Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012
Vern Peterman · Jan 15, 2012
Bible Bkgds/Church History, No. 02
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492625897845

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

One of the things we talked about last week was sequence matters. Some books, sequence doesn't make a lot of difference. The sequence is fairly random and doesn't matter a whole lot. The Bible sequence does matter. And some of the examples we gave were, for instance, does it make a difference whether Adam or Abraham is first?

Yes, it does, right? It does. And one of the reasons we said that it does make a difference is because if you have Abraham first and then Adam later, it's like, wait a minute, how did sin get in here, right? Adam being the first man and having sinned, creates the need for the rest of what is in Scripture and explains it.

The sequence does make a difference. Another example we gave of sequence matters is the identification truths. We've been identified with Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. And that sequence matters, doesn't it? But what if you were identified with Christ in His resurrection, And then you are identified with him in his crucifixion. Does that work? No, not so much, right? So sequence matters in the Bible, okay? Sequence does make a difference.

And so one of the things we'll be looking at a lot, and especially today, is timelines. And so we'll be taking a look at that. Let's step through some of these things. So the big picture of Bible history and geography, timelines and maps will be the main theme today. You have this, I think, on your handout, and it's similar to one we had last week.

It's a historical timeline of the Bible going from creation to just after the time of the New Testament. And one of the things we said is that the Old Testament was written over a 1,000 year period of time from Moses, and he finished about 1,400 B.C., and then here to Malachi about 400. So 1,000 years of time from the beginning of the writing of the Old Testament to the end of the writing of the Old Testament. And all during that time, the book of Psalms is being collected as Israel's national hymn book. The New Testament is only in the first century and not even all of that. A little short piece by comparison.

And one of the points we make is there's about a 400 year gap between them. And we will cover what happened during that 400 year gap because it matters. It makes a difference. There are things that can't be explained without understanding what happened in that 400-year gap.

One of the things I show creation, notice I don't put a date there, but we'll make a comment. One, if we assume that the ages and time frames given in the Bible are to be taken at face value, and secondly, are given without gaps, That is, all the names that are given have no gaps, if we assume no gaps, and you start adding them up, and if we take the days of Genesis 1 as literal solar days, then we arrive at creation about 4000 BC.

Some of them have calculated 4,004. As a matter of fact, somebody even came up with some, and I'm pulling a number out of my head here, but something like, you know, September 23rd at 9 a.m. at 4, you know, I think that's a little bit too much. But at any rate, some have come up with numbers like that. So if we assume those three things, then you end up with that date. It's the second assumption that is most open to discussion, therefore extension of the creation date, although there are people, of course, that have other assumptions that they operate with.

We won't go into that in detail. There is a supplement. We don't have a copy of it yet. I'll have a supplement available that talks about the reason why the days should be taken as literal days. But we won't go into that here in this class. While the biblical chronology could consume a lifetime of study, most of us will find some round numbers for key events to be helpful in setting a framework.

And what would it mean? Abraham about 2,000 BC. So that would mean about 4,000 years ago. So that's point one. If we have that, then we say, well, was it before or after Abraham, right? So that would be one key point there. Next one, the Exodus, that is the time when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt after 1500 BC. That's to give you a round number, okay? So after 1500 BC would be the date of the Exodus. and the time of Moses, and then David about a thousand BC, so three thousand years ago. And then the New Testament in the first century AD. The only exception to that would be Christ was born several years BC. So, alright, is that okay? I noticed some quizzical looks. Pardon? Not at zero. Actually, this is a sad thing I have to tell you. Nobody was alive during the year zero. Nobody. The year zero never existed. That's why.

So, what we have here, here's Abraham looking at the timeline like you have. Here's Abraham, he lived in Ur. Ur had these pyramid-like structures with flat tops as were built all around numerous places in the Middle East during that time. Ur was an advanced civilization and a lot of times people think, well, 4,000 years ago things were pretty primitive.

Not so much. Here, for example, is a cosmetic box with a lid. That's fairly sophisticated. And what it is kind of curious is to look through archaeological findings and they find over the millennia that women have had cosmetic cases. And this is one of them. And this one here and the ziggurat at Ur actually predate Abraham. So it was already an advanced civilization when he was born.

