Mesa Hills Bible Church

Pastor Tim Dane: Good morning, family. We are in the Book of Revelation, chapter 6, verses 9 through 17. Pagans love to shake their fists in God's face. The fact of the matter is every one of us is born dead in sin and hostile to God. Spiritually, that is what the Bible says our natural condition is. We're not born right with God. We're not born neutral. We're born in opposition to God.

There are a lot of pagans who love to put their fists in God's face. This could not have been more blatant than this past week when you had some of the homosexual parades in New York City. They are going down and actually saying, "We're here for your children." The news media is trying to write it off by saying they didn't really mean that, but there could not be anything more blatant. The evil that is becoming widespread and happening at a public level is incredible.

They can get away with this for a little while, but the day is coming when Christ is going to return and God is going to say enough is enough. This is My day now. We call this the Day of the Lord. The Day of the Lord in the Bible is that time period when God says it is now time for Him to step in and put an end to this. You can see there were certain episodes in the Old Testament where God said He was coming to get Israel for what they had done by bringing in the Babylonians.

The main concept in the Day of the Lord is God stepping in and saying He is putting an end to this. Many of these passages point ahead to that final time period in human history when Christ is going to step in. The day of grace has now come to an end. He has given humanity an opportunity to believe in His Son for 2,000 plus years. He has sent the gospel into the world, and now He is going to settle the scores with sinners.

This is that seven-year time period that begins after the Rapture when God pulls the plug of restraint on a world that needs to be judged. Last week, we looked at Revelation chapter 6, verses 1 through 8, where you have the beginning of the Day of the Lord. The symbolism used is that of a scroll that has been sealed up. Every time one of these seven seals is opened, the scroll is opened further and John begins to read the events that are going to unfold in the future.

There are seven seals on the scroll. When you open the seventh seal, it actually contains seven trumpet blasts. Each one of these trumpet blasts signals more unfolding and intensifying judgment. When you come to the seventh trumpet, it contains seven bowls that are poured out. There are 21 judgments in all, but the seventh seal and the seventh trumpet really contain the successive judgments that come.

Last week, we looked at the first four seal judgments that contained these four horsemen of the apocalypse: a rider on a white horse, a red horse, a black horse, and then a pale yellow horse. The first seal symbolized a false and temporary peace. That peace is taken away in the second seal with massive worldwide war. The third seal symbolizes scarcity of food and widespread starvation. This is when you have the scales; you're weighing things out and everything has become very scarce.

The fourth seal talked about worldwide death. It says that in the fourth seal judgment alone, one-fourth of the earth's population dies. In today's terms, that would be two billion people. This is something that has never been seen in the history of the world. This morning, we're going to look at the fifth and sixth seals here in chapter 6. In these judgments, we continue to see the unfolding of God's eternal plan and His judgment on a Christ-hating world.

We saw this expression last week: "those who dwell on the earth." As you look at that expression, it occurs 11 times in the Book of Revelation. This is their home. They hate Christ, they hate God, and they hate God's people. They do everything they can to try to destroy God's people. What you see here as God brings these judgments is that they despised God's Son. God gave a Savior that they could be saved, and they despised Him and hate His people. God says, "You love your sin; I'm going to give you the consequences of your sin."

Let's read Revelation 6:9-17: "When he broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained; and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?' And there was given to each of them a white robe; and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, should be completed also."

"I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?'"

Lord, we thank You for giving us Your Word that tells us Your purpose for this world and how You are going to bring a judgment on sin one day. I pray that You would take these things and strengthen our hearts and calm our hearts because sometimes when we see the evil and we see the people mock You and despise You, it makes us upset. Sometimes we might feel like we want to take matters into our own hands if we could, but we know that You are a God with a plan and purpose.

You are working things according to Your plan and purpose, and You will settle the score with sin one day. Use these things to help us understand You, Your love, and Your judgment. Use these things to help us serve You better. We pray these things in Christ's name, Amen.

