{"id":18382,"date":"2017-01-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-08T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sugar-land-bible-church.local\/sermon\/daniel-007-gods-unshakeable-kingdom\/"},"modified":"2022-01-12T17:17:46","modified_gmt":"2022-01-12T23:17:46","slug":"daniel-007-gods-unshakeable-kingdom","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/slbc.org\/es\/sermon\/daniel-007-gods-unshakeable-kingdom\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel 007: God’s Unshakeable Kingdom"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","book":[72],"series_event":[467],"sermon_service_type":[472],"speaker":[6],"class_list":["post-18382","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","hentry","book-daniel","series_event-daniel","sermon_service_type-main-service","speaker-dr-andy-woods","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":{"sermon_title":"Daniel 007: God's Unshakeable Kingdom","sermon_date":"20170108","sermon_month":"1","sermon_year":"2017","sermon_notes":20068,"sermon_slides":20069,"sermon_mp3":20070,"sermon_id":"1817109300","series_or_event":467,"service_type":[472],"speaker":6,"books_of_the_bible":72,"chapter_and_verse":"2:37-45","sermon_transcript":"Andy Woods\n\nSUGAR LAND BIBLE CHURCH\n\nLesson 7, God\u2019s Unshakeable Kingdom, Daniel<\/a> 2:36-45\n\nJanuary 8, 2016\n\nGood morning everybody.\u00a0 If we could take our Bibles and open them to the book of Daniel, chapter 3 and verse 36.\u00a0 The title of our message this morning is God\u2019s\u00a0 Unshakeable Kingdom.\u00a0 And as you\u2019re turning there just a quick housekeeping matter\u2014church membership is something that we offer to people; it doesn\u2019t get you any brownie points with God necessarily but it\u2019s just a way of (in the eyes of man anyway) publicly identifying with a flock or a congregation.\u00a0 You fill out a little paperwork, have a meeting with the elders, and the last step is to publicly acknowledge someone as a new church member.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t here last week so I have no idea if we did this last week but\u2026 is Rick Miller here today?\u00a0 Could you stand up real quick Rick, we won\u2019t embarrass you too bad; Rick has joined Sugar Land Bible Church, let\u2019s give him a round of applause [clapping].\u00a0 And if we did this already you get it twice.\u00a0 Rick, as many of you know, is our State Rep in the Texas House so it\u2019s nice to have a man of God doing God\u2019s work in the devil\u2019s workshop, so we appreciate that.\u00a0 [clapping]\u00a0 I won\u2019t say anything more because this is on the internet (the IRS might be listening).\n\nAnyway, the book of Daniel, chapter 2, verse 36.\u00a0 I want to also thank Gabe Morris for filling in last week.\u00a0 Let\u2019s give Gabe a round of applause.\u00a0 [clapping]\u00a0 I really don\u2019t tell Gabe what to teach on; the subject of replacement theology is something he wanted to do and I\u2019m very excited, he didn\u2019t do a sermonette for Christianettes kind of thing but actually wanted to take you to a deep place and so I hope you\u2019re blessed by Gabe\u2019s messages on replacement theology and you\u2019ll have a chance to encourage him on the way out.\n\nDaniel 2:36. \u00a0Did you know that you as a child of God are on the precipice of receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken?\u00a0 Is anybody happy about that?\u00a0\u00a0 You\u2019ll find that promise in Hebrews 12:28, you don\u2019t have to turn there but you might mark that down.\u00a0 [Hebrews 12:28, \u201cTherefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe;\u201d]\u00a0 It\u2019s sort of something stable that we are citizens of that we are coming to receive and this is the type of promise that we can cling to\u00a0 in an unstable world, an unshakeable kingdom.\n\nAnd you might be asking yourself, well can you describe this unshakeable kingdom a little bit for us.\u00a0 I\u2019m very glad you asked that question because the book of Daniel, chapter 2, beginning in verse 36 and hopefully making it through verse 45 this morning, gives us tremendous details of this kingdom that\u2019s on the horizon. It even begins to describe the failing kingdoms of man which will precede this unshakeable kingdom that\u2019s coming.\n\nOf course God has strategically raised up this man, Daniel, to be His prophet during a very difficult time in the nation of Israel\u2019s history when the nation is being trampled down by various Gentile powers.\u00a0 She has actually been removed from her land through the disciplinary hand of God and is in deportation in Babylon, in a place called Iraq\u2026 now it doesn\u2019t say \u201cIraq\u201d in the Bible, does it?\u00a0 But modern day Iraq is ancient Babylon.\u00a0 This is where the nation of Israel went for 350 years and you can see how discouraging it would be for these Hebrews who had had their temple destroyed, they\u2019re being taken away into captivity, the Shekinah glory of God has left the temple, Ezekiel describes that.\u00a0 And you can understand how they would be without hope.\n\nAnd beyond that they need to know how to live for God because the only instructions they\u2019ve had thus far is they know how to live for God in the land of Israel but now they\u2019re living for God outside the land of Israel.\u00a0 So Daniel is raised up to give great prophecies about this time period and also to serve as a role model concerning how to live.\u00a0\u00a0 Because like Daniel, we are too living in a pagan society; the assumptions of the Bible are no longer held by our culture at large.\u00a0 So how do we live?\u00a0 What are we to do?\u00a0 What are we to do when we\u2019re challenged about our Christianity at the school, or at the work place?\u00a0 Daniel serves as a tremendous example for us in this regard.\n\nChapter 1 is really the introduction of the book; it sets the stage, the setting if you will, and from there we move into chapters 2-7 which we\u2019ve been studying for several weeks and we are focused on chapter 2.\u00a0 There\u2019s so much in chapter 2.\n\nHere is a very fast outline of chapter 2, first of all Nebuchadnezzar, the individual that God used to bring the nation into captivity, a Babylonian king, has s dream, Daniel 2:1.\u00a0 [Daniel 2:1, \u201cNow in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; and his spirit was troubled and his sleep left him.\u201d]\u00a0 The year is about 603 B.C.\u00a0 That\u2019s a very important date so keep that in mind as we go through this today.\u00a0 Daniel is probably about 17 years old as these events unfold, and Nebuchadnezzar lays down the gauntlet, verses 2-13, and gives an impossible challenge.\u00a0 In fact, this challenge is so great that only God could answer this challenge; the bar is so high that only God Himself could over the hurdle.\n\nNebuchadnezzar says to the wise men of Babylon, tell me the dream I had and its interpretation.\u00a0 I\u2019m not just going to tell you the dream and let you interpret it, you tell me the dream itself.\u00a0 And obviously only God of heaven can reveal something of this level.