So that you also may be where I am." Or again, 1 Thessalonians 4:17, "And so we will be with the Lord forever." Ezekiel 37:23, have you heard this before? "They will be my people, and I will be their God.” Do you know how many times it says that in Ezekiel and Jeremiah? The answer is seven. That's how many times again and again, "They will be my people and I will be their God." He wants fellowship with us. Or again, it's cited in Revelation 21:3, "I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them, they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God, and He'll wipe every tear from their eyes and there'll be no more death, mourning, crying or pain.'" He wants to be with us. And this is at this moment, the rapture, as I mentioned. He's going to send out his angels and they'll gather his Elect. They're dispatched to collect us and bring us up to meet the Lord in the air. Let me read 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 again, "For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with a voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up." That's “rapture.” That's what the word means. And the Latin root is “to be captured up, caught up.” I picture like a mother cat and a kitten being grabbed by the back of the neck, something like that because we can't fly, gravity works on us. So how are we going to meet the Lord in the air? He's going to send out angels who can fly, and they will pick us up so that we can meet the Lord in the clouds. You may say, "Well, why does He want to meet us in the clouds?" I don't know, but He does. We're going to go out like a welcome committee, and meet Him in the clouds. This is the rapture. Verse 27, "He will send His angels and they'll gather His elect from the four winds from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heaven." By the way, the Elect by then will all have been converted. Evangelism and missions will be done by then, no unconverted elect. This is the eternal separation at this moment of the Elect and non-Elect, as Matthew 24:40-41 says, "Two men will be in the field, one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill, one will be taken and the other left." Yes, I believe in the “left-behind” thing. But the left behind here is not pre-trib seven year and all that. This is the separation of the Second Coming. If you're left behind at that moment, you are non-Elect, and the gospel era is over. The sheep and the goats are separated, the wheat and the weeds are separated, the good fish and bad fish are separated forever. The non-Elect will be stunned and seem like they have no idea what's happening. They will not understand this. Matthew 24, "As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man." From the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage right up to the day Noah entered the ark. They knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. VI. Properly Preparing for the Second Coming How can we apply this? How can we properly prepare for the Second Coming? I've already said it, but first and foremost, trust in Christ and Christ alone for the forgiveness of your sins while there's time. That day is the end of the faith era. It's the end of the gospel era. It's the end of the open door to Noah's Ark era. God closed Noah's door with His own hand. God ended that. Everyone outside the ark perished. Now is the time to enter. Now is the time to believe. Now is the time to trust in Christ, to believe in Him for the forgiveness of your sins. That's how it starts. And what does that look like? Paul spoke to the Thessalonian Christians in 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10, "You turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus who rescues us from the coming wrath." What does it mean? It's to turn to God away from idols. What are idols? It's the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life. It's all the things that lead us away from God. It's all the wickedness. We turn away from those things, away from sin to God through Christ, and we receive forgiveness for all of our sins, Jesus' blood shed for all of our idolatries. You did that in Thessalonians, you turned to God from idols, and you waited, to wait for His son from heaven. So prepare that way. Secondly, cry out in prayer, I would say daily, for the Second Coming of Christ. This line is already very famous. I cited it once, but you remember it's the Lord's prayer, "Our Father in heaven, hallow be your name." What's next? "May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." That's the Second Coming. It's a crying out for the Second Coming. Pray that. Do it. Revelation 22:20, "He who testifies to these things says, 'Yes, I'm coming soon.'" What was John's response? "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus." That's a prayer, right? Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Or again, Revelation 1:7, "Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him." John's answer, “Even so, "Amen. Let it be. I want that to happen." Or again, in 1 Corinthians 16:22, if you have New American Standard Translation, it reads like this, "If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be a cursed.” What is “maranatha”? It's Aramaic for, “come, Lord.” It's a prayer for the Second Coming. Christians should cry out for Jesus to come, and this accords with our understanding of prayer. Not as, number one, giving God an idea He didn't have before, or number two, persuading God to do something He didn't want to do until you persuaded him. That's not what prayer is. Then what is prayer? It's understanding from the Word what God has said He's going to do but hasn't done yet, and ask him to do it. Wouldn't you think the Second Coming fits that description? Has God revealed that he wants his son to come? Yes. Has it happened yet? No. Pray for it. Pray for it. Thirdly, look forward to the Second Coming and long for it. Your prayer for it will stimulate that. You should long for the Second Coming. 2 Peter 3:12 says, "Look forward to the day of God." 2 Peter 3:13, "In keeping with his promise, we're looking forward to a new heaven, new earth." Then verse 14, "So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this…” That's three consecutive verses. Look forward to it, look forward to it, look forward to it. That means yearn for it. Say, "I want this to happen." Fourth, be holy. Again, leaning on 2 Peter 3, "Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?" Answer, you ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God. 2 Peter 3:14, "So then, dear friends, since you're looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless, and at peace with Him." Now that day is coming, bringing about the destruction of the heavens by fire and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with this promise, we're looking forward to a new heavens and new earth called the home of righteousness. Only pure people will enter the new Jerusalem. We know we can't purify ourselves by our own efforts, but we know that it's justification, sanctification, and then glorification. That's purification. John says very plainly in 1 John 3, "We know that when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Everyone who has this hope in Him is purified, just as He is pure. The more you believe in the Second Coming, what Jesus is coming to do, the more zealous you should be to put evil and sin to death in your own life. Colossians 3:5 and 6, "Put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming." The Second Coming. That's why He's coming back, to destroy those sins. Fifth, speed the Second Coming by evangelism and missions. Peter said, "As you look forward to the day of God in speed, it's coming." Matthew 24:14, "This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." We speed the day of God by evangelism and missions. With every unconverted elect person who then becomes converted and crosses over from death to life through faith in Jesus, we've gotten that much closer to the Second Coming of Christ. We are called on to preach the gospel to lost people. We're surrounded by people who, like in the days of Noah, they are not ready for the Second Coming, and we should care about that. Sixth, serve the Lord's purposes in light of the Second Coming. 2 Timothy 4:1 and 2, "I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead. And by His appearing and His kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching." We are each given a role to play. You all have a ministry or should have a spiritual gift ministry. Do it. 2 Timothy 4, "In light of the second coming." In light of the fact that in view of his coming, you're going to give an account for your life and your ministry. Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time we've had to walk through this deep, powerful, and significant topic. Father, I pray that you would press these truths home. Help us to live in light of them, help us to be prepared, help us to warn others who we know are not yet prepared. Oh Lord, help us to be holy, to put sin to death. Help us to just saturate our minds in the truths of the Word so that we may live a life pleasing to God. In your name we pray. Amen.

A daily news briefing from Catholic News Agency, powered by artificial intelligence. Ask your smart speaker to play “Catholic News,” or listen every morning wherever you get podcasts. www.catholicnewsagency.com - The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals approved additional abortion pill restrictions, including ending mail-order abortions, in a Wednesday ruling in the high-stakes abortion case Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v Food and Drug Administration. The court did not disapprove all use of abortion pills but rather ruled that the FDA must reinstate restrictions in place before 2016, most notably banning administering the pills through the mail or via telemedicine. Because of this finding, variations of the most commonly used abortion pill, such as Mifeprex and generic mifepristone, “will remain available under the safety restrictions that were in effect prior to 2016.” Once reviewed and certified by the Supreme Court, the ruling will mandate that the FDA restore its original regulations in place in 2000. This means that the mifepristone approval will be capped at seven weeks, rather than 10, and require at least three in-person doctor visits to administer the drug. Stay tuned to catholic news agency dot com for the latest on this story. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255106/breaking-5th-circuit-court-approves-abortion-pill-restrictions-ends-mail-order-abortions Pope Francis this week merged the Diocese of Takamatsu with the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Osaka in Japan. Cardinal Thomas Aquino Manyo Maeda, archbishop of Osaka since 2014, was named on August 15 as the first archbishop of the new Archdiocese of Osaka-Takamatsu. The last bishop of the Diocese of Takamatsu, John Eijiro Suwa, died in 2022. The two territories are on different islands: Takamatsu is on Japan's Shikoku Island while Osaka is on Honshu. They are connected by water through the Osaka Bay and Seto Inland Sea or by land by crossing Awaji Island, already part of the territory of the former Archdiocese of Osaka. The new archdiocese has just 51,413 Catholics, less than a third of 1% of the area's 19 million inhabitants. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255101/pope-francis-merges-two-dioceses-in-japan Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin in his visit to South Sudan this week urged the people of God in the east-central African country to continue to work toward building a united nation by embracing a spirit of peace and reconciliation. Speaking to the media after his meeting with South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit on Monday, August 14, Parolin underscored the importance of peace and reconciliation in building a stable country. Parolin left Juba on Tuesday, August 15, and headed to the Diocese of Malakal, where he had been invited by Bishop Stephen Nyodho to meet refugees from war-torn Sudan. Parolin will end his four-day visit to South Sudan on Thursday, August 17, in the Diocese of Rumbek, where he will preside over Mass and meet with Church leaders and more government officials. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255099/vatican-official-urges-south-sudanese-to-remain-committed-to-peace-and-reconciliation Today, the Church celebrates Saint Hyacinth, one of the first members of the Dominicans (the Order of Preachers) and the "apostle of the North", also called the "Apostle of Poland." https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-hyacinth-566

By 1582, Oda Nobunaga's efforts at unification were gaining momentum as he increasingly consolidated power for himself. Just when it appeared that he couldn't be stopped, he was betrayed by a subordinate and assassinated.Support the show

On this latest episode of Birth Stories of Japan we speak with Kate who gave birth in Okayama to her beautiful baby boy Fynn. Originally from New Zealand, she talks about how the borders being shut during the COVID-19 pandemic and not having her mum by her side really messed with her expectations of what her first birth story would be like. It was a tough and lonely journey, but with the support of her husband, her in-laws and good old video calling she found the strength to get through. Overall she was very happy with her care at Miyake Clinic, Okayama. Her story is one of strength and happiness. Thank you so much  Kate for sharing your story xx Birthcare facility: + Miyake Clinic, Okayama ------------------------------------------------- Show notes:Acupressure for labour - Healthline article Midwife Cath @midwifecath Syntocinon - News Medical Life Sciences JET ALT, fertility shrine, accupressure epidural, induction, Takamatsu, Shikoku, COVID-19, corona virus, pandemic baby, missing support, stitches. -------------------------------------------------  To help other mums see this podcast please hit the SUBSCRIBE button & LIKE this episode. You can also find us on ⁠IG ⁠⁠@birthstoriesjp⁠⁠⁠ for updates & exclusive stuff or on YouTube @BirthStoriesJP⁠⁠  #birthstoriesofjapan #birthstories #positivebirthstories #positivebirth #livinginjapan #japanlife #mominjapan #muminjapan #japan #japanpodcast #pregnantinjapan -------------------------------------------------   CHAPTERS 00:00 - Opening  03:55 - Intro 06:10- Getting pregnant 10:23 - Pregnancy 17:02 - Birth story 31:08 - Postpartum recovery 34:10 - Costs 35:24 - Bottle time 42:27 - Outro

This time the Eastern Lariat starts with a look at the two joshi tournaments running at the moment with Stardom's 5 Star Grand Prix and Tokyo Joshi Pro's Princess Cup. Since the Princess Cup is coming to an and, STRIGG A& Dylan discuss possible outcomes of that before turning their attention to the G1 Climax 33 that also is nearing towards its end – at least when it comes to the group stage. Here, the Eastern Lariat discusses the 3 shows from Nagoya, Takamatsu and Hiroshima and then it's G1 MATH with intense discussions about Kaito Kiyomiya, Jeff Cobb and yes, of course Tanga Loa. Join in, get a coffee and a flip chart!

NPB: Seibu to Trade Outfielder Kawagoe for Chunichi Infielder Takamatsu

Oggi visitiamo lo Shikoku! Partiamo dalla mistica Naoshima, isola dedicata ai musei d'arte. Ci spostiamo poi a Takamatsu, dove visitiamo il Ritsurin Koen e proviamo specialità come il sashimi di pollo e gli udon. Infine tappa a Matsuyama per rilassarci alle onsen dove si reca anche l'imperatore e assaggiare qualche bevanda al mandarino.Per sentire la diretta dove vi facciamo anche ascoltare musica tratta dalla nostra playlist di viaggio appuntamento a martedì alle 20:30 su unive.it/radiocafoscari!

Bill and Krishna take a look at this week's news, including CM Punk's deleted Instagram post criticizing AEW's creative and Jon Moxley. They have some updates on Jamie Hayter, Will Ospreay and Koto Ibushi. Krishna provides the AEW Roundup looking at the best matches from Dark, Elevation and Rampage, while Bill discusses the New Japan Cup finals and more of the matches from Stardom on Himeka's retirement road. He also gives his thoughts on the Kairi vs. Mercedes Moné match from Battle in the Valley. They top it off as always with their match and wrestler of the week. Updates on Jamie Hayter, Will Ospreay and Koto Ibushi: 1:46 CM Punk Instagram Post: 3:48 AEW Roundup: 25:09 Japan Report: 41:00 Match of the Week: 1:02:05 Wrestler of the Week: 1:05:20 Matches Discussed: Hiromu Takahashi (c) vs. Lio Rush for the IWGP World Junior Heavyweight Championship, New Japan Cup 2023 Finals, March 21, 2023 Kairi (c) vs. Mercedes Moné for the IWGP Women's Championship, NJPW Battle in the Valley, Feb. 18, 2023 Meltear (Tam Nakano & Natsupoi) vs. MaiHime (Maika & Himeka), Stardom in Hachioji, March 11, 2023 Himeka vs Ruaka, Stardom in Takamatsu, March 15, 2023 Himeka vs Giulia, Stardom in Osaka, March 16, 2023 Brandon Cutler vs. Jason Geiger, AEW Dark Elevation, March 20, 2023 The Firm (Ethan Page, Matt Hardy & Isiah Kassidy) vs. Sebastian Wolfe, Massive Damage & Mo Jabrai, AEW Dark Elevation, March 20, 2023 Athena vs. Taylor Rising, AEW Dark Elevation, March 20, 2023 Dark Order (Alex Reynolds & John Silver) vs. Tony Nese & Ari Daivari, AEW Dark Elevation, March 20, 2023 Juice Robinson vs. Leon Ruffin, AEW Dark, March 21, 2023 Iron Savages (Boulder & Bronson) vs. The Wingmen (Ryan Nemeth & Cezar Bononi), AEW Dark, March 21, 2023 The Renegade Twins (Robyn & Charlette) vs. Avery Breaux & Mafiosa, AEW Dark, March 21, 2023 Toni Storm vs. Billie Starkz, AEW Dark, March 21, 2023 Powerhouse Hobbs (c) vs. Penta El Zero Miedo for the TNT Championship, AEW Rampage, March 24, 2023 Brody King vs. Jake Hager, AEW Rampage, March 24, 2023

