Video Transcript: The Tale of Two Men (Ravi Zacharias preaching on 2 Kings 21:1-6; 22:1-2)

Video Transcript: The Tale of Two Men (Ravi Zacharias preaching on 2 Kings 21:1-6; 22:1-2)

I didn't know, were real. As you know, they tell you when you land after a long journey, you look more like a passport picture than before you took off. But we got off here. And now we're coming from Manila through Singapore, in order to get your prior to that had already been in. We live in Atlanta, but a bit in Los Angeles, and then in Taipei and then Jakarta, then in New Delhi, and then we'd gone on to Manila. So we're coming through here. And the man looked at my wife and said, Did you mean to say you do have TB and a criminal record? And she said, No, of course not. He said, But you've checked out Yes, out here for both of those. She thought he was kidding. But that's tell you how wide awake we were. So after 43 years, I find out my wife has a criminal record. And maybe the only criminal acts she committed was getting married to me. But it's nice to see that little humor there. And other parts of the world. She may have been taken out to another room and question but he had a good humor, sense of humor about it. Also to have Michael Ramsden with me, he'll keep you amused for about 48 minutes and then get to the serious stuff for the last two. When he speaks his if he had never joined our team, he could have done a stand up comedy routine somewhere. 

But you'll enjoy him. And of course, he goes deep into the subject that he deals with Michael beyond as has been mentioned, for the nights ahead. And of course my other colleagues who are here with me too, so thank you for coming. It's really a privilege to be here in Melbourne. My deep condolences to you for the way the ashes have gone. But if anybody can sympathize with you the Indian scan, because our team is always buried in the ashes anyway. We start off with all kinds of promises and then end up in what they call stunning reversals. So we've been stunned recently in Sri Lanka as well. I don't know what it is. But whenever I watch a match, they lose. And then when I don't watch it, they all tell me how well they're doing. I think that's all made up stories. But thanks for taking part in this weekend. It's good for me to just take two or three minutes to talk a bit, because my vocal cords do need some warming up otherwise I run into trouble while I'm trying to speak. So enough of all the pleasantries.

If you've got your Bibles with you, please stand with me to Second Kings chapter 21. And I'm going to talk to you about lessons from history and looking at two monarchs and how they changed their particular times. You know, it is amazing what Malcolm Muggeridge said. He said, All new news is old news happening to new people, or new news is old news happening to new people. And when you read the stories here of Manasseh, and Josiah and in between, in that little parenthetical period of Manasseh son Amon who reign for just two years, if you put the three stories up, in just brief fashion, you think you're reading about what's happening happening in the Middle East, this very day or the way transitions actually take place. But Second Kings 21 Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem 55 years. His mother's name was Hephzibah. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed. He also erected altars to Baal and made an usher uphol as they have king of Israel had done, he bowed down to all the story hosts and worship them. He built altars in the temple of the Lord of which the Lord had said, in Jerusalem, I will put my name in both quotes of the temple of the Lord. He built altars to all the story hosts, he sacrificed his own son in the fire, practice sorcery and divination and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, provoking Him to anger. 

So there he was, provoking the Lord's wrath as it were, by purposely turning his back upon the living God and erecting false altars. And in the latter part of that chapter, in verse 19, it says, Amon was 22 years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem, two years. If you read a little further down, you'll find out what happened that he is the son of Manasseh was continuing in all of these evil ways. And his close group of supporters his inner circle, was were not at all pleased with him. they conspired together and had him on assassinated, the nation rose up in anger, all kinds of turmoil broke out in the land. And they finally installed Josiah, who was only eight years old. So here's what I want you to bear in mind. an eight year old boy takes the reins after his father has been murdered right there in the palace.

Couldn't be easy. You could imagine the trauma of all that had happened. He had to be very much aware of what had really gone on in the murder of his dad. And at age eight, he took the reins and here's what it says in chapter 22. Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem 31 years. His mother's name was Jedidahthe, daughter of Adaiah, she was from Bozkath. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. It's an amazing taking over of the reigns of a nation of a young boy. Obviously he had the right kind of counselors around him, but it tells us how the progression was made. It was Percy Bysshe Shelley who wrote the words: "I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away." 