\u00a0 So verses 14-23 the dream is revealed to Daniel.\u00a0 And then we moved into verses 24-30 where Daniel actually recites the dream and interprets it for Nebuchadnezzar.\u00a0 It\u2019s at this point that Daniel explodes into praise to God because he realizes that the revelation he has receive did not come to him through a Chinese fortune cookie.\u00a0 It could not come to him through gazing at the stars. It could not come to him by reading Jeanne Dixon and the horoscope.\u00a0 It could not come to him by tapping into the Oprah Winfrey network.\u00a0 It could only come to him from God.\n\nAnd as Ed read the verses, verse 31-35 we now have the dream itself; first of all its contents and then its interpretation.\u00a0 As Ed was reading those verses what was described is a giant statue; the head was made of gold, the chest and arms were made of silver, the belly and thighs were made of brass, the legs were made of iron, the feed were made of iron and clay.\u00a0 And in this dream Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar both see a stone cut without human hands that strikes the statue at its most weak level, the feet, causing the entire statue to crumble.\u00a0 And then Daniel continues and Nebuchadnezzar in this dream sees the pieces of the broken statue spread out through the threshing floor.\n\nBeyond that he sees the wind driving these pieces away of the statue that\u2019s been crushed, and he sees this stone, which originally struck the statue, grow and grow and grow until it fills the whole earth.\u00a0 And that\u2019s the dream that troubled Nebuchadnezzar.\u00a0 This is the dream that was also given to Daniel and its interpretation.\n\nYou say well what does it mean?\u00a0 I\u2019m glad\u00a0 you asked, verse 36-45 interprets this dream for us.\u00a0 \u00a0Notice, if you will, verse 36.\u00a0 \u201cThis was the dream; now we will tell its interpretation before the king,\u201d as Daniel communicates this.\u00a0 You\u2019ll notice in this verse, verse 36, the word \u201cinterpretation.\u201d\u00a0 The Bible is its own interpreter; the Bible is what we would call a self-interpreting book.\u00a0 If there is something in the Bible that puzzles you, if there is something in the Bible that is strange to you, my exhortation to you is to be patient with the Bible because in the course of time, physically in the same context (as we\u2019re going to be seeing today) the Bible will interpret itself.\n\nAnd so many Christians are impatient with the Bible.\u00a0 They try to force the Bible into their own (what I would call) sanctified imagination; they just bring ideas out of the carnal mind to interpret things in the Bible.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard some of the craziest interpretations you can imagine on this statue.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard interpretations of the statue that are so detailed people will tell you exactly what each of the ten toes represents, they\u2019ll even get into the toenails themselves and explain that to you.\u00a0 And you hear all these things and you ask yourself, where are they getting this from?\u00a0 And generally they\u2019re just pulling it out of their hat.\u00a0 And we ought not to be this way with the Word of God; we ought to let the Bible interpret itself, which is nicely does here in verses 37-45.\n\nWhat is being described here is a brand new period of time that the nation was in, that they had never experienced before, called the times of the Gentiles.\u00a0 That\u2019s a phrase Jesus Himself uses in Luke 21:24.\u00a0 [Luke 21:24, \u201cand they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.\u201d]\u00a0 It\u2019s a time period when the nation no longer has a Davidic king reigning on the throne in Jerusalem.\u00a0 It\u2019s a time period when the nation of Israel is being bullied by various Gentile powers.\u00a0 It\u2019s a time period which began with Nebuchadnezzar, all the way back in 605 B.C.\u00a0 when Nebuchadnezzar came and took the four Hebrew youths into captivity and subsequently destroyed the temple, around 586 B.C.\u00a0 And it\u2019s a time period that continues on, right on through the Second Advent of Christ.\n\nIn fact we, today, are still in \u201cthe times of the Gentiles.\u201d\u00a0 The nations of the earth continue to look at the tiny nation of Israel, just a speck in a sea of totalitarian dictatorships as somebody or an entity that needs to be bullied.\u00a0 In fact, even at the end of 2016 the United Nations got together and once again demanded that Israel give up what\u2019s called the West Bank.\u00a0 I don\u2019t use the term \u201cWest Bank\u201d because when you use the term West Bank you\u2019re describing a piece of geography from the Jordanian point of view.\u00a0 This territory is not to the west of Israel; it\u2019s actually to the east of Israel.\u00a0 And the proper name for it is not the West Bank, it is called Judea and Samaria.\n\nThe name of the game in the world community is to coerce the tiny nation of Israel to giving up that land.\u00a0 The fancy name that the politicians give this today is the two-state solution, reducing the width, if you will, of the nation of Israel from about 44 miles to about 9 miles.\u00a0 And people that are pilots, and we have several in this group, will tell you that you need about ten miles to shoot down an enemy plane; you reduce the width of the nation of Israel to about 9 miles you put her to an indefensible position and that\u2019s what\u2019s being demanded by the world community, that\u2019s what they want.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very, very sad day in America when our own presidential administration, the Obama administration, under cement Samantha Power the ambassador to the U.N. goes to the U.N. and does not exercise what historically Israel has been able to count on, a United States Veto.\u00a0 The United States of America abstained from that vote as the year and the end of the year 2016, and in abstaining they acquiesced to this demand by the United Nations.\n\nJanuary 15, the great nations of the earth will be gathering in Paris, France, seventy of them at least, will be in attendance and their whole name of the game is once again to demand this two state solution.\u00a0 Dr. Jim McGowan and I did a Facebook post, we do a live feed on Fridays, covering the international law that governs this.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to bore you with details because if you\u2019re interested \u00a0you can to listen on our Facebook page to that.\u00a0 But there is no international law that Israel is violating by living in Judea and Samaria, by building settlements in east Jerusalem.\n\nI bring this up because I want to show you that the times of the Gentiles that Daniel predicted are continuing on right on to the present day.\u00a0 This is the time period that Daniel saw, where Israel would be bullied perpetually by Gentile powers.