Now, here's Moses, and again we could say Moses, if you start with the 1500 BC date as a round figure, he was alive then. that would give you a starting place for where I put Moses in the sequence, okay? And then we have David. David was the first of a line of kings and the last king in his line is yet to reign. Christ, right? Christ. So here's David about a thousand BC, okay? So then you have the New Testament here in the first century. Okay.

Now, with David, if you can handle just a touch more detail, with David, you have David is between Saul and Solomon. So Saul, David, and Solomon. So that gives you another kind of framework to tack onto it. Each reigned about 40 years and then the kingdom divided. That is, Saul reigned for about 40 years, David for about 40 years, Solomon for about 40 years. And then the kingdom was divided between the northern and the southern kingdom. So 40-40-40. As a matter of fact, Moses 40-40-40 works too.

Where was Moses the first 40 years? in Egypt and then where was he in the next 40 years? He was out in the desert, you know, tending sheep. And then the next 40 years doing what? That's when he got the people out of Egypt and was out in the wilderness. So the 40-40-40 pattern works for Moses too.

Alright, the Jews were exiled in Babylon in 586. This is where the southern kingdom, with Jerusalem as its capital, the people were hauled off to Babylon. And as we'll take a look, each of the empires that Israel had to deal with had their own philosophy of empire. They didn't all do it the same. And Babylon, one of their philosophies was you haul people to Babylon.

You bring them, get them close, right? It's sort of you keep your enemies, you know, closer and that's what they did. Okay. So 586. So if you have kind of some figures in there, then you can start saying, well, okay, if somebody, something else happened, what was, you know, where is it in this timeline? Example, where were the judges? Who were they between? the period of the Judges in the Book of Judges. Pardon? Okay, you're close, but that's not quite right. Pardon? Yeah, in other words, if you look at it between Moses and David, depict the big names, those are going to be, that's going to be the period of the Judges, okay, in between there. If we look at Daniel, The Jews were exiled to Babylon in 586. So Daniel, why is Daniel not described as being in Israel? Because he was in Babylon, right? He was part of this exile into Babylon.

Okay. How about Noah? Yeah, so here's Abraham here. You got Noah's earlier, right? So having these kind of round numbers in place to begin thinking helps us to say, OK, who was where in this picture, right? So that's why I suggest these are kind of beginning round numbers to work with. And you can place other events and people with respect to these, right? So if I said Jacob, So where does Jacob fit? Between Abraham and Moses because it was Abraham, Isaac, then Jacob. Right. So this gives us a way of kind of putting people in the right time location because sequence matters. Right. OK. A word about historical dates. We use what's called the Gregorian calendar. That was decreed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. It wasn't fully accepted in Europe until the early 1900s. Can anybody tell me why it wasn't fully accepted until the early 1900s?

Yep. Okay. Now, so the Pope says, look, we're going to use this dating system and you're Lutheran, right? So what are you going to think about that? Yeah. Right. You're not going to like that. Here's another one. One of the places where it was last accepted was in Russia. Why would Russia be later to accept the dating system? Okay, they were behind. And while there's truth to that, there's another reason. But you're right, they were behind. Yes. Think about this.

The traditional church in Russia is the Russian Orthodox Church, right? Well, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, as we'll discover in church history, split off centuries, many centuries earlier. So it's like the Pope says something, who cares? What do I care what the Pope says something? So although it was decreed in the 1500s, it was centuries later before it was finally adopted.

So the dating system that all of us are familiar with is something relatively recent. And if you came up to Daniel and say, Daniel, did you die in 536 BC? He'd say, what's a BC? The whole system is one that we read back into all the historical documents and evidence. And one that even in our modern era has only been accepted finally in a little bit less than the last century. So it's a recent dating system.

The Bible authors knew nothing of our calendar, because not only did they not have that dating system, but where did we get our calendar? We have the month of July. Where did that come from? From Rome, right? So does Daniel know about Rome? No. Right? So you have our dating system.