Just today's newspaper here in Melbourne, talks about the possibility that one of the present what they brand demagogue in Assad, may be the last one standing for a short while. And who knows what his destination will be. There are marked one of two or three options. Now I'm not getting into the politics of the region. I'm just telling you that these things continue to happen. And you go through the desert terrain of that part of the world. And you'll see broken and fallen statues with the frown and wrinkled lip and smear of cold command that tell the descriptor well those passions read the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed but they've got the qaddafi's or the Saddam Hussein's or whoever, once upon a time with demagogue power, controlling the masses with an iron fist, and all of a sudden from somewhere, emerged voices that take these boys down. We were recently in Romania, in the big massive palace of Ceausescu 2 million square feet. He drained five years of the totality of the taxpayers money, in order to build this home for himself. You see the incredible artwork, the marble, the carpets, all the craftspersons and the artisans that have been brought together, he never even got to live in it. 

Now. It's called the people's palace. And it all happened within a matter of 10 days. From the moment one clenched fist in an audience interrupted what he was saying. And 10 days later, they were both executed somewhere silently in some part of the country, and they were gone. It's payday someday, sooner or later, all that demagogues do they find out if not in this world, but in the world to come. The balances are really set straight history. Songwriter James Russell Lowell says: "once to every man a nation comes a moment to decide in the strife of truth with falsehood for the good or evil side. With each choice. God's speaking to us offers then the bloom of blight, then the man or nation chooses for the darkness of the light." He also went on to say: "truth forever on the scaffold wrong forever on the throne. But the scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown standards God within the shadows, keeping watch keeping watch over his own." And we see in so many parts of the world. Truth is on the scaffold wrong metaphorically on the throne. Decisions are made bereft of wisdom. Moral compasses have been tossed away. 

We are on the high seas of rapid progress that we call it without chart and compass. Where are leaders taking the masses of the people? In the early days of my ministry, I was speaking in Birmingham, Alabama never forget, a man walked forward. And he looked at me and he said, You know what? I'm a new follower of Jesus Christ. And then he looked at me and he said, You're a speaker. Please be right in what you say. Because a lot of the things people like me end up believing are based on what people like you say and teach. Please be right. In what you say. I looked at him and said, Boy, you know how to get a man to feel more burden than he was before. And I talked to him about what is the word that really abides forever, and what it is that cannot be broken, and how the scriptures ultimately have to be our guide. But the fact of the matter is, history moves on at a rapid pace. And the faster we are moving, the farther ahead we had better be able to see, the faster we're moving, we better be able to see farther ahead. Because we are moving at that huge and rapid pace. I've often wondered how history will really be defined, and how we may define it in our times. Samuel Taylor Coleridge put it in these words: "If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us, but passion and party blind our eyes. And the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us. The light which experience gives us a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us."

So often time, after the blunders. After the decisions, we see the ripple effect. And then we realize the intended and the unintended consequences of the decisions that were made, and how civilizations can be transformed. We are on the throes of making huge decisions, enormous decisions, with all the weaponry that is piled up with all the geopolitical maneuverings that are going on. Who and What do we turn to, to give us wisdom to do that, which is right, our capacities may have increased dramatically, but I'm not sure our moral capacities have kept pace with all the other abilities that we now have in our time. And this is not meant to throw rocks at others or pass judgment. I know myself at the pace at which I move the speed at which life now comes. 

I say to myself have I got the ability to make wise decisions and choices in my life, and for the lives of my family members. And so you go back to these two men, and you go back into nearly 700 years before Christ, and Manasseh comes on the throne and on the scene. And what is amazing to me about Manasseh is that he was raised in the home of a godly man Hezekiah had ushered in one of the greatest revivals the nation had seen. But Hezekiah made three defining choices for himself and for the nation. You see, a leader is sort of almost like a big tree. If that tree is felled, it pulls all the little saplings around it as well. When you look at law, law is like the root. The trunk is like politics, the branches is how it works itself into culture. Law like the root, the trunk politics, branches, how it works itself into culture, what is going to hold the roots. What holds the roots together, law unless it is kept together and rooted in moral reasoning will result in political infrastructures that ultimately decimates culture. And our culture does not have the ability to resist the tide of counter cultures and counter perspectives. Then counter ideas come in politically, and the roots will be changed in to be being held in a different moral framework and a different moral culture. 

