First Thessalonians 3:11-13 Paul's prayer for the Thessalonians
1 Thessalonians 3:11-13 · Roger Henderson · Apr 18, 2021
Thessalonians, No. 12
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261922305498

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right, so we're looking at the last part of chapter three today. This is including three verses, and this is Paul's prayer for the Thessalonians. And actually, I started looking at this and thought, well, this might be a pretty dull section, dull in quotes, but it turns out to be a pretty interesting section with a lot of interesting thoughts about our Savior. So let's just kind of get into this. So the outline, I'm just gonna go through it quickly here. This is from Macaulay, as we usually do.

We've been covering the reports from Timothy about the Thessalonians, about their faith, love, and their attitude. And then we spent quite a bit of time in the seven through 10 talking about various aspects. One of the aspects was the comfort through your faith. They were encouraged by their faith.

And then today we're going to talk about this prayer, or this strong desire, we'll see, that comes across from Paul for the Thessalonians, and that they'd be able to visit them again, because they were apart from him now when he's writing the letter, and his love for them. And actually, the prayer is really, it's a prayer to God on behalf of the Thessalonians. So you have to kind of read carefully. It's Paul's praying to God to do something in the life of the Thessalonian believers. So first of all, a prayer that they might see them face to face again. Secondly, that their love for one another would increase and abound. And then third, for their stability of mind.

And then he kind of wraps it up with a rapture verse. You know, this is a book of the rapture we're going to see. And so this will be the second verse that talks about, verse 13, that talks about the rapture, that talks about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn't look that way when you read initially, but I believe it is. So let's kind of get into this here. Okay. So the verses we're going to cover are 11 through 13. I'm going to go back to 10. Let me read 11 through 13 on what happened in 10 that preceded these verses.

Well, starting in verse 11, it says, Now may our God and father himself and Jesus Christ, our Lord, and direct your ways and direct our ways to you. So they want to go to the Thessalonians. And may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another. and for all people, just as we also do for you, so that he may establish you, God, he may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all the saints. So if you look back, I think Bob taught verse 10, previously. Verse 10 actually is a precursor and kind of gives some ideas about what his prayer will be. Because back in verse 10, if you have your Bibles, in 310, 1 Thess 310, we see it says, and we night and day prayed most earnestly that we may see your face.

They wanted to see their face. So that's verse 11. He's going to pray again about that and complete what is lacking in your faith. And it seems like that what is lacking in their faith, or what he wants to increase, is their love for one another. And he wants their stability, they want to be stable, not thrown about, as it says, by every wind of doctrine. He wants them to be stable believers. And that's amplified in these three verses. So 10 kind of sets the stage, and then 11 through 13 kind of gives a prayer of Paul. Okay, so let's go to verse 11.

So I have it here in the interlinear. It reads a little roughly, but hopefully you'll get across what I want to point out. In the interlinear it reads, now God himself, even the father of us, and the Lord of us, Jesus, may he direct the ways of us to you. Okay.

So now he says, now based upon the discussion about his desire to see the Thessalonians, We see that you know if you look in what's been helpful to me is to look through I have this this great tool to help me to see the Subject verb and direct object in the original and I can put the English in there and understand it The subject of this is a big long subject It's got him's got himself even the father of us and the Lord of us Jesus. That's that's the subject So what comes across here? Macaulay kind of picked it up too. It's neat when I can see something from the diagramming and then also Macaulay kind of verified that the words Father and Jesus are linked by and making a joint subject. So we have a joint subject here.

Father and Jesus want to direct our ways. So several things come out of this subject that are really good about the Godhead. First of all, so it says God himself, The Father is God, and Jesus is God. And we see that, of course, in many other places. One of the places we see it is in John 10, 30, where it says, I and the Father are one. And when Christ said that, everything just blew up. The Jews just went ballistic, as we'd say today. They got their stones ready, and they were going to stone him, because he was saying he was God. And that's exactly what he meant. So this verse kind of reaffirms that, that God is the Father of us and the Lord of us. And all believers have this relationship with the Father and with the Lord Jesus, which is what's really cool. So that's one of the cool things. It just comes out just to the subject of this clause here.

