Darren Tappouras - The Man Who Changed the World - Study 4 - The Influence of Christ

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

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   Well, I'd like to welcome everyone here this morning for our first session. The continuation of our studies by our brother Darren DePores. The title this morning, The Influence of Christ, the first shall be last. Brother Robbie, stoked if he'd come forward and read for us from Luke chapter 4, reading from verses 16 to 21.

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   Thanks, Robbie. We'll now ask our brother Darren if he'd come forward and deliver to us his talk this morning, The Influence of Christ, the first shall be last. Thanks, Darren. Good morning, Bible School. Good morning. We finished up in our last session having established some facts. These are what we refer to as bedrock facts.

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   Facts that are undeniable, that relate to the Lord Jesus Christ. Attested by, as we said, atheist scholars and historians, Jewish scholars, Muslim scholars, right across the spectrum. And those facts establish certain minimums, if you like, that Jesus existed, that he was born in Judea at the time when the Bible depicts it. He died.

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   He was executed by Pontius Pilate by crucifixion. And that his disciples preached this gospel immediately following his death, that there was an empty tomb and that he had been resurrected. We spent a little bit of time going, well, using and anchoring our logic in those facts and then looking at the reality that the Old Testament had predicted those things hundreds of years before they occurred.

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   And we had a little look at the Isaiah scroll and focused in on Isaiah 53 and the Messianic prophecies of this Messiah that would come. And we quickly looked at how they were fulfilled in the life of Jesus as confirmed by the historical facts. And Psalm 22, which gave us some really specific details hundreds of years before they occurred about the way our Lord was executed and the response of the crowds and what the soldiers would do to him, etc.

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   And those things were sort of literally point by point fulfilled. And we know that that was a legitimate prophecy that was given hundreds of years before. And we have the facts that they were actually fulfilled. So they're quite powerful from that point of view. This morning, we want to then sort of go in the other direction.

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   We want to push forward into history and we want to look at the effect that Jesus has had on the world. As another sort of avenue to see and to ask ourselves and look at the credibility and the plausibility of this happening purely by natural processes. And we all have to answer that question for ourselves.

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   But let's start with the facts and let's look at the results and just see in your own mind, is it plausible that this was just an accident of history? Now, before we get into it, I want to make a few comments about this time period, the time period between the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ and when he will return again.

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   What we might call and will refer to as the first coming. We understand what that means. The first coming encompasses both the birth, the divine begettal of Jesus, right through to his resurrection and then ascension. That's all captured under this concept of his first coming in the sense that God had a son and that son was Emmanuel, God with us.

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    So that's the first coming. And the second coming, of course, which we believe and pray and hope will be soon is when he will return back again. So there's there's a terminology, these two events in the history of mankind. But they're separated, aren't they? There's this 2,000 year gap between the first coming and the second coming.

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    Now, this is quite interesting and this really positions our our presentation this morning and what we're going to look at. No Jewish writer anticipated this gap. No Bible character. There is no specific evidence that any Bible character even anticipated this gap. No Jewish sect, no Jewish rabbi, no Jewish writer, no one that we know of in ancient history in the Bible or out of the Bible anticipated this gap between the first that there would be a first coming of the Messiah and there would be a second coming.

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    There is no explicit prophecy or details in Scripture that make this obvious. I mean, we can read back into like Psalm 110, but it's not an obvious, an explicit anticipation that are reflected in those in those words. So this gap, if you like, this this period of time is part of what the Apostle Paul calls the mystery.

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    This mystery that was hid in ages past and then now was revealed following the resurrection of Christ and the preaching of the gospel. Now, we're going to talk about this gap. This this is a very significant period in in history. And I want to make it clear. This gap. Is a really important part.

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    And you could even say arguably the important part in God's purpose with the earth. God is doing some incredible work during this gap period. This this this interval between the first coming and the second coming. And sometimes in our in our language and our vocabulary, we can sort of imply that this gap is like a dead period.

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    It's a waiting game that's going on. We're just waiting, waiting, waiting. And and and and we're really looking forward to the next stage of God's work on this planet. But really, this 2000 year period is really important and really vital. And God's doing an incredible work during this period. And you and I are part of that, which makes it so amazing.

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    We just want to make a few comments about about that. Brother Thomas talks about this this gap in one of his articles called the last days of Judas Commonwealth, which is an excellent little exposition. And he points out that this gap exists. He says between the two comings, which we call the first coming and the second coming, there's an interval between the two of them.

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    And he says the Old Testament writers didn't define this. They didn't see it. And he illustrates it by saying he says he says and this is a really good analogy. He says, imagine there's three poles. Now, the reason he's saying three, because he's expounding the fact that AD 70 was also a coming of Christ.

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    It was a different sort of coming, but but it was a coming. And so in his exposition, he's saying there's the first coming, there's another coming at AD 70, and there's the second coming as we understand it. So he says, imagine you've got three poles all lined up. If you're standing in front of the three poles, you don't see the gap between them because you're just looking at the first pole.