Matter of fact, we have October, right? Oct tells us 8. What month is it? Is it the 8th month? No, it's the 10th. The last months are all displaced by a couple of months in order to make some extra months in there. So our calendar system is a kludge. The Jews had a lunar calendar. It's a moon-based calendar. And then because that gets out of sync with the sun, they throw in an extra month every once in a while. So they have a completely different dating system, which is why We'll have, like for example, Hanukkah is sometime in December, but it might be early in December, in the middle, and just happened to be this last year here, it was later in December and coincided more generally with our Christmas holiday. It jumped around. Why? Because they have a completely different calendar system. Okay.

The usual pattern was to you know, tie the date of something to a reigning monarch or to key historical events. The day that we got out of Egypt. Some pivotal event or, you know, this is the person that reigned and it's in, you know, this king and it's in this year and this month and in this day of his reign. So counting that way is typical.

Historians try to establish a chronology based on assembling the facts available to them about a certain king, when a certain king came to power, how long he reigned, when he died, etc. And since the available data on these historical events and royal personages is never totally complete or absolutely clear, chronologies will vary from one time to another. Excuse me, from one to another. Let's take it for instance. Herod. Herod the Great. Josephus said, and Herod the Great, this is the one that met with the Magi, the wise men. Herod the Great, Josephus said, died after a lunar eclipse. So which one?

And so there was a lunar eclipse in 4 BC, March 13th. So how long did he die after that? Yes. Yes, yes or no. Often astrology, you know, you will see things from astrology cropping up in scripture. In this particular case, Josephus was a Jew. and they had the lunar calendar.

So a lunar eclipse would matter because you're gauging everything based on what's the moon doing, right? So if you would say, well, we got a full moon or, you know, waning, whatever, that would be something to note. But a lunar eclipse, now that's notable. That doesn't happen all the time. Doesn't even happen once a month, right?

So Josephus marked that it was just after a lunar eclipse that Herod died. So if he died, and that would have been, so he would have died March 13th, was the eclipse, so say the 14th, or sometime after that, then it meant that when he met with the Magi, it must have been before that date, right?

Okay? So, chronologists will look at all sorts of things to try to put things together date-wise. While we ought to pursue accuracy, sometimes we have better success than other times, the sequence of events is seldom an issue, and the value of the historical sequence in Bible study is of the greatest importance. So if you see some variation from one date to the next, that shouldn't bother you, as long as the sequence is clear. Here's the instance where here's the birth of Christ, And here's Herod, died in the middle of March in 4 BC. That's taking the lunar eclipse that Josephus wrote about as the date marker.

So the Magi came to Jerusalem where they asked, where is he who was born king of the Jews? And nothing is going to get Herod's attention like that kind of question, right? Wait a minute, I'm the king of the Jews. What do you mean? Anybody who's born, he's going to be dead. So the Magi met with Herod the Great before he died, likely no later than January 4 BC. After that his health declined and he was gone.

So that would be the latest time. It doesn't mean that it has to have been January. It could have been earlier. So what that does is it gives us a latest date. It doesn't tell us how much earlier it might have been. But the sequence is still clear. The sequence is still clear. All right. Let's see.

There are some key points at issue in the historical chronologies. When you're reading somebody's chronology, is the Bible taken at face value? Or has somebody built in assumptions about what they believe to be true or not? Oh, the Bible isn't right on this. If the assumptions are not giving scripture the benefit of the doubt, so to speak, then they will come up with other dates and maybe even other sequences.

And the next one, does the author accept that there are true prophecies? Is it possible to prophesy something in advance? Can God do that? If you say the answer is yes, then I can look at it and say, OK, what's this prophesying? On that basis, there are about 10,000 prophecies in Scripture. 5,000 have been fulfilled. Round numbers. If, however, you don't think that it's possible that there are true prophecies, the tendency will be to say, well, that The book wasn't really written then, it was written this later time.

Why? Because I can't stand the idea that God could predict something. And it's all about assumptions, not the facts. So, be a matchmaker. As you're studying the Bible, looking at the aspects of language, history, and culture as they shed light on the meaning of the biblical text, match up the text with the right Bible background. Okay, Jesus is crucified on a cross. Why? Why is it a cross? Because that's what the Romans did. That's the way they did it, right? And crosses were not used in that way many centuries earlier. That just wasn't the way it was done.