\n\nIt\u2019s interesting to me that the world community is not worried about the Iranians building nuclear weapons, they\u2019re not worried about Al-Qaida, they\u2019re not worried about ISIS, they\u2019re not worried about the aggressive nature of Russia which has invaded Georgia and the Ukraine and Crimea, they are not worried about China on the march.\u00a0 They\u2019re worried about this little nation over here that\u2019s so small, it\u2019s about the size of New Jersey, you can hardly see it on a large Middle Eastern map. They\u2019re worried about these Jews building settlements in their own territory.\u00a0 See that?\u00a0\u00a0 And somehow this is the most important problem that we\u2019ve got to fix.\n\nThe times of the Gentiles never ended when Israel went back into the land.\u00a0 The times of the Gentiles are continuing on; they will continue on.\u00a0 What is happening today will intensify right up through the reign of the antichrist and it won\u2019t end until Jesus takes His seat on David\u2019s throne and establishes His Kingdom.\u00a0 You see, Daniel is seeing all of these things, all the way back into the sixth century; this is what the interpretation of this vision that he is going to give provides.\n\nWhat did Daniel see?\u00a0 I think what he saw were six empires in total.\u00a0 Each empire represents a different body part on the statue.\u00a0 So let\u2019s walk through these various empires and let\u2019s bring ourselves up to speed with what Daniel saw all the way back in the sixth century.\u00a0 Notice, if you will, verses 37-38, \u201cYou, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory; [38] and wherever the sons of men dwell, or<\/em> the beasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, He has given them<\/em> into your hand and has caused you to rule over them all. You\u201d as Daniel was speaking to Nebuchadnezzar, \u201care the head of gold.\u201d\u00a0 What does \u201cthe head of gold\u201d in the statue represent?\u00a0 It represents the first empire during the times of the Gentiles, Babylon.\u00a0 I don\u2019t need a sanctified imagination to understand that.\u00a0 Look at the end of verse 38, \u201cyou\u201d Daniel is speaking to Nebuchadnezzar, \u201care the head of gold.\u201d\n\nIt\u2019s an empire that started to persecute Israel around 605 B.C. and it would last about seventy years or so, perhaps a little under, right up 539 B.C. when Babylon would be overthrown by the Persians.\u00a0 Daniel predicts that overthrow in this vision and that vision becomes a reality in Daniel 5, the great handwriting on the wall chapter, where the Persians would overthrow the Babylonians.\u00a0 This was the empire, Babylon, that was in place when Daniel was taken into captivity. \u00a0It was a worldwide power.\u00a0 Daniel is saying in this vision that that empire will end in my own lifetime, it would take a few decades but it would come to pass. When God says something is going to happen you\u2019d better bet the ranch on what God says because it will happen with great precision and great accuracy.\u00a0 This prophecy would be fulfilled in Daniel\u2019s very own lifetime.\n\nNebuchadnezzar receives the dream because he is the first empire, if you will, Emperor, during the times of the Gentiles.\u00a0 And did you catch what Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar, \u201cthe God of heaven has given the kingdom\u201d to you.\u00a0 He says a little bit later He has \u201cgiven them into your hand.\u201d \u00a0A little bit later he says He \u201chas caused you to rule over them all.\u201d\u00a0 Nebuchadnezzar, you\u2019re in the position you\u2019re in, not because of your resume or your intelligence or your military strategy, it\u2019s the God of heaven that\u2019s put you there for a season.\n\nAnd everybody seems to understand this but Nebuchadnezzar.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that interesting about people \u00a0\u00a0in power?\u00a0 They\u2019re the last person to figure out that the reason they\u2019re there is because God put them there.\u00a0 Because in Daniel 4 what does Nebuchadnezzar say?\u00a0 Verse\u00a0\u00a0 30, \u201cThe king\u201d that\u2019s Nebuchad\u00adnezzar, \u201creflected and said, \u2018Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built \u2026 by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?\u2019\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019s got a bad case of the \u201cI\u2019s\u201d Nebuchadnezzar does. If he had only gone back and reread what this teenager Daniel told him back in Daniel 2:37-38.\u00a0 [Daniel 2:36-38, \u201cThis was<\/em> the dream; now we will tell its interpretation before the king.\u00a0 [37] You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory; [38]and wherever the sons of men dwell, or<\/em> the beasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, He has given them<\/em> into your hand and has caused you to rule over them all. You are the head of gold.\u201d]\n\nYou know, the New Testament, the book of Romans says this, \u201cFor there is no authority except from God and those which are established by God.\u00a0 Therefore whoever resists authority has\u00a0 opposed the ordinance of God.\u201d [Romans 13:1b]\u00a0 We are living in a society of rebels that want to fight authority constantly.\u00a0 When you fight a God-ordained authority\u2026 some people come into the church and do this, when you fight against a God-ordained authority you\u2019re fighting against God.\u00a0 And if you find yourself in a collision with some authority figure in your life, whether it\u2019s your school, at your job, at your workplace, even in the church, you might want to ask yourself who it is you\u2019re really fighting.\u00a0 And for those that are in authority positions it\u2019s time to humble yourself and abase yourself before God because you wouldn\u2019t even be there had God not sovereignly put you there.\u00a0 It\u2019s a different perspective, isn\u2019t it, on authority.\n\nBut what would happen according to this vision is the head of gold would give way to the chest and arms of silver.\u00a0 Notice, if you will, the first part of verse 39, \u201cAfter you\u201d Nebuchadnezzar, \u201cthere will arise another kingdom inferior to you.\u201d\u00a0 This is the chest and arms of silver; this is the empire that would replace Babylon, an empire called Medo-Persia.\u00a0 You say well, where are you getting that pastor?\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t say Persia in this text.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t say it here but when Daniel 5 records the overthrow of the Babylonians it gives you the name of the next empire.\u00a0 You might want to jot down Daniel 5:28,\u00a0 you\u2019ll see the word Persia there.\u00a0 [Daniel 5:28, \u201c\u2026your kingdom has been divided and given over to the Medes and Persians.\u201d]\n\nDaniel 8 and Daniel 10 are both visions about the middle two empires during the times of the Gentiles.\u00a0 Daniel 8:20 uses the word Medo Persia. Daniel 10:13 uses the word Persia twice.\u00a0\u00a0 [Daniel 8:20, \u201cThe ram which you saw with the two horns represents the kings of Media and Persia.