So let's go on to the verb here. The verb here is may he direct, may he direct. And it's the idea to make straight. It means to guide or direct one's way. And may direct is, and this is interesting, you look through the different, every Greek verb has subject, mood, and voice. And most moods, we don't think, we don't talk too much about the mood. A lot of times it's indicative, which is a statement of fact. Well, it turns out in this case, it's one of the rare cases where you have a mood of what's called optive. May direct represents the octave move in the Greek text, which expresses a strong wish, often a prayer.

So we're gonna see that Paul uses this strong desire, this strong prayer on behalf of the Thessalonians. May he direct. And we also see it when we get to chapter two, we get to second Thessalonians, we'll see it in another situation. And it's the Lord this time, may the Lord direct your hearts in the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ. So Paul's beseeching the Lord, praying the Lord with a strong desire for his Thessalonian brothers and sisters. He wants them, and he wants basically to seek, he wants to direct his ways to them.

And so ways of Paul, and he said us, I assume he means Paul, Silas, and Timothy, who were mentioned earlier in the book. And the constable says, he's asked God his father and Jesus Christ his Lord to clear the way so that his fellow missionaries could return to the Thessalonians.

Okay, so that's, all right, so that's verse 11. So we got the, this is verse 11 is that his first prayer is about directing their ways to the Thessalonians. He wants to return and see them. Okay, so now we go on to verse 12. Okay, so now he says, this is kind of part two of his prayer. May the Lord cause you to increase and to abound. So this is a twofold thing he wants to happen.

First, in love for one another and in love for all people. So he's asking the Lord, praying to the Lord with a strong desire to increase, that their love would increase, to increase and to abound, into two people groups. One, one another is typically the brethren, the brothers and sisters in Christ, and all people are everyone else. So God has a desire for us as believers to love one another, and that's actually our primary focus, but also we're to have love for all people. So let's look at that. So the subject here is Lord. And once again, he's praying to God about this on the behalf of the Thessalonians.

May cause to increase. And this word is to cause, to have much. And we have here, to increase and to abound are, we have one subject, the Lord, and we have a compound verb, to increase and to abound. So this is a part of this compound verb. The cause to have much or to increase. Once again, it's the optive mood.

So this is a strong desire on Paul's part, asking God for an increase in their agape love. You know, love most times, if you look in scripture, is this word, this Greek word agape, which is God's love. God's love that took the initiative, wouldn't wait for man to love him. He loved him irrespective of what man did. He loved him because he's God and created him.

Okay, so that's the first part. The second part is to abound, this is the second verb, to abound in love for one another. And to abound is to cause to abound, to make, to overflow. So that's part B of this compound verb. And it's once again based upon these two aspects.

He wants them to increase and to abound. And we have a third occurrence of this optive mood, strong desire. And I looked up, you know, I kind of looked at other verses. I like to do that, look at other verses that have the same word that I'm studying. This word, to abound. So it's used in 2 Corinthians, and it says, and God is able to make all grace abound to you. So that's in terms of grace, but he wants, Paul's desire is that their love would abound. He wanted it to increase, now he wants it to abound.

In love for one another. Okay, so a verse that we're gonna see shortly here in the next chapter, in chapter four, now as to the love of the brethren, And this is really cool. The question comes up, well how are we going to accomplish this love for one another? Love among the body of Christ, within the brethren.

So verse 9 in chapter 4 tells us, Now as to love the brethren, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. So this kind of goes back to kind of some fundamental things. How are we taught by God? And we know a lot of these probably already. We probably remember verses that talk about that. But one that came to my mind was the one in 1 John.

1 John 2.27.

And this talks about the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And it says, as as for you, the anointing which you receive from him abides in you and you have no need for anyone to teach you. But as his abiding teaches you about all things and it's true and it's not a lie and just as it has been taught to you, abide in him. So this this uses a phraseology of the anointing. And that links back to the Holy Spirit.

If you remember, when the Lord Jesus left, he said, I'm going to send another, another of the same kind, and he will guide you into all the truth. He won't speak in his own initiative. Whatever he hears, he will speak. And he will reveal to you what I said. He will show you. The Holy Spirit is to show us. He's going to teach us. He's going to teach us about And so, to my mind, I think that kind of connects in with this idea and our love for one another. We're taught by God, by His Spirit.