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    It's sort of blocking the rest of the perspective. And he says the observer occupying the position before the poles doesn't see the gap in order to see it. Dr. Thomas says you've got to either step to the left or right to see that there's actually a gap there. And he says this is a perspective.

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    He says it illustrates the apostles. The apostles didn't, of course, understand that there was going to be this gap. They were anticipating the kingdom being established there and then. But he even says this is the same case for Daniel and the prophets. They didn't see it either. So this mystery that's been hidden there is something we are so privileged to actually see.

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    And then he gives an example. He says, oh, he's already given us the example, but I just want to sort of act it out. So we've got two poles, if you like. I'll use these pens. If I look down at these two pens, I can only see the first one. I can't see the gap between the two unless I sort of dodge around a little bit.

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    And that's what we have when it comes to this time period, this really incredible time period. It's like an expansion of the coming of Christ. He comes in one instance and it sort of like expands out to 2,000 years. And that was part of, as I said, part of the mystery. So there's a little timeline running down the bottom of the screen from Noah, Abraham, David, etc., taking us up to the exile.

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    We've got that jump across from the exile to the New Testament of that 490 years. And then we have the first coming. And then this gap. Now, I just want to give you one example. And I did a whole Bible class series at Gosford on this, so I'm not going to go into it in great detail.

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    But here's just one example that we know well, showing how the Old Testament writers collapsed those two comings into one. Okay, does that make sense? So I'm just going to give you one example of that. This is a well-known passage, Isaiah 9. It's in Handel's Messiah. So I could burst in the song at any time and just sing that out.

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    It says, Which coming are we talking about there? The first coming. The very next line says, And the government will be upon his shoulder. What's that talking? When's that going to happen? It's the second coming. And then you read on and it says, The called Wonderful Counsel, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

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    The increase of his government and peace will be no end. And he will sit upon the throne of his father David over the kingdom. Okay, his kingdom will have no end. So all of a sudden there's this quantum jump, if you like, from a child he's born. Boom! His kingdom lasts forever. And that's the way, that's the perspective that the Old Testament writers have.

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    They don't have that 2,000 year gap. And maybe we need to think about this 2,000 year gap a little bit more. Of course we don't believe that God didn't anticipate it or he made a mistake or he changed his mind or whatever. That's not the point. The point is it was concealed to the Old Testament believers.

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    But we know it. We know it. We live it. We are in it now. So we want to make sense of that gap. Okay. We had a little introduction last night from Scott, which was really awesome, on the symbols of the apocalypse. And Scott dealt with particularly the second last and the last seal.

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    So the apocalypse contains within three sets of symbols, if you like, that track the history of the world during this gap period, during this interval. Literally. Literally. From the time of the Caesars, if you like, right through to post-World War I, World War II, to the period in which we're living today. So those symbols, the sets of symbols, Scott dealt with the fifth seal and the sixth seal, which is the persecution that preceded Constantine and then Constantine coming.

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    So we've got the seals to start off. I like to acquaint the seals. Now just, the seals were like little wax seals in a scroll. That's just for the Queenslanders. Okay. Because, well, when they hear seals, they think SeaWorld, you know. So it's, I've just got to explain that for them. That's, that's, that's, the Gold Coast isn't that awesome.

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    So you think of, think of that as the, as ancient history. That's the Caesars and the time of ancient Rome. Then we've got the trumpets, the next symbolic period. That's like, think of that as the Middle Ages and the rise of Islam, if you like, to just want to use broad categories. Then we have an interval there of the two witnesses.

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    And then we have the vials or the bowls, if you like, as some translations have. These vials that are poured out take us into modern history. It starts with the French Revolution right through World War I and beyond. So you've got the whole, that whole 2,000 year interval is mapped out. Now, obviously this is important that God has given us the very last book of his inspired word to map out the history of that 2,000 year period.

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    God is very much at work during this particular period. And of course the book of Revelation goes beyond that into the millennium. Now, I was going to ask that as a question, I've given it away now. What, what, what was the very first seal? So at the very first little mini epoch of time that is reflected in these symbols, what's the, who knows the very first one that is depicted?

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    The first symbol. The white horse. The white horse. And the rider on the white horse has a bow and there's no arrows in the bow and he's got a laurel wreath and he's going forth to conquer. Okay. Here is a spiritual warfare that happens right at the very start of this time period.

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    And it's talking about the, the early believers and the early Christians in this period of peace in the Roman Empire, the Pax Romana, and they're taking the gospel and they're conquering. They literally, at a literal level, Christianity conquers the world as we saw through Constantine. Christianity so-called. Anyway, but this, this, this, this white horse period, the gospel from the Roman Empire is going out and covering the entire world.