In verses 9 to 11, we see this fifth seal. This is a picture of mass martyrdom coming to God's people. Why is it that unsaved people hate Christians? The reason is because Satan hates Jesus Christ. Satan hates God and Satan hates people who follow Jesus Christ. It is that simple. When you look at people who mock the gospel, who hate Christ, and who hate Christians, the reason is because Satan hates Jesus Christ and he instigates people who are not saved to hate His people.

This should not surprise us. The Bible tells us that explicitly in John 15:18-19. Jesus said, "If the world hates you, just understand this: it hated Me before it hated you. So if it hates the world, it's going to hate you. If they persecuted Me, they're going to persecute you as well." Jesus told us ahead of time that this is the way it is. At the present time in America, generally speaking, we don't see people being killed for their faith in Jesus Christ.

If we go to other parts of the world, does that happen? It happens in many parts of the world. Throughout the last 2,000 years of church history, there are many places where killing Christians has been commonplace. One of the worst persecutors of Christians was the Roman Catholic Church in medieval times. The Bible says that persecution and martyrdom are going to explode in the Day of the Lord. After the Rapture, it is going to be intense and widespread.

Jesus said in Matthew 24:9, "They will deliver you to tribulation and they will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name." Christ has already told us that this is what's going to happen here at the end of the age. We see three things about these martyred Christians in verses 9 to 11. Notice first in verse 9, God gives John a vision of them. "The Lamb broke the fifth seal, and I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and because of the testimony which they had maintained."

When John says that he saw the souls of those under the altar, the word "soul" more often than not in both the Old Testament and the New Testament simply means the person. "I saw those people that were slain," and it is not necessarily talking about the immaterial aspect of man's existence. John sees a huge number of people that have been killed, and it says they are under the altar. Back in the Old Testament, there was the Tabernacle or the Temple.

In the Tabernacle, you would walk in and on the left-hand side of the Holy Place, you had a huge lampstand. That lamp symbolized God, the light of the world. On the right-hand side was a table with bread, called the Bread of the Presence, the bread that is there in the presence and before God. If you look straight ahead, there was a curtain. If you go through the curtain, you would go into the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was located.

Right in front of the curtain was a golden altar, an incense altar. This altar would be the place where they would put incense on it, and the incense would rise up. It symbolized the prayers of God's people, sweet-smelling incense. God says, "I love the prayers of My people." This stood right in front of the curtain before you would go into the Holy of Holies. This altar of incense is not on earth; this one is part of a vision that John sees in Heaven.

This altar of incense is first mentioned back in chapter 5, verse 8. It says that when Christ took the scroll out of the hand of God the Father, "the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one having a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints." This incense symbolizes the rising up of the prayers of God's people. What we start to see here in chapter 6, verse 9 and 10, is that these prayers are prayers for God to bring judgment on evil, vengeance, retribution, and justice.

As the incense is poured out, the judgment of God begins to intensify. For example, in chapter 8, verse 3, another angel came and stood at the altar holding a golden censer and much incense was given to him that he might add it to the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. The smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints went up before God out of the angel's hand.

The angel took the censer, filled it with the fire of the altar, and threw it to earth. There followed peals of thunder and sounds of flashing and lightning and an earthquake. Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. What happens is that as this incense is poured out—as God is beginning to give greater and greater answer to the prayers for vindication—the trumpet judgments start pouring out and the judgments intensify from that point on.

These people that are underneath the altar at this time are in the presence of God, but they are not yet in resurrection because the resurrection that comes to the people who are killed in the tribulation period does not come until the end of this seven-year time period when Christ returns and establishes the kingdom. In that tribulation period, we're going to have a really bad guy called the Antichrist. The Antichrist is killing Christians who will not bow the knee to him and will not take the mark, the 666 mark.

There's going to be an economic system that the Antichrist puts in place during that tribulation period, and you will not be able to do any kind of commerce unless you take this mark. We read about it in Revelation chapter 13. The Antichrist says, "Fine, you won't worship me and obey me? I'm going to kill you." John says in Revelation 20:4, "I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given to them. And then I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of the testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and they did not receive the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they came to life and they reigned with Christ for the thousand years."