And we're taught by, and there's actually another verse I have in the next chart that I want to share too here. But let's look, I had another little, Paul's desire for them was to walk in the truth of what they have been taught. And this other verse, I put it over here in this next chart. This is just such a magnificent verse.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. So we know we find, right, that we really can't love one another of ourselves. It has to be God's love. because love is from God. We didn't invent love. Man thinks he made it. Some people are foolish enough to think they have, but love is from God. True love is from God. And to love our brothers and sisters, that love must have its origin in God. So these verses just have a lot of really cool, basic stuff in them.

And if you have questions, we can try to go back and forth here. If not, I'll just kind of carry on here. Okay, so let's carry on here. Okay, so the second part of this, so we talked about love for the brethren, for all people. I'm sorry, we talked about love for one another. Now we're gonna talk about in love for all people. And there aren't as many, at least I didn't find as many verses. One verse that kind of shows up, it talks about the Galatians, Ten, it talks about, let us do good to all people.

So that takes in all the unbelieving people, and especially to those who are the household of faith. And this is what we commonly see God is interested in, and it demonstrates His love, that we love one another in the body of Christ, but we are to do good.

This reminds me of a story from my work. There was this gentleman, he was a believer, kind of a interesting guy. If you met him, he was a character, but he loved the Lord. So in the mornings when I pass him in the hall, he would say, good morning. And he said, well, how are you doing? And I would say, well, I'm good. And he'd say, brother, he said, there's only one that's good. And if you refer to that verse in Mark 10, it talked about no one is good except God alone. So doing good to all people really is, you know, good doesn't sound like it's a whole lot, but there's a whole lot involved in that.

So that was interesting. All right, so let's carry on here. Another thing I had here. Yeah, okay, the second part is believers' love is to increase and overflow even more among themselves and toward all people. So that two-part process is to increase.

Paul's prayer is that the Thessalonians' love would increase and abound and to the brothers in Christ, in their midst, and to all people. So that's his prayer in 12 there. So now, and it says, and so then the last part of this, he points out that just as we, Paul, Silas, and Timothy, also do for you. So I said, I kind of scratched my head and I said, well, where do I find the verses that talk about the love that Paul had for the Thessalonians? Well, the first thing that struck me was the very beginning of this book in chapter one.

He says, we give thanks, the three of them, I give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers. So he, right at the very beginning, he was showing his love for them, praying for them. You show your love for your brothers and sisters as you pray for them. And then constantly, verse three, constantly bearing in mind, he was looking at their ministry, if you will, your work of faith, your labor of love, the steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus, And then the fourth verse is knowing brethren, knowing brethren beloved by God, his choice of you. He realized that that they were chosen of God, as is every believer. So that's, you know, something to think about. Every believer that we intercount and have an engagement with is has been chosen. That's part of being a believer.

So anyway, there probably are more, but that's kind of what kind of came to mind that He points out that he's praying for them about their love and he says just and he gives an example of the love that he had for them Okay, so now we go on to verse 13, which is Now the climax of this chapter here Okay, so he says so that he may establish your hearts so so that Kind of look, you know, so that is a is a you can translate with a purpose that so he said I want you to increase and abound in your love for one another and for all people and Here's the purpose. This is a purpose. It has a purpose. It wants to produce something. It's gonna it's gonna do something.

It's gonna That God may establish your heart. So I mean, you know, it's kind of scratch your head and you say wow, I My love for my brothers and sisters and for all people is gonna establish my heart. How does that work? And he doesn't necessarily explain that, but he just says, he states that, so that, or the purpose that, he may establish your hearts. And he goes on without blame and holiness before God and so on. But anyway, that connection was really interesting. So the idea here is that the verb is may establish, to fix, to make fasts, he wants to strengthen them. You know, we talk about many times growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Jesus, Lord Jesus Christ. Well, that's to, why do we study scripture? Why do we interact with God's word? Why do we pray? You know, that has a stabilizing force in our life. And that's what God intended. That's our, that's the milk or the meat of the word that causes us to grow and causes us to have stability.

So once again, this is Paul's prayer. He wants God to establish their hearts, and it seems like the connectivity from the previous verse is in view here. And that's why I state in this little bullet, loving one another and God's established your heart without blame and holiness are interrelated. And I wouldn't have thought of that without this verse. It wouldn't have come to mind, but Paul states it, so we accept it as God's truth. Okay, and then here's one that kind of, so I want to kind of move on to the idea about without blame and holiness before God.