\u201d\u00a0 Daniel 10:13, \u201cBut the prince of the kingdom of Persia was withstanding me for twenty-one days; then behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left there with the kings of Persia.\u201d]\n\nDo you see what I\u2019m doing here?\u00a0 I\u2019m allowing the Bible to interpret itself.\u00a0 The rest of the book of Daniel tells you exactly who this second empire is going to be.\u00a0 Daniel, as a 17 year old, would see this prophecy come to pass in his own lifetime.\u00a0 The key chapter of the military change is Daniel 5 which I mentioned a little earlier.\n\nIt\u2019s interesting that in verse 39, when Daniel describes this empire that\u2019s coming after Babylon he says it would be \u201cinferior to you.\u201d\u00a0 [Verse 39, \u201cAfter you there will arise another kingdom inferior to you, then another third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth.\u201d]\u00a0 That puzzles people because Persia conquered more territory than Babylon but the reality of the situation, and most historians agree with this, that the Babylonian Empire was very centralized and controlled by one man.\u00a0 Once the Persians came to power you see a decentralization in authority.\u00a0 And this is the meaning of the gradual decline of the value of the metals as you move from gold, to silver, to brass, to bronze,\u00a0 to iron, and finally the least valuable, iron mixed with clay.\n\nIt would be a very impressive empire but it would be inferior in terms of centralized authority to Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s empire.\u00a0 You see, Nebuchadnezzar never thought his empire would end.\u00a0 That\u2019s why in Daniel 3 he built the giant statue made of what?\u00a0 Gold; the statue represents his empire.\u00a0 And what he is saying is oh, that silly kid back there, when he was 17 may have made some statements but the Neo-Babylonian Empire will never end, it will last forever.\u00a0 And that is a common trait as you study history and the existence of various empires. I\u00a0 could show you many, many quotes from Rome, they never thought Rome would end.\u00a0 But it did end!\n\nA lot of people are like this with the United States of America\u2014what\u2019s poor God going to do without the United States of America?\u00a0 Answer\u2014He\u2019ll raise up somebody else.\u00a0 No Gentile power has a permanent lease on history and time.\n\nIt is interesting to me that the chest and arms of silver cover the heart; the heart is the seat of affection in the ancient world.\u00a0 What I think this means is that the Persian Empire was close to the heart of God.\u00a0 Why is that?\u00a0 Because God had a special calling on Persia; He had a special calling on Babylon (to start the captivity); Persia\u2019s job was to end the captivity because it\u2019s under the Persian Empire that the nation of Israel will go back into their own land seventy years later, in three waves.\u00a0 This will begin with a man named Cyrus, a Persian, who, by the way, is called out 200-300 years in advance by the prophet Isaiah, as you look at the end of Isaiah 44 and the beginning of Isaiah 45.\n\nPersia was close to the heart of God because God would use Persia to take the nation of Israel out of captivity.\u00a0 The modern nation representing Persia today is Iran and how the Iranians and their leadership have lost sight of their culture because today Iran is not dictated by an emperor like Cyrus, but it\u2019s controlled by a Shite Muslim theocracy whose very ambition is to take Israel, and as one of her former leaders said, wipe Israel off the map.\u00a0 Which actually, if you think about it, that\u2019s a step forward because most Islamic maps don\u2019t even have the state of Israel on the map so at least you\u2019re acknowledging Israel is on the map so you can wipe her off the map.\u00a0 And you hear this anti-Semitic vitriolic rhetoric and you read the pages of God\u2019s Word and you say how amazing it is for a culture to lose sight of what God once did in that culture.\n\nI think here in the United States of America we are largely losing sight of what God has done here and why God raised up our nation.\u00a0 Our nation was not raised up by God to veto United Nations resolutions that help Israel; we were here to bless Israel, and how we need to get back into history and remind us of our existence and our calling, and tremble before God because God can pull the plug, as we see very easily here, on any nation.\n\nBut you see, the chest and arms of silver would give way to the belly and thighs of bronze and you see that at the end of verse 39, it says, \u201cAnother third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth.\u00a0 [Daniel 2:39, \u201cAfter you there will arise another kingdom inferior to you, then another third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth.\u201d]\n\nThe belly and thighs of bronze, who is the belly and thighs of bronze?\u00a0 It would be the next empire during the times of the Gentiles, the empire of Greece.\u00a0 [Daniel 2:32, \u201cThe head of that statue was made of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze\u201d]\u00a0 You say well how do you know it\u2019s Greece, it doesn\u2019t say Greece here?\u00a0 Once again, allow Daniel to interpret himself because in Daniel 8 there\u2019s a prophecy of the middle two empires during the times of the Gentiles; Daniel 10 there\u2019s more information about the middle two empires during the times of the Gentiles.\u00a0 And over in Daniel 8:21 you will see the word Greece.\u00a0 Over in Daniel 10:20 you will see the word \u201cGreece.\u201d\u00a0 [Daniel 8:21, \u201cThe shaggy goat represents the kingdom of Greece, and the large horn that is between his eyes is the first king.\u201d\u00a0 Daniel 10:20, \u201cThen he said, \u2018Do you understand why I came to you? But I shall now return to fight against the prince of Persia; so I am going forth, and behold, the prince of Greece is about to come.\u2019\u201d]\n\nAn empire that really would not come into existence until long after Daniel was dead, beginning to come to power about 331 B.C. and going all the way to 63 B.C.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I said at the beginning the date of this prophecy that Daniel is having here is very important.\u00a0 Daniel, as a 17 year old, in the sixth century, is seeing things that would not come to pass for centuries and long after he was dead.\u00a0 Greece is the empire of Alexander the Great, who is going to become a big deal in Daniel\u2019s prophecy centuries in advance in Daniel 8.\n\nAnd then what would happen is the belly and thighs of bronze would give way to the legs of iron.\u00a0 Notice, if you will, Daniel 2:40, \u201cThen there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron; inasmuch as iron crushes and shatters all things, so, like iron that breaks in pieces, it will crush and break all these in pieces.\u201d\u00a0 I will call this Rome Phase 1; Rome historical Rome. \u00a0Rome really moved into the land of Israel around 63 B.C, almost 600 years after Daniel made this prophecy.\u00a0 Rome is the one that would push the nation of Israel out of her homeland in A.D. 70.