Lanzar una empresa en España no es fácil. Lo más normal es que cierre antes de cumplir cinco años, una edad que no alcanzan ni la mitad. La esperanza media de vida cuando nacen es de 11 años. Cifras todas inferiores a las registradas en el resto de la Unión Europea. Así se entiende, claro, que solo 41 compañías españolas se hayan fundado antes del siglo XX.Pasa en España, pero es un comportamiento general en casi cualquier país. Con algunas excepciones, principalmente asiáticas. Y por encima de todas las excepciones, Japón, un país de tradiciones ancestrales, que cuenta, no con una, sino con varias empresas milenarias. De hecho, 4 de las 5 compañías en activo más antiguas del mundo son niponas. Y tiene más de 20.000 compañías con más de un siglo de vida.Y por encima de todas destaca Kongo Gumi, la empresa más antigua del mundo. Corría el año 578 -por poner en perspectiva, un siglo más tarde de la caída del Imperio Romano-, cuando Shigetsu Kongō ponía en marcha esta empresa, dedicada a algo tan universal como la construcción. Pero no a cualquier tipo de construcción, sino a la construcción, y después al mantenimiento, de templos budistas.Todo comienza cuando el príncipe Shotoku Taishi, un adolescente, encarga la construcción del primer templo budista en Japón, en la actual Osaka. En un país donde la religión predominante era el sintoísmo, no había carpinteros, arquitectos o artesanos especializados en este tipo de edificaciones. Así, deben ir a Corea, donde contrata a tres expertos en la materia. Uno de ellos es el propio Shigetsu Kongō.Este equipo llegado de Corea fue el encargado de construir el famoso y espectacular templo de Shitennō-ji, el primero construido en suelo nipón. Kongo Gumi, durante sus primeras décadas de vida, se dedicó en exclusiva al mantenimiento y la preservación de este templo.Su construcción finalizó en el año 593, y ha sobrevidido hasta nuestros días. Aunque a lo largo de su historia ha sido víctima de numerosas catástrofes y accidentes, que han hecho que tuviera que ser reparado o reconstruido varias veces. Su imagen actual data del año 1963, cuando se le hizo la última gran intervención, tras ser destruido por un tifón.La rápida expansión del budismo por todo el país, la fama alcanzada por la belleza de Shitennō-ji, el apoyo imperial y el prestigio que le daba el hecho de ser los pioneros, les abrieron numerosas oportunidades de negocio. Así, en los siguientes siglos se encargan igualmente de la construcción de los templos de Hōryū-ji (607) y Koyasan (816).Kongo Gumi era una empresa familiar. Los 40 presidentes que ha tenido la compañía en sus más de 1.400 años de historia son todos descendientes de Shigetsu Kongō, o cónyuges de los mismos. Pero con una particularidad, el cargo no lo heredaba el hijo mayor, como era tradición, sino que se le entregaba al más preparado de todos.Por supuesto, una empresa de tal longevidad también ha pasado por crisis, algunas de las cuales llegaron a amenazar su supervivencia. Una de las más graves llega en 1868, con la revolución Meiji y su persecución al budismo, en el que incluso llegan a destruirse algunos templos. Kongo Gumi se queda así sin una de sus principales fuentes de ingresos.Para superar esta crisis, la compañía decide diversificar su negocio, y comienza entonces a construir otro tipo de edificios, como casas tradicionales o oficinas, adaptándose a la revolución industrial que empezaba a llegar a Japón, y que estaba impulsada por los Meiji.Las dificultades que viven en ese periodo llevan a Yoshisada Kongo, el 32º líder de la empresa, a escribir 16 reglas, 16 principios básicos, basados en su glorioso pasado, que sirvan como guía en el futuro. Estos van desde normas formales, sobre cómo vestir, cómo tratar a los clientes o cuánto beber; a metodológicas, como el control de calidad o la importancia de presentar presupuestos honestos; o de formación, especificando los pasos a seguir para convertirse en maestro artesano, o fijando la importancia de la lectura y el aprendizaje de la aritmética.Con la gran recesión sufren otro momento muy complicado. El líder Haruichi Kongo se suicida, al no poder cumplir con los objetivos marcados, en un ritual ante las tumbas de sus antepasados. Le sustituye en el cargo su viuda, Yoshei Kongo, la primera y única mujer que ha dirigido la empresa en su milenaria trayectoria, que logra remontar la situación apostando por la construcción de ataúdes de madera. Con la II Guerra Mundial, el negocio estuvo asegurado.Pero la crisis que de verdad puso contra las cuerdas a la compañía llegó a finales del siglo XX. Por un lado, por la burbuja inmobiliaria de los años 80, que le llevó a alcanzar un elevado nivel de deuda, por todo el dinero que había pedido prestado para invertir en ladrillo. Y por otro, por los cambios sociales y la mayor laicidad que han llegado a Japón, que han provocado una caída dramática de los donativos que recibían los templos budistas.La empresa sufre una situación económica muy complicada, que provoca que deba ser adquirida por Takamatsu, una constructora japonesa de mayor tamaño, en 2006. En este momento surge cierta polémica. Hay que considera que con este movimiento se pone fin a la historia de la empresa, dejando de ser la más antigua en activo, a pesar de seguir trabajando; mientras que otros consideran que aunque esté bajo el paraguas de otra marca, sigue viva.Mientras tanto, la legendaria empresa ha vuelto a especializarse en edificios religiosos, con la artesanía y la calidad como principios básicos. Sin embargo, en vez de vivir de los encargos del Gobierno, ahora apuesta por promover activamente nuevos proyectos de construcción y restauración.Los días 1 y 15 de cada mes, los empleados de Kongo Gumi siguen reuniéndose para rezar una pequeña oración en honor del príncipe Shotoku, para agradecerle cómo empezó todo.

Alex and Dylan return for the latest episode of Stardom Quest. To begin our hosts run down recent Stardom news including a Stardom in Showcase Volume 2 match announcement as well as the possibility of Stardom allowing cheering soon. They then move on to reviewing Stardom's shows in Takamatsu and Hiroshima, with a brief detour to look at Sayuri Nanba's cagematch ranking. To close out they preview Stardom's upcoming PPV at Yokohama Budokan and the Korakuen Hall show the next day. Follow Dylan on twitter: @XXIchiban Follow Alex: @LWOSPWAlexR or @LWOProWrestling Amazing show art courtesy of @KHsNotebook Also listen to Dylan and Alex's other podcast Victory Through Guts (@VTGPod) which is all about the legendary All Japan Women's Pro Wrestling.

Per l'ultima puntata direttamente da terra nipponica esploriamo alcune delle più celebri città di due isole dell'arcipelago principale giapponese.Partiamo dallo Shikoku e in particolare da Takamatsu con le rovine del castello e lo splendido Ritsurin Koen, per poi visitare Matsuyama e le sue celebri terme.Ci spostiamo poi nel Kyushu per esplorare Beppu, capitale delle onsen e città dei "nove inferni". Infine facciamo tappa a Fukuoka per un ramen buonissimo e per vivere l'esperienza dell'illuminazione buddhista!

Oliver is joined by Sophie Richard, art historian, museum specialist and acclaimed writer, as we explore art museums in Japan of every variety. From her training at École du Louvre, Sophie has visited museums across the archipelago, broadening her understanding of what a museum can be and inspiring her to write a book on capturing this for the non-Japanese speaking art lover. Read Sophie's book, The Art Lover's Guide to Japanese Museums. Museums by order of mention: Hara Museum ARC (Gunma Prefecture) Archi-Depot Museum (Tokyo) Teshima Art Museum (Kagawa Prefecture) Kyu Asakura House (Tokyo) Izamui Noguchi Garden Museum (Shikoku) Kan Yasuda Sculpture Museum (Bibai, Hokkaido) D. T. Suzuki Musuem (Kanazawa) Edo Tokyo Museum Intermediatheque (Tokyo) Byodoin Temple Museum (Kyoto) Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum Historical Village of Hokkaido (Sapporo, Hokkaido) Shikoku-mura (Takamatsu, Shikoku) Mingeikan Japan Folk Crafts Museum (Tokyo) The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo Crafts Gallery (see more at JapanInNorwich.org) So ends the second series of Beyond Japan! As Oliver starts his PhD in the autumn, the third series of Beyond Japan will continue with monthly instalments on the first Thursday of every month from September 2022. In the meantime, do get in touch and let us know what you have enjoyed and what you might like added to the series – we would be particularly interested in knowing if the addition of transcriptions and subtitles has improved the experience for you. IMAGE AND AUDIO CREDITS Intro-outro music: jasonszklarek / MotionElements.com [L] The Art Lover's Guide to Japanese Museums. [R] Oliver at the D T Suzuki Museum (2015). Photograph courtesy of Chhorvy. Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education purposes. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/beyond-japan/message

Lexi Takamatsu had just sat down for the very first time in her new home in the US, opened her laptop to find an email which would change the trajectory of her life again. Lexi shares how by finding what she likes about her legal practice and focusing on those areas, opportunities have come to her that she never imagined. If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, we'd love to hear about it and know your biggest takeaway. Head over to Apple Podcasts to leave a review and we'd love it if you would leave us a message here! In this episode you'll hear: How Lexi came to be a lawyer after a foray into insurance The similarities between the law and Japanese language The email that upended her carefully laid plans Lexi's transition from US law firm to Japanese law firm How Lexi is breaking new ground in creating an international litigation team in a Japanese law firm Her favourite book and other fun facts About Lexi Lexi is an international disputes specialist, who has represented companies in U.S. domestic and international litigation and arbitration, including commercial disputes, intellectual property disputes, and corporate governance disputes. She is also experienced in internal investigations and compliance, and was seconded to a large Japanese company to assist with a major internal compliance and white collar investigation. Lexi attained her BA from University of Southern California 2008, and JD from U.C. Berkeley, School of Law in 2015. She was admitted in California in the same year (2015 and is admitted as a registered foreign lawyer in Japan as of 2021 and a member of the Daini Tokyo Bar Association In 2015, Lexi completed a one-year clerkship (2015-2016) for a U.S. Federal District Court Judge in the Central District of California, assisting the Judge in drafting opinions for the civil litigation cases on her docket. In 2016 Lexi joined the U.S. law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in Los Angeles, California. After 2 years with Skadden Lexi joined the disputes department of Morrison & Foerster's Tokyo office where she was from 2018 to late 2020. At MoFo she was in the disputes department working on cross-border intellectual property and contract-based disputes. Lexi joined Mori Hamada in September 2020, she is working to expand Mori Hamada's international arbitration practice, while also assisting in various disputes and white collar investigations. Lexi is a fluent speaker of Japanese and also reads and writes in Japanese having received her JLPT N1 certification in 2018. Connect with Lexi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexi-takamatsu-a423a339/ Links Routinery App Burnout by Emily Nagoski https://www.amazon.co.jp/Burnout-Secret-Unlocking-Stress-Cycle/dp/1984818325

Discover what everyone on the other side of the tracks is raving about and listen to the thought-provoking conversations from the scholar-gentlemen of Slam City about the finest things in life, odd but interesting news, and the wealth of knowledge around us. Double X Quantimino. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - Penis Breath. Arthur the Arbiter: Kids Eat Free. How Arthur saved another 70 cents: Hacking the BTS Meal at McDonald's. The Gemini Jackson Meal. Brian's love coach. Gemini and Arthur order Jimmy John's in the middle of the show. Eric America's cousin Chris Columbus. Burrito's Moving Update. Brian's Apartment Hunt Update. Dating app nudes baiting. This Is The Newz. Man who can't remember Bitcoin password says he's ‘made peace' with $220M loss. School decides to cover girls' chests by altering yearbook photos, St. Johns County students, parents angry. My wife has 125 lipsticks. Her $11K cosmetics bill is our household's largest expense — exceeding vehicles and housing. Walkers stumble across a tonne of cocaine worth £80m on Sussex beach. Drug dealer jailed after sharing a photo of cheese that included his fingerprints. Here's what the BTS McDonald's meal comes with and when you can get it. Woman fired from law firm after seen jumping into zoo spider monkey exhibit. Lego Art World Map set boasts more than 11,000 pieces – the most in a set ever. Burrito's Nippon Newz. Strange Japanese job ad asks to "deliver a pork-egg onigiri" from Okinawa to Tokyo twice per day. An Osaka man finds a stranger eating in his kitchen at night, and the stranger dies shortly after. A Takamatsu man was arrested for car-bombing a person whose parking method he disapproved of. The dream of playing smartphone games on packed Tokyo commuter trains comes true thanks to Thanko. More Newz. Father Hit Daughter In Face With Pizza. Forget about circles. Unknown author turns a rapeseed field into giant Pac-Man. American Airlines Flight From Tokyo Diverts to Seattle After Passenger's Phone Charger Stops Working. Brigantine man learns late in life he has the gift of 'perfect poop'. Angry over tomato thickness, woman hurls racial slurs, burger at Burger King employee. Angelina Jolie stands perfectly still, unshowered, covered in bees for World Bee Day. Men with massive penises on problems they face – from unemployment to no sex. Woman practicing "self care" in a parking lot tells cops she thought she was in Florida. What I Had For Lunch. Eric America's Learning Corner. Pluto's orbit takes 248 years, so no human will ever see a complete orbit. A female donkey was acquitted on charges of bestiality at a trial in 1750 due to witnesses attesting to her virtue and good behaviour, but her co-accused human was sentenced to death. As of 2020, the Sega Dreamcast still gets new releases. A guy took the turducken concept to an extreme and created a dish consisting of 17 birds nested inside each other like Russian dolls. The hermaphroditic animal known as a sea squirt begins its life as a tadpole-like creature, until it settles down anus-up in a location for the rest of its life. It will then eat its own brain, disintegrate its nervous system, and fire sperm and eggs into the water to reproduce. Deepfake Sponsors: Julio Tejas, Booba Gettz The Crazy One, Daddy Juice Energy, Blo-N-Go Hair Dryers.

The work of Canadian mokuhanga printmaker Graham Scholes is the work of an artist searching for history. His career has taken him across Canada, teaching, studying and creating his prints and water colours.  Graham has worked in various types of printmaking and art but it is mokuhanga which he seems to have found his voice.  In this episode of The Unfinished Print, Graham (accompanied with his wife Marnie) goes into his artist life, his relationship with printmaker Noboru Sawai, his various print series as well as his printmaking methods and philosophies. We also discover how history shapes an artist.   Please follow The Unfinished Print and my own print work on Instagram @popular_wheatprints, Twitter @unfinishedprint, or email me at theunfinishedprint@gmail.com Notes: notes may contain a hyperlink. Simply click on the highlighted word or phrase. Graham Scholes website and shop can be found here. Art Gallery Of Ontario is a big box art gallery located in the city of Toronto founded in 1900. Western Technical School is a high school located centrally in the city of Toronto and was founded in 1927 with a focus on machinery and robotics.  Font de libération du Québec (FLQ) was a neo-nationalist and separatist political group and terrorist organization which was highly active in the Canadian province of Québec from 1963-1971. For a good read on the subject, D'arcy Jenish's book The Making of the October Crisis is worth a read. Barrie, Ontario, Canada is a city located in the Canadian province of Ontario with a long a rich history of First Nation and settler tradition and culture. The McLaren Art Centre which Graham discussed in the episode is located in Barrie. Vancouver Island is an island off the coast of Canada with a rich history of First Nations and settler culture. Watercolours and How is a book published by Graham Scholes describing the use of watercolours as an art form.   Let There Be Light  is a book by Graham Scholes about his lighthouse woodblock prints.   Noboru Sawai (1931-2016) - mokuhanga and printmaking teacher of Graham Scholes, an American/Japanese printmaker who spent 22 years in Calgary, Alberta at the University of Calgary. He studied printmaking with Tōshi Yoshida (1911-1995) in Japan. His studio, Sawai Atelier was established in Vancouver, BC in 1981.   Kochi, is a prefecture located on Shikoku Island in Japan. It has a rich samurai history and tradition of paper making. Inochō paper making museum is located in Kochi.   Takamatsu is a port city in Kagawa prefecture on Shikoku Island in Japan. shina (Tilia Japonica) is a Japanese plywood made for mokuhanga printmaking.    The West Coast Trail is a 75km trail for backpacking which follows the southwestern edge of Vancouver Island. gomazuri is a printmaking technique called sesame printing in English printed with water and pigment.    waterless lithography is a form of printmaking developed by Canadian printmaker Nik Semenoff using silicone, offset aluminum plates, toner, water-soluble pencils and heat.  dry point is drawing on copper plates with diamond or carbide tipped needles, inked then cleaned.  This process is in the intaglio family of printmaking. John Amoss is an American mokuhanga printmaker whose Appalachian Trail series is one of the greatest modern mokuhanga print series available today. He was interviewed by The Unfinished Print and can be found here.  Sybil Andrews (1898-1992) was a British modernist linocut printmaker, painter, and teacher who lived in British Columbia. Her works are lauded and highly collectable.  kappazuri are Japanese stencil prints by layering colour and form with stencils cut by the artist. Made famous by Yoshitoshi Mori (1898-1992). Mokuhanga printer and painter Paul Binnie also began his career with kappazuri. Ronin Gallery NY has a great blog post about kappazuri  here.  reduction printmaking, colloquially known as “suicide prints,” is a form of printmaking where the printmaker cuts away from one  wood or Lino block , printing as they go.   Walter J. Phillips (1884-1963) was a British born printmaker who lived in Victoria, British Columbia. Famous for his watercolours and self-taught woodblock prints, WJP made his own tools and made some of the greatest woodblock prints ever produced.   opening and closing credit background music:  Blue, Red and Grey by The Who from the record, The Who By Numbers (1975)  © Popular Wheat Productions Disclaimer: Please do not reproduce or use anything from this podcast without shooting me an email and getting my express written or verbal consent. I'm friendly :) The opinions expressed in The Unfinished Print podcast are not necessarily those of Andre Zadorozny and of Popular Wheat Productions.                 .                               