So 1 Peter 1.22 says, since you have an obedience to the truth, purified your souls for sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart. So this kind of, This kind of ties it together, too. It talks about obedience to the truth purifies your soul. There's a purifying effect about interacting with God's word.

And we'll see it in other verses, too. Actually, I have another one I wanted to quote, too, here. Yeah, okay, so the other verse that came to mind is one in 1 John again. You know, the effect of interacting with our Savior and with his word. 1 John 1, chapter one, verse seven.

And this just talks about our walking with the Lord. But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin. So there is a purifying effect as we, as our brother Howie said, we hang out with the Lord, as we fellowship with the Lord through his word and in prayer. There is a purifying and cleansing effect that that has, that scripture talks about.

Okay, so let's go on here. So actually, okay, in your heart, so I'm gonna keep going here. So he wants to establish your hearts, blameless in the sphere of holiness, he says. So just kind of backing up. So we know that as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are blameless in holiness because we are in him. We've been baptized into him, placed into him, and that's our position. And we count upon our position.

Well, it seems like Paul is, asking them to make this real in their life. His desire or prayer for them is to have their condition equal their position. That's what he wants to happen. But this is looking forward to an event that's going to happen. And that's what I kind of found in studying this. I kind of found that some people had kind of went off in strange directions. I'm not going to tell you all those rabbit trails, but there are a lot of rabbit trails. You can see if you look through a lot of the commentaries. So this verse kind of came to mind.

First John 3, 2, Beloved, now we are children of God and has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when we, when he appears, we will be like him because we will see him just as he is. And here's the part that just really talks about this. cool thing that is going on. And everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself just as he is pure. So there's a cleansing effect. There's a cleansing effect by interacting with God's word, realizing the truths of God's word, walking in those truths, abiding in those truths. That's where the Lord would have us be.

Okay, so now we're gonna move on to the middle part here. Okay. All right. So now the last part, and this probably is the most challenging part of the verse. It says, I'll just go back to the beginning. So that he may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. So let me just tell you my little journey with this verse and studying it. And actually, I looked at it before and I probably knew, I probably had forgotten what I had studied before, but anyway, my first thought is, well, is this referring to the, and the Lord, he says, coming with all his saints. Sounds like it means he's coming, this is what we call the second coming, he's coming with power and great glory.

But you know, the more I studied it, the more I looked at it, I said, no, I don't think it's talking about that. I think it's talking about something different. So let's see what we have here. So here's a verse I have, and I've changed the preposition here. It's a couple things it could be.

So it says, before our God and Father, it's either at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, or it could be in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. with all his saints. So this looks very familiar. If we go back to chapter 2, we covered a verse that talks about his coming again. And it says in chapter 2, 19, the B part, it is not even you, Thessalonians, in or at the presence, and presence of can be before our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming.

So looking at those two verses, the verse 13 here and 219, and you look at those two verses, there are three things that are similar about those verses. It uses the same preposition, en, e-n in the Greek, that's either translated at or in, and it uses this word, it's before, in our verse, 13, and it's the presence of, in our verse, and then thirdly, it uses the word coming. So we're going to look at all those three aspects. So we've already kind of looked, just because I have it up there, the preposition and en can be translated at or in. I think it has about the same, at is coming or in is coming, approximately the same idea. So the next part of this is the word before or presence of. And this word is used of places or positions with a meaning in the sight of a person.

So it's the idea that you can see the person. You can, I can, I only have one person in the class today. All the rest of the people are off making merry at some place. I mean, they deserve it. But, so Marilyn, she's here today and I can, I'm in the sight of a person, I can see her. Okay, so that's kind of the idea.

There's a verse here that talks about that. It says, but, in a negative sense, but though the, This is talking about Christ. But though he had performed so many signs before them, or in the presence of them, yet they were not believing in him. So the idea here is that you're in his, before him, or in his presence, is the idea of in his sight. You can see each other. He can see you, and you can see him. So that's the middle part of this.

And then actually, I looked in Vern's notes, and Vern has this, Commentary which I'm going to share with other teachers, which is pretty cool, but he has this note. He hasn't here Paul uses his same construction concerning presence slash before in 219 and 313 His presence is used concerning a face-to-face encounter So this idea of before our God and father or in the presence is the idea. There's a face-to-face encounter So what face-to-face encounter is he talking about? Okay, that's a as I used to say, a $64 question, right?