\u00a0 And isn\u2019t it interesting that when you look at this vision Rome, or the legs of iron, are represented by two different legs.\u00a0 There\u2019s an eastern division of Rome, was there not?\u00a0 And a western division of Rome, exactly like Daniel said.\u00a0 That\u2019s why it\u2019s so interesting that the legs of iron are used to describe Rome.\n\nWell, pastor, how do you know it\u2019s Rome?\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t say Rome.\u00a0 And you\u2019re correct, there is nothing necessarily in Daniel that tells me this is Rome, as clearly as we saw the word Greece or Persia.\u00a0 But this is just a matter of knowing history and knowing which empire followed Greece.\u00a0 It\u2019s a matter of historical fact that Greece was replaced by Rome.\u00a0 And notice the imagery that Daniel uses to describe this Roman Empire; he uses imagery like strong, crushes, shatters, breaks.\u00a0\u00a0 That is a description of everything we know about Rome.\u00a0 It was a ruthless regime.\u00a0 In fact, you know from your own Bible that it was under Rome that our Lord was crucified.\n\nThe Romans did not invent the crucifixion; that was invented by the Assyrians, one of the most bloodthirsty groups that have ever existed.\u00a0 There\u2019s a reason why Jonah didn\u2019t want to\u00a0 go preach to Assyria and he went to Spain instead.\u00a0 Assyria was so wicked in terms of their instruments of capital punishment and death Jonah just said God, I\u2019m not going to shed Your grace on those people, let them go right into hell where they belong.\u00a0 And God gave Jonah a little wakeup call, didn\u2019t He?\n\nAnd isn\u2019t it sad that we can get this way with people, that we can write people off and say the grace of God should not go to them, those 9\/11 people that flew the planes into New\u00a0 York City, Islamic Fundamentalists countries, ruthless dictators, people like Fidel Castro (who has passed on).\u00a0 There\u2019s something instinctively in us where we want to treat those people with the justice they deserve.\u00a0 And then we turn around and say to the Lord, well Lord, thank\u00a0 You for treating me with grace.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t it great that God doesn\u2019t treat us the way we treat other people?\u00a0 And that\u2019s the whole point of the book of Jonah, to awaken us to this.\u00a0 Is there someone in your life that you just can\u2019t wait to see die and slip right into hell where they belong?\u00a0 That\u2019s not the God of the Bible.\n\nAnd so Rome would come to power and Rome would take this Assyrian method of capital punishment, called the crucifixion, and popularize it.\u00a0 Rome looked back into history, they looked at what Assyria did and how they killed people and they said this looks like a great idea, let\u2019s bring it to life.\u00a0 And this was how our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified.\n\nIt was Rome, as I mentioned before, that pushed Israel out of her land.\u00a0 Do you realize that when that happened in A.D. 70 over a million Jews died.\u00a0 Do you realize that what the Romans would do to the Jewish women that were pregnant?\u00a0 Josephus talks about this, they would tear open their wombs and strangle the child inside the mother so that Jewish life would be permanently snuffed out.\u00a0 It brings to life this imagery of crushes, shatters, breaks, the ruthlessness of Rome.\n\nDaniel 9:26, Daniel focuses in on Rome and he says this:\u00a0 \u201cThen after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.\u201d\u00a0 Daniel here speaking of two diabolical acts of Rome, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, number 1, and the destruction of the nation in A.D. 70.\u00a0 Daniel is seeing all of this in advance.\n\nBut then the legs of iron would give way to the feet of iron and clay, and notice, if you will, verses 41-43, \u201cIn that you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it will be a divided kingdom; but it will have in it the toughness of iron, inasmuch as you saw the iron mixed with common clay. [42] As the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong and part of it will be brittle.\u00a0 [43] And in that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery.\u201d\u00a0 Where am I going now?\u00a0 We leave ancient Rome, the legs of iron, and we move into the feet of iron and clay and this thrusts us into what I will call Rome phase 2.\n\nBut even Rome phase 2 is not an adequate definition because recall that Daniel 2-7 is chiastically structured.\u00a0 In other words, the themes started in Daniel 2 are repeated in Daniel 7.\u00a0 Just like the themes of Daniel 3 are repeated in Daniel 6, just like the themes of Daniel 4 are repeated in Daniel 5, that\u2019s a literary device called a chiasm.\u00a0 I walked\u00a0 you through that and to help us understand this last empire we can\u2019t just look at Daniel 2 we have to factor in supplemental information in Daniel 7.\n\nDaniel 7:23 says this, \u201cThus he said: \u2018The fourth beast will be a fourth kingdom on the earth, which will be different from all the other kingdoms\u201d watch this, \u201cwhich will devour the whole earth and tread it down and crush it.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 This is something bigger than Rome.\u00a0 Rome might be some kind of origination point but this is an empire that will exist over the entire planet earth.\u00a0 What I believe is being described here in verses 41-42 is the coming kingdom of the antichrist.\u00a0 You say well how can you interpret the Bible that way?\u00a0 The ten toes are interpreted for us in Daniel 7:24 as ten horns.\u00a0 Daniel 7:24, says \u201cAs for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings<\/u> will arise;...\u201d\n\nThe book of Revelation repeats this, Revelation 17:12, \u201cThe ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, [but they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour].\u201d\u00a0 What is this talking about here, this final empire.\u00a0 It\u2019s talking about a ten king confederacy that somehow manages to get the entire world in its grasp.\u00a0 This ten king confederacy, as we study this image, is immediately and instantaneously destroyed.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t take but an hour for this to happen according to Revelation 18.\u00a0 That\u2019s the meaning of the stone cut with human hands striking the feet; it\u2019s an empire that comes suddenly to an end as God replaces it with His kingdom.\n\nLet me ask you a question: study ancient Rome, did ancient Rome ever consist of a ten king confederacy?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Did ancient Rome ever suddenly terminate?\u00a0 No, not at all.\u00a0 In fact, if you were to read Edward Gibbon and The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire<\/em>, a historian documenting Roman times, he will tell you that Rome deteriorated gradually, over centuries, as the morals of the Roman people weakened.