In episode 54, Chris answers a listener question from Dan around the sinking of Lusitania off Ireland in 1915. Plus we have the usual round up of cruise news!This podcast is only possible thanks to our supporters, simply buying a coffee keeps us on air. It is just like shouting your mate a coffee, and we consider our listeners close mates. https://bit.ly/2T2FYGXA-Rosa new E-Motion River Boat - Credit A-Rosa River CruisesCRUISE NEWS Steel construction of A-ROSA's new E-Motion Ship is completedThe steel construction of A-ROSA's new E-Motion ship was completed at the Romanian Severnav shipyard in mid-April 2021 and the ship is now being transferred to the Netherlands for interior fitting and finishing. It was taken downstream on the Danube to the port of Constana, on the Black Sea coast and loaded onto a dock ship. The new E-Motion ship is now travelling through the Bosporus, the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay to Rotterdam, where it is expected to arrive in the first half of May. The interior work will then be carried out at the Concordia Damen shipyard near Rotterdam.The E-Motion ship will feature the latest-generation battery propulsion system, which will enable it to call at cities with virtually no noise or emissions. It has also been designed from the outset with families and multigenerational groups in mind and the ship will have the first dedicated kids club room and 28 m² family cabins. The sun deck will also feature an adult pool and a separate shallow water pool for children. The 21 m² standard cabins offer a spacious living and sleeping area and a balcony with seating for two. The 26 m² suites are located in a separate area of the ship. In addition, comfortable single and double cabins have also been created for crew members as part of a well-being concept. A separate kitchen as well as a dining and relaxation room each also provide an attractive retreat during breaks and non-working hours.Aqua Nera Launches June 12, 2021Aqua Nera, will set sail on its much-anticipated inaugural voyage on the Peruvian Amazon on June 12, 2021!Aqua Nera has made quite a journey over the past year, having been custom-designed in Vietnam by award-winning Noor Design. She was then transported from Ho Chi Minh City to Bélem in Brazil to sail the full length of the Amazon river to her home port of Iquitos, Peru after an epic 19,866 km journey across the world. With the good news of international travel resuming into Peru earlier this month, Discover her contemporary style and bold design aesthetic which sets a new standard of luxury on the Amazon river on her 3-, 4-, and 7-night itineraries.Holland America Line to Restart Cruising from Greece in August 2021Working in close coordination with the government of Greece, Holland America Line has received approval to restart cruising from Piraeus (Athens) in August with four departures aboard Eurodam.  Bookings for these cruises will open May 6.Departing Aug. 15 and 29, the “Idyllic Greek Isles” itinerary features Kotor, Montenegro, plus the Greek isles of Kékira (Corfu), Thíra (Santorini) and Mykonos.“Ancient Wonders” departs Aug. 22 to explore Haifa, Israel, as well as Náfplion, Mykonos and Rhodes in Greece. Both options can be combined to form a longer, back-to-back 14-day Collectors' Voyage.A seven-day “Adriatic Allure” itinerary departing Sept. 5 will sail from Piraeus to Venice, Italy, with calls at Mykonos, Katakolon (Olympia) and Crete (Chania), Greece, and Sarandë, Albania.Additional Mediterranean cruises aboard Eurodam through the fall will be announced in the coming weeks and include ports in Italy and Greece. Eurodam returns to the United States to begin sailing its published Caribbean cruises in mid-November.Princess Cruises Introduces Dine My WayPrincess, the world's leading international premium cruise line, today unveiled Dine My Way, another flexible MedallionClass enhancement that makes it easy for guests to pre-plan and tailor their dining experiences, and pairs with the revolutionary OceanNow® on demand service to offer the ultimate in onboard dining flexibility and convenience.Dine My Way, gives guests the freedom to make reservations in onboard dining rooms and specialty restaurants at times they prefer and with whom they wish to dine. Dine My Way also helps to optimise capacities in dining rooms and restaurants on board, manage wait times, and gives guests much more flexibility.When making a reservation, guests will be able to:add additional friends or family members with whom they are travelingselect their preferred pace of dining (relaxed, quick)indicate their desired seating location (near window, close to entrance) in the Ocean profileshare dietary preferences and allergen informationpick the same venue and dining time each night In addition, Princess' OceanNow on-demand menu has been expanded to include entrees and beverage options from restaurants throughout the ship with guest's requests delivered directly to their location. OceanNow orders can be made using the MedallionClass app on a smart device, via the stateroom TV, or by having a crew member place the order on the guest's behalf.Experience Northern Autumn Colours & Seaside Villages with Princess' 2023 Canada and New England Cruise and Cruisetour SeasonTwo MedallionClass Ships with Next-Level Service Offer Effortless and More Enjoyable Cruise Holidays.Discovering colonial history, rocky shorelines, seaside villages, stunning lighthouses, fresh regional seafood and the colours of the northern Autumn season are the top reasons to experience Canada & New England with Princess Cruises during the newly announced 2023 cruise and cruisetour season, on sale May 5, 2021.The upcoming 2023 Canada & New England cruise season offers 16 departures from New York, Québec City and Ft. Lauderdale, visiting 17 destinations, 11 states and provinces in three countries, with five itineraries sailing on two MedallionClass ships – Regal Princess and Caribbean Princess.From cruising underneath the iconic Verrazzano Bridge during the sailaway from New York City, to visiting Boston's Freedom Trail and strolling the scenic streets of Old Québec, seven-to16-day voyages, that even take cruisers are far north to Greenland, are offered including:Canada & New England – Regal Princess – Seven Days: Roundtrip from New York, visiting Newport, Boston, Bar Harbour (for Acadia National Park), Saint John (for the Bay of Fundy), and Halifax. Cruises depart September 16, 23, 30, October 7, 14, 21, 28, 2023Classic Canada & New England – Caribbean Princess – 10 Days: From New York City to Québec (More Ashore overnight), with port stops in Newport, Boston, Bar Harbour (for Acadia National Park), Saint John (for the Bay of Fundy), Halifax, Sydney (Cape Breton Island), and Charlottetown (Prince Edward Island). Cruises depart August 30, September 19 and October 9, 2023Classic Canada & New England – Caribbean Princess – 10 Days: From Québec (More Ashore overnight) to New York City, visiting Saguenay, Charlottetown (Prince Edward Island), Sydney (Cape Breton Island), Halifax, Bar Harbor (for Acadia National Park) and Boston. Departure dates of August 4, September 9 and 29, 2023Canada & Colonial America – Caribbean Princess – 13 days: From Ft. Lauderdale to Québec (More Ashore overnight) visiting Norfolk (with access to Williamsburg and Jamestown), New York, Newport, Boston, Bar Harbor (for Acadia National Park), Saint John (for the Bay of Fundy), Halifax and Sydney (Cape Breton Island). Cruise departs July 22, 2023Canada & Colonial America – Caribbean Princess – 12 Days: From Québec (More Ashore overnight) to Ft. Lauderdale, visiting Halifax, Portland, Boston, Newport and New York City. Cruise departs October 19, 2023Greenland & Canada – Caribbean Princess – 16 days: Roundtrip from New York City visiting Halifax, Sydney (Cape Breton Island), Nuuk, Qaqortoq, Nanortalik and St. John (Newfoundland). Cruise departs Aug 14, 2023Princess 2023 Caribbean Cruise SeasonCaribbean Princess Returns to Cruise Roundtrip from Ft. Lauderdale to World-Famous Beaches in the Eastern & Western CaribbeanSailing off into the sunset onboard MedallionClass ship Caribbean Princess, roundtrip from Ft. Lauderdale, offers the ultimate family adventure playing on world-famous beaches in the Eastern Caribbean, or exploring Mayan ruins in the Western Caribbean, or both. The season runs from April through July 2023 and features 11 destinations, 31 departures and four itineraries, ranging in length from seven to 14 days. Travel dreams calling cruisers to top-rated beaches, colourful cultures and endless water activities can be fulfilled with the new 2023 summer schedule, including:All guests sailing on Eastern Caribbean itineraries visit the cruise line's Princess Cays private island resort for a day of fun, sun, water activities and a beach BBQ, ranked among the “Top Cruise Line Private Island Destinations” by Cruise Critic. The island even offers cabanas with air conditioning and bar service. MedallionNet Wi-Fi featuring reliable and fast connectivity is also available on the island for cruisers who may take advantage of an oceanfront office for the day or to share photos and videos with friends and family back home.Carnival Cruise Line Announces New Red, White & Blue Hull Design Across FleetFollowing the popularity of the stunning red, white and blue livery adorning Mardi Gras, another Carnival Cruise Line ship will soon receive the dramatic hull design that will become a trademark feature across the fleet as Carnival, America's Cruise Line, prepares to celebrate its 50th birthday in 2022Carnival Magic will be the first ship to receive the new livery during its current dry dock in Marseilles, France.Paying homage to maritime tradition and patriotic colours, the eye-catching hull design is highlighted by a stately navy blue hull inspired by officers' uniforms along with vibrant red and white accents running the entire length of the 1,004-foot-long ship. Additional vessels will receive the new livery as they undergo scheduled dry docks.  Carnival Glory will be the second ship to receive the new hull design during a dry dock scheduled in June.In addition to the new livery, Carnival Magic will emerge from its dry dock on May 24 with an expanded casino with an even greater variety of slots and other games, as well as a host of enhancements including freshening up the finishes for the WaterWorks aqua park and pools.Sail to bucket-list destinations including Antarctica, Iceland and Greenland with immersive itineraries on NCL Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), the innovator in global cruise travel with a 54-year history of breaking boundaries, offers guests seeking bucket-list experiences the opportunity to explore some of the world's most unique destinations with its ‘Extraordinary Journeys' itineraries, a series of immersive voyages to some of the world's most unique destinations including Iceland, Greenland and Antarctica.From discovering the striking landscapes and lively cities of Iceland, to whale-watching in Greenland, sailing the fjords of Norway, discovering the culture and dramatic coastlines of South America or getting up close to colonies of elephant seals and penguins in Antarctica, these voyages are designed to be anything but ordinary.Itinerary highlights for NCL's 2022 and 2023 Extraordinary Journeys include:Norwegian Star's 10-day Iceland and Greenland Round-trip from Reykjavik departing 25 July 2022, will give guests the opportunity to explore some of the northern hemisphere's most beautiful and remote locations. From walking amongst the picturesque, coloured buildings of Qaqortoq and whale watching off the coast of Nanortalik, to exploring the flourishing arts and dining scenes of Seydisfjordur and Reykjavik and seeing first-hand the hot springs, lava flows and epic landscapes of Iceland, this is the ideal adventure for those who love the great outdoors and rugged natural beauty.For a truly larger-than-life wilderness experience, guests can enjoy NCL's 14-day Antarctica & South America Round-trip from Buenos Aires departing 15 January 2023 aboard Norwegian Star. Starting with the sumptuous street food and dynamic culture of Buenos Aires, the city that never sleeps, this voyage calls on ports in Chile, the Falkland Islands and Uruguay. Guests will also be able to experience the magnificent glaciers and fascinating wildlife of Antarctica, including colonies of elephant seals and penguins – making this itinerary a photographer's dream – and a genuine bucket-list voyage.Norwegian Star's 12-day Iceland: Reykjavik, Dublin & Belfast voyage departs 4 September 2022 from Southampton, England. Nature lovers will marvel at the views, waterfalls, seals and birdlife at Eidfjord in Norway, while architecture fans will delight at the art nouveau buildings of Alesund. An overnight stay in Iceland's capital, Reykjavik, has something for everyone, from outdoor enthusiasts to culture vultures, while in Belfast and Dublin, guests will be spoilt for choice when it comes to trendy cafes, boutique shopping and lively nightlife (including enjoying an obligatory pint of Guinness, of course).The above Extraordinary Journeys highlight voyages all sail onboard Norwegian Star, where guests will experience first-hand the line's unique onboard offering. At Sky High Bar, outdoor seating offers the best views on board, while the adults-only Spice H2O is the ultimate retreat, where travellers will find a private pool, bar, hot tub and ocean views by day, and an open-air lounge with live entertainment and DJs after dark.Ponant Announce details of the Series Of 19 Smithsonian Small Ship Expeditions      New itineraries featuring Smithsonian-crafted Cultural Experiences on board and on land.Ponant,  in alliance with Smithsonian Journeys, the travel program of the Smithsonian Institution, has released examples of 19 forthcoming voyages commencing in 2022.Drawing on Smithsonian's resources dating back 175 years, the new sailings will feature notable experts and experiences that embrace local cultures and dive deeper into a destination's history, cuisine, language, environment, and wildlife. PONANT and Smithsonian Journeys share common values – focusing on cultural immersion and discovery – with a goal of further inspiring guests to become global citizens through travel. This is Smithsonian Journey's first alliance with an expedition line.Nineteen departures exploring Antarctica, Japan, Iceland, the Mediterranean, British Isles, Great Lakes, and Norwegian fjords and more, will debut in 2022, and will provide opportunities to engage with a variety of experts, ranging from archaeologists and scientists to anthropologists and historians. The full list of voyages can be viewed here.Highlights include: Panama and Costa Rica by Sea: The Natural Wonders of Central America, Le ChamplainEmbark on an eight-day voyage from Colón, Panama to Puerto Caldera, Costa Rica passing through the Panama Canal. Ports of call include UNESCO World Heritage site Darién National Park for treks through the wilderness; an exclusive hosted visit at the Punta Culebra Nature Center at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama City; and Carara National Park, home to over 10,000 species of plants, 300 species of birds and 200 species of butterflies.  Departure on January 24, 2022 / 7 nights, 8 daysTreasures of Japan by Sea, Le SoléalSail from Kobe, one of the first Japanese ports to open to international trade in the 19th century, to Japan's second-largest city of Osaka to explore how its rich heritage blends with the country's industrialisation and modernisation. Highlights of the itinerary include an Udon-noodle master class at a Takamatsu cooking school; a visit to Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park; and a tour through Korakuen Garden, one of Japan's Three Great Gardens in Okayama. Departure on April 15, 2022 / 7 nights, 8 daysCruising Southern Spain and Portugal, Le Bougainville and Le ChamplainExplore the Portuguese and Spanish coasts from Lisbon to Barcelona including a stop in Cádiz, from where guests will visit the oldest royal palace in use in Europe, the Alcázar de Sevilla. From Málaga, a true highlight includes a trip to Granada to enjoy a private after hours visit of the Alhambra. Guests will continue to Palma de Mallorca for an island escape before stopping in Valencia, where its history meets modernity with stops at both the UNESCO World Heritage site La Lonja de la Seda, originally used for trading silk in the early 1500s, and the cultural complex The City of Arts and Sciences.  Departures on May 3 and October 30, 2022 / 7 nights, 8 daysIceland Voyage: Land of Fire and Ice, Le BellotSailing roundtrip from Reykjavik, this voyage will include five ports of call exploring Iceland's various landscapes including glaciers, fjords, volcanic rock, basalt pillars and soaring geysers. Guests will head to Grimsey, the nation's northernmost territory and the ideal place to experience the midnight sun; before stopping at Heimaey, encased in a fortress of lava and home to 8,000 puffins, for an exclusive visit to the world's first Beluga Whale Sanctuary.  Departures on June 6 and August 8, 2022 / 7 nights, 8 daysA Voyage Along the Great Lakes, Le BellotAn exploration of all five Great Lakes in one voyage, this eight-day itinerary will depart from Toronto, on the shore of Lake Ontario. The journey continues through each of the lakes, passing sights such as Niagara Falls before sailing the length of Lake Michigan and ending in Milwaukee. Departure on September 18, 2022 / 7 nights, 8 daysSeabourn Charts A 65-day Nautical Journey With New “Grand Pacific Voyage 2022: A World Of IslandsSeabourn, the ultra-luxury resort at sea, is inviting travellers to explore the “peaceful sea” and myriad islands within it on the brand new Grand Pacific Voyage 2022: A World of Islands. Open for sale now, the 65-day adventure is set to depart Vancouver, British Columbia, aboard Seabourn Odyssey on September 30, 2022, and arrive at Sydney, Australia, on December 5, 2022, offering a world of experiences for guests in between with 41 ports, 30 islands, 12 countries, and five overnight stays on the itinerary. Guests will also have the option to embark the voyage in Seattle on October 1, 2022.The 65-day itinerary of the Grand Pacific Voyage includes stops at notable destinations Seabourn has not visited in over five years, including: Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii; Avatoru, Rangiroa, French Polynesia; Mataiva, French Polynesia; Maupiti Island, French Polynesia; Maroe Bay, Huahine-Iti, French Polynesia; Cook's Bay, Moorea, French Polynesia; Alofi, Niue; Dravuni Island, Fiji; and Ghizo Island, Solomon Islands.Once-in-a-lifetime travel experiences available on Seabourn's 2022 Grand Pacific Voyage are endless, with 25 optional, guided Ventures by Seabourn excursions where guests are invited to explore settings of natural beauty via hike, kayak, and Zodiac across the South Pacific. Destinations with the excursions include Maupiti Island, French Polynesia; Ureparapara, Vanuatu; Ghizo Island, Solomon Islands; and Savusavu, Vanau Levu, Fiji, to name a few. There will also be two days of Ventures by Seabourn offerings in Conflict Islands (Panawal Group), Papua New Guinea, and Cairns, Queensland, Australia.Ethical Cruise T-Shirts Now available branded podcast t-shirts, cruise-tees and Christmas gifts or design your own in the studio. All using organic cotton, printed using green energy and plastic-free packaging! https://bit.ly/32G7Rdh Join the show:If you have a cruise tip, burning question or want to record a cruise review get in touch with us via the website https://thebigcruisepodcast.com/join-the-show/  Guests: Chris Frame: https://bit.ly/3a4aBCg    Chris's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ChrisCunard  Peter Kollar: https://www.cruising.org.au/Home  Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2XvD7tF  Castbox: https://bit.ly/2xkGBEI  Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/2RuY04u  I heart Radio:  https://ihr.fm/3mVIEUASpotify: https://spoti.fi/3caCwl8  Stitcher: https://bit.ly/2JWE8Tz  Pocket casts: https://bit.ly/2JY4J2M  Tune in: https://bit.ly/2V0Jrrs  Podcast Addict: https://bit.ly/2BF6LnE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nuestro invitado, el periodista Rubén Ibarzábal, autor de “Crónicas de los samuráis”, desmitifica la imagen a veces idealizada de estos guerreros sobre el honor, la lealtad a su daimio o su código del Bushido. Y nos contará historias apasionantes de la Era Sengoku, la era de las guerras civiles en Japón, con batallas épicas como el asedio al castillo de Takamatsu o la del samurái de raza negra. Nos hablará de lo que ocurrió realmente a “los 47 ronin” o a un samurái que se convirtió en objetor de conciencia en el siglo XII o los curiosos duelos de Miyamoto Musashi. Y la historia de un “templo maldito" en el corazón de Kyoto cuyo origen está en un buda gigantesco forjado con el hierro de miles de katanas. O la cabeza cortada de Taira no Masakado en Tokio. O la rebelión del Hijo de Dios y sus samuráis cristianos en el siglo XVII asentados en el castillo de Hara cuyo líder decía que podía hacer milagros como Jesucristo. Y nos contará también por qué se hizo el seppuku del escritor Yukio Mishima. Manuel Berrocal nos hablará del cómic “Ronin” de Frank Muller, el de “Usagi Yojimbo Saga”, las aventuras del conejo samurái o los principales del manga japonés: “El lobo solitario y su cachorro”, “La espada del inmortal” o “Crónicas del viento”. Juan Ignacio Cuesta sobre la obra de Hokusai, un artista del siglo XIX de la escuela «pinturas del mundo flotante». Marcos Carrasco sobre la técnica japonesa de estampación xilográfica llamada Ukiyo-e que dio paso a un género llamado el Musha-e de guerreros samuráis. David Sentinella unirá las creencias del mundo fantasmal japonés con el mundo samurái, trayendo la famosa historia del fantasma de Yotsuya Kaidan, una de las más representadas en el teatro kabuki. En la WikiPepa conoceremos las anécdotas de la película de “Ran”, de Akira Kurosawa. Y Jesús Callejo nos desvelará el arte de la “esgrima sin espada” del legendario samurái Tsukahara Bokuden y que influyó a B