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    It's, it's an incredible concept. As well as preaching the gospel as we, we understand it as a first principle set of doctrines. Jesus has asked his disciples not just to do that, but they're, he, he, he gives them the commission to make disciples of all men throughout the world. So they're not just teaching doctrine, they're teaching the ethics, the morals, the teachings of Jesus as part of that.

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    And people are, are, are, are taking that on and, and amazed by it and seeing the power of that. So, so this is happening at the very start. So that's the very first part of the 2000 year period, the very start of this interval. The last symbol at the very end is the one we are living in right now.

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    We're at the end of that period and it is the sixth vial. And it's, and it is, it begins with a depiction of World War II, the drying up of the Euphrates, World War I, sorry, the drying up of the Euphrates River. The, the, the land of Israel now being available for the Jews to return to.

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    And it ends with Armageddon. But just before Armageddon, we've got this little picture of the, what, what we call the frog-like spirits. It's this spirit of madness and linked to this idea of equality, fraternity and liberty that sort of goes crazy at the last time and brings the world to Armageddon. So this is this span of 2000 years, really important span of time.

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    Starting with the, the gospel message going forth from a little unknown part of the Roman Empire to the whole world, conquering the world in a sense. And then ending with this last vial period of the frog-like spirits. Now we just want to make sense of that and put that together in some context.

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    This 2000 year period, you know, it seems like a long time to us, but what's in the, in the divine time scale, what's 2000 years in God's sight? Two days. So it's not, it's not really a long period. From our perspective, it seems that way. It's a, it's really relatively short period of time or a short gap.

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    But God's doing amazing things during this gap. Now there's a number of, of tracks, divine tracks or railway lines, if you like, that are running through this 2000 year period. I just want to identify a few of them. There's probably many more that we, that God's doing, but there's some obvious ones. One track through this 2000 year period is what we call the Jewish diaspora or all the Jews being scattered throughout the world.

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    So this, this happens at the start of the 2000 year period, particularly 70 AD when Jerusalem's destroyed. Jews are scattered and sold to slaves around the world. And it begins this, this, this diaspora track where the Jews have been scattered. They try and settle in one country. They get persecuted. They get expelled.

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    They move to another country. They suffer pogroms. They suffer expulsion. They get locked into ghettos. They suffer massacres. And it just goes on through this whole 2000 year period. It sort of reaches a climax in Nazi Germany in the, in the 1940s in the Holocaust. And then it ends with the Jews still being persecuted throughout the world, of course, you know, in different ways.

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    But they now have their homeland at the end of that 2000 year period. So you can see that, that Jewish track running through that particular period. I like to call this 2000 year period God's runway, if you like. This is, this is a runway to land the, to land his purpose. And it's all happening in God's, God's good plan.

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    Another track that's running through this 2000 year period is the, what we call false Christianity track or the Antichrist track. It again starts the start of the century, the 2000 year period. Paul says in 2nd Thessalonians that the spirit of it, the seed of it was already at work at the time when he was writing that epistle.

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    And then it continues to grow. This man of sin, false Antichrist system grows and grows and grows. And at the end, it's destroyed by the Lord. It is coming. So you can see it spans, it spans that, that, and traverses that, that time period, that whole 2000 year time period. And it becomes a central part of the apocalypse story without going into it in too much detail.

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    Another track. Now this is the, this is the really good one for us. This is why I say this is God's, this is God's time. This is God's doing his amazing work during this track. During this period of time, God is calling out of the nations. That's all different ethnicities and nationalities and peoples and tongues.

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    God's calling out of the nations are people for his name. That's happening during that period of time. We're, we're part of that. We're part of that. We're witnessing other things, but we are the actual subjects of this particular track. So God's taking out of, out of the people of this world, someone for his name.

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    They're, they're, they're kings and priests, if you like, in his, in his purpose. And they are, as first Peter two says, they were not a people, even though there might have been Australians or Greeks or New Zealanders or whatever. They were not really a people, but now they're the people of God. So God's taking a people and making them his people, which is covenant terminology.

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    I won't go into now, but, but God is taking these people to be his own connected to him in this relationship. But that track's going on right now. And we're part of that. And we contribute into that in, in his grace, of course, when we preach and we bring people to Christ. Just want to make another observation about this, this time period, this runway in God's purpose.

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    Christ already rules over this period of time. He's already enthroned as King. And sometimes in our vocabulary, we can push Christ being the King through when he returns. He's already the King. He's already over all, everything. Okay. And of course, when he returns, he will bring the kingdom to earth, like the kingdom will come, but already Christ rules and he's King over this whole period.

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    I'll give you some verses. Ephesians one, it says, God raised Christ from the dead and set him at his right hand in the heavenly places above principality and power, above all authority, all might and dominion and every name that he's named, not only in this age. So he's already in this age. He's King above every principality and power, but also in the age that is to come in the millennium as well.