They were killed for not bowing the knee to Antichrist. Antichrist kills them, but they are coming to life at the end of that seven-year tribulation period when Christ has returned. When Christ brings His kingdom to this world for a thousand years, they came to life and they reigned with Christ. Right now, they are in heaven under the altar and they are crying out for vengeance on this wicked world.

The reason why they were killed is because they were completely faithful to Christ and would not bow the knee. In chapter 12, verse 11, it says, "They overcame the Antichrist because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even to death." You can kill me if you want to. That's okay; it's just going to take me out of this miserable world and bring me into the presence of Christ right now.

I watched a movie a few weeks ago called *Tortured for Christ*. Many of you are familiar with Richard Wurmbrand, who was a Romanian pastor that was put in prison and tortured for 14 years. He survived eventually in 1965 when some people ransomed him and gave the communists a bunch of money to get him out of this prison in Romania. He talks about so many people that were killed by the communists.

He said the communists were even worse than the Nazis. The Nazis were bad, but he said the communists were even worse because what you have is this complete obliteration of any sense of knowledge of God. Their cruelty was just beyond imagination. Some of these people, his friends and fellow Christians, were killed for their faith. This is what we see right here. It is going to be bad times.

Nobody is going to escape God's judgment, whether it's in the tribulation period or you die right now and stand in the presence of a holy God. It is funny the way that the unsaved world will take that sometimes and say, "Ah, yeah, your God says believe in Jesus Christ or I'm going to punish you." They don't quite understand how evil sin is. They don't understand that a holy God must judge.

We understand that ourselves because we have things like police and judges and courts. When somebody does something evil, we say we can't let that go by. A God who is perfect in holiness, there are no exceptions at all. When it comes to sin, God doesn't give you five to ten miles an hour over the speed limit. In verse 10, we see the second thing John saw about these martyred Christians: their plea. "They cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?'"

God, when are You going to punish this evil? They're pleading for justice. Make things right. Vengeance coming from God is not bad. When you and I try to do revenge, it is tainted by evil and our own sin, so I don't recommend that we be people who seek revenge. Jesus said if somebody slaps you on the cheek, don't slash their tires. Vengeance is not our job. God says, "Vengeance is Mine; I will repay."

These people who are now in the presence of God, standing in perfect righteousness, are crying out for vengeance. Notice the ones they are wanting God to judge: "those who dwell on the earth." This expression is basically a technical expression. It occurs 11 times in the Book of Revelation and it's always negative. The wicked world that says, "We hate Jesus Christ," and God says, "Okay, I'll give you what you have wanted. You don't want Me; you want your sin."

They're calling out to Christ asking for judgment, and they call Him "O Lord, holy and true." The typical word for Lord in the Greek New Testament is *Kurios*, but here it's a relatively rare term: *Despotes*. We get the word "despot" from it. It's the word that means the owner or the master, like the owner of a slave. It's a term that conveys the idea of harshness. Why must God judge sin? He's holy and He's true.

If we have a judge and we see judges that never punish evil, we say that's wrong. God must judge sin. In the Old Testament, there are a number of psalms where the spirit-inspired songwriter, like David, is calling out for God to judge evil. We call these psalms Imprecatory Psalms. There's quite a few of them where the Spirit of God is moving in the heart of the prophet to call out for justice and vengeance on evil people.

In Psalm 7, verse 6, King David says, "Arise, O Lord, in Thine anger; lift up Thyself against the rage of my adversaries, and arouse Thyself for me; Thou hast appointed judgment." David is calling on God to bring judgment upon some really evil people who are trying to destroy him. They're trying to destroy David because these people hate God. They're enemies of God and righteousness.