You know, just this week, an 80 year old man in Syria, the archivist for their history for all these years, was beheaded. And his buddy hung from a lamppost for all to see, 82 years result? What maniacal, beastly mentality would put the sword to the head of a man who has served his people and his country only by loving and cherishing the values of the past and keeping it intact? Where are the world leaders in all of this? What do we say? The man is just taken off the scene and cold blooded, brutal murder, and the body held in display like that? This is our world today. And when I look at a man like Manasseh I say to myself, how did you end up this way? He did similar things, said you were raised in a home with values. You've turned your back upon the living God. And all that he ended up doing in the process, history records and the biblical writers record for us, he led a willful reaction against his father's reformation. When I look at Western civilization today, they've had the impact of the gospel message, whether we like it or not, the values espoused in many nations of the West, were espoused on the basis of the imperatives of the Judeo Christian worldview. And I go back, for example, to the United States of America, where I've made my home in the last 30 years, in that Declaration of Independence, where it says so clearly, that We hold these truths to be self evident. So that very first line is talking about self evident truths, what we would call sort of natural law. 

Nobody believes that there anymore, these truths to be self evident, that we are all created, equal, and endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights, for the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, in that one statement alone in the foundation of that nation is revealed. So now that no other worldview could have generated that statement. naturalism couldn't have because naturalism wouldn't talk about being created equal and being endowed by our Creator. pantheism wouldn't have said that, because the quality with which we come into this world is not so in the hierarchical fury of the reincarnation model. And then given life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the other major theistic worldview would never have said that, suddenly the Judeo Christian worldview that would hold to these truths as being self evident. We don't believe that anymore. In North America, we simply don't. In fact, those very truths I'm giving to you are somewhat mocked in the academy, and in the popular media, and in the entertainment world. If you believe in a creator today, you're more likely to be laughed out of the Academy, than if you don't believe in the creator today.

And so, we see the same cultural drift of leading a reaction against the truths that helped frame nations in their early stages. He led a reaction number two, it accelerated the development of heathenism. Nature abhors a vacuum, you will never have a neutral worldview left. If you evict truth, you will bring one lie after another. What is a G.K. Chesterton said: "of course, truth is stranger than fiction because we have made fiction to suit ourselves." And so truth has become stranger than fiction. Because we've become so comfortable now with fiction that the truth seems rather bizarre in present times. In that acceleration of the development of hedonism, you begin to see what happens the third step, He instituted a bitter persecution of the prophets. And so three reactions here, against the father's reformation, accelerated the development of hedonism and instituted a bitter persecution of the prophets. When you see the coalescing of those three realities in the reign of Messiah, you begin to see what it is that actually happened, and how it was unfolding in history. In fact, if you read the book of Hebrews, you will read that some of them were sawn asunder. 

That is referring to the time of Josiah when he when Isaiah the prophet was speaking was a prophet at that time he went in instead inside the hollow trunk of a tree, and Manasseh ordered the sewing in two of that particular trunk of the tree. He was the one who murdered the prophet Isaiah, who had talked to us about the suffering servant who was to come. One commentator talking about what happened in Manasseh's time, because if you remember it said he brought his own children and offered them to, to as sacrifice. Listen to what one commentator actually says here. They will bring the children into the arms of the brazen idol and the flaming arms of the island that beast instruments playing to their highest volume, so that the shrieks of the children would be drowned, and the masses would not be able to hear it. Women were forced to bring their children to offer them as sacrifices. Here's what one commentator says. Nighttime seems to have been that special moments for these awful emulations. The yells of the children bound to the altars are rolling into the fire from the brazen arms of the idol. 

The shouts and hymns of the frantic crowds and the wild tumult of drums and shrill instruments, by which the cries of the victims are sought to be drowned rosen awful discordance over the city, forming with the whole scene, visible from the walls by the glow of the furnaces and flames, such an ideal of transcendent horror that the name of the valley became then, and still continues in the form of Ghana, the usual word for Hell. So it's called the Valley of Hinnom. Till this very day, and it comes from the word literally meaning the place of hell, flames going up into the sky, and amber colored sky, shrews and screams of mothers and children and the instruments drowning them out. And the people said, This is what hell must be like. And so they called it the Valley of Hinnom. You can see that name stays to this very day. Children, the littlest ones, the most vulnerable in our society. Sometimes even the hardest heart can be tamed by a little one. I knew a man who is a high placed banker in New York. He was a good friend to our ministry passed away some years ago, deep, gruff voice looked almost so angry all the time. And one day I looked at him and I said, How did you come to know Jesus Christ? 