I'm dating myself here. OK, then the third part of this is the word coming, parousia. And this word, it's a compound word in the Greek, a presence, para, and with, pousia. I'm sorry, paras with and we see a being. So it denotes two things. It denotes both an arrival and a consequent presence with. So we have an arrival and presence. That's what the word parasia means.

Okay, so actually we see it used here in 2 Peter, and it's used in the transfiguration And so here's, I'll just read the 2nd Peter 1.16.

This is describing the Mount Transfiguration where they saw Christ. Disciples saw Christ. For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we were made known to you the power and coming, parousia, of our Lord Jesus, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. So they're saying that when the coming of our Lord Jesus to the Mount of Transfiguration, we saw him.

And there's a whole description of that in the Gospels. And they saw what he was doing, he was talking with people and they interacted with him. And then he vanished, but they were in his presence. Okay, so at this point, I believe this passage, I'll just read it again, has to be talking about the rapture. And maybe it's hard to see.

It says, so that he may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all the saints. Now, you can think of it, once we're caught up to meet the Lord in the air, we're in his presence, right? So I think that helped me. So what I did here, I also had from Vern's notes, I had a listing.

There are nine occurrences of parousia. So I'm just going to go through these briefly. And actually, there's a whole bunch here in Thessalonians. So let's just start. So the first occurrence is in 1 Corinthians 15.23. Christ, the firstfruits after those who are Christ at his coming. of Parousia. You are hope in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming.

We say that one first Thessalonians 2.19, then our verse today, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all the saints, the third one. So we've got two Thessalonians here, and here's the third one coming up. We who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, 4.15. You be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's in chapter five of 1 Thessalonians. With regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and the gathering together to him.

That's gonna be in 2 Thessalonians. And then we have something in James here. Be patient therefore brethren until the coming of the Lord 5-7 and then another one in the following verse strengthen your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand and lastly We shall not shrink away from him in shame at his coming 1st John 2 28 OK, so that's the nine occurrences.

I have the ones in blue that we're going to study. We're going to have a chance to study all the ones after this first, 415, 523, and then chapter 221. And maybe we'll get a chance to look at some of those, whoever's teaching that one. So to kind of sum up here, I found in studying this is a bunch of people went off in all kinds of different directions, but I thought this is a Looking at that as a rapture passage was the correct view. So also I found someone else who thought that too. It's always good to find. So J. Vernon McGee says, he has a couple of paragraphs here.

He says, therefore, speaking of this verse, verse 13, at the coming of our Lord Jesus refers to the fact that believers are going to be present with the Lord at the very moment that we are caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So that this coming does not refer to the return of the Lord with his saints to establish his kingdom, but to our coming to heaven into the presence of the Father. I've always thought, you know, trying to distinguish between the rapture and the second coming. In the rapture, there's so many things you can list, but if you had to list, you know, we're going up, right? We're caught up to meet the Lord in the air. At the second coming, we're coming down, so to speak, with our Savior. He's coming down, we're going up. So this is a going up one, which is pretty cool. And then lastly, J. Vermagee says, we will come into the presence of the Lord Jesus, and at that time, we will be presented unblameable in holiness before God. So I thought that was just really pretty amazing.

And so I've actually hadn't let any of you guys talk. Do you have any thoughts or questions? We have a few minutes to chat here if you want. So Andrew, I think you get to teach the rapture if I looked at the schedule. OK, yeah. Yeah, in a couple of weeks. Yeah. So hopefully this is helpful. Oh, yeah. And I think I would read that as like you as the second coming. Right. But when we talk about the Lord Jesus coming, the coming of the Lord Jesus with all of saints, it's because we that's just our definition that we use. Right. Second coming. We're coming with him or the rapture. He's coming for us.

But that's really just our definition we use in this church and a lot of other churches for His saints or with the saints. So when you see that phrase, your mind automatically goes to the second coming. But it could mean that, like you say, the establishing of our hearts with all the saints. So, yeah, it's a tough little test. Hey, can I say something? Sure, go ahead, Mike. Okay, I was thinking about the Ascension, and we have already ridden His train to glory. you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Well, we're and he gave gifts to man at that point, right?