\u00a0 What I\u2019m trying to get at is this striking of the statue has never been fulfilled in history and so the image from head to ankles is past, but the feet are yet future.\u00a0 So in between the ankles and the feet is a period of time lasting at least 2,600 years.\n\nYou say well, this is a very strange way of interpreting the Bible.\u00a0 But the fact of the matter is you already interpret the Bible this way all of the time, you just don\u2019t realize it.\u00a0 Do you remember what\u2019s on\u00a0 your Christmas card?\u00a0 Isaiah 9:6, \u201cFor unto us a child is born, a son will be given,\u201d First Coming or Second Coming?\u00a0 First Coming.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026and the government will rest upon His shoulders,\u201d First Coming or Second Coming?\u00a0 Second Coming, Isaiah just conflated two prophecies, one about the First Advent, one about the Second Advent, and he didn\u2019t tell you (because he didn\u2019t know) what\u2019s going to happen in the interim.\n\nThe best analogy I have for this is looking at two mountains in the distance.\u00a0 What do you really see if the front mountain is smaller than the other you see the first mountain and in the background you see the second mountain and what can you not see?\u00a0 The valley.\u00a0 That\u2019s what the prophets of old could not see; they could not see exactly what is happening in that valley.\u00a0 This is why the Apostle Peter, in 1 Peter 1:10-11 says the prophets searched with great diligence trying to understand the times that the Holy Spirit had revealed to them.\u00a0 [1 Peter 1:10-11, \u201c\u2026the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries [11] seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.\u201d]\n\nDaniel himself, in this book, will search out the meaning of this prophecy but he will be told to go his own way.\u00a0 But isn\u2019t it interesting how hindsight is 20\/20.\u00a0 We can look back and see what\u2019s in the valley; the valley is the period of time between the two advents of Christ; we are part of that valley, the age of the church.\n\nAnd you say to yourself, well, do you have any good books I could read to tell me about that valley?\u00a0 And I have two, number 1, the book of Ephesians; chapters 1-3 will tell you all about that valley.\u00a0 The second thing I\u2019d have you read is Matthew 13 where Christ described that valley in the form of eight parables.\u00a0 If you were to go home today and you were to read Matthew 13 and Ephesians 1-3 you would know exactly what God is doing in this time period that\u2019s called here the valley.\u00a0 And isn\u2019t it wonderful that we, through a full canon of Scripture, can look backwards and understand the prophecies of Daniel better than Daniel could; better than Isaiah could.\n\nBut one of these days this valley is going to end and this set of feet, two feet mixed with iron and clay, a ten-king confederacy will come into existence and cover the earth.\u00a0 This is the kingdom of the antichrist.\u00a0 This is the kingdom that I believe you\u2019re seeing develop before your very eyes as I speak.\u00a0 One of the things that\u2019s very interesting to me is these one-world organizations that don\u2019t know anything about the Bible; get together\u2026 and the club of Rome did this years ago and they got a map and they said you know, when this whole thing is done we\u2019re going to have the world divided up according to various regions\u2026 do you know the number they picked?\u00a0 Ten regions; oh my goodness.\n\nBeloved, we are living on borrowed time.\u00a0 The forces in places of prominence as I speak are busy putting together the tapestry for this final kingdom of the antichrist.\u00a0 And the name of the game here is regionalism.\u00a0 Look at what they did to Europe; the tiny European states don\u2019t have power any more, the power resides in Brussels.\u00a0 Those tiny European states are just debating societies, the true source of power is in Brussels which reigns over that region.\u00a0 And perhaps there\u2019ll be another region in another part of the world.\u00a0 I like the book by Jerome Coursi, called The Late Great USA<\/em>, published a few years back; a Harvard PhD where he explains the plan in place to take the United States and merge it with Canada and Mexico and have one region over that territory, and one currency by the way, called the Amero.\n\nI\u2019m not saying it\u2019s going to happen exactly like this, I\u2019m just trying to show us that the forces of what Daniel saw all the way back in the sixth century are alive and well.\u00a0 You say well, I\u2019m depressed, why are you talking about this?\u00a0 Let me give you some good news.\u00a0 Do you know how long the antichrist\u2019s empire is going to last?\u00a0 Revelation 13:5 says forty-two months.\u00a0 [Revelation 13:5, \u201cThere was given to him a mouth speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, and authority to act for forty-two months was given to him.\u201d]\n\nIt gets its day in the sun but it will come, as we will see in a minute, to a crashing halt.\u00a0 It\u2019s going\u00a0\u00a0 to be overthrown.\u00a0 And even when this empire comes into existence the way Daniel seems to be describing it here it really is not a very cohesive structure; it\u2019s almost like it\u2019s sloppily pieced together; people groups with totally different cultures are thrown together into a common bond.\u00a0 This is what Daniel means about the iron and the clay not mixing well together.\n\nJohn Walvoord, in his commentary on the book of Daniel, of these verses says this:\u00a0 \u201cThe final form of the kingdom will include diverse elements, whether this refers to race, political idealism, or sectional interests, and this will prevent the final form of the kingdom from having any real unity.\u00a0 This, of course, is borne out by the fact that the world empire at the end of the age breaks up into a gigantic civil war in which forces from the south and the east and the north contend with the ruler of the Mediterranean force supremacy as Daniel himself will explain in Daniel 11:36-45.\u201d\n\nWhat is the name of the game today?\u00a0 They call it multiculturalism.\u00a0 All cultures are equal.\u00a0 Don\u2019t stand up today and say one culture is superior to another; you\u2019ll get called every name in the book from racist, xenophobic, my personal favorite, ethnocentric.\u00a0 Whatever name is called it\u2019s a name thrown at people that stand for a particular culture, like a patriot.\u00a0 Well, the patriotic mindset has to be erased because all cultures have to be united into one. But even as those cultures are put together what\u2019s lurking beneath the surface is deep, deep division.\u00a0 It\u2019s a superficial unity only and it comes to the surface as that empire goes to war against itself in the second half of the tribulation period.\n\nBut then Daniel kept watching and he saw a stone, cut without human hands, strike the feet of the statue which brings to an end not just the empire of the antichrist but it brings to end the whole Gentile dominion; the whole statue, head to toe, crumbles and the wind drives the pieces away.