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    He's, but already now he's, he's King and everything is under his feet. And he already fills the all in all, but you know, all in all is a, for Christodalvians is a, like a loaded phrase, isn't it? Which we, we, we know is ultimately the end of the, not the end, but the culmination of God's purpose.

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    In a sense, that's happening right now. First Peter three, verse 22. He's gone into heaven. He sits at the right hand of God. Angels and authorities and powers are subject to him right now. And we'll pick up this in our exhort, God willing, on Sunday. And in Matthew 28, Jesus says, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

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    He already is the, or has authority and he's the King of the earth during this 2000 year period. As all these things are happening, as God is drawing out of the nations of people for his name, as Israel are being scattered and persecuted and regathered again as, you know, Deuteronomy 28 predicted, Leviticus 26, Jeremiah 30 and 31, the regathering, all that's all happening under the auspices of a King who's already enthroned in power.

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    So there's, let's just quickly summarize some of these tracks that are running through this, this period of time. We saw the divine purpose of God as Jesus is now in authority during that period of time. We saw the false Christian track of the apostasy during that time. We looked at the orange track of, of colored orange anyway, of God's drawing out of the nations of people for his name.

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    And we saw the Jewish diaspora, the Jewish people track through that period of time. There's one other one I want to introduce this morning, which will sort of lead us into the rest of our session. There's another track in history of Jesus' influence permeating the world. The teachings of Jesus through that white horse period, not necessarily the doctrines of the gospel, but the teachings of the, the moral ethical teachings of Jesus have permeated the history of particularly Western civilization and the world in which we, we live.

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    And I just want to introduce some of that, those concepts to you very briefly as we finish up this session. Scott really nicely introduced this idea of the cross last night. I just want to talk a little bit about the cross, this, this symbol that has been associated to and with Jesus.

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    You know, it's, it's the greatest logo that has ever existed in the history of the world. It is the most recognizable logo or symbol ever in the history of the world. That's another, that's another Jesus thing, another phenomenal thing that you can, you can put down under the, under the Jesus heading. Now, the cross.

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    I want to talk a little bit about the cross. And, and Scott made this clear the other night as well. We see the cross today. We see, it's got, people wear it and it's on outside churches and it's everywhere. The, the cross was a torture device. The most horrific torture device you could ever imagine.

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    Yeah. It'd be like people wearing, you know, a electric chair on the electric chair, like some sort of torture device. It's, it's sort of hard for someone back in the first century to understand why you would be interested in the cross. And, and in fact, um, Scott showed some of the art, that Christian artwork from Constantine and they've retrofitted the cross into it because when it, when Constantine was around, the cross was not a, would not have been, um, looked at as a, as a good thing at all.

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    It would have been a horrific thing. The cross was the, the torture implement that the Romans used particularly for slaves, for, for slaves. It was, it was to strike horror into slaves. Now you think in the Roman empire, they were taking slaves from all over the world. In fact, um, like, like two thirds of Rome at some stage of their history were slaves.

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    There's more slaves than citizens in Rome. There was a household would have slaves looking after their kids and slaves cleaning and looking after the farms, et cetera. So there were slaves everywhere in ancient Rome. Now you think of the backstory of some of those slaves. They've watched their own families being butchered and killed.

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    They've seen their own parents killed, their family killed, their town burnt down. They've been dragged in chains and treated terribly and abused. They, they get to someone's house and now they're looking after your kids, you know, bathing them and looking at it. It's like, it's a, it's a funny juxtaposition, isn't it? In a way, not that funny, but, but it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a weird juxtaposition.

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    So the Romans allocated this torture called crucifixion where they tried to accentuate and maximize the pain and the suffering and, and the degradation of somebody for as long a period as possible in absolute horror and break them on that cross and people would look at that and shudder. And that, that was designed to keep slaves particularly.

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    It was a shameful, horrible thing. Now, Paul refers to this in 1 Corinthians 1 and it is relevant because God has taken this shameful, extremely shameful and degraded, disgusting, horrible thing and, and turned it on its head in, in what he has done. So let's just look at 1 Corinthians 1. Paul writes, for the message of the cross is foolishness.

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    Seems like crazy talk to, to, to a first century person. To those that are perishing, those non-believers, it's like nuts. He says, we preach Christ crucified. To the Jews, they just see that as just crazy. How could the Messiah suffer this horrible, degrading death, this horrible death where you just beg for your, to be killed.

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    You're in absolute agony and pain and naked and just shameful. How could that ever be applied to a Messiah? And to the Greeks, it's just utter craziness. It's foolishness. It's just like, what? You'll, you follow a guy who was crucified. It's just beyond belief. So that's, that's how the normal person during the early centuries would have seen crucifixion.

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    Here's view two. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those that are perishing, but to those of us being saved, it is the power of God. What? What? What a difference. We preach Christ crucified to the Jews, a stumbling block to the Greeks, foolishness, but to those who are called Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

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    The same event, view one, foolishness, foolishness, stumbling block. Or the power and wisdom of God. Foolishness, foolishness, stumbling block, power and wisdom of God. I could do this all day. I won't. But you get the point. You get the point. This is an extreme difference in the way you view this. Here's one writer talking about crucifixion.