You know, at salvation but uh that takes me to heaven positional truth and you know, then there's the beam of seed and everything uh that happen in uh uh to the earth. Um we have our gifts which we do now uh that we share I think with the people in the kingdom. You know, I just think comparing it with the rapture and the Yeah, somewhat, uh, you know, I, what occurred to me that this verse actually gives me some new light on the fact of the, of the rapture, how, you know, we're going to be together with him. We know that from what the verse says, we're caught up to meet the Lord in the air. Well, this kind of says, Hey, this is, uh, you know, he's presenting, I mean, it's just like, here's my bride here. You know, it's, it's really, there's some cool things in this verse of the, the ponder.

A lot is unsaid, but a lot is said, enough to make it, and it compares well, as I tried to do with other passages that talk about the rapture, that talk about his coming. And that word parousia is kind of a key word in all the study of this, and people have spent a lot of time tracking that word through scripture, and it occurs actually a lot more than just the rapture passages. There's a whole, if you look that up in your, It occurs a lot more times. I didn't go into that, but it occurs those nine times in these rapture passages.

Yeah, boy, the hope we have in Christ and it's going to be a fantastic. Oh, just well, it is now, you know, because we're seated in heavenly places in Christ. It's so fantastic reading the Word and seeing all what's already been done and what will be done. You know what I was wondering, isn't the context of 1 Thessalonians, in general the rapture, Yes, it is.

I mean, that's what we're going to see here when we get to chapter four, which is next week. We're going to start into that. We're going to start into the rapture toward the end. And then the day of the Lord is kind of connected. It's what follows the rapture is the day of the Lord. And we're going to talk about that whole. So we're going to talk a lot more about this being the rapture of the body of Christ, basically. So yeah, it would make sense that that this was the rapture, right?

I agree. I agree. But but I think I agree with Andrew, too, that I look at that and the way I've heard it defined, we there's a kind of a phrase we use at Holly Hills. You know, it actually comes from Chafer, I believe. You know, Christ coming for his saints is is called the Chafer calls that the rapture. So Christ comes for his saints and then it then Schaeffer uses he comes with his saints at the second coming when he comes Establish his kingdom so that we use that phraseology, but that's that's a from a man He liked that phraseology, but that can kind of get in the way like in this passage whenever we see with his saints we think well that sounds like the Sounds like the second coming, but it's really the rapture.

So it's just, we have to be good students of the word and look carefully and try to understand what's really being said. Right, well, I guess it depends on which direction you're going. Are you going toward the earth or toward heaven? Exactly, I'm happy that we're going up. The coming down part, that's in the by and by, so to speak. I won't worry about that part, because it's the going up part that's important right now, right? I want to make sure we're going up. You see all these movies about the rapture and the people left on earth, but at that time when we are caught up into the air to meet the Lord, they projected the man on earth, well, as we leave this earth, like pilots and stuff planes will crash and all that, you know, is that true? Yeah, well, actually, I have an ongoing discussion. Bonnie isn't here. She's going to come, surely, to do music, but we have this ongoing discussion at home. I'm on the camp.

I think the Lord is not capricious. I think things will work out fine. The plane will come to land, will land just fine. These catastrophic things, I think, there's no evidence that that's going to happen. Right, yeah. I have a doubt. But Vani says, well, wait a minute. You're starting into the end times and the tribulation. It's going to be terrible times. Why can't it be chaotic? So I'm not sure you can exactly pin that down.

But we don't have to worry anyway. We're going up, right? We don't have to worry about what's... But God is brilliant. He can handle everything and he can land every plane every plane can land every I have no doubt about that But it's kind of cool they move I'm sure I do them so that there's you know, you can make points that Bill's putting his his comment into about the about all the children that were Christ's birth the pilot went and killed all the babies so bad things happened and when God entered the world and so, anyway, I don't know, we can... You know, but what these movies never proclaim is who the saints are in the heavenlies. The Bema Seat and... Oh yeah, right. The Olympic prizes, the crowns, you know. Right, right. That's a bummer. Well, we're gonna have to wrap it up here, so I'm gonna...

Dear Father, we thank you for our time today, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have, Lord. Thank you that we're going to be with you, Lord. That's a marvelous truth that is before us. We're thankful for that. There's many questions about people not going with you. We know that you're not willing that any should perish, that all should come to repentance. We pray that we would be getting your word out, telling people about our Savior. Thank you for our time. In Christ's name, amen.