In verse 9, he says, "Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end." I pray that You would stop them and bring them out of this picture. "But establish the righteous, for the righteous God tries the hearts and the mind." Then in Psalm 139, we usually say God loves us and knows everything, but the reason why David is saying this is because he's saying, "You see what these people are trying to do to me, Lord. I need You to come in and help me and stop these people."

In verse 19, he says, "Oh, that You would slay the wicked, O God." That is a harsh prayer, but this is the Spirit of God speaking through David. "Depart from me therefore, you men of bloodshed, for they speak against You, Lord, wickedly, and Your enemies take Your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with the utmost hatred; they have become my enemies."

David is praying, "God, I pray that You would bring these people out of the way." We have some extremely evil people in places of power in our country today at every level. In my opinion, I don't think it's wrong to pray, "O God, I pray that You would remove these people." I'm not saying that you pray for God to strike them with lightning and kill them, but I think it is entirely biblical that we pray that God would remove evil people who have control and power because it's so destructive what they do.

Pray that God would give us righteous, godly people who lead. That's a biblical prayer. How God does that, that's God's business. After David prays for God to bring judgment, notice how David brings it back to himself. In verse 23, he says, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be in me any hurtful way, and lead me in the everlasting way." He prays for God to take action, yet he says, "I don't want to become a hateful, vindictive person overtaken by this kind of spirit."

The Bible shows us that God is love. How do I know that? He sent His Son, Jesus Christ. Let nobody ever say God is hateful and unloving. He hates evil, but He gave Jesus Christ so that we could be saved. Don't you ever blame God as being the problem here. He is love; He desires men to be saved. But the Bible also shows us that He's a God of vengeance on those who hate Him, and especially those who harm His people. Our God is a God of justice.

These people are crying out for justice, and in verse 11, God answers them. "There was given to them each of them a white robe; and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, should be completed also." God says, "Guys, a little while longer. There are going to be more that are going to be killed in this process."

In Revelation 13, when the Antichrist is ravaging the world, it says in verse 5, "There was given to the Antichrist a mouth speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, and authority to act for 42 months." That is three and a half years, the last three and a half years of the Great Tribulation. It starts with this false peace treaty that the Antichrist makes. He breaks it at the three-and-a-half-year mark and then he brings the armies that he controls to bring great destruction across the world.

For the last three and a half years, especially, the Antichrist is just ravaging the world. It says in verse 6 that he opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme God's name and His Tabernacle, that is, those who dwell in heaven. "And it was given to the Antichrist to make war with the saints and to overcome them, and authority over every tribe, people, tongue, and nation was given to him." This is a global block of power.

In verse 8, it says, "And all who dwell on the earth... will worship him." "We like this guy." These are the ones whose names have not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who's been slain. They're not saved. In verse 10, "If anyone is destined for captivity, to captivity he will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword he must be killed. Here is the perseverance and faith of the saints."

In other words, what God is doing is He's unfolding for His people and saying, "I have a plan and purpose, and it's perfect, and it's going to include a perfect resolution at the end. But for some of you," God says, "you are going to be in prison; for some of you, you are going to be killed. Trust Me. Stay faithful." We don't know how this thing is going to unfold before the tribulation period comes and unfolds in this world.

We may have stuff getting really ugly even before the Rapture and before the tribulation period. But no matter what happens in your life, you and I need to say our God is a good God and He's a sovereign God, and I can trust Him. The full retribution is on its way as you read the rest of this unfolding in chapters 7 through 19. In chapter 16, verse 4, the third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and all these waters became blood.

And I heard the angel of the waters saying, "Righteous art Thou, who art and who wast, O Holy One, because You have judged these things. For they poured out the blood of Your saints and Your prophets, and You've given them blood to drink. They deserve it." And I heard the altar—the saints under the altar—saying, "Yes, O Lord God the Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments." When God judges sin, unsaved people say, "What kind of God is that?" He's a true and righteous God.