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    Crucifying people beside busy roads or by the entrance of a city was, of course, designed to make a statement, an issue warning. People with business on those highways would walk past those terrible spectacles every day. And we may presume that many slaves would look up and shudder and decide that even if their present miserable life was better than that, they would just shudder at the sight.

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    And it was the most horrific and degrading thing. And here's the point. There is this introduced, even in the method of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, what we might call a topsy-turvy approach. Something that would be the antithesis of how humans view everything. To the Greeks, it was foolishness. To the Jews, it's a stumbling block.

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    But in this divine method, everything's been turned on its head. And it's captured in these words, these words that Jesus uses a number of times. The first shall be last and the last first. And in nature, we have something called the survival of the fittest, where the strongest survives and eats the weak.

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    And the weaker are preyed upon. Here we've got the strong dying for the weak. It's sort of a, it's the opposite of how nature works. It's the opposite of how our business world works, our political world works. It's the opposite of everything that humans believe. And in a way, do you like that?

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    That's like for the young people. So I just, you know, I'm trying to be young sometimes. The power of love trumps the love of power. There's this topsy-turvy thing going on here that's, did you ever play Opposite Day when you were kids? And you sort of say, you say to a girl at Bible school, I like you.

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    And then she goes, what? And you go, Opposite Day. It's all like, it's a, it's sort of, I use that. They're free tips, young people. I, you know, I don't charge extra for those.

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    It's the, it's just the opposite way of, of, of, of how our world, our society, even, even as I said, nature itself works. Power has been re-engineered, if you like. There's power in love. There's power in giving. There's power in turning the other cheek. And it's the opposite of how, how, how the human world has, has worked.

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    This, this little picture here, I, I, I just like the, the gain, the juxtaposition of it. Where, where's the power sit in this picture? Because in the picture, you got a Roman centurion. And he's there in all his regalia, all his, you know, buff armor. And he's got his helmet on and all, he looks awesome.

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    And he's got this jab, big javelin. And he's an officer in the most powerful army in the world. And he's thrusting this spear into the side of a victim that's writhing in agony on a cross. And you think, where, what point, what part of that spear is power being projected? And we would look at it through our three-dimensional glasses and go, well, the power's there in the, the soldier with all his gear on and his muscles.

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    And that was the dead opposite of where the power lay. The power lay in the, in the sacrifice of this man, in this, in this incredible scene that was taking place. A torture scene where this man was suffering. Now, I just want to make this point very quickly.

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    The Greco-Roman world was brutal. And if I was to tell you the things that happened during that period of time and the tortures that were invoked and the way people were treated, it would turn your stomach. It is just beyond belief how, even to their own. The Romans did it to their own.

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    Have you heard of decimation? Have you heard of decimate? Where if a Roman platoon or army units didn't serve the general well, they would decimate the unit. Decimate meant they would pick every tenth man and they would beat them to death in front of their, in front of their, their, their, these, these are their own people.

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    So imagine how they treated the people they conquered. It was just horrific. Crucifixion is just one example of, of the horror of the Greco-Roman world. The use of rape and, and, and, and degradation of the, of, of people that were slaves and captured by them. It's just horrific. It just, just, it just, it's just so cruel and brutal.

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    Today we would look back at those things in shock. They, we were, we'd be shocked. If you read, if you read Tacitus or Gibbons, Decline and Fall, you read some of the torture and some of the things that you, you were literally a sick. What has changed in that 2,000 year runway? That's how one end treated people, even their own people.

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    Today we look at that and we look at that in horror and, and we're, we're disgusted by it and we're offended by it. What has changed? Something has changed in humanity. Where did that change come from? How did it come into the world? What was the catalyst or the influence for that, that change from a brutal world to something today that would be sensitive about capital punishment and killing people and torturing and, and, and, and leaving babies out to die.

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    And all sorts of things that happened in the Roman Empire. The change happens even earlier than the birth of Jesus. There were these prophecies made, and we're just going to pick up a little thread of these prophecies that were coming. Something was changing in the world. Here's the prediction of, of John the Baptist in Isaiah 40 about this one that would, would be the forerunner to Jesus.

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    And look at the message that this forerunner would be bringing to the world. Comfort ye, my people. This is a Messiah one too, isn't it? I should start singing. Comfort ye, my people, says your God. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make strength, the desert highway for a God.

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    But every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain brought low. It's probably like that. There's this levelling out thing that's taking place. Whatever, whatever that is, it's, it's very enigmatic, and it's sort of, um, couched in these poetic terms. But there's this levelling thing. Mountains are being brought low. Hills and valleys are being brought up.