And he told me it was his granddaughter sitting on his lap, that looked at him and said, Grandpa, you're going on a long cruise around the world, I won't see you for about a month, what is going to happen if something happens to you, I will not see you in heaven because you don't know Jesus Christ. And this man looked at his granddaughter, and he didn't know how to respond to her and all of her little sweetness, and her longing for a relationship that would never be ruptured. We have four grandchildren. Winston Churchill was once asked by a corporal, Mr. Churchill, Have I ever told you about my grandchildren? He said, No. And I want you to know how much I appreciate it. And so I'll try not to tell you too many stories about my grandchildren. But I would like to tell you at least one the oldest of them is four years old. Jude is the nonstop talker. He was pontificating from the time he was little over two talking and talking and talking. I don't know where he gets the vocabulary from, but boy, he sure can talk goes on and on big words, quite big words. So he's four now, a few months ago, he's sitting at the table, and he's he his father spring before they have their dinner. And then everybody of course, around the table says Amen. And he looked at his mom, Adora Naomi and said, why did you say amen. Daddy prayed, Why do you have to say amen. 

So, my daughter began to explain what amen actually meant. And being the daughter of an apologist, she went on too long, going on, and on and on. And finally, when she finished her explanation, he puts his arms up Jude puts his arms up in the air like this. He says, well, somebody please explain to me what on earth has just happened here. He comes up with lines. I didn't know what the earth meant when I was four years old. I don't know what do you know if he knows what it means? But you look at those tiny little lives, with all the capacity to bring such joy and laughter and hope And fill your life with wonder. If we're offering the arms of an idle, brazen arms of an idle, you see, when you turn your back upon the living God, and you're de sacralized life, even in its beautiful stage of, quote, innocence, you will victimize them and render them vulnerable and ultimately dehumanize them. How have we reached the place we have in modern civilization, where millions of babies can be disposed off and justified in the name of progress? This is unthinkable, but it is real. It is real folks, just because we don't see some of this happening. Can we therefore say to ourselves, it's not real. 

Our world has lost its direction. And we are victimizing these little ones, the three consequences of what Manasseh did very plainly number one is the consequence, that it only takes one person, one person to lead millions into untold evil, one person that can lead millions into untold evil. And when that happens, you begin to see how demagogues can take one life after another one life or after another. And we see millions, millions, millions sacrificed in geopolitical causes. It was in the 1900s, that nature said God had died. But he also went on to say, because God had died philosophically, the 20th century would become the bloodiest century in history, and a universal madness would break out. One person can lead millions into untold evil. We are now looking at the whole election process in the United States. And everyone is wondering, what direction are we moving in? Who are we going to bring into the center in order to lead us individual single issue voters moving in one direction the country desperately needs desperately needs someone with a moral compass, who can bring moral reasoning into the decision making process, but I'm not even sure most of the electorate is thinking in that direction. 

When you go back to the last century, and see the havoc created, for example, by Stalin, and they were describing him in the most glowing terms, Muggeridge himself, a committed Marxist and communist at that time, goes into Russia to do his research. And he comes away from that totally disillusioned, and says, Do you know what's really happening in that country? Do you know the millions that are being eliminated in the process, and when he wrote his book winter in Moscow, he was roundly criticized for his view on what Stalinism was taking the country into, and of course, Stalinism ended up destroying 15 million of the Russian people. They are among some of the most gifted people in the world musically, philosophically, in literary works. Imagine the wiping out of 15 million of them, at the behest of one man, was done, done wiped out, and lady asked her was visiting him and said to him, how long do you expect to keep doing this and killing your own people, he said, as long as it's necessary. As long as it is necessary. Hitler himself his words in Auschwitz today, I want to raise a generation of young people devoid of a conscience imperious, relentless, and cruel, and think of the havoc, it's possible for one person to lead millions into untold evil. Why? that's the second result of the kind of Manasseh had, it is because most people don't know how to think clearly anymore. 