\u00a0 And the stone cut without human hands grows and grows and grows until it fits the whole earth.\u00a0 What is this growing stone?\u00a0 It\u2019s the future kingdom of God.\u00a0 It\u2019s the very thing Jesus taught us to pray about in Matthew 6 when He said, \u201cThy kingdom\u201d what? \u201ccome.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s the focus of our attention; this is the unshakeable kingdom that you as a child of God are an inheritor of.\n\nYou\u2019ll notice back in verse 34 the stone is called \u201ccut without human hands\u201d meaning it\u2019s not of human origin.\u00a0 It will not be human manipulation, human political strategy that will bring this kingdom into existence; it will be the work of God.\u00a0 And it will overthrow the antichrist\u2019s kingdom.\n\nLook again at verse 44, \u201cIn the days of those kings\u201d what kings?\u00a0 The ten king confederacy.\u00a0 \u201cin the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed,\u201d there\u2019s a chronology here.\u00a0 First comes the ten king confederacy, it reigns for a while and then God overthrows it instantaneously, miraculously, cataclysmically.\u00a0 Did you notice this expression here, \u201cthe God of heaven.\u201d \u00a0I believe that this was the kingdom that was actually offered to Israel on a silver platter in the first century, with the expression, \u201crepent for the kingdom of\u201d what? \u201cheaven is at hand.\u201d\u00a0 The source of this kingdom will be physical and earthly but it will emerge from heaven itself.\u00a0 And this is what is meant by this \u201cstone cut without human hands\u201d growing.\u00a0 It will be a universal and eternal kingdom.\n\nLet me ask you a question.\u00a0 All of these kingdoms we looked at, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, even Rome phase 2, are those literal kingdoms?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Did they reign for a literal time?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Did they occupy specific lands?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Did they have borders?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Did they have a capitol?\u00a0 Yes they did.\u00a0 Then why wouldn\u2019t the last kingdom.\u00a0 This stone cut without human hands, not reigned for a literal time (a thousand years), have land, a tract of real estate from Egypt to Iraq, Genesis 15:18-21; have borders, and have a capital also called Jerusalem.\u00a0 And what I have just presented to you is what we would call a premillennial view of history; millennium simply means a thousand years.\u00a0 Premillennialism is the belief that the thousand year kingdom will not come into existence until Jesus comes back first, \u201cpre\u201d and then sets it up, premillennialism.\n\nBut that view is not the majority view in church history.\u00a0 The majority view in church history is either amillennialism or postmillennialism, which argues that Jesus set up His kingdom in the first century and He\u2019s reigning in our hearts.\u00a0 What does that mean?\u00a0 That means that I interpret everything in the statue literally except the stone, that\u2019s not literal.\u00a0 That is called vacillation where you switch horses in midstream.\u00a0 The fact of the matter is, a literal interpretation of the statue demands premillennialism.\u00a0 Jesus did not set up His kingdom in the first century.\u00a0 That was rejected and postponed.\u00a0 My professor, J. Dwight Pentecost, says this: \u201cChristianity did not suddenly fill the earth in the first century; it took decades for the gospel to even get to Rome.\u00a0 Christ did not destroy Rome; Rome existed several centuries after the time of Christ.\u00a0 There\u2019s no simultaneous kings existing in the first century, in the time of Christ.\u00a0 In fact the New Testament never calls Christ \u201ca smiting stone,\u201d it calls Him a cornerstone, Ephesians 2:2, a stumbling stone, 1 Peter 2:8. [Ephesians 2:2, \u201chaving been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone,.\u201d 1 Peter 2:8, \u201cand, \u2018A STONE OF STUMBLING AND A ROCK OF OFFENSE\u2019; for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were also appointed.\u201d]\n\nHe\u2019s not a smiting stone yet.\u00a0 He\u2019ll be the smiting stone at His Second Coming.\u00a0 Christ, in the first century, did not destroy all the kingdoms of the world.\u00a0 He set up something new called the church.\u00a0 The church is not a political kingdom.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have any borders, do we?\u00a0 We don\u2019t have a capital.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have an army.\u00a0 We are a spiritual man.\n\nMerrill Unger writes this: \u201cHence, the iron kingdom with its feet of iron and clay (cf. 3:33-35, 40, 44) and the nondescript beast of 7:7-8 envision\u2026the form in which it will exist after the church period<\/em>, when God will resume His dealing with the nation<\/em> Israel. How futile for conservative scholars to ignore that fact and to seek to find literal fulfillment of those prophecies in history or in the church, when those predictions refer to events yet future and have no application whatever to the church<\/u>.\u201d\u00a0 [Unger's Commentary on the Old Testament<\/em> (Chicago: Moody, 1981; reprint, Chattanooga, TN: AMG, 2002), 1643.]\n\nThis is why in our doctrinal statements, whether it be at the College of Biblical Studies, whether it be the Sugar Land Bible Church doctrinal statement, what you\u2019ll discover is the kingdom in those statements is placed yet future.\u00a0 We are waiting for Jesus to return and establish His kingdom. We are winning souls through the gospel who will be citizens of this coming kingdom but the actual work of manifesting and establishing the kingdom is not a task that God ever gave to the church.\n\nAnd yet what you discover out there, and I\u2019ve been going through these quotes on Wednesday evenings, I encourage you to come, we\u2019re studying the doctrine of the kingdom on Wednesday nights, I won\u2019t reread all those quotes, but what people are out there doing today is they\u2019re trying to set up the kingdom.\u00a0 One of the most popular voices is Rick Warren, who most people know, runaway bestseller, Purpose Driven Live<\/em>, Purpose Driven Church<\/em>, he says, \u201cI stand before you confidently right now and say to you that God is going to use you to change the world.\u00a0 I\u2019m looking at a stadium full of people right now who are telling God they will do whatever it takes to establish God\u2019s kingdom on earth<\/em>.\u201d Rick, count me out, because I\u2019m premillennial, I believe that God, as demonstrated through this \u201cstone cut without human hands,\u201d He Himself will set up the kingdom. \u00a0And people say premillennialism, postmillennialism, amillennialism, what difference does it really make?\u00a0 I\u2019m a panmillennialist, it\u2019s all going to pan out in the end.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to be bogged down with theology.