90. 33:08

    But when the angel gives Mary the news of, and Elizabeth the news that she was going to have a child and Mary's going to have a child, Mary sings this beautiful song. But just pick up some of the elements of the song. Mary says, my soul magnifies the Lord. He's regarded the lowly state of his maidservant.

91. 33:25

    I'm just a peasant, nobody. He's shown strength through his arm. He's scattered the proud. They've scattered the proud. He's put down the mighty from their thrones. He's exalted the lowly. He's filled the hungry, and the rich he sent away empty. It's, again, opposite day. It's topsy-turvy thing, isn't it? The rich have been sent away empty.

92. 33:43

    The poor have been elevated. This is mountains and valleys. It's all built into the story. This is the backstory of Jesus as he comes into the world. And then his very first presentation, which Robbie read for us from Luke 4, the very first public presentation of our Lord, he quotes from Isaiah. And look at the things he focuses on.

93. 34:01

    You can see they're not doctrinal in the sense he doesn't start doing a lecture on, you know, immortal soul or anything like that. Not that that's wrong, of course. But you see the focus of his message was this good news that comes through. He says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news to the poor.

94. 34:19

    The poor are sort of something that he cares about. He has sent me to proclaim liberty, to set free people that are slaves, that are captives, to recover the sight of the blind, so the handicapped become people that he cares about. In the ancient Roman world, no one cared less about them. They were just debris, rubbish.

95. 34:39

    No one cared about the lower classes or the lower people. To set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim this year of jubilee. So there's this release coming, couched in these, of course it's got this ultimate reference to the kingdom, of course, but right now it's couched in these ethical values and ideas of liberty and freedom and setting people free and poor being elevated.

96. 35:07

    And these are built into the very first presentation of the gospel. This is a very famous, of course, section of scripture where the Lord washes the disciples' feet or when he talks sternly to them about who wants to be the greatest in the kingdom of God, etc. And I don't know if anyone watched the coronation of Charles.

97. 35:29

    Did anyone watch that? I would not normally watch it. Susan's into that sort of stuff. So I had to watch it. But I just remember so many times he would move to another bench and stick something on his head or move somewhere else and pick up a sword or move somewhere else and do something.

98. 35:45

    And he would read out these little scripts and he kept using this phrase, servant leadership. I don't know if you remember that. Servant leadership. I promise to be a servant leader. I'm a servant. Where did kings ever decide to be servant leaders of their people? That was not something that any of the Caesars saw themselves as being servant leaders at all.

99. 36:05

    It's the infusion of Jesus' teaching, this topsy-turvy teaching that is coming to our Western culture. And he comes from passages like this. Jesus says to them, stop arguing about who's going to be the greatest. He says, that's not going to be how you live out your life and express your faith. He says, it's not going to be so among you.

100. 36:29

     Whoever's going to be great among you must be a servant. Who would be first among you would be a slave. Even the Son of Man himself came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life for others. This is opposite day. This is topsy-turvy talk, isn't it? This switching power around.

101. 36:49

     This is a whole new way of seeing how the world works. A first becoming a slave. A master becoming a servant. This is what Jesus is asking of his followers. And this becomes infused as that white horse preaching effort conquers the world. These values become infused into our culture. These are some of the things we all value really highly.

102. 37:18

     But we just don't value them highly. So does everyone in our street. Whether they're Muslim. Whether they're Hindu. Whether they're Jewish even. Whether they're Christian, atheist. Everyone in our street would say, they would tick the box and say, yeah, of course I like equality. I think kindness is awesome and compassion is good.

103. 37:36

     Where are they getting that from? All of them. They all sort of magically have the same values when it comes to all these things. It doesn't come through Greek philosophy. It didn't come through the Enlightenment. It wasn't invented during the Enlightenment or progressive stages of Western development. It all comes from Jesus Christ.

104. 37:59

     Before that, no one had any interest in another clan or another tribe. Or anyone else suffering and what they were going through. No one could care less. They would hear about an earthquake in Indonesia. They wouldn't care less. They would never raise money for people that had suffered a bushfire in Canberra or anything.

105. 38:16

     That idea was just so foreign to the ancient world. Where did it actually come from? The idea of equality that we all take for granted. Everyone says equality is so wonderful. It was not part of the ancient world. At all.

106. 38:32

     Where did it come from? It comes from Jesus. Jesus, the idea of looking after the marginalized came from Jesus. He was the one who elevated the marginalized. Every valley is going to be exalted. Even you get insight into the way Jesus talks about Samaritans. Jesus tells the greatest, you could argue, the greatest parable, which is illustrating an answer to the greatest question.

107. 38:57

     What is the greatest commandment of all? And to illustrate that, Jesus gives this parable. And who's the hero of the parable? The hero is a Samaritan. I mean, we read that and it's like so easy to read. But that is so counterintuitive to Jewish ears. They hated the Samaritans. They looked down on them.