The Art of logical thinking, the art of rational thinking, the art of reasonable thinking, is gone. Very seldom are we really taught how to think logically how to think morally, how to think rationally, how to think reasonably, I see it again and again and again, when I travel. And people make up make comments and make opinions and I say to myself, how did you arrive at this conclusion? But now reversals have taken place. Not only are we not able to think we attack those who try to rationally and reasonably think things through properly,

or my word, the kind of attack we're coming under, because some of our views, some of the beliefs, I don't read any of that stuff, I don't let all that stuff keep me awake. I know others, my team reading it just for my protection and so on to keep a track of it. And I say to myself, This is amazing. You're trying to defend what is true, what is good and what is beautiful. And there's always somebody there who wants your scalp for it. Are you learning how to think? Are you teaching your children how to think, how to build an inductive and deductive argument, how to take the premises and make sure they are true, and then to know how they are connected with validity, truthful premises validly connected can lead to logical deductions, you take untrue premises are not validly connected, you will lean believe it will lead you to illogical deductions and illogical conclusions, which is precisely what has happened. Only a handful of laws of logic, you know, there's not too many of them are there are many footnotes, there's just about three or four fundamental laws of logic, the law of non contradiction, the law, the the undistributed, middle, the law of rational inference, the law of identity, these four laws tell you how you can test the validity of a statement and an argument. But we don't know how to think logically anymore. 

And through the backdoor of imagination, so much as being plundered now. I was just, I just wrote a blog after doing having a record performance in my own life. If I see one movie a year, that's quite a significant number for me. I'm a reader. I'm not a viewer, I saw a T-shirt in Bangkok once a person walking around with books in his hand, and it said, Never judge a book by it's movie. I think that's a great statement never to judge a book by its movie. But I was in Jakarta doing some writing and one of my friends decided to take me to a movie in the afternoon. It was a Chinese movie, I think it was called the Little Big Headmaster or something like that. And all the subtitles of beautiful movie, very low budget film, obviously. There's a great story. It's a true story of a woman who saw a school in need of a teacher, and they were going to shut that school down. Because once it came down to less than five city council voted to shut her down. She was in a thriving school and a thriving profession. And she convinced her husband. Let me take care of this actually, it's a school in Hong Kong in a village. She gave it all she had almost paid with her life. It's a year I mean, the Indonesian folks, the Chinese folks sitting there the tears running down their face watching this. And it got me to and I thought what commitment, what commitment from him. 

And then he took me to see Mission Impossible. And I looked at him I said, you know India used to produce movies like this 40 years ago. But the Taj Mahal would be stolen one night and brought back the next morning I said you boys are just catching up with Tom Cruise holding onto a plane taking off. You can't even do that sitting down without your seat belt. He's got his fingernails. And to be sure a harnesses attached to him. We are told later on. I said at the end of the two movies, I said, you know what I've concluded the first doctor of character, the second of the ingenious capacity of science, and what science was able to accomplish is really the Mission Impossible. It could not cannot change your character. What was making a difference in this little school in a village in Hong Kong was a woman with character who was willing to pay no matter what it took to develop these five young lives into maturity, and teach and impart and train and they give you a backdrop of the homes of these kids. It's heart wrenching from the homes from which they come. Let us learn how to think and lot not allow these blunders of our imagination to take away logical and reasonable thinking. parents read to your children. read to them, help them develop the ability of language and communication and skill in thinking one person can lead millions into untold evil. 

It's mainly because we don't know how to think. And thirdly, the highest priced way out price we ultimately pray is in our children. The highest price we ultimately pay is in our children. The ultimate test of any civilization is what we do with our little ones. And when I see a world ahead of us, and I look at our children and our grandchildren, I want to talk to you. My final message will be on the family, what it really means to build a family in our time, and how critical that is for the future. Manasseh stared a whole country offered his own children to the bracing arms of an idol and brought that whole country down in his 55 year span. You know what the irony of Manasseh is, in his sunset years, he realized the mess that he had made, and he repented. But a godly, but a repentance that brings hell in the end is the repentance that comes so late. When you see exactly the price that has been exacted from what it is you have done. Manasseh paid that heavy price. And shortly after Amon comes goes on, goes off the scene assassinated. And then comes Jusiah and our look at young Josiah's life, I am overwhelmed by this young boy deeply overwhelmed by him. At the age of eight, he takes the reins at the age of 16 he starts to seek after God. 