Justin and Carlos wonder if this was the best card top to bottom so far.  Justin is pro-Taichi and they also found time to watch NJPW Strong to give their recap.Go Fund Me for Jim Valley: https://www.gofundme.com/f/jim-valley-fundraiser?fbclid=IwAR0QV2kTaYNrfR6htcgK1f0X6LyG3Ly7dYDVomUlD3F0s-IAQglkitew8UULiger Dojo links: Find GG on Twitter at: twitter.com/rohebliusFind John on Twitter at: twitter.com/LaRoccaJLFind Justin on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/justinmknipperFind Carlos on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/CarlosToro360YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCaJKsqfSTkt1Cj7GZ0-yDyAPodcast Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/1958473677605950/Website: www.fightgamemedia.comWebsite Facebook page: www.facebook.com/fightgamemedia/Website Twitter: twitter.com/fightgamemedia

Épisode 88 - Dans cet épisode on va partir à la découverte du plus beau parc selon moi du Japon à Takamatsu et on en profitera pour faire un petit tour en ville. Le coup de coeur sera pour le site Ojijima.fr Vous pouvez voir des photos du japon sur mon instagram : https://www.instagram.com/ngee/ ma page tipee si vous voulez soutenir le podcast : https://fr.tipeee.com/explore-japon

現在、コロナ禍により多くの中小企業が苦境を強いられています。 そこでスモールサンでは、中小企業が今この危機を乗り越えるために必要な情報を動画で配信する『スモサンWebinar』をスタートしました！ 第８回のテーマは、「家賃支援給付金」！ 7月14日から申請受付が開始された家賃支援給付金。 給付対象やもらえる金額、申請の注意点などまだまだ分からないことも多いですよね。そこで今回は、ゼミTAKAMATSUの明石浩幸税理士事務所　大塚紀夫氏にご登場いただき、家賃支援給付金について分かりやすくご解説いただきます！ 経済産業省　家賃支援給付金に関するお知らせ https://www.meti.go.jp/covid-19/yachin-kyufu/index.html 家賃支援給付金ポータルサイト https://yachin-shien.go.jp/ また、過去のスモサンwebinarは、下記のURLにて一覧でご覧いただけます！ https://www.smallsun.jp/radio/ex/webinar/ ※動画についてのお問い合わせは、スモールサン事務局までご連絡くださいませ。 ゲスト： 明石浩幸税理士事務所　大塚紀夫氏 進行： スモールサン事務局　大澤徳 スモールサン事務局　山口恵里 ※この番組は、中小企業サポートネットワーク『スモールサン』が配信する『スモールサン・インターネットラジオ』の一つです。 スモールサンのネットワークにかかわってくれている中小企業支援の専門家“プロデューサー”たちと、全国に１８ある中小企業経営者の勉強会“スモールサン・ゼミ”メンバー、現役の中小企業経営者たちがパーソナリティを務めてくれています。 中小企業経営者に対する様々な経営ヒントの発信ツールとして、そして世間へ中小企業を発信する重要なメディアの一つとしてスモールサンが配信しています。 スモールサン・インターネットラジオ https://www.smallsun.jp/radio/ スモールサンオフィシャルサイト http://www.smallsun.jp/