108. 39:17

     They despised them. They would cross the River Jordan to get up to Galilee rather than walking through Samaria that was in the middle. Even Greeks and Turks aren't that bad. But anyway, they're pretty bad. But Samaritans, the Jews actually hated them. And yet Jesus makes this Samaritan the hero of his story. Jesus interacts with the Samaritan woman.

109. 39:39

     And here's an extract from the parable of the Samaritan has compassion on this fellow traveler. Also, Jesus interacts with the woman of Samaria, which shocked his followers, didn't it? It shocked his apostles. He's interacting with her. She's a woman. That's another issue we'll get to. But she's also a Samaritan. And that just totally shocked them.

110. 40:05

     He also interacts with those who were disabled and those who were outcasts in Israel. The lepers. The way lepers were treated is horrific. I don't know if any of you have watched The Chosen at all. But one of the movements in The Chosen that I sort of teared up was just to see how lepers were treated.

111. 40:25

     And they'd come near a city and everyone would go and start throwing stones at them to keep them away from the city. These poor people that are suffering are just having suffering added and put on the top of them. And Jesus would go and touch them. And some writers have said that's probably the first human touch they've had for decades, the touch of Jesus.

112. 40:41

     He didn't even need to touch them. We know he could heal without touching. But Jesus interacted with them. The mentally ill, the demon-possessed, if you like. Jesus interacted with those people that were despised. And in Jewish culture, those people were seen as cursed from God. They've done something wrong in their life. That's why they've been cursed.

113. 40:56

     And Jesus had this empathy, this feeling for them. Moral outcasts, even prostitutes. You know, in the ancient world, prostitutes were often the product of their poverty. And they were despised and spat on and treated badly. Jesus would interact with publicans and sinners. When you read sinners, it's a euphemism for prostitutes. He would interact with them, even though the rest of society rejected them.

114. 41:22

     All right. You know, phrases like Galatians 3, there's neither June or Greek, male or female, etc. We just read over that like it's just nothing. That was so radical when Paul wrote that. Paul's writing these radical words. That was not how society was structured in the ancient world. Kindness and compassion, the ancient historians would tell you, or the historians of the ancient world would tell you, that was not valued like we value it today.

115. 41:49

     We hear a compassion story or a kindness story, we think, oh, isn't that lovely, we're moved by it. That's not how, they had no idea. You were kind to your family and your loved ones, but you weren't kind to other people. That was just not a thing. And so these teachings of Jesus had this practical outcome in the Roman world as they conquered and went forth to conquer in practical ways.

116. 42:12

     You know, the very first hospital, the very first hospital in the history of the world, the history of the world. The Greeks had sort of, not hospitals, but they had barracks, medicos for their soldiers, but not for everyday people. The first hospitals came from followers of Jesus who established hospitals and healthcare. Right through this 2,000-year period, they've been responsible for looking after the sick.

117. 42:39

     Even during epidemics, when the Roman world went through multiple plagues, it would wipe out 25% of a city. If one of your relatives was sick during a plague and contracted something, they would put their own relatives out on the street because they didn't want to die from the plague. The Christians in those cities went and gathered these people up into hospices and looked after them and nursed them, often dying themselves from doing that.

118. 43:05

     You know, they're putting this compassion of Jesus in a way, this is how it conquered. It wasn't an intellectual conquering of the world just because of debating. People saw the love of Christ in the way they responded. This is how it spread through the Roman Empire. It was so radical and so amazing.

119. 43:23

     I've just put an extract here from a writer who's an atheist. He's a well-known atheist writer called Bart Ehrman, and he's very anti-Christian. He's an expert on first-century history, and that's why I put it up here just to show you. This is not from a friendly source. This is a historian who doesn't like Christianity.

120. 43:43

     But Ehrman acknowledges the profound impact of Jesus' ethical teachings, particularly those concerning love, compassion, and concern for others. These teachings, according to Ehrman, were revolutionary. Jesus' teaching about loving one's neighbour, caring for the poor and the marginalised, even loving one's enemies, were groundbreaking in their historical context and had a lasting influence on Western moral thought.

121. 44:05

     This is coming from someone who is anti-Christian, doesn't believe Jesus was actually resurrected. But I put it there for that perspective. So let's finish up our thoughts going back to this divine runway.

122. 44:22

     Compassion and kindness, equality, care for the poor, care for the marginalised, these are the hallmarks of what we might call progress in human development, if you like, from the brutality of the Roman Empire and the callousness of the Roman Empire through to the period in which we live today. The only source in the ancient world for that change of thinking is Jesus Christ himself.

123. 44:50

     And the initiation of that change of thinking was the white horse of the first seal that went forth and took, in an attempt to make disciples of all men, took the teachings of Jesus to the world. So there is this progress over time. But in the last epoch, represented by the sixth vial, we have a change.