In verses 12 to 17, we have the sixth seal judgment. This time we have unprecedented disturbances in the physical creation. The Day of the Lord is going to bring upheavals like have never been seen in a long, long time. The earth has already seen some massive upheavals in its world history. Just go back to the Flood. There's never been anything before it; there's never been anything like it yet.

In the Flood, you have a cataclysmic deluge that covered the entire earth, that wiped every face of life off the planet of the earth, every kind of land life. It also brought about massive shifts in the earth's structure and the plates of the earth. In the latter days of the Flood, the plates of the earth began shifting. The waters that covered the earth began receding. When the Flood came, you didn't have things like the Rocky Mountains.

You didn't have the Himalayas. The earth was relatively smooth and round at that time. You had land that existed, and at that early stage of world history, most geologists believe in something called Pangea. It means that there was one single block of land. You didn't have separate continents before the Noahic Flood. But in the latter stages of the Flood, God began causing shiftings of the earth's plates.

The earth was pulling apart. When we look at something like North America and Europe, and Europe and Africa, you look at a map and you say, "Look, that fits right together." That's because it used to be together. These things began shifting apart. In the meantime, you also have deep ocean canyons forming when the earth is shifting. You've heard of the Mariana Trench over there off the coast of Japan. That's over 36,000 feet deep.

Mount Everest is 29,000 feet, but the Mariana Trench is much deeper. You have these huge canyons opening up in the bottom of the oceans, bringing all those waters off the continent. At the same time, you have the shifting of the tectonic plates where you have the rise of these massive mountain chains that cover every major continent on the face of the earth. You've got the Andes down in South America, we have the Himalayas in Asia, and here in America, we've got the Rocky Mountains.

These things were formed in the latter days of the Flood, and then massive quantities of water went crashing down off of the continent. The Grand Canyon wasn't formed by a little bit of water over billions and billions of years. It was formed by huge quantities of water over a relatively short period of time. That's a much better explanation of the geology that explains why we have the Grand Canyon.

When you look at what we have here in our own backyard, we live in a unique place because it's one of the few places in the world where you can see some of these geological formations. One of my favorites is called the Great Unconformity. You can see it over in Glen Eyrie right next to the castle, but you can also see it right up here in Manitou. You drive through Manitou and then you come up to the spot where you've left the town and you're just ready to start crossing over.

On the left-hand side, you can park right next to it and walk up to it. What you have is you have all of these sedimentary layers that are mud, water, and sandstone. Then you come to a place where it's nothing but solid granite. Geologists call it the Great Unconformity because this is the very place where the foundational granite of the earth is now matching up with the flood deposits that began to form during the days of the Noahic Flood.

Bill Hoesch is a Christian geologist down in LA. He did his graduate studies in Colorado mapping the entire state. He said that to get to that same spot in the Denver Basin, you have to drill down 10,000 feet. Drill down 10,000 feet! What Bill told me is that in this area, there was a 20,000-foot shifting of the earth's surface that took place during the Flood. You want to know what that earthquake must have been like?

The whole earth was covered by water, but can you imagine the tsunamis that must have taken place when these things were forming? When we look at some of the major earthquakes that have taken place in the world over the last hundred years, in Chile in 1960, there was a 9.5 earthquake that triggered a tsunami that killed people as far away as Hawaii and Japan and the Philippines. The Anchorage quake of 1964 was 9.2 and it had a 600-mile fault that lifted up one side of the fault over 60 feet high.

The 1965 Alaska quake of 8.7 triggered a tsunami that went as far as Peru. The Sumatra earthquake of 2004 in Indonesia, a 9.2, triggered a tsunami that killed over 300,000 people. You've got to understand that what God is going to do in the tribulation period, this is not new. It's just that we haven't been seeing it for a while. We kind of get used to life as usual. God's going to shake up this world in a way that has not been seen in a long, long time.

The earthquake struck, but then it also says the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood. War has broken out—massive war has already broken out—so you've got military weapons and fires taking place. One of the things that you get with massive earthquakes is you get volcanoes. This opening volley of the Lord is a great earthquake followed by the sun turning black.