sermon transcript Christ: A Wonderful Savior, a Terrifying Enemy The Lion and the Lamb There are two comings of Christ to the earth. The first was a coming of grace. The second will be a coming of glory. The first occurred in meekness, lowliness, and obscurity. The second will occur in power, radiance, and majesty. The first was surrounded by animals in a stable — as a baby, he was wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger. The second will be surrounded by the mighty armies of heaven. The first was a picture of infinite humility and poverty. The second will be a display of position and authority. The first was announced by an angel to the shepherds, proclaiming “Peace on earth, good will toward those on whom His favor rests.” The second will be announced with trumpets of war, with wrath and destruction to His arrogant, wicked enemies. The first, He was like a lamb. The second, He will be like a lion. These images of lion and lamb have been opened for us throughout the book of Revelation. Revelation 5:5-6 says, “‘Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’ Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain.” Jonathan Edwards spoke from this text of Christ’s amazingly diverse perfections and excellencies. How different a lion is from a lamb! Lambs are meek and gentle, easily led to shearing and to the slaughter with quiet bleating. Lions are terrifying, overpowering creatures, weighing over 500 pounds sometimes, whose roar can be heard five miles away, whose teeth can rip to shreds instantly, whose paw can strike to the ground effortlessly. These are opposite images. The First Coming On the first coming, Christ was like a lamb. He was meek and gentle in his deportment to sick and dying sinners. He was patient and tender-hearted day by day. Quoting Isaiah, Matthew 12:20 says, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” This is a picture of his gentle dealing with sinners. We are like bruised reeds; he does not break us but is very gentle with us. We are also like smoldering wicks — there is a work of grace in us, but also a smoldering through indwelling sin. We are mixed. He does not snuff out that spark of grace that he has lit in us. He is able to fan it into a flame until it is a bonfire of righteousness. Christ is meek and patient and tender-hearted. His most powerful description of himself comes in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” It is the only description where he puts adjectives to himself. Gentle, humble in heart, a king whose yoke is easy. If we bow to place our stubborn necks under his yoke, we will find that it easy and his burden is light. That is the nature of King Jesus. His most powerful action in his first coming was dying on the cross like a lamb. As Isaiah predicted in Isaiah 53:7, “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” Like a Lamb to His Enemies After Revelation 5, the title of Lion is not ascribed again to Jesus. He is repeatedly referred to as Lamb, even with the odd phrase, “the wrath of the lamb” in Revelation 6. Revelation is written for believers, and to us, He is always Lamb, never Lion, except on our behalf. Over 20 centuries of church history with the advance of the Gospel, we also see how lamb-like he is even to unbelievers. He is patient, forgiving of blasphemies and the hard words spoken against him. No human being in history has been so slandered as Jesus Christ, but he says, in the passage about the blasphemy against the Spirit in Matthew 12:31: “And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven.” See how gracious he is. He is not vindictive. For 20 centuries, he has not been vindictive against people who hate and denigrate and oppose and fight him every step of the way. Instead, he has stood all day representing his Heavenly Father, as did the father of the prodigal son. Romans 10:21 says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.” He reminds people over and over, “Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” He was gentle toward Saul, who was breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples on the day he was converted. Saul had a vision of the resurrected glorified Christ while on the road to Damascus. Instead of the terrifying image in Revelation 19, that gracious glorious Savior said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Now, get up and go into the city. You will be told what you must do.” Saul never got over that vision; all he wanted was to see it again. In Philippians 3, he says, “All I want is to know Christ, that one that appeared to me in radiant glory.” He sensed, more and more as he went on in sanctification, how much he deserved to be struck dead that morning. Instead, Jesus was a lamb to him, very gentle, and forgave him. But someday, dear friends, all of that will end. At the Second Coming, Christ’s terrifying wrath will be on full display. He will be Lion on that day to his enemies. He will roar like a lion; he will rise up to defend his people, his bride, to fight for her. He will rip apart His enemies with no mercy. Joel 3:16 says, “The LORD will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the sky will tremble. But the LORD will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel.” We can say plainly that Jesus Christ is a sweet and gentle Savior, but Revelation 19 shows what a terrifying enemy He will be at the end of the world. Promise Fulfilled Christ’s Names At the Second Coming of Christ, we will see a promise fulfilled: Jesus’ promise to come back, which he gave in his own words as well as through his messengers. Revelation 19:11-21 is the account of the terrifying Second Coming of Christ. It is the fulfillment of a promise He made to us, the Church. Christ’s name is revealed in the context of his promises to his people. Verse 11 says, “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True.” He is faithful to his promises. He is not a liar or a promise-breaker. There are many promises of the Second Coming. One of the most powerful is there at the beginning of the book of Acts. Jesus died on the cross as a bloody atonement for sinners like you and me, but God raised him from the dead on the third day. After his resurrection, he appeared over a period of 40 days to his disciples to train them, and he taught them many things about the Kingdom of God from the Scriptures. Acts 1:6-11 says, “So when they met together, they asked him, ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them: ‘It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.’” Those are his final marching orders, “You will be my witnesses by the power of the Holy Spirit to the ends of the earth.” When that work is finished, He will come back. Jesus himself promised the Second Coming many times. John 14:1-6: “‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I'm going.’ Thomas said, ‘Lord, we don't know where you're going, so how can we know the way?’ He said, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.’” Now, we come to Him by faith, but some day he will come back to take us to be with him forever. Matthew 16:27: “…the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.” Matthew 24:27: “…as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” He will come like lightning across the sky. The summer after I graduated from MIT, I crossed the country with a friend of mine who was taking a job in the aerospace industry in Los Angeles. It was a great trip. Driving down a highway across a long valley in Montana — Big Sky Country — there was an electrical storm such as I had never seen in my life, with massive clouds — I call them Second Coming clouds — lit up by flashes of lightning, obvious and big and visible. As lightning that flashes in the east is visible in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Matthew 24:30 says, “At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.” It is a clear prediction of the Second Coming of Christ. Matthew 24:37-39: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” Matthew 25:31-32 says, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” He predicted it during his trial before Annas and Caiaphas, the Jewish leaders who hated him and had conspired to kill him. They were ready to kill him, but the false witnesses could not coordinate their stories, frustrating the leaders. Finally, the high priest said, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” Jesus replied, “I Am” — God’s name. Predicting Daniel, he said in Matthew 26:64, “‘I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.’ Then the high priest tore his clothes…” The prediction of his own second coming in glory is what condemned him to death. Jesus is depicted here as faithful and true. He promised he would do this, and he will do it. Earlier in the same book, in Revelation 1:7: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen." The Final Battle God’s Enemies Gather The context of the Second Coming is the final battle. Eschatology, the study of the end of the world, is like a big jigsaw puzzle — pieces here, pieces there, and fitting together. The book of Revelation is like that, so remember what we have already learned, that there will be a massive final battle. It is into this battle that Jesus comes back. Something is happening ging on on earth that motivates Him, to put it mildly, to come from Heaven to earth to end human history. John says, “Then I saw the beast [the Antichrist, the one world ruler who is in charge of the final empire] and the kings of the earth [subordinate to the beast] and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse and his army.” These armies have come from all over the world, assembled under the authority of the Antichrist, ruler of the empire. Their purpose is to make war on Christ and his army, though they likely did not expect that they would fight Christ directly. They did not think the Second Coming would happen. They did not anticipate a warrior from Heaven descending with his army. The kings of earth are coming together for genocide, to wipe what is left of the people of God, the Jews, from earth, centered in this particular location in Palestine called Armageddon. By now, God has taken away the blindness from the hearts of the Jews. He will remove that veil that has hidden their eyes from seeing Christ in these prophecies. Romans 11 says that He will take away the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh, and they will turn and all Israel will be saved. The Jews have refused to bow down to worship the beast or to receive the mark of the beast on their forehead or hand. They have not played along, so they are the enemy. Revelation 16:12-16: “The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty. [These deceptive demons trick people to assemble under the Antichrist to fight Jesus and His people.] Behold, I come like a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed. Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.” The Antichrist’s worldwide kingdom is made up of lesser kings who give their power to him. He is therefore an infinitely lesser version of the King of kings and Lord of lords. Revelation 17 speaks of these lesser kings and their desire to assemble and fight for the Antichrist in his efforts to wipe out all of God’s people. Revelation 17:12-14 says, “The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast. They will make war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will overcome them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings-- and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers.” They will fight, but they will lose because Jesus is omnipotent; He never loses. The Antichrist gives the order to his henchmen, the demons, to do supernatural deceiving signs and wonders. People are tricked and lured into gathering by these signs. Behind the scenes is the dragon, Satan. His bitter hatred for the people of God drives his desire for the genocide. Throughout redemptive history, he has sought to slaughter the Jews. Now he has the chance to do it, so he thinks, especially now that they love Jesus and have found in him the Son of David, the Son of God. ALMIGHTY GOD is the Mover Satan especially wants to kill them there at Armageddon. Revelation 12:17: “Then the dragon was enraged at the woman [Israel] and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring — those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” Behind the scenes, the dragon and lying demons seem to be in control, but ultimately Satan, the demons, the Antichrist, the kings bringing their armies are not causing all to gather in one place. The real mover here is Almighty God, assembling all of Christ’s enemies into one place for that final battle. They think they will put an end to Israel to destroy the people of God, but God is actually gathering them for their own slaughter. This is predicted plainly in the book of Joel, which I am currently memorizing. I am living in the battle of Armageddon every day. Nothing like Joel’s words of prophecy have yet been fulfilled in Israel’s history. Though Joel is a “minor prophet”, it is a significant book. Peter quoted Joel 2 for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Joel 3 predicts the final battle. Joel 3:9-17: “Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare for war! Rouse the warriors! Let all the fighting men draw near and attack. [The sixth bowl judgment in Revelation 16 dries up the Euphrates and sends out frog-like demons to gather the kings of the world.] Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears [the reverse of the more well-known verse]. Let the weakling say, ‘I am strong!’ [Still weak, but ready to fight.] Come quickly, all you nations from every side, and assemble there. Bring down your warriors, O LORD! [See Revelation 19:14] ‘Let the nations be roused; let them advance into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, [“the Lord judges”] for there I will sit to judge all the nations on every side [See Revelation 14]. Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full and the vats overflow-- so great is their wickedness!’ Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision. The sun and moon will be darkened, and the stars no longer shine. The LORD will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the sky will tremble. But the LORD will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel. ‘Then you will know that I, the LORD your God, dwell in Zion, my holy hill. Jerusalem will be holy; never again will foreigners invade her.’” Revelation 19 is exactly what Joel said would happen. The immediate context of the Second Coming is clear. The seven bowls have been poured out: the world is in its death throes. The oceans have turned to blood and every living thing in them has died; the fresh water has turned to blood. The sun’s heat has greatly increased, scorching people like fire. The earth was plunged into total darkness for a short time and has passed — nothing can be done in that kind of darkness. Finally, the Euphrates River has parted to allow these kings of the East to assemble for their death. They are motivated by Satan’s hatred for God and His people. Antichrist is motivated by his own prideful rage that this remnant will not bow down to worship him; his arrogance reaches to heaven. They assemble in Palestine, assuming it will be an easy battle. It be a very easy battle, the easiest in history, but not the way they think. They are confident in their own victory because they will be fighting against a small number of people who have no military strength and will be easy to wipe out, so they believe. Christ the Warrior King The Rider on a White Horse But as they assemble to slaughter God’s people, the heavens open. Revelation 19:11: “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war.” At the baptism of Jesus, the heavens were ripped open and a dove came down. When the heavens are ripped open this time, it is not a dove coming down. This is the final demonstration of God’s right to interfere with the affairs on earth, to get involved in human history. He has that right because He is the King. Jesus is riding a white horse, in clear contrast to his entry into Jerusalem the week before he was crucified. There, he rides on the foal of a donkey, meek and humble, Zechariah told us, a picture of humility. I don't ride horses or donkeys, but it is obvious that donkeys are much lower. It is easy to knock someone off a donkey. I will not be riding anything in a battle, but if I did, it would not be a donkey. A horse is massive. Heavy cavalry would be almost unstoppable. This is a picture of power. The entry into Jerusalem was about peace and humility, but this time he is here to wage war. Many commentators say that this horse is symbolic. You horse lovers hope it is not symbolic — you would like to see Jesus literally on a horse. We have no way of knowing whether it is symbolic or not and it does not matter, but it could be that like the sword coming out of the mouth, it is symbolic. Either way, there is a sense of awesome military power. He is called Faithful and True. He is keeping his promise. His overwhelming, perfect justice is in focus here. It is absolutely right what he is about to do. The justice of Jesus is depicted in Isaiah 11:3-5: “He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.” As sinful human beings, when we read Revelation 19, we tend to see carnage, an absolute bloodbath. We may become queasy and pull back. We may want to charge God with injustice, like when Joshua entered Jericho and they killed everybody — men, women, children, infants. We have a hard time with that kind of bloodshed, but this is what the text says. Here the perfect righteousness and justice of God is on display. These are wicked warriors who are assembling to slaughter the innocent. Fierce Kingly Authority and a Secret Name Revelation 19:12: “His eyes are like blazing fire…” This is a picture of perfect holiness. Habakkuk 1:13 says of God, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.” He sees everything and everyone with pure eyes. Proverbs 20:8 says, “When a king sits on his throne to judge, he winnows out all evil with his eyes.” He is judging with justice and can sift out everything to burn up the chaff. Revelation 19:12: “…on his head are many crowns.” Like that great hymn, Crown Him With Many Crowns. The Lamb upon His throne. This is the lion upon his horse crowned with many crowns. This pictures his authority, his right to judge. He is the king of every nation, the king of the universe. Verse 12 also says “He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself.” It's a powerful verse. I thought a lot about that. My initial reaction is, "John, why did you tell us then?” Why would you tell us? He has a name written on him that only He knows. Years ago, a beloved missions professor, Christy Wilson, told me he had been in at a missions conference. He said, “Someone there knew you and said to say hello.” I said, “Really? Who was it?” He said, “I don't remember, but he said to say hello.” I thought, “I don't know what to do with that, but thank you.” This verse may beg the question, “So why tell us?” But the reason is powerful. Jesus wants us to know that we do not know everything about Him. He has a name that he calls himself which we know nothing about, though perhaps we will one day. In heaven we will be learning Jesus forever — we have much to learn about him. He has other names given here in this very passage that he wants us to know, like King of kings and Lord of lords, and Word of God, but this name written on him is not revealed. A Bloody Robe Revelation 19:13: “He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood.” This is not His atoning blood. The time for that is over. This is the blood of carnage of His enemies, depicted prophetically in Isaiah 63:1-6, in which Jesus is trampling the grapes of the wickedness of Edom. “Who is this coming from Edom, from Bozrah, with his garments stained crimson? Who is this, robed in splendor, striding forward in the greatness of his strength? ‘It is I, speaking in righteousness, mighty to save.’ Why are your garments red, like those of one treading the winepress? ‘I have trodden the winepress alone; from the nations no one was with me. I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year of my redemption has come. I looked, but there was no one to help, I was appalled that no one gave support; so my own arm worked salvation for me, and my own wrath sustained me. I trampled the nations in my anger; in my wrath I made them drunk and poured their blood on the ground.’” Isaiah 63:1-6 is clearly talking about the Second Coming of Christ. His garments are spattered in blood. Though it may seem strange that there blood on His garments before the battle, remember that this is his final battle, not his first. The wrath of God is being revealed right now against all the godlessness and wickedness of men. He has been doing this for 20 centuries, but this is the final battle. His Revealed Name: The Word of God Revelation 19:13: “…and his name is the Word of God.” There is no question that this is Jesus. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. This is the Second Coming of Christ, the Word of God. He is so named because by his word, he created the heavens. By his word, he saved his people, those who repent of our sins and believe: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” But also by his word, his enemies will be slaughtered. The Armies of Heaven Revelation 19:14: “The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean.” This is an image of perfect holiness. These are likely all of the 100 million angels as well as all of the redeemed throughout history. They are dressed in garbs of holiness. When the Son of Man comes, He will bring the angels and the redeemed. However, none of them seems to be armed, or at least none of them is depicted as fighting. The casualty list at the end on our side will be zero. We will be there as witnesses, not to fight. The Sword Coming from Christ’s Mouth Revelation 19:15: “Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron scepter.” The double-edged sword is symbolic of the power of the word of God, the most devastatingly powerful weapon in human history, more powerful than a thermonuclear bomb or any weapon ever conceived. It is simple. Jesus looks at His enemies, says “Be dead,” and they are dead. The Word of God is like a sharp double-edged sword, and it cuts right through. Nothing slows it down. When Jesus was arrested in John 18, around 600 Roman soldiers came with Judas, who was filled with the devil. Jesus went out to them, unafraid. John 18:4-6: “Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, ‘Who is it you want?’ ‘Jesus of Nazareth,’ they replied. ‘I AM!!!’ Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) When Jesus said, ‘I am he,’ they drew back and fell to the ground.” Satan, in Judas, fell on the ground in front of Jesus. 2 Thessalonians 2:8 says, “And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.” John quotes Psalm 2:1-5 “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One. ‘Let us break their chains,’ they say, ‘and throw off their fetters.’ The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath…’ saying, ‘I have installed my king on Zion, my holy hill.’” The Father says to the Son in Psalm 2:8-9, “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will rule them with an iron scepter; you will dash them to pieces like pottery.” The Wrath of God Revelation 19:15 also says, “He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.” Jonathan Edwards never got over that verse. He used this text, among others, to portray the wrath of God in his famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The KJV of this verse says, “He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” Edwards said this: “The Words are exceeding terrible: if it had only been said, the Wrath of God, the Words would have implied that which is infinitely dreadful: But ‘tis not only said so, but the Fierceness and Wrath of God: the Fury of God! the Fierceness of Jehovah! Oh how dreadful must that be! Who can utter or conceive what such Expressions carry in them! But it is not only said so, but the Fierceness and Wrath of ALMIGHTY GOD. As tho’ there would be a very great Manifestation of his almighty Power, in what the fierceness of his Wrath should inflict, as tho’ Omnipotence should be as it were enraged, and excited, as Men tend to exert their Strength in the fierceness of their Wrath. Oh! then what will be the Consequence! What will become of the poor Worm that shall suffer it! Whose Hands can be strong? and whose Heart endure? To what a dreadful, inexpressible, inconceivable Depth of Misery must the poor Creature be sunk, who shall be the Subject of this! He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” The phrases stack up to give us a sense of how terrifying it is. Christ’s Kingly Name Revelation 19:16: “On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.” The Antichrist is an imposter — his time is done. Jesus is the true King of kings and Lord of lords. Who are the kings and lords over whom he is King and Lord? We are. The saints will inherit the earth and rule under him forever. The Carrion Birds Revelation 19:17-18: “And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, ‘Come, gather together for the great supper of God, so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great.’” By now the darkness has passed, but this angel stands mid-heaven blocking the sun like an eclipse with his mighty power and summons carrion birds “for the great supper of God.” Human bodies are God’s direct work. He knit us body together in our mothers’ wombs. He gave us our blood, kidneys, lungs; He is sustaining us right now. Our organs, blood, all parts of our bodies are gifts from Him. But He will rip apart the bodies of these wicked warriors on that battlefield; it will be a bloodbath. All levels of society from kings and generals and mighty men to the lowliest slave and free people will be there. This is a vast slaughter, reminding us of Jesus’ ominous words in Matthew 24:28: “Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.” Christ Conquers! At the end, Christ conquers all of his enemies. Revelation 19:19-20: “Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse and his army. But the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped his image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.” This is a quick battle. The opposing general and his false prophet are captured quickly and thrown into Hell. Revelation 19:21: “The rest of them were killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.” The Second Coming of Christ brings terrifying carnage. Applications Unbelievers: Come to Christ NOW In the day of salvation, flee to the Lamb. This gentle, meek, humble Savior says, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Stop fighting me. Take my yoke upon you, learn from me. Yield to my kingly rule and find in me a gentle, humble, tender hearted Savior.” God gave him as a propitiation through his blood for anyone who believes. You need only to trust in him. You do not need to do anything except to hear the Gospel — Jesus is the Son of God, who died on the cross for sinners — and to trust in him. In fact, you must not do good works to pay for your sins. When you trust in Jesus, you will be forgiven. At that point, you will know you will be with him on that final day, dressed in a white robe of righteousness that you do not deserve. Come to Christ. Believers: Look Forward to What We Will Learn in Heaven Second, ponder the fact that Jesus has a name written on him that only he knows. Eagerly anticipate the education we will receive in Heaven. “When we've been there 10,000 years, bright, shining as the sun…” we will still have things to learn about Jesus. That is exciting — I look forward to that. Jesus has aspects to his personality we do not know. We may have a hard time seeing Jesus as depicted in the account I have read, but it is true. Ponder the greatness of Christ and yearn to follow Him. Believers: Be Ready, Constantly Ready, for His Coming Let us, as believers, be ready for the Second Coming. He has not told us exactly when it will happen. He told a series of illustrations about a master who goes away, entrusting his affairs to his servants, and then he returns. We must be ready for Him to come back all the time, to be busy doing what He wants us to do. That includes the two journeys: first, the internal journey of holiness. 1 John 3 says, “When we see him, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” We will be instantly transformed; everyone who has hope in him purifies himself as he is pure. That is holiness. Second, the external journey of evangelism. We are told to share the Gospel. Let’s do some workplace evangelism this week. Let’s talk about the Second Coming of Christ. Let’s warn people who are not ready for Him. When I was a missionary in Japan years ago, I traveled every week from Tokushima to Takamatsu where I taught English and Bible classes. It was a wearying trip. Japan is a hard place to work. They are very respectful and kind, but they do not repent and come to Christ easily. I was weary. One day, as I got off the train and started walking to the English class, I looked up and, like that sky in Montana, the sky was full of dramatic electrical storm clouds. The final verse of the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul” came to mind: “And Lord, haste the day when our faith shall be sight: the clouds be rolled back as a scroll; the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend! Even so, it is well with my soul!” Closing Prayer Lord, thank you for the truth that the Scripture tells us of the future. We would have no way to know that this is coming except that you have told us. Christianity is different from any other religion in the world in this issue of prophecy. You have told us that you are coming, and you have told us to get ready, to be busy and occupied until you return. Help us to be filled with the Spirit. I pray for any who walked in here as unbelievers, that they would flee the wrath to come and find salvation in the Lamb of God. Help all of us, O Lord, to be faithful, diligent, and holy; to put sin to death; and to warn our neighbors, co-workers, unsaved relatives and total strangers here in Durham to flee to Christ. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Introduction Please turn in your Bibles to Revelation 3:7-13 as we look at the sixth of the seven timeless letters that Jesus gave to the first-century churches. Since the beginning of human history people have marked the passage of time in various ways. God Himself set the celestial beings — the sun, the moon, and the stars — in the heavens as the first time pieces. Their celestial motions still keep time for all of creation. It says in Genesis 1:14, “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years.’” This rhythm of the passage of time was established right from the start: “There was evening and there was morning… the first day…; there was evening and there was morning, the second day…” At some point human ingenuity and technology took over. Increasingly sophisticated and elaborate means of marking the passage of time were developed: water clocks, candles with gradations, sundials, pendulum clocks with escapements, Swiss watches with exquisite internal gears and mechanisms and springs, quartz watches, digital timepieces, up to the latest technologies that use electronic and even atomic mechanisms to keep time with precision and accuracy. With our smartphone apps and other technology, we have no excuses to be late: it has become more and more possible to keep perfectly synchronized time throughout the day. I say to all preachers, “Teach us to number our minutes that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” What is time, really? Physicists call it the fourth dimension; science fiction writers fantasize about time travel; philosophers meditate on the significance of time in human culture; various cultures mark time in different ways; aged people in nursing homes wonder where all the time went and marvel at how quickly it passed. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s book The Hobbit, the creature Gollum engaged with Bilbo Baggins in a duel of riddles. Gollum tried to stump Bilbo with this riddle: “This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers. Gnaws iron, bites steel, grinds hard stones to meal. Slays kings, ruins town and beats high mountain down.” The answer to the riddle, of course is time: Time devours all things. Time kills birds and beasts and trees and flowers; all living things eventually die; they pass away as though they never lived at all. Time gnaws iron until all that is left is a pile of rusty powder. Time grinds the hardest stones down along the ocean side; the relentless pounding of waves over centuries erodes the rocks until they are erased entirely. Time slays both kings and commoners alike; their glory fades like the flowers of the fields — here today and gone from all memory tomorrow in a blink of an eye. Time ruins towns and cities alike; they rise up, up, up from the dust of the earth through human technology and ingenuity and energy and drive, but then they eventually reach their peak and they sink back down into the dust from which they came, covered over with layers of silt and sand and clay, some to be discovered centuries later by archeologists. Time even wears ancient mountains down; wind and rain efface the hardest rock until it is gone. Obviously Gollum had a very dreary view of the effects of time. However, though everything under the sun eventually does wear down, grinds down, dies or comes to an end, yet in and through Christ, time itself has been redeemed. The days of our lives have been redeemed to an eternal purpose. The biblical way for us to understand time is to equate it with opportunity. Opportunity, otherwise known as time, is a specific set of providential circumstances orchestrated by God that will never happen in that exact way again. Today, this day, this Sunday is unique, and with this particular day comes a unique set of opportunities. These opportunities worldwide are for the church of Jesus Christ to do eternally significant things. These things will be eternal because there is something in the universe that is not wearing down by time, not aging, not past its prime — actually has not even reached its prime yet. Every day makes it more and more glorious, more and more lofty and grand, more and more intricate and detailed, more and more beautiful and massive. I am speaking of the church of Jesus Christ. Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, “On this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not overcome it.” Death cannot stop this glorious worldwide building project of the church. It is growing bigger and more glorious and more elaborate and more intricate all the time. Every day, by the sacrificial loving works of the children of God, it rises. We know from Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” At the end of that same chapter, Ephesians 2, Paul sets before us this vision of the rising church of Jesus Christ built by those same good works. Ephesians 2:21-22 says, “In Him the whole building [the spiritual structure] is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.” This is an incredible, eternal building project. At the end of the book of Revelation, we have a picture of the final product of all of those centuries of labor. In Revelation 21:9-11, the angel said to John the Apostle, “‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a Jasper, clear as crystal.” Thus, every day that we live is special, unique. It is specially crafted, prepared in eternity past by the mind of God, who is sovereign in wisdom and who has a perfect plan and all power to effect His plan. You are a part of it; so am I. He gives us works to do every day that will shape some specific aspect of the beautiful, magnificent Church of Jesus Christ by our Spirit-filled labor. That is the work we have to do. Time, then, is daily unique opportunity to do something eternally significant to build the Church of Christ with our life of faith and our knowledge of the Word of God. Today is opportunity. In Revelation 3:8, Jesus speaks these amazing words to the church at Philadelphia: “Behold, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut.” I hope to show you that, as with the other letters we have studied, we should read this statement made to a church almost 2000 years ago as a timeless, living, active Word to us today as a church. This letter urges us to walk through the open door of opportunity to serve the Living God, to build the Church of Jesus Christ through evangelism and missions, spiritual gift ministry, acts of service, discipleship, prayer, the ministry of the word. Today is one of a limited number of days, each one unique as an open door of opportunity for us to walk through. I. Christ the Sovereign King Addresses His Church (vs. 7) Let’s review to get our bearings. We are looking today at the sixth of seven letters that the resurrected, glorified Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth, the Lord of the Church has given as timeless instruction to all of his churches. The Apostle John was in exile on the isle of Patmos. He was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day when he heard a voice behind him. Turning, he saw a vision of the resurrected, glorified Christ moving among and ministering to seven golden lampstands, which we are told represent seven churches (the number seven being a number of perfection and fulfillment) for which He had individual messages. In His right hand He held the stars of these churches, which were the messengers, or pastors, of the churches. Some scholars believe that there were actually seven messengers from these churches in exile with John but that they would be set free to go back to their churches. Others hold that the letters were going to be sent. Regardless, these were literal churches in space and time and history, but they also represent what Christ has to say universally to every local church in every generation. At the end of each of the seven letters, he says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” What Makes these Seven Letters So Precious Jesus is speaking to us today through this letter that he spoke to this actual church of Philadelphia so many centuries ago. Each of these seven letters begins with, “These are the words of…” followed by some amazing description of Jesus Christ, the Lord, the king of the church walking among them and ministering to them. Usually they begin with words like, “I know you, I know your deeds, I know your circumstances, I know your challenges, I know your successes, I know your failures.” That is what makes these letters so precious. They give us a glimpse into the mind of Christ as he cares for us as a local church and show us the glory of the One who wrote them. The specificity of His knowledge of us, the fact that He knows us completely reminds us that we cannot hide from Him. He knows and searches us with His eyes of blazing fire. Nothing is hidden from Him, and He speaks words of wisdom and timeless commands to us. I believe each church should read all seven of the letters as though they were a powerful message to us. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Jesus is speaking through the Holy Spirit to us today by means of this letter. Christ’s Unique Self-Description In this particular case, the sixth letter to Philadelphia, the circumstance of Christ’s self-description is unique. Typically, He takes some aspect of the vision that John had in Revelation 1 and cites that as a descriptor of Himself. However this time he does not do that. He goes instead back to the pages of the Old Testament. Verse 7 says, “These are the words of him who is holy, who is true, who holds the key of David, who opens and no one can shut, and who shuts and no one can open.” He begins by declaring Himself to be the One who is holy. “Holiness” means separation. God alone can make this assertion, because God’s holiness is different than the holiness of any of the created beings. God certainly has a perfect separation from all evil and wickedness. He is holy in that regard, just as the holy angels or the holy saints are separated from evil. That is true. But beyond that, God is also infinitely separated above all created things. He is infinitely above all of creation, and so He is the Holy One. His holiness is so powerful, such an awesome attribute, that it seems to be the focal point of much of heavenly worship. Like the Seraphim in Isaiah 6:3 who cannot stop singing, calling out with loud voices about the holiness of God: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty… the whole earth is full of His glory.” They are holy in themselves, separated from all evil — there is no evil in them; they have never done anything evil. But they are celebrating in triplicate the holiness of God their Creator, the Lord. The living creatures before the throne cry the same thing in the next chapter in Revelation 4:8, “Day and night they never stop saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.’” Jesus’ identification of Himself as the Holy One is a claim to deity. Jesus possesses undiminished holiness. He has not only perfect separation from evil in and of himself, but also perfect separation from all creatures as King and Lord over all creation. He also calls Himself “the one who is true.” Jesus claims to be the one who is true. If something is true, it lines up accurately with reality — either spiritual reality or physical reality or both. It is authentic, genuine, real in the heavens and on earth. Satan, by contrast, has crafted his evil empire with lies. He lied to himself about his own power and his own capability when he thought he would ascend to Heaven in Isaiah 14 and take over the throne of God. In addition, he lied to the angels who fell with him, who joined with him in his rebellion in Heaven. Revelation 12 tells us that they were cast down and are now called demons. He lied to Adam and Eve at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, saying, “You will not surely die.” Since then, he has lied to every sinner who ever lived; he has built a worldwide empire of sin, all of it based on lies. Jesus said in John 8:44, speaking of Satan, “[The devil] was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” But everything Jesus has ever said is perfectly true, and it flows from the source of all truth. Jesus is Truth and speaks truth. He appears to be powerful because he is powerful. He appears to be glorious because he is glorious. He appears to be sovereign and in charge because he is sovereign and in charge. He appears to be alive after being crucified because he is alive. It is all true. Jesus is holy and true. He himself is the Truth. He HAS the Key of David He also says that He has the key of David. The word “key” designates authority. He has the right to open and shut. He has the right to unlock and swing a barred door wide open; and he has the right to slam a door shut and lock it. He said in Revelation 1:18, “I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” He holds the keys of death and the grave. Specifically here the “key of David” means he has the right to sit on David’s throne. He is the son of David, predicted to come and reign over all human beings. He is the Son of Man, the son of David, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Savior of the world. All of that was predicted to be the son of David — David was the focus of the promises God made to place a human king over all humanity. The very first thing that the New Testament teaches us about Jesus is found in Matthew 1:1, a very brief “… record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham.” This is included to show that Jesus is the heir to David’s throne, has the right to David’s throne. But Christ’s throne, unlike David’s, which was real but temporary and symbolic of future glories, is eternal and glorious in the Heavens. For all eternity he will sit on that throne. He has the Key of David. Furthermore, He has the right to open and close doors. Look at verse 7:“What He opens, no one can shut, and what He shuts, no one can open.” This is a statement of absolute, infinite power and authority. He controls the doors of Heaven and earth. If Jesus wanted a door open, and Satan and all of his demons and all of the wicked men and women on earth joined together to close that door, it could not be closed. If he opens the door, it stays open. Conversely if Jesus wanted a door shut, none of those combined powers could do anything to wedge it open even an inch — it would be shut with immeasurable power and authority. If He shuts a door, it stays shut. “What he opens, no one can shut, and what he shuts, no one can open.” In this way, Jesus has controlled the flow of human history as well as entrance into Heaven itself. “The king’s heart is like a water course in the hands of the Lord. He directs it whichever way he pleases.” He opens doors and their wickedness flows in a specific direction and not in other directions to achieve His purposes. This is the way He is sovereign over wicked people who do not even acknowledge him. He is opening doors and water flows. Their nature is evil, but it will flow in a specific direction. This is how he has controlled human history. Beyond this, He has the right also to determine who will and who will not enter the kingdom of heaven. That is the most important door. He is the doorkeeper of the Kingdom of Heaven. He says in Matthew 5:20, “I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” You may think, “What right does He have to make that statement?” He has all rights. He has the right to open and the right to shut. And he said the righteousness of the Pharisees and Scribes is not enough for heaven. Even further, He said to His own disciples in Matthew 18:3, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” He said to Nicodemus, “Unless you are born again, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” He has the right to make these assertions. If Jesus shuts the door of heaven, no one can open it, like Noah’s ark in the days of the flood: when the door was shut, everyone on the outside perished. The hand of God alone had the right to shut that door and say, “No more can enter the ark.” Similarly, the Five Foolish Virgins in Jesus’ parable were not ready when the bridegroom came. They ran off to get oil for their lamps, arrived back too late and found the door closed. They banged on the door and cried, “Let us in, let us in,” but they were not permitted. “I never knew you. Go away,” they were told, and the bridegroom would not let them enter. He has the right to determine who has access to the throne of Almighty God, the right to draw near to God and address Him. As I got up here to pray, I was struck again with the privilege of prayer. It is a great privilege for sinners like us to have access into the throne room of God. Jesus controls that access. It is by him alone that we have access to God. It says in Hebrews 10:20 that we enter into the throne of grace “by a new and living way… that is his body”, only by the death of Jesus. It says also in Ephesians 2:18, “For through [Christ], we both [Jews and Gentile believers] have access to the Father by one Spirit.” He is the door by which we enter into the presence of God. As we have seen, then, Jesus describes Himself as holy and true and having the key of David, and he has the authority to shut and no one can open and he has the authority to open and no one can shut — He is the one who is talking to us today by the Spirit. Don’t you want to hear what he has to say to this church? I do. II. The Church at Philadelphia: Small but Faithful (vs. 8-10) Christ’s Unmixed Commendation What does he say to the church of Philadelphia? He begins in verses 8-10 with this word: “I know your deeds. Behold, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars — I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you. Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the earth.” “I know your deeds…” He always begins with this. He starts with the fruit of the tree, with the works — by our fruit, He will know us. Make a tree good and its fruit will be good; make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad. A tree is known by its fruits. Jesus starts with the deeds, the works. In this case, He actually says nothing about their deeds, good or bad. We do not know anything about what the did; instead, he speaks of the challenges they are facing, specifically from unbelieving Jews, which I will address in a moment. He says, “I know you have little strength…” This is an accurate evaluation of the church, not a criticism in any way. “Oh, church, you have little strength; you are weak.” But they know it, and that is their spiritual strength to some degree. They are not boastful about what a great church they are; they are not a dominant part of the city of Philadelphia; they do not have a massive footprint in the life of that pagan place. But they are a faithful outpost, a colony of heaven, a refuge for those seeking true salvation, right there in Philadelphia. The Church seems to have been small in number, not very influential, probably comprised of lower classes of society. It reminds me of what Paul said to the Corinthian church (1 Corinthians 1:27-28): “Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential, not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things… the weak things… the lowly things… the despised things of this world… — and the things that are not —[to exalt His own power and glory,] to nullify the things that are.” They were a church of small strength. When you know and acknowledge the simple truth that you have little strength, you can tap into true power, the infinitely greater strength of Almighty God working through you. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:10, “… for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” To clarify and expand this verse to its full meaning, I would add, and I think Paul would agree, that when I know I am weak and feel myself to be weak and confess my weakness to God in prayer, that is when I am truly strong. Thus, Jesus says, “I know you have little strength…” A church that knows that apart from Christ they can do nothing is a strong church — perhaps the most powerful it can be in this world. He says, “You have kept my word, and have not denied my name.” That gives a sense of the persecution and the opposition that all these churches were going through. There has been a constant pressure. Maybe they were not facing the same level of persecution as Smyrna, nor perhaps even maybe like Ephesus, but they were under opposition and they persevered, did not give up, did not forsake the name of Christ. They refused to cave in. He says, “You have kept my command to endure patiently…” We are in a race which we are called to run to the end with great endurance. We are to be bold in our witness, to persevere in a hostile environment. Jesus said in Matthew 10:22, “All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.” The author of Hebrews tell us in Hebrews 12:1 that we are to “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and… run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” This faithful little church refused to drop out of the race, refused to quit; they kept his word, his command of endurance. III. Christ’s Provision: The Open Door and Protection The Open Door Now we come to verse 8: “Behold, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut.” We have already discussed Jesus’ sovereign power over the doors of Heaven and earth. He holds the key of David, and what he opens, no one can shut. He says, “Behold,” which gives the idea that He is unveiling something that we have not heard before: “I will show you something you did not realize: I have set before you an open door. I am giving you an opportunity, and no one can shut it. No demon, nor Satan himself, can shut it. No human ruler can shut it.” What is this open door He is referring to? It could be just the door of salvation — the right to enter Heaven through Christ, who is the door. In Matthew 7:13-14, He said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many, enter through it, [enter hell]. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” We could see it as the open door to Heaven. But I think here in Revelation, this “open door” goes beyond salvation. It is a door of opportunity, of work, to serve Christ, to do specific good works that will build His kingdom. Paul uses this kind of expression in 1 Corinthian 16:8-9: “I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me.” We should think of the open door first and foremost as opportunities for the external journey of evangelism and missions, to share Christ. This door is open into dark places to shine the light of the Gospel where it has not been shining before. Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 16 gives us amazing insight into the nature of the open door. Paul was excited and motivated to stay on in Ephesus, because, number one, God had opened a great door of effective work for him. And number two, “I am excited to stay here because” “there are many who oppose me.” Many enemies translates to staying where he is…? Wait a minute… that does not sound like an open door… But yes, it is; apparently, the open door and opposition are not mutually exclusive. So we must ask again, what is the open door? We should think of it first and foremost in terms of human hearts, the hearts of the elect. One of those in Philippi who listened to the apostle Paul preach the gospel was a woman named Lydia. She was a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira. Acts 16:14 tells us, “The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.” There is your open door. It is elect people who are hearing the gospel and coming to faith. Paul requested similar prayer in Colossians 4:3-4: “And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.” The open door is about the Gospel message and opportunity and people responding to it. Paul’s prayer also reflects the need to ask for the boldness to step up and move through that open door. The open door represents God’s sovereignty over circumstances and providential indicators that the church should move in that direction for evangelism and missions so that the word of God may flourish there. When Paul and Silas did not know where to go next and were prevented by the Holy Spirit from going up into Asia Minor, they had a vision of a man of Macedonia saying, “Come over and help us.” That sounds like an open door to me. All the other doors were shut. They could not go anywhere else, so they had to go to Macedonia. Let me give you some examples from church history. In 1949, Douglas MacArthur was ruling over the rebuilding of war-devastated Japan. He urgently called for 1,000 missionaries to come and preach Christ there — this is a matter of recorded history. He said, “Japan is a spiritual vacuum and if we do not fill it with Christ it will be filled with communism.” You might think that was an wild and speculative prognosis, but look at what happened in Korea. Just across a short strait of ocean from Japan, that country went almost 100% communist before the Korean War. Now, it is half Communist. So it was a big threat. What was the remedy? According to Douglas MacArthur, the preaching of the gospel of Christ was the solution. Many Christian workers from many different denominations looked on that as an open door: “If the potentate of Japan says we need missionaries, I am getting on a boat.” Many Southern Baptist missionaries went there to rebuild churches and preach the Gospel and do all kinds of works in Japan. The Japanese pastor whom Christi and I worked with in a church planting effort in Japan was an 82-year-old godly Christian man named Kubo-sensei. This man, Mr. Kubo, had been in the Imperial Japanese Army and fought against the Americans and the British in the islands and in the Philippines. He contracted malaria, which saved his life and his soul. He went back to Japan to be healed and convalesce and was there when the war ended. It saved his soul because his unit was involved in a battle and the Japanese units generally fought until there were no survivors. So he would have fought until he was dead and would not have known Christ. But in 1950, Southern Baptist missionaries came to Takamatsu and led him to Christ. It was an open door for him, for them to come do work. He walked with the Lord from 1950 on. (He never spoke a word of English to me. I had breakfast with him every Wednesday morning, and we sat there in silence for the first few weeks until I thought to myself, “I’d better get going on my Japanese.”) What a great open door that was. Throughout the history of missions, Christians have walked through similar open doors of opportunity to advance the Church of Christ. Again, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 16, “There is a great door of openness for the Gospel in Ephesus and also great opposition.” Since the open door by definition means people are coming to Christ, Satan responds generally to that event by mobilizing forces to persecute and shut that church down, if it were possible. We can see the rhythm of much fruit leading to much persecution leading to much fruit. Paul calls that an open door. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Eastern Bloc countries were open for the first time in more than a generation to missionaries. Christian workers flooded into that area, and the Gospel spread rapidly. Many came to faith in Christ. The backlash is now coming: recently, especially in Russia, there has been more of a crackdown; it is becoming more difficult for evangelicals to share the gospel in Eastern Europe. We see openness and we see persecution. We are also seeing the backlash from the activities of Islamic extremist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS create an open door. A tremendous disaffection is building in the hearts of many nominal Muslims who express that if that is what orthodox Islam is, what being a “good Muslim” looks like, they do not want any part of it. There is a book about this theme called Leaving Islam. Those who are leaving are not necessarily going to Christianity, but they are considering options, and missionaries are frequently there to share the Gospel. There are open doors in refugee crises where missionaries and others are serving in tent communities to people who are disconnected from their home culture, separated from their home religion and society, desperate and open to hearing a message of hope like never before. Pray for open doors for the spread of the gospel. The Opposition In verse 9, Jesus speaks about the opposition that the church of Philadelphia was facing. He says, “I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars — I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge I have loved you.” This is the second time in these seven letters that Jesus has spoken of the synagogue of Satan, meaning people who claim to be Jews but are not, first to the church at Smyrna, and now to this church at Philadelphia. According to Jesus, particularly in the Gospel of John, that physical descendants of Abraham who call themselves Jews but reject Jesus as Messiah are not truly Jews. That is Jesus’ attitude. John 8:39-44 tells of a conversation between Jesus and His enemies. “‘Abraham is our Father,’ they answered. ‘If you were Abraham’s children,’ said Jesus, ‘then you would do the things Abraham did. As it is, you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.’ They protested, ‘The only Father we have is God Himself.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father you would love me, for I came from God… You belong to your father the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.’” That is a very strong statement, but it is Jesus’ assessment of Jews by physical descent who do not accept Him as Messiah. Paul said the same thing at the end of Romans 2:28-29, “A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God.” Jesus says it straight out in Revelation: “They are not really Jews. They claim to be Jews, but they are a synagogue of Satan. But I will cause them to come to you, oh Gentile converts to Christ, to fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you.” This image would have been very familiar to any careful, zealous, Bible-reading Jew. They had in mind that that was what would happen with the Messianic reign over all the Gentile kingdoms. Messiah would spread the kingdom of David and of Solomon as far the ends of the earth, and their enemies would come lick the dust of their feet — a picture of conquest, of the total humiliation of enemies. It says in Isaiah 49:23, “They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet.” Isaiah 60:14 says, “The sons of your oppressors will come bowing before you; all who despise you will bow down at your feet and will call you the City of the Lord, Zion of the Holy One of Israel.” Jesus is using the same image. He is saying, “Actually, the shoe is on the other foot. The unbelieving Jews will come to you Gentile believers in Christ, and will fall at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you.” It is a picture of vindication from the persecution that they were suffering. Protection Through the Hour of Testing Verse 10 is a promise of protection from suffering: “Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the earth.” Jesus is promising to protect this faithful church in or from the hour of testing that was in the future, that would come on the whole earth. This is a fascinating and challenging promise. Let me start with a simple approach, then I will add a little more complexity. Jesus will protect his church: they will not fail, whatever test this is; they will endure through it and make it to the other side because of his sovereign protection. That is His simple promise. What is the hour of trial that will come on the whole world to test those who live on the earth? The Book of Revelation depicts “the Great Tribulation”, a terrible seven-year period of suffering that will come right before the Second Coming of Christ. The words “keep you from” have been carefully analyzed. Some scholars believe that there will be a secret rapture in which the Lord will come like a thief in the night to rescue His Church out of the world before the Great Tribulation. That may well be. Others see it more as a promise to protect his people in the midst of, not out of or out from, the Great Tribulation — somewhat like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who had a bubble around them when they were thrown into the fiery furnace. The Church will be in the trial, but it will not harm them, at least to a degree. These scholars see Christ as saying, “I will keep you through it; I will make a refuge for you in the midst of it.” The exact translation for this interpretation hinges on the Greek, which I will not burden you with. Suffice it to say that they will be protected from something. It is possible He is talking about death as the trial: “Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” Isaiah 26:19-21 gives a beautiful picture of this: “But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.” [That is all about the resurrection of believers.] Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until His wrath has passed by. [That is interesting — perhaps this indicates that the church will go through the suffering but not be harmed by it in any way. God has always been doing that.] See, the Lord is coming out of His dwelling to punish the people of the earth for their sins. The earth will disclose the blood shed upon her; she will conceal her slain no longer.” That harmonizes well with what is depicted in the Book of Revelation. I cannot say whether or not Revelation 3:10 is teaching the secret rapture, but it would be an interesting discussion. But we do know that Christ makes sweet promises to His faithful church in Philadelphia: an open door, fruitful ministry, vindication from their bitter enemies, and protection from the overwhelming trial that will sweep the whole earth. IV. Christ’s Command: Hold Fast to What You Have (vs. 11) The Promise of the Second Coming: I AM COMING SOON In verse 11, He commands them, “I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have [or hold fast], so that no one will take your crown.” First, we have the promise of the Second Coming. “I am coming soon.” That word “soon” has been standing over every generation of Christians for 2,000 years. This should not trouble us, because “with the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” (2 Peter 3:8) And according to Psalm 90, a man’s life is like a mist that appears but is gone by the evening, or like an evening watch that it is quickly finished. Either way, He is coming soon. At the very end of this book, in Revelation 22:20, John says, “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” John wrote that around 90 AD, saying, “Amen. You are coming soon. Come, Lord Jesus.” Every generation of Christians has had a sense of the imminent return of Jesus Christ, as well we should. Christ’s Command: HOLD FAST Next, He says, “Hold on to what you have until I come.” This is clearly a call to courageous perseverance in the face of mighty struggle. What is it we have? To begin with, we have doctrine. We must hold on to Christian doctrine, to the Gospel. Jude writes to urge his fellow Christians “to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.” 2 Thessalonians 2:15 says, “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.” “Hold on to this brothers and sisters, hold on to what you have. Scripture, the truth of the gospel, faith, doctrine — hold on.” Further, let us hold on to Christ. Hebrews 4:14 says, “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.” Perhaps He is also saying, “Hold on to your crown.” The crown may possibly mean the crown of eternal life. James 1:12 says, “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.” At the end of a hard life of fighting the good fight, of running a marathon race, finish the race and keep to the faith until the end: “Hold fast and I will give you the crown of life.” Or the crown may refer to specific rewards for serving Christ faithfully. Paul said to his converts in Thessalonica, “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when He comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy.” — “You are our crown.” Whether the crown of eternal life or specific rewards, we are to hold fast. V. Christ’s Promises: A Crown, A Pillar, A Name Christ promises a crown, a pillar and a name. Look at verses 12-13: “Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he leave it. I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on him my new name. He who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” As with each of these seven letters, the conquerors are rewarded. The ones who overcome, who fight and win, who stand firm to the end, do so by the power of the Spirit and by the blood of the Lamb. Rewards What rewards were theirs? Besides the crown implied in verse 11, he also says, “I will make [him] a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he leave it.” Remember that I said there is one work that grows more glorious, bigger, grander, more radiant every day, with every generation,. That is the Church of Jesus Christ. Here he is promising the conquerors, the overcomers: “You will be a pillar in that temple.” A pillar is a symbol of stability and permanence and security; it bears glory and honor in the intricate, beautiful decorations on its crown. This pillar that Christ speaks of is strong and beautiful in its privileged place in the eternal spiritual heavenly temple of God, and the overcomers will never leave it. In Isaiah 56:3-5, God speaks to the Gentiles, the foreigners, the people from other nations who would eventually come to Christ: “Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the Lord say ‘The Lord will surely exclude me from His people.’ And let not any eunuch complain, ‘I am only a dry tree.’ For this is what the Lord says: ‘To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant — to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.’” There is the marvelous consistency of the word of God! Isaiah 56:5 speaks to the exact thing Jesus is promising. He will make the Jew and Gentile believers in Christ who overcome and run this race with endurance a pillars in His eternal temple, and they will never be cut off. Also, He imparts a sense of His total ownership: “I will write the name of my God on you. He will be your God and you will be his people. I will write the name of the New Jerusalem, the Bride of Christ on you, and also my new name” — the name of Jesus Christ himself. Revelation 22:3-4 says, “No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him. They will see His face and His name will be on their foreheads.” Complete, indisputable ownership. VI. Applications Understand the Significance of TIME First, understand the significance of time. I am not talking about the mindless tick-tock tick-tock of a timepiece marking the passage of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. I am talking about opportunity, about redeeming the time. What makes today special? You should ask that every day. This is the day the Lord has made. Ask Him, “What good works have You crafted for me personally? What open door have You set before me that I should walk through it? What opportunity does today bring for me to serve You?” If you are not a Christian, there is only one work for you on this day: to believe in Jesus. God gave you the opportunity to come here today to hear the Gospel. Let me say it clearly: God, who made Heaven and earth, is ruler over all nations. He put just laws in place by which we are to live our lives: the Ten Commandments, the two great commandments — to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. All humans have violated those laws. We have sinned against Almighty God. The wages of sin is death, not only physical death, but also for eternity in hell. It is no more than we deserve. But God, in His mercy and love for us, sent Jesus, born of a virgin, who lived a sinless life and did signs, wonders, and miracles that established him as the Son of God. Most important, He died a substitutionary death on the cross in our place. Our guilt was put on Him and He died. His righteousness is given to us as a gift, and we live even on Judgment Day. If you will only repent and trust in Christ, you will have eternal life. That is the Gospel. Today is an opportunity for you to walk through the door of Christ into salvation. Jesus said in John 5:24, “…whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” Today you have the opportunity to cross over. In 2 Corinthians 6:2, God is saying this to you: “‘In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.’ I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” Also He says in Isaiah 55:6, “Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near.” For You Christians… SEEK THE OPEN DOOR!! For you Christians, I say this: Seek an open door. Ask God, “Where have You placed me that I can I be a witness for Christ? What unique opportunity do I have to reach the particular people that I will encounter today? What door have you set before me that I'm supposed to walk through?” Wherever you are in your vocation, you have a mission field with your co-workers, many of whom are unchurched. We have opportunities every day. Ask the same for our church. We live in one of the best places in the world, the Triangle, for an evangelical church. People are pouring in from all over the country. They come to live here because of mild temperatures, economic opportunities, myriad reasons. We are among the few Bible-believing, Bible-preaching, evangelistic, fervently active churches in this area. And we, with our sister churches, are called to reach the people who are pouring into this area. Pray for more open doors. Pray for doors to open in these new expensive apartments and condominiums that are rising around us in downtown Durham. Those who will move into these will be people who generally make more money than we do and who will generally not have the same world view that we have. Pray for an open door, for a chance to meet some of those people. Think about the underserved parts of the community: African Americans, Latin Americans, refugees, undocumented aliens. That is a door of opportunity for us to share the Gospel. Think about unreached people groups like the Gujarati in Morrisville. Think about people flooding into this area from all over the world — perhaps you cannot reach them in their country, but they are here now. We can reach them with the Gospel. Ask God, “Set before this church an open door of opportunity and let us walk through it.” Ask the same thing with missions. Let us continue to be a missions-minded church. You sent me to Cameroon last week — thank you. We will be sending short-term mission teams to East Asia and other places. Support those teams financially, pray for them, get to know those who are going. Give financially to the Great Commission Fund. Spiritually adopt unreached people groups and pray for them — for people in North Africa, in the Middle East, in Muslim countries — that the door of the Gospel would be opened for them. Closing Prayer Close with me if you would in prayer. Father, we thank You for the chance we have had to look at this incredible letter to the church at Philadelphia. Help us to take to heart its encouraging message and to be strengthened in the good works You have for us to do. Thank You for the Gospel, for our Lord Jesus who, at infinite cost to Yourself, by His blood, by His body, opened a door, a new and living way for us into Heaven. Father I pray for those who are lost, who have come here outside of Christ, that they would hear and take to heart the Gospel. Help us as a church to be fervently active in spreading the Gospel, both in evangelism and in cross-cultural missions for your glory. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