124. 45:17

     And all of a sudden we have this frog-like spirits represented in a very negative way. They're spirits of madness. They're crazy. They've reached a crazy limit. And here's my opinion. This is, you know, warning, this is a Darren opinion zone. Okay, take it for what it's worth. What has happened is humanity has unhitched itself from the source of this morality, from the source of compassion, from the source of equality, from the source of kindness and care for the marginalised and those who are oppressed, which is all admirable.

125. 46:00

     But it has come unhitched from the source, which is Jesus Christ, on behalf of God, of course. And so it has, yes, it progressed over time, but now it has, you could say, metastasised into something crazy, into something nuts. And we see this, I think in the 1970s, this starts to happen as we unhitch and unmoor ourselves from Jesus and we have this morality that we value, but it's floating in an empty vacuum.

126. 46:29

     And you have now in America people claiming to defend the marginalised and they're assassinating people and killing people or acting violent to support who they consider to be the victims or the oppressed. It's, they've lost, they've lost the source of where this morality comes from. And God has beautifully depicted it as these frog-like mad spirits.

127. 46:55

     You know, it started in the 70s with, you know, John Lennon's song, Imagine, have you heard of that? You know, it's Imagine, this ideal world, this sort of utopia world where everyone's beautiful and peaceful and there's no God. It's like, no, that doesn't, that can't happen. You know, you might think he's a dreamer, but he's not the only one.

128. 47:17

     So, others, others have got onto this socialist idea and thought, we can create this utopia without God. You can't. You've unhitched yourself from the source of kindness and compassion. It's all anchored in the very character of God in Exodus 34. That's where it's all coming from. To unhitch yourself from that is to lose your compass in that and socialism hasn't worked and now it's metastasised into what we might call wokeism and, you know, when I saw, when I first saw in the news in American campuses people holding up signs saying, queers for Palestine, I knew we'd reached the, I knew we're in the, we're in the sixth vial.

129. 47:53

     This is madness. This is nuts. The crazy lights have all gone on. You know, this is really crazy. But it's all done in the name of the oppressed and the marginalised and trying to be kind or perceived to be kind, et cetera, so we are in the last, we are literally in the last vial and we've reached that period where this has all gone, it's all gone nuts.

130. 48:15

     But let's, let's try and remember the real source of kindness and compassion and equality. It comes from, it comes from Jesus and it was infused into the world through his followers. Be they hospitals, orphanages, even education came through the followers of Jesus that were trying to educate and help people come out of poverty.

131. 48:37

     It was all the spirit of Jesus working through this 2,000 year period to bring us to today where we don't torture people and crucify people and do all those sorts of things and we value kindness and things of that nature. So, mankind in this final vial period have lost the anchor back to Jesus.

132. 48:58

     But I want us to go back to our first objective in our studies was to boast about Jesus. Remember we talked about boasting glory in Christ. He is the source of all that is good in our world. Everything that you value comes from Jesus. Be proud of that, not in a bad way, but be proud to be associated with that.

133. 49:17

     You are, you are connected to Christ. You're a Christadelphian. You're in relationship with this man who brought these amazing, beautiful things into the world. And of course, we don't run to the excessive right of those who have disconnected themselves from the source. Just want to finish with this thought about the cross. What was once a torture device?

134. 49:39

     Think of that. It was a torture device, the most horrific, degrading death that you could ever imagine. And today, it has morphed into a symbol of hope over 2,000 years in many different ways. If someone is injured at your work or injured at school or injured here even at Bible school, we call an ambulance that turns up with a big red cross on the side.

135. 50:03

     It's a symbol of help and hope that comes and helps that resuscitate that person or take them off for medical care. You're in a disaster zone where there's been an earthquake or a tsunami and there are tents put up and they've got crosses on them for people to see, that's where I can go for help and succour and aid and compassion.

136. 50:22

     In the workplace, someone hurts themselves or they're cut or injured or electrocuted. You go to the Green Cross which is the first aid area and there's hope and there's succour from that source. How did this happen? How did a man 2,000 years ago with no armies, no money, no resources, no influence, no connections at all, a carpenter and the son of a carpenter from a peasant village in the back of what was already a backward country but he's in the backward part of a backward country in a backward village called Nazareth and yet that man would influence the world and change the world and today we have a cross on our hospitals and our ambulances and we can drive around this suburb in Lake Macquarie here and see the end result of those who follow him and claim to follow him and what they have done in the world from hospitals to schools to universities.

137. 51:21

     All these things came through the followers of Jesus through the 2,000 year corridor of time. It's quite phenomenal. So let's just get our berries before we finish. We have the absolute facts that Jesus existed. We have the absolute facts that the Old Testament predicted his life and we know those predictions were given before he lived.

138. 51:41

     We know they were fulfilled in reality and now we can look forward from that time into history and see the effect that this man has had on our world in this very incredibly positive way and I hope that has helped convince you and as I said to glory and boast in a good way that you are a Christadelphian that you are a follower and you're in relationship with this man Jesus Christ.

139. 52:05

     Thank you.