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to be bogged down with the structure of the kingdom and when it comes.\n\nAnd let me explain to you why you\u2019d better care.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t get this right the church becomes confused as to its mission.\u00a0 What has God given the church to do?\u00a0 Not to set up the kingdom; that\u2019s something only God can do.\u00a0 What He\u2019s given to the church to do is to fulfill the great commission which becomes the great what?\u00a0 Omission, when you get confused as to what your role is.\n\nIf a business is struggling or failing the first thing they do when they hire a consultant is the consultant comes in and he asks the business what\u2019s your mission?\u00a0 Why do you exist?\u00a0 Ask different pastors that question and watch the confusion.\u00a0 Why is the church here?\u00a0 The church exists for three things: number 1, to glorify God, number 2, to edify the saints, number 3 to fulfill the great commission.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got that definition from Robert Lightner, you see the Scriptures that he\u2019s using.\u00a0 Everything that happens at Sugar Land Bible Church should relate to glorifying God, edifying the saints and fulfilling the great commission.\u00a0 That\u2019s the final words that Christ gave to the church.\n\nAnd what a sneaky guy the devil is to get us involved in establishing the kingdom which is a task that God never gave to the church.\u00a0 Hal Lindsay, in a very good book called The Road to Holocaust<\/em> warned what could happen to the church in the last days if she began to see herself as the establisher of God\u2019s kingdom.\u00a0 Quote, \u201cThe last days of the church on earth may be largely wasted seeking to accomplish a task that only the Lord Himself can and will do directly.\u201d\n\nTheology is like dominoes in a row; you knock over one domino the rest will fall.\u00a0 Whatever your eschatological position is, is going to affect your ecclesiological position.\u00a0 There is nothing that the devil wants to confuse us more on than why we\u2019re here.\u00a0 And yet because these matters are not clearly taught there\u2019s massive confusion.\u00a0 Most churches don\u2019t even know why they exist.\u00a0 You do, because we instructed you this morning.\n\nKingdom now theology is nothing but a resurrection of an ancient heresy that did not begin up north in Antioch but began down south in Alexandria, Egypt, the very things that Gabe is talking about in his series where the church got into interpreting prophecy non-literally, that\u2019s what they got into, largely promoted by Gnostic thought which said that the physical world is evil.\u00a0 So if the physical world is evil I guess we can\u2019t have a physical kingdom on planet earth and by the way, how could Jesus come in a body, so they began to damage that doctrine and the incarnation as well.\u00a0 The most influential theologian in church history is Augustine, who wrote a book called The City\u00a0 of God<\/em>, in the fourth century where he gave a formal literary treatment to Kingdom Now theology.\u00a0 And that book and that man cast a shadow over church history that has been almost impossible to climb out of.\u00a0 The Protestant Reformers returned a literal interpretation; we are trying to take the same literal interpretation that the Protestant Reformers stood on and apply it to this \u201cstone cut without human hands,\u201d but it\u2019s a battle, climbing out of that shadow.\u00a0 It is a devilish work in many respects, not the least of which is it confuses us in our mission.\n\nWhat a message this would be, first of all to the Jew, hang in there throughout the centuries, you\u2019re going to be bullied by various powers but God is going to maintain you as a distinct nation, He\u2019s going to set up His kingdom through you, and by the way, all of these empires that are bullying\u00a0 you will one day be on the ash heap of human history.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t it interesting that Rome, a Latin speaking nation, pushed Israel out of her land in A.D. 70.\u00a0 Today Rome is gone, but who\u2019s still in that land?\u00a0 Israel.\u00a0 Latin is a dead language. What language are they using over there?\u00a0 Hebrew.\u00a0 Hang in there, God is going to fulfill His Word in His timetable.\u00a0 Each empire that bullies you is limited but on the horizon is a kingdom which cannot be shaken, a kingdom which we are partakers in.\n\nMessage to the Jew\u2014comfort.\u00a0 Message to the Gentile\u2014be on your guard, you think you\u2019ve got the upper hand in history but your day in the sun will come to an end just like every other nation.\u00a0 People today are asking well, what\u2019s going to happen to America?\u00a0 I\u2019ll tell you what\u2019s going to happen to America\u2014what\u2019s happened to every other nation in the course of history.\u00a0 She has her day in the sun and she will dissipate as a culture.\u00a0 It almost seems like we\u2019re cheerleading that to happen based on a lot of our decisions that we\u2019re making.\u00a0 But God does a pretty good job, even without America.\u00a0 One day America herself will be replaced by a kingdom which cannot be shaken.\n\nMy exhortation to you is where is\u00a0 your citizenship?\u00a0 Where is it?\u00a0 Where is your hope?\u00a0 Interest rates, stock market, the value of your house, a career path?\u00a0 Is that your hope for the future?\u00a0 You\u2019ve invested in the wrong kingdom.\u00a0 You\u2019ve invested into something that\u2019s shaking, in fact, even as I speak its shaking.\n\nAnd how different it can be for a person who places their personal faith in Christ and His promises.\u00a0 That\u2019s something that you can do now, even as I\u2019m speaking.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to raise a hand to do it, walk an aisle to do it, join a church to do it.\u00a0 It\u2019s a matter of privacy between you and the Lord where you acquiesce, you believe in what He has said, shifting the hope for your eternity into a coming kingdom which cannot be shaken.\u00a0 And as you walk through life\u2019s trials and you see this world system buckling it doesn\u2019t faze you because your hope is in a higher and greater place.\u00a0 Are you invested into the ten toes of iron and clay that\u2019s going to crumble or are you invested into the stone cut without human hands which cannot be shaken.\u00a0 I hope and pray that you\u2019ll trust Christ.\u00a0 If it\u2019s something you need more information on I\u2019m available after the service.\n\nShall we pray.\u00a0 Father, we\u2019re grateful for this ancient prophecy and how it encourages\u00a0 us and motivates us and speaks into our lives.\u00a0 Help us to be people that share this good news of citizenship of a higher kingdom with others.\u00a0 And we\u2019ll carefully give You all the praise and the glory.\u00a0 We lift these things up in Jesus\u2019 name.\u00a0 And God\u2019s people said\u2026.","series_sermon_number":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t