It's one of the biggest struggles I think that every person has in life, is a sense of purpose. You know, “Why am I alive?” “Why am I even here?” “Why do I live each day?” And people struggle with that. “What gives meaning to my Mondays and my Tuesdays?” “What is the remedy to the terrifying sense of aimlessness and purposelessness in life that kind of dogs my heels.” And that same idea led the wisest man who had ever lived on earth up to that point, King Solomon, as he wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes, and he looked around at the world that surrounded him as he looked at his own life, his own achievements. And he looked at all of those achievements and the power and the wealth and the pleasures and all of that, and He said in Ecclesiastes 1:2, “Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity, it's all emptiness, it's all meaningless.” As he looked at it. Now, we don't want to reach the end of a single day and feel that it was all vanity, it was all meaningless. We don't want to live a single day that's empty of purpose. And praise God through His grace, we don't need to, isn't that awesome? Every single day for us as Christians is a day just crackling with energy and promise with good works that are worth doing. I mean, eternally worth doing. And the more we meditate on Ephesians 2:10, the more joy that can come to us, and I hope the more energy and zeal and power through the Holy Spirit to live an active life of good works. For it says in Ephesians 2:10, "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.” So, this idea is very powerful. There are a few verses that I think about every single day. There's a few of them, and I don't do it intentionally, I'm just saying they come in my mind. This is one of them, I think about Ephesians 2:10 every day. I think about it in the morning when I get up, and when I pray and say, “Lord, I want to do the good works that you prepared for me to do today. I want to walk in those good works. So Lord, give me a wise and discerning heart, show me what they are. I don't want to miss any of them.” I think we all have the feeling, and it's a mystery how Ephesians 2:10 fits into failure to do the good works but we know that we miss opportunities don't we? There are some things that we should have done and didn't do. And I don't want that to be my life, I don't want that to be any single day, and I sure don't want that to be the cumulative effect of my whole life that I missed them. I missed the good works. And so I pray for that every morning I just say, “Lord, to help me to walk in that pathway of good works that you have ordained for me,” There are various types. There are some just grand and glorious big, good works that you might only do once in your life, and years later you'll be thinking about that good work and what God did and in and through that time, and never do it again. And then there are just those day-to-day mundane small good works that you may be tempted to despise and wonder why it's still your job and why somebody else doesn't do it, by now. But that God has set out for you to do everything's included for me in Ephesians 2:10. So it could be anything from a word of encouragement that you speak to somebody, you pick up the phone and call them. Or you just take a moment and pray for a situation you know about it in the church. And no one needs to know about it. You don't need to tell anyone like Jesus said in Matthew 6, “you go into the room and close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen.” No one ever knew about it, but you prayed for a brother or a sister, or a situation and God sees it and He knows, and He hears it. Or it could be right a check for a ministry, or something large or small, wouldn't matter. So all kinds of good works. And so, God has ordained these good works, and in the language of Isaiah, I think of a pathway of good works in which God says “This is the way, walk in it.” Like there are these golden steps that we're going across, across the river of life, and we're just stepping from good work to good work to good work, and you can just live your life that way. This is the way, walk in it. It's what glorious grace from God to arrange ahead of time, a life of good works that have eternal significance and to be able to join with God the Father in the work that He's doing. As Jesus said, “My Father is always at His work to this very day and I too am working.” And we as sons and daughters of the living God, we can say that God's at work. He's working in the world, always working and I have, by faith, joined in His work, and that is glorious. There is also a sense in this verse, I think of craftsmanship, a sense of craftsmanship. We are God's workmanship, and the day is God's workmanship. The both of them and we're going to talk about that today, but there's a sense of craftsmanship. A little while ago, I came across a website that was talking about these expensive mechanical watches, from Switzerland and from Germany, and I came across one that cost 2.6 million dollars. For a wristwatch. Alright, now if I had 2.6 million, I would not invest it in a wristwatch. Imagine giving Jesus an account of that on Judgment Day, alright, enough said. But at any rate, this German watchmaker, Lange & Söhne, makes this one watch, it's called “The Grand Complication,” that's the name of the watch. And it takes a skilled craftsman, an entire year to make a single watch. And every part that goes into it, is hand-crafted the complexity is staggering. It has different chimes for different parts of the hour, 15 minutes, 30, 45 and the hour, a different chime, like it's a grandfather clock on your wristwatch. Imagine being at work, and the thing goes off and people are like, "What is that?” “Well, that's my new watch for 2.6 million dollars.” And the craftsmanship is amazing. It's got a calendar and it's got all of these things, it's all mechanical, it's not computer it's all gears and sprockets, and springs. And I just think about the complexity of it. And it's about that big and all of that fitting together, centuries of craftsmanship, but then I thought about this verse today. And we are more complicated than that. Vastly more complicated. And the craftsmanship that has gone into us is staggering, and the craftsmanship frankly, that's gone into the world around us, the complexity of how we as sons and daughters of God interact with other Christians and with non-Christians to achieve His eternal purpose is just staggering. It's exquisite craftsmanship. So God has been crafting you and shaping you and molding you for this lifetime of good works and He continues to do it, He's doing it right now for me and for you. And He's getting us ready for these good works. Not Saved by Good Works Salvation from Sin is Not by Works Now, when we come to the issue of good works, again, we need to stop and just be careful of context here, don't we? And it's very important. I chose to divide Ephesians 2:10 from Ephesians 2:8-9, and from the larger section, that Andy just read. And so I think it's good for us to look back and understand where we just came from last week, Ephesians 2:8-9, “It is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.” So you really need to see the whole thing together. So we have to go back and remember what we talked about last week because it is so pernicious, and so powerfully magnetically attractive this idea of justification by works, or being saved by works, and it's just consistently dogging our hearts whenever we feel guilty, whenever we know we've sinned, we want to turn to our own works, and try to pay for our sins by good works, and that cannot be. “It says it is by grace you have been saved,” “have been saved.” And so we said last week. Saved from what? Well, the answer is: Saved from eternal condemnation under the judgment of God, when it says in Revelation 20, that we will all be “gathered before this great white throne. And the court will be seated and the books will be opened and everyone that has ever lived will be gathered and we will all be judged, according to what we have done as recorded in the books, and by the Lamb's Book of Life and if anyone's name was not written in the Lamb's Book of Life, they are thrown into the Lake of Fire.” So we could sum this up. To answer the question, “Saved from what?”, it's from the lake of fire that we deserve because of our sins. How can we be delivered from condemnation, how can we be delivered from Hell? And the answer is, it is by grace, through faith, faith in Christ, faith in the blood of Christ that you have been saved, and this is not of yourselves, he says, it is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. We can't emphasize this too much, although I don't want to just go off and preach last week’s sermon now because if Ephesians 2:10 is so glorious and beautiful, but we just need to understand that no amount of good works, no amount of the things that we could ever do in service to God can ever be used to pay for our sins. It is “through faith,” by simple trust in Jesus, by believing the words of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and this faith “is not of ourselves,” It doesn't originate with us, it comes from outside of us in, it's a gift of God. And it's not by works. The Spiritually Dead Cannot do Good Works Why not? Because Paul already said in Ephesians 2:1-3 that “we were dead in our transgressions and sins, even while we lived, we were enslaved to the world, the flesh, and the devil and we could not have delivered ourselves.” Our good works cannot deliver us from that bondage, that slavery. “We were by nature objects of wrath, but God because of His richness, of His mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions God made us alive with Christ. It is by grace you have been saved, and God raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms, in Christ Jesus.” So that's God, God stepped in, “but God” intervened, God raised you from the dead. You couldn't have done that. That couldn't be by works, and that's the Gospel of free grace. We talked about grace, remember unmerited favor, and how that's a good starting point. There's an unmerited side and there's a favor side, how we said that those are infinite under statements. We deserved condemnation and wrath. So it's definitely unmerited. And it's not mere favor, but it's a river of blessings, “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,” a river of blessings that has come to us and will continue to come to us forever. It is by grace, it is God's settled determination to do us infinite good, we who deserve infinite punishment. That is grace. So that's salvation by grace, and “it's by grace we have been saved through faith, not of yourselves but it is a gift of God” and not by works. But though we have not been saved by works, the text most certainly asserts that we have been saved for works, for good works, Not by good works, but for our good works. “For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.” So we are clearly told that we're saved for good works. Good works cannot be used to pay for sins, but God when He saves us, by grace gives us a new nature, He gives us a transformed nature. And from that transformed nature flow a river of good works, or the nature hasn't been transformed. So we have been born again by the Holy Spirit of God. We have had the heart of stone removed, and we've had the heart of flesh put in. I love what it says in his Ezekiel 36:25-27. "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean." Oh, isn't that beautiful? You will be clean, “I will cleanse you from all your impurities. And from all your idols and I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit in you and I will remove from you your heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh.” And now, listen to this, this is Ezekiel 36:27. “I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” Now we come to the complexity of the role of the law in the Christians life. And the way I put all of this together is the law condemns us, and brings us to the cross of Jesus Christ, saying we can't save ourselves And so we despair our self-salvation, despair our salvation by works. We can't keep the law and so we come and throw ourselves to God at the feet of the cross, and we plead for mercy and we get it. And we receive full forgiveness and salvation by grace through faith. But then having done that we have received now, a new nature, a transformed nature and the Lord turns us back to the Law and says, Now by the Spirit, keep this law. It's beautiful, it's the best life you can ever live in Psalm 119, the whole Psalm, 176 verses are “Oh, how I love your law, and how beautiful it is and how majestic and how right it is.” So we're dead to the law and its power to condemn us, but now we now live the law, the moral law, the beautiful virtuous law the Ten Commandments, or the two commandments Take the two commandments Jesus said, “All of the law and the prophets hang on this that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and the second command is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.” So the Holy Spirit, then moves us to love God with all that we have and to love our neighbor as ourselves in ways that we've never even imagined. Salvation by Works is no Gospel at All Now, there's been so much controversy about this over the years, so much misunderstanding. Before the Reformation in the 16th century, the medieval Catholic church had a whole system of religious works, and a terrible confusion about justification and a false Gospel, honestly, that they were preaching, “which was no Gospel at all,” and the Lord raised up Martin Luther. And Luther tried to earn his own salvation by works of Medieval Catholicism, by becoming a monk, by scrubbing floors and doing penitential prayers and doing confessional, and all of these works of Medieval Catholicism. But all it did was make him realize the inner corruptions of His heart more and more and more and he just felt greater and greater condemnation, until at last, he finally understood the Gospel. In Romans 1:16-17 Paul writes, “I'm not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, for in the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness that is from faith for faith just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith.” And he finally understood that the righteousness of God there was not the righteousness by which, He condemned sinners, but the righteousness by which He saves sinners. It's a context issue, it's good news, it's the Gospel, and this righteousness of God is now mine as a gift to save me. He said, “Then at last, the Gates of Heaven flew open and I ran through I understood at last salvation.” Well, he spent the next number of years understanding more and more and preaching more and more on justification by faith alone, “apart from works of the law,” and he's preaching this, and being diligent and emphasizing this again and again, because they really needed to hear it, and He preached from Romans 4 about how “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” and he didn't work for it. It was just given as a gift. Preaching all of these things and they never tired of preaching “justification by faith, apart from works of the law.” Spurgeon and Luther Charles Spurgeon, and said they hit that same nail again, and again, and again, and again with their hammers, and so gradually became imbalanced, imbalanced on the issue of works, and it's easy to happen. And it shows up when Luther translated the Bible into German, and he came to Romans 3:28, which says, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith, apart from observing the law,” he's stuck an extra word in there to help the scripture out a little bit. Hey, look, the scripture doesn't need help. If the Greek word is there, put it in there. If it's not in there, don't put it in there. Good. Just a good rule on translation. All you Bible translators. He stuck the word alone in there. “We maintain that a man is justified by faith alone, apart from works of the law.” God wasn't hindered when Paul wrote Romans. If He wanted him to say alone, He would've, He didn't. But it got even worse when he came over to the Book of James. And James in James chapter 2, from verse 14 on to the end of the chapter is talking about the role of works and faith, and he's actually asking a different kind of question than Romans 3 and 4 is asking. And that is, “What kind of faith justifies you?” That's what James is dealing with there. He says a “faith that has no works is a dead faith, he says It's a demon faith, even the demons believe that there's one God but they shudder.” So James is dealing with what kind of faith, and the faith that produces no works is dead, it's demon faith, it's empty faith and it will not save you. Well, Luther couldn't handle some of the phraseology that James used. The person justified by faith apart from works, but James says, that Abraham was justified by works, and he just couldn't figure it out. How they're using the word slightly differently etcetera. And coming at it from a different angle. Saved for Good Works Good Works Validate Justification And that Luther did teach the place of good works in the Christian life and he understood it properly. He was so upset at James, by the way they've worked it out, they're friends now, everything's good. But he called them Jimmy in the German language, and all that, and he said he wrote an epistle of straw, and if he could, he'd have it out. Well, that's disrespect for the word of God, and let me tell you something, when you come to two texts from the scripture that don't seem to harmonize, roll up your sleeves and work and pray. Don't throw one of them out. So, “we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from works.” But James says yes, “but what kind of faith saves, the faith that produces a lifetime of good works.” Paul would say the same thing right? From Ephesians 2 8-10, wouldn’t he? That's what's going on here. So, good works validate justification, they prove it. They show that it happened, that you've been born again by faith, you're leading a transformed life. It's the issue of fruit. There's going to be fruit in your life. Good works equals fruit in other places. So John the Baptist said, "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance." If you've genuinely repented, you will have good works, you'll have fruit. Jesus said, "By their fruit, you will recognize them. Do people ever pick grapes from thorn-bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear a bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear a good fruit. Thus by their fruit you will recognize them." And then Jesus said "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven." Plain Doctrine And again, this is a very hard thing to understand, but we will not be justified by works, but we will most certainly be judged by works. It would be easier to understand if I change the word judge, to say he's assessed or evaluated. Is that a little bit easier to understand? We will not be saved by good works, but we will be evaluated on the basis of our works on Judgment Day. Many passages teach this, but most clearly Romans 2:6-10, "God will give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, He will give eternal life." Who's that? Christians. That's a description of the Christian life. People who by persistence in doing good are seeking for “glory, honor and immortality.” To them, He's going to give eternal life. "But for those who are self-seeking, who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger." Who's that? Non-Christians. Then he says the same thing doubled up. “There will be trouble and distress for everyone, every human being who does evil, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile,” Romans 2:10, “but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, for God does not show favoritism.” So Jesus is a perfect fruit inspector, and He will inspect the fruit of your life. He will have the full record of your words, He'll have the full record of your deeds. And He will evaluate your heart perfectly accurately based on the works. But you will not be forgiven or saved on the basis of your good works. Does that make sense? Just evaluated. Was there saving faith? If so, there's definitely going to be these good works. I've had to say that I don't want you drawing that back down on it. I see it in my own heart. You do something wrong, you have to do something right to make up for it. Don't do that, go to the cross, go and pray, ask for forgiveness, and then get up by the power of the Spirit, and start living a works-filled Christian life again. Alright now, God's workmanship is on us and around us concerning these good works and that's awesome, isn't it? It's really exciting. “We are God's workmanship created in Christ is to do good works.” So, that means that God prepares us for the good works, God crafts us, He shapes us, and without that craftsmanship in our lives, we will not do the good works. That means all of your good works are a display of God's glory. To God be the glory for all of the good works, because He got you ready to do them. Now, His workmanship is done through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. He makes us a new creation. We're born again, we're made new, created new, without that no good works are possible. So, wait a minute pastor, you're saying that non-Christians do no good works? Yes, that's what I'm saying. Non-Christians do zero good works because none of it's done by faith. And “anything that's not from faith is sin,” anything not done for the glory of God is sin. So, they do none. We now ,as Christians born again, we now can do good works. We're able to do good works, and that's awesome. Now, He then continues to work on us, to craft us for more and more good works. How is he do that, by pouring the Bible into you? Just pouring scripture into you by your daily quiet time, by the sermons that you listen to, the books you read, the conferences you go to, the conversations you have, Bible study groups you're part of, just everything you do alone and in groups. He's getting you ready by the ministry of the Word of God for good works. Fruit And all of this is based on our union with Jesus Christ. Look at the verse again, “we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus.” So we are created new creations in Christ Jesus. It's all by union with Jesus. We do our good works in union with Christ by the Holy Spirit, not alone. Clearest passage on this is John 15, Jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the branches. If anyone remains in me, you will bear much good fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing." That's powerful, isn't it? So as we abide in Jesus by prayer and by the Word, and stay close to Him and walk with Him by the power of the Spirit we'll do good works, we do it in Christ Jesus to His glory. Apart from me, you can do nothing. So God is working on us. God’s Workmanship on Us and Ahead of Us Both Sides of the Equation Now, it's so cool about all this, is God works both sides of the equation. He works on us for the good works and He gets the good works ready for us. That is really exciting, isn't it. Clearest example of this in the Bible, I think, is in Acts chapter 10, the story of Cornelius and Peter, do you remember that story? So Cornelius was a Gentile, a Roman centurion, who was a God-fearing man, interested, very interested in the Jewish religion, fasting, praying, doing lots of good works, but not converted. And one day an angel appears to him, and said, “Cornelius your good works have come up as a memorial offering before God, send men to Joppa to find a man named Peter who's staying in a house of the house of Simon, a tanner, he will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved. So he's not saved by all of his good works, but an angelic messenger said, Now, go send to get this man Peter.” Alright, so that's God working that side of the equation. Now, the next day, Peter gets up for his quiet time and he's having his quiet time, and putting one of those flat Middle Eastern roofs and he gets hungry. Isn't it funny how God uses little things, and so he's hungry and he asked for someone to make him a sandwich. Sorry, they didn't have sandwiches back then. Anyway, to make himself lunch or breakfast or whatever it was and while the meals being prepared he has a vision, he falls into a trance and has a vision, you remember. And how there was this large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners and the sheet contained all kinds of unclean animals and reptiles, and nasty things that Jews can’t eat. And the voice came from Heaven, "Arise Peter. Kill and eat." And Peter did what Peter does. He said, "Never Lord", four times he says, Never Lord, look it up. That was the last of the four. And that's after the resurrection, and the ascension into Heaven, “Never Lord.” Don't ever say, “Never Lord,” don't do that. Alright. If it's the Lord speaking and say “Yes Lord,” alright? "Never Lord, I have never eaten anything impure or unclean." And the voice comes a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." God is able to declare foods clean, that were unclean before and he's able to make people clean who were unclean before, but he didn't understand all that, he's just like, "What is this?” And it happened three times. Then the men from Cornelius appear at the gate. And the Spirit tells him, "Get up Peter and go with these men, don't be afraid to go with them." So they traveled back and they get to Cornelius' house, which Peter as a law-abiding Jew, would never have entered that home, and would never have had a meal with them, wouldn't have had anything to do with them because they're unclean. He understood, “wait a minute, I get it.” And as he's preaching the message the Holy Spirit falls on them and they become brothers and sisters in Christ by faith in the Gospel. He said, “Now I understand that God does not show favoritism, but accepts men from every nation who love him and believe him and do what's right.” And he learned a lesson there. He wasn't done learning, read about in Galatians 2, another day, we'll talk about, I already did, look on the Internet, I already preached that sermon. God’s Good Works are “Prepared in Advance” But yeah, he has not done learning yet, but God got both sides of the equation ready. Do you see that? He's doing that all the time, He's getting people ready for you, and you ready for those people. I don't just mean in terms of missions or evangelism everything. It could be another Christian brother or sister who's got a need, and He's getting her ready or him ready for you and you ready for that person, and it's just beautiful. God prepares these works in advance. Andy did a great job of emphasizing that. I mean, God has gone ahead of us. I like that it's redundant, “prepared in advance.” You know, that's redundant, don't you? All preparation is done advance. Imagine if your friends came, and there was no meal ready and you're like, what's going on and all that, and it's like maybe your friends say, “I thought we were coming in for dinner.” “Oh yeah, we're going to prepare it after you leave.” Well, that doesn't make any sense. Alright, preparation happens ahead of time, but Paul strengthens it with some extra phraseology, and says “God has gone ahead of you and gotten everything ready.” So I had this picture in my mind a number of months ago of how at Lowes you can do these kits, like you can go make a bird feeder, and you get there and everything's laid out. All of the pieces are cut. There's this little dish with the right amount of glue, and you've got all the tools, and just put it together. Do you like it like at Christmas time especially Christmas Eve. “Some Assembly Required,” isn't that cool? No, it's not cool. Not at 3 in the morning. Some Assembly Required, “tab A,” “slot B,” and all that. By the way, never put tab A in slot B, that's the problem. Put tab A in slot A please, alright. As a mechanical engineer, I had to say that. At any rate, some assembly required, these good works, we have something to do with them. God wants us to put it together and do it and it's awesome. It's very, very exciting. So every day the day is a masterpiece of good works, the day as I said, crackling and sparkling and filled with possibility, and energy and good things worth doing. So how far in advance does God get these good works ready? Minutes? Hours? Years? Centuries? Yes, all of the above, the complexity is beyond the brain to calculate. When it comes to, let's say, the mission field for example, there are many stories told of traditions, tribal stories passed down from generation to generation that got that tribe ready to hear the missionaries to come. Don Richardson tells the story in Peace Child, the Sawi people in Irian Jaya who had a tradition of a peace child, where warring tribes would exchange the son of the chief, and as long as that child was alive there could be reconciliation piece between the tribe. He used it as what he called the redemptive analogy. A way to explain the Gospel. They've been doing that for time immemorial. They didn't know when they started that. That was worked in providentially in that tribe. I heard another story, once of another tribe in a jungle area and they had passed down a prophecy by word of mouth of a man with yellow hair was coming with leaves with some kind of writing on it that would come and tell them the way to know the Most High God. Is there any chance that missionary is going to be bald or red-headed? No! Yellow hair. Imagine the mission agency, they don't know about the prophecy, they know nothing, and they're like, “Yeah, I like this guy, he's got yellow hair.” That's their requirement for the job, but God got that tribe ready to hear the Gospel in advance even, I don't know, centuries in advance or it could be just an individual encounter that God prepares. When we were missionaries in Japan, I had the experience of going, every Saturday, I would go to Takamatsu and I would take a train from Tokushima to Takamatsu and teach the Bible in English there, and then I would take the train back. And one thing I noticed on that train ride is that Japanese people didn't like sitting next to me. And listen, I was looking after my hygiene, I was doing what I needed to do whatever it was necessary but it just, I frequently had an empty seat next to me. The train could be crowded. So after a while, I kind of liked it. I actually used it, just put my books there, I had a little more space and it was good. But you know, until one day, a young man came, college-age, and asked if he could sit next to me, Japanese man. I said “Sure.” So I moved my books, and he sat down, and we got in a conversation. It turned out his mother is a Christian, but he's not a Christian, not yet, and he had questions about Christianity. He didn't sit down to talk about Christ, he just sat down. But we got into an incredible conversation about an hour long train ride and it led to many other Bible studies and he eventually came to faith in Christ and he said, after that happened, he said, "I think it was God's work in my life that I sat next to you on the train. I'm usually very shy, and I don't talk to strangers. And so God was working in him and in me to get us ready for that encounter. Walking Daily in a Pathway of Good Works “That We Should Walk in Them” And it's a pathway of good works, it says literally that we should “walk in them.” The NIV just simply says for us to do. I like "walk in” better so I like quote the NIV until I get to the end of that verse and say that we “should walk in them.” Is that okay? Anyway, that's what I do. “For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.” So, again, I get this picture of like tunnel vision, and this is the road ahead of me and I need to do these good works, this is how I'm going to make my way through my life. And Mondays works are not Tuesdays works and Tuesdays works are not Wednesdays works, and I can never go backward and do yesterday's works and I honestly can't go ahead and do tomorrow's works. I've got today's works to do today. And so we need to redeem the time, don't we? We'll get to that in Ephesians 5, but we need to make the most of every day, “redeeming the time because the days are evil.” So what kind of good works? Two Categories Well, he didn't say what kind, but I'm going to break them into two categories. Here in our church, we talk about the internal journey and the external journey. The internal journey is sanctification, or growth in Christ-likeness, growth in holiness, sanctification and good works. And then the external journey, is works you do in service to other people. You could say external, what either external to me, it could be both Christians and non-Christians are external to the church is non-Christians as we're reaching out. Okay, so two categories that I'm commending to you. Sanctification and service. Those are two main categories of good works that God wants you to do, that you should walk in, or another way to put it would be works of growing and works of going. So if you like the alliteration, I will give you two versions of alliteration. Sanctification and service if you like the letter S, growing and going if you like the letter G, and you like the rhyme. But the point is that you would be “growing in grace in the knowledge of Christ” internally and going out to serve other people in whatever way God has determined. Both are needed. Now, concerning the internal works, you are to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” you are to “grow in the grace and the knowledge of Christ.” How do you do that? Daily quiet times. Get up and have a time in God's Word every day, and have a time in prayer every day. Also you're to grow by being a covenant member of a good, local church and receiving the benefits of the Body of Christ as they pour into you, as people hold you accountable, as people speak into your life and you do the same, so good works of growing that will feed your soul. You have to, by the Spirit. Romans 8:13, "by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the flesh.” That's a work you have to do, if you're tempted in some area of lust, or weakness, or sin, you have to work and put that sin to death that's something you do by the power of the Holy Spirit. So those are works of sanctification. And then there are works of service. So everyday life, just deeds you do with your hands, with your mouth, with your feet, things you do to serve others, and they could be menial and mundane. It could be just everyday stuff you do around the house. It could be like emptying the dish-washer or loading the dishwasher. It could be vacuuming, it could be chores. It says in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God,” the name of Jesus Christ. Do even the most menial things, those are some of the good works that you do. And we don't neglect them. But we also do good works toward other Christians by means of our spiritual gifts and so we're going to get to that later. I'm not going to say much about spiritual gifts now, but Ephesians 4, is all about it. But there it says in Ephesians 4 that, “to each one of us grace has been apportioned as Christ measured it out,” that Christ has given you. Each of you, a spiritual gift package, by which you can serve other brothers and sisters in Christ and advance the Gospel. And so you need to know what your spiritual gifts are and do your spiritual gift ministry. And there are other things that don't have anything to do directly with spiritual gifts but just ministries of care and compassion for other Christians, ministry of mercy. Going to visit people in the hospital, making a meal for a couple that just had a baby, or it has a medical need, there might be works of financial generosity where you see a financial need and you meet it financially. Home fellowship starts tonight. The works of just getting the house ready and hosting a home fellowship are good works that God's prepared in advance for you to walk in, beautiful works that bless others. Works of hospitality. Then there's works of evangelism and missions, reaching out to lost people. And that's something I just have a heart for in our church, that's the future of our church that we would grow and flourish more than ever before. In works of outreach of evangelism, external journey ministry. I am yearning for us to help, like the elders, to help people become better evangelists in their world. It's staggering to me, all the different mission fields you folks are going to go scatter to this week. All the workplaces, and schools, and neighborhoods, and malls, and shopping areas, and all these things. You're going to go throughout this week, and it is up to us to prepare God's people for works of service, “so that the body of Christ can be built up,” it says in Ephesians, get you ready for that. Application So one of the things that I would commend to you is the idea in terms of evangelism, say, "Lord, I want to be a witness. Would you please today give me someone to talk to? Just give me someone to talk to. And Lord, make me alert to it, I pray for that, and I want to be faithful, I'm willing to be bold but I don't need to even share the Gospel, I just want to talk to somebody knowing that my desire is to be evangelistic, but I want to just be more social, more outgoing and connect with somebody. Connect that also if you would with a challenge I'd like to give to each member of our church. That a year from now, somewhere between now and a year from now, you will develop a list of five people that are lost, you know them to be lost, by name that you're praying for, for them to come to Christ. I'm not saying you should evangelize them. I'm kind of saying that, we'll get to that another time, but I'm just saying that you're praying for them now, that's all, you're just praying for those five names. Now if you say, "I don't have five names,” then just go get them. Go to the same convenience store every week until you know the name of the person who's there on Monday evenings, find out what his name is or her name is. Ask if there's some way you could pray for them. They'll usually tell you something, even if they shut you down, you can still get their name. And just they're one of your people and then just until you've got five, all of us can do this. And then Home fellowships, I urge you to just hold each other accountable, who are you five? Well, I've got two, great praise God. Be positive, no guilt, just positive. Great. Who are you two? I'll pray for you for those two. So, we're going to do in our home fellowship this year and it's something I want to urge you to do. We are God's workmanship created for evangelistic good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to walk in. At some point as you're pleading with God to send some missionary or evangelist to this person, it might be you and God might just work that in your heart. So, assess yourself. As you listen to this sermon, assess yourself. It says in 1 Timothy 6:18, “they are to do good and to be rich in good works, to be generous, and ready to share.” Talking about the rich there, but I think it's true there. Are you rich in good works? That's what I'm asking you, just look at your life. Are you rich in good works? Do you feel a sense of excitement about God crafting you to do a specific array of good works today and in your lifetime? Do you look at every day as unique in terms of God going ahead of you, preparing good works for you to do? Are you doing the daily good works of internal holiness, daily quiet time, Bible intake, prayer, putting sin to death by the Spirit, is that happening for you? Are you feeding on God's word? And are you using your spiritual gifts? Do you have a spiritual gift ministry here at FBC [First Baptist Church of Durham]? Are you doing a pattern of good works? If not, just find out, say, "Lord I want to, give me a ministry here,” and then evangelistically reaching out, as I've shared. Close with me in prayer. Prayer Father, this is such good news, it's such a blessing to know that you have eternally significant, good works for us to do that we're not justified by works, we are no more children of God because we do the good works than before we did them, and we're no less if we should miss some, and we feel terrible, and we ask forgiveness for being selfish, or we're cowardly and not doing the good works, but Lord, we're secure, we're children of God, but Lord, we want to please you, and we want to do these good works. Lord, open our eyes to them, and help us by the Spirit to walk in those good works in Jesus' name. Amen.