He is 16 he starts to seek after God. Realize what lay ahead for whole nation because the age of 16 is sought after God. You don't know who you're dealing with when you're dealing with young people, you know, John Wesley, five years old, the house is on fire. And the father and mother ran out of the house, they would all have their kids, they thought John was with them he was not. And they see the whole house being engulfed. And the neighbor looking for a ladder couldn't find the ladder. They stood on one another's shoulders to reach out and grab this boy through the window. That's why his biography is called a brand plucked from the burning. Little did they know one day they would be standing on the shoulders of this boy. Because if you read of England in the 18th century, you'll find out that one of the great things that kept the rot from spreading was the preaching of a man by the name of John Wesley. And of course, George Whitfield alongside you rescue a little boy standing on each other's shoulders, not realizing that one day you could be standing on the shoulders of that little boy, because the child is really father to the man and builds the future and takes the future into consideration when you take that little boy. And so here's here he is eight years old 16 he starts to seek after God. 

Can I pause for just a moment? 

When I was in Jakarta two weeks ago, the waiter coming from a completely different religion to my upbringing. He came over to my table. I've seen him many times and he looks at me and he says, Mr. Zacharias, you're a Christian. I said yes. He said, Were you always I said, No. He said, when you become a Christian, I said, I became a Christian when I was 17. He said me to 16 or 17. I said, Really? He said, I had a dream one night that I was carrying a dead lamb in my hand. And I saw the Jesus coming towards me and touching that dead lamb and the lamb came to life. He said, Mr. Zacharias clear dream, clear dream. In my mind. I was only 16 or 17. And Jesus comes and touches this lamb and raise it. He said What dream did you have? I said I had many dreams that were shattered. And that's when on a bed of suicide. I cried out to Jesus Christ. 16 17 year old man I was 17 you look at fellows like John Calvin writing the institute's at age 25, Malang from the Theologian of the Reformation writing all of his theology in his 20s young men and young women, I want to say something to you. You are one of the main reasons I keep on this trail of speaking.

You're one of the main reasons because I care about you in your youth. And I firmly believe if the world is going to change, it's going to be because young men and young women like yourself are deeply committed to making this gospel known all over the world. I mean, that be the easiest thing for me now to say I've done my bit. I can now stay home and park myself and I can't I cannot tell you how alluring that is, to me, really. Pleased, I'll find out my wife wasn't a criminal, if I'd say at home, filling out the wrong forms you know. No, seriously, the travel takes its toll on you. It drains you emotionally, physically, in every way. You don't even feel like yourself some many days at a stretch. But I keep on this trail because of the young men and the young women whose lives we want to touch. And Michael and I and our team talk about this all the time. And I'm sure your Pastor Mark shares that same burden. And so look at look at your site, age 20, he starts to cleanse Jerusalem, at 26, cleansing the temple, and he discovered the book of the law. So in his 20s, he finds out that the book of the law was lost not in the city, it was lost in the temple. And the temple precincts contained that which was needed the most, but had been lost into obscurity. Power became the thing of the priests power became the thing of ecclesiastical authorities, they were controlling the masses, just as much as the political process was, and they lost the authority and the moral compass and the law that God had given to them. 

The book of the law was found in the house of God, it was lost to the people. So he brings them all together, and has the Book of the Law read, and they are committing in prayer in a prayer of repentance. And this young boy in his 20s turns the Nation Back To God, truth forever on the scaffold wrong forever on the throne. But the scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown standard God within the shadows, keeping watch over his own as his own, keep praying, God brings into leadership somebody, someday, that changes the course of history. Who would have ever thought 20 years ago that China would have the fastest growing church in the world. Mao Zedong said his buried finished gone never to return as it has gone. More churches now and more conversions now going on. He was dancing on the grave. But he didn't know that there was nobody in the grave. The Savior had risen and always rises up to outlive his pallbearers. The gospel is triumphing in those land three results from what he did least the first two two choices, give them the book of the law. Secondly taught them how to worship again. And quickly three things happen. Number one, he built a conviction of safety for his children and for the children that nation. Do you know what a beautiful thing is when your children can go to sleep at night and feel safe? Shouldn't tremendous power of that Billy Kim the Korean evangelist tells us a story of the time he was going to he was they were during the Korean War. 