Events that are taking place here on earth are blackening the skies and creating a black sky with lots of smoke. This is causing the moon to look red. We know how that works. Look what happened back in New York City and the East Coast over the past weeks with all these forest fires coming down from Canada. People were saying, "Oh, this looks like an apocalyptic event." Well, yeah, it does, a little bit.

Henry Morris was a physicist and he started the Institute of Creation Research. He says the great earthquake described here is worldwide in scope. The earth's solid crust is traversed with a complex network of faults, with all resting upon a plastic mantle whose structure is largely unknown. In all likelihood, the entire complex of crustal instabilities is a remnant of the phenomenon of the Great Flood, especially the breakup of the fountains of the deep.

Suddenly, this network of unstable earthquake belts around the world will begin to slip and fracture on a global basis, and a gigantic earthquake will ensue. This is evidently and naturally accompanied by tremendous volcanic eruptions spewing vast quantities of dust and steam gases into the upper atmosphere. It is probably these that will cause the sun to be darkened and the moon to appear blood-red.

Revelation talks about it, but Jesus said this is going to happen as well. The prophets of the Old Testament also said these same things. Joel chapter 2, Isaiah chapter 13, those prophets looked ahead and saw these events by the Holy Spirit. Verse 13, "The stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind." What you have here, in all likelihood, is meteor showers that are beginning to crash down upon the world.

You see a falling star and you make a prayer. That's a meteor. What's going to happen is that there's going to be massive amounts of meteor showers that God in His sovereignty brings upon the world in that tribulation period. Stars falling from the sky; it looks like figs falling when you shake a tree. Jesus predicted these exact same things in Matthew 24.

Verse 14 says that the sky was split apart like a scroll when it's rolled up. We have a magnetic field that is driven by the earth's core, and that magnetic field shelters the earth from cosmic radiation. Cosmic radiation is what produces the Aurora Borealis. When you look at the northern lights and you see the northern lights coming down, well, that's because it's able to slip through the magnetic field.

If you have a disruption on the earth's magnetic field, you get massive quantities of cosmic radiation that come in. At the time of the Flood, there were massive quantities of radiation that came into our atmosphere. Some of that might have had effects upon the human race at a genetic level as well. When you look at some of these pictures where there's intense northern lights, it looks exactly like a scroll, like the sky is split in two and then it looks like a scroll being rolled up.

John is seeing the disturbances upon the earth, like earthquakes, and you're having the disruption of the earth's magnetic field, and what it's causing is a vision that John sees and it looks like the sky is being rolled up like a scroll. God is striking the earth because of sin, and it's having a physical effect. Lastly, it says every mountain and every island were moved out of their places. Horrifying events as you see mountains being cast down.

Look at the effect upon the unsaved world. The kings of the earth, nobody is exempt. The great men, the commanders, the rich, the strong, every slave, every free man—they hid themselves in caves and among the rocks and they said, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne," God the Father, "and from the wrath of the Lamb." They understand that this is God settling the score.

The Father and the Son are pouring their wrath down upon the world. The wrath of the Lamb; that's a little ironic. Lambs are cute little cuddly things, right? No, now it's time for wrath. And then they say in verse 17, "For the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?" God is going to come crashing down upon this world and it's going to be ugly from the human perspective.

How do you respond to that? If you're not saved, you need to put your trust in Jesus Christ. Whether you live to see that time period or you die right now or you die sometime before that, you're going to stand before a holy God. If you've never trusted Christ, trust Him right now. If you are a Christian, live for Him and tell others. What is the gospel? God loved us and God sent His Son. Jesus Christ paid the price of our sin, but also He conquered death.

He's alive, and God says if you trust in Me, I will forgive you. We're going to remember that great message as we share in the Lord's supper. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your great and wonderful salvation, that You have not abandoned us to our sin but You have given us a Savior, a victorious Savior, and we know that in Him we have the promise of life. We thank You and we praise You in Jesus' name, Amen.