One of the soldiers who had been ordered to go and rescue the fallen his fallen mates had been commanded to come out of a shell hole and pick up all the wounded soldiers. But he kept looking at his watch and wouldn't obey the command pretending he was obeying the command as the commanding officer go away. The third time he came in order this man and he kept looking at his watch looking at his watch and suddenly jumped out of the shell hole and started rescuing his fallen mates. And after that long, horrible night, one of them looked at him and said, I don't understand you. You were ordered to go and rescue your fallen mates and all you kept doing for a protracted moments was looking at your watch. What on earth were you doing? He said I don't know God. I'm far away from God. But before I left home, my mother hugged me, kiss me and put a Bible into my bag back and told me what time every day she was going to be on her knees praying for me. I was waiting for that hour to strike because I knew when my mother was on her knees. It didn't care and didn't have any fear of what it was that could happen to me. Imagine having all the firepower under your control. But the protective cut power came from a mother on her knees. Built a conviction of safety number two bestows upon you the power to change bestows upon you the power to change. I don't know where you're at today. But I want to ask you a very honest question. Are you a slave to sin?

Are you a slave to sin? On man said not anymore. God bless you, sir. God bless you. What a wonderful testimony that is once in chain now liberated. But if your feet are taking you to places you're to be going, hands are about what they are not to be doing and your mind is just embroiled in all kinds of thoughts that you are not to be entertaining. God can bestow upon you the power to change. He can bring new hungers, new desires, new hopes, take away all the old fears. Do you know I know of no other truth than the greatest strain in the Christian fair other than in the Christian faith, of where the Redeemer enters your life with forgiveness, offers redemption, and provides for you the power to live a different life, you won't hear that anywhere else. I want to speak in my next message on the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. And so I say to you, today, God bestows upon you the power to change if you are wallowing in places where you know you shouldn't be and you're struggling with many tears, and feel yourself handcuffed. Totally surrender yourself to him. He'll give you the power to change the power of a transformed heart. 

And so it is here conviction of safety, the power to change, and lastly, to rescue you from the tyranny of the immediate, to rescue you from the tyranny of the immediate, it is God who helps us look at the world from an eternal perspective, not from this narrow period of time. Let me close with the words of Malcolm Muggeridge because they are powerful as he brings this thought to a close. The world's we are responding to intimations of decay is to engage equally in idiot hopes and idiot despair. On the one hand, some new policy or discovery is confidently expected to put everything to writes a new fuel, a new drug, detente, World Government. On the other hand, some disasters as confidently expected to prove our undoing, capitalism will break down fuel will run out plutonium layer slow, atomic waste will kill us off, overpopulation will suffocate suffocate us, or alternatively, a declining birth rate will put us more surely at the mercy of our enemies. In Christian terms, such hopes and fears are equally beside the point. As Christians we know that here we have no continuing city that crowns roll in the dust and every earthly kingdom or sometime flounder, whereas we acknowledge a king men did not crown and cannot be thrown, as we as citizens of a city of God, they did not build and cannot destroy. 

So the apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, living in a society as depraved and dissolute as ours, their games like our television specialized in spectacles of violence, eroticism, exhorted them to be steadfirst, unmovable, always abounding in God's work to concern themselves with things that are unseen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. It was in a breakdown of Rome that Christendom was born. Now in the breakdown of Christendom, there are the same requirements and the same possibilities to astute the fantasy of a disintegrating work, and to seek the reality of what has not seen the eternal reality of Jesus Christ. Christianity has become institutionalized in the West, and some of it needs to die. In the breakdown of Rome, Christendom was born in the breakdown of Christendom. He says, There are new hopes, new possibilities, to assure the fantasy of a disintegrating world, and to see the treasure and the greatness of what has not seen the eternal reality of Jesus Christ. Are you going to be one of those who will see that reality and not succumb to the moment? Yes, I met a traveller from an antique land who said: Two vast and trustless legs of stone stand in the desert. Yes, there are crestfallen demagogues, but for everyone that falls on... (Video stopped here.)