So we want to match up the time and the culture and the place. So be a matchmaker. Matching the right language, history, and cultural background to the text will open a gold mine of deep spiritual discoveries. It will also confirm the truth of the text of scripture because then everything fits. Everything fits. Oh, that's why they did that.

That's why they wouldn't do that. That's why, for example, you find in the New Testament, you find that they're concerned about what did Moses say? But Abraham wasn't. Why? It was not the right time for him. So it is a matter of matching up what time is it and what's the place And what culture are we talking about here?

Here's an example. Daniel's friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into a fire as punishment under orders from the king of Babylon. That's Daniel chapter 3. Remember what the account goes like this. The king of Babylon has this huge statue set up and when they get the music playing, everybody's supposed to bow down to the statue.

And if you don't, you go into the fiery furnace. Well, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are exiles from Israel, and they say, sorry, we can't do this. We'll only worship the true God. We can't bow down to this idol that you put up. So they were thrown into the fire, and The king is looking in, and he says, I see one, two, three, there's four in the fire, and they're walking around. Come out. So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego come out of the fire.

So then, Daniel himself friend of these three guys that were thrown in the fire, was later thrown into the lion's den as punishment under a regretted order from the king of Persia. That's Daniel chapter 6. And God was shown to be greater than the lions. So, why was one set of guys thrown into the fire, and Daniel is thrown into the lion's den.

Well, it turns out we can understand the differences in these punishments because the Babylonians held lions as sacred, but not fire. So the Babylonians would think, oh, you don't throw people to lions because lions are sacred, but we don't care about fire. Well, but then the Persians took over and they held fire as sacred, but not lions. So to them, you know, we don't care about, you know, we don't care about the lions, it don't matter, but we, you know, hold the fire as sacred.

So what you find is the switch fits the change in cultures. Exactly. Oh, one more thing. You may recall that when the ruler had Daniel thrown into the lion's den, he regretted it, but He couldn't change it. Why? Because the laws of the Persians, when you gave an order, it couldn't be reversed.

That fits with the Persians. It doesn't fit with the Babylonians. So what you find is what happens and what's described there in the book of Daniel fits the culture exactly. It fits exactly. It is, on the one hand, a way to understand the scripture better, It's, on the other hand, evidence in favor of its historicity. See that? So it helps us understand what's being done, helps us understand Scripture, and it's also something that supports, confirms the historicity of the Bible. Because Daniel didn't mess it up when he wrote this down. It fits. Now, so this Persian ruler couldn't change an order once made. And so once he made the order, even though he greatly regretted it, he had to have the order carried out. All right.

So the setting for the Book of Daniel is from 605 BC to 536 BC, shown by that line above there. And I don't think this is a timeline in your handout, is it? I don't think so. The skeptics of Daniel's miracles and prophecies place the writing here. Why? It's several centuries out of sync, why do they place it here? Because Daniel made prophecies and they can't believe that God could have a prophecy written centuries in advance. So they say, well, it must have been written centuries later, because we won't allow for prophecies. So it isn't the facts that dictate that it was written later, it's the assumptions.

All right. Now, you have some timeline resources. There's a handout with two pages. And believe it or not, that about one and a half pages there covers all of biblical time. It shows some things, but there's also a lot of detail it doesn't show. And so as we go through this elective, we'll be looking at what are some other resources that show more detail. And so I'll be handing some out. For those who want it, I'll be sending you more via email.

But this timeline goes on all of one page and then half of another, and that's the entire Bible timeline. One of the things you'll notice looking at that is that Genesis is the book that covers the most period of time. It in fact covers most of the timeline. One of the other things that you'll notice is that because of the long ages, of those during the, especially the early chapters of Genesis, there's a lot of overlap, even to the point where, again, assuming no gaps, Noah died just about the time Abraham was born.

It's kind of surprising, you know, overlap to look at there. Now let's look at something. I talked about the gaps and the genealogies. Yeah. I was going to say, it's also interesting, and I think it's quite likely that Adam, who had recognition of God, lived during all these people except for Noah. So he was able to pass on the information that he had been given by God to all these generations. Yes. Yeah.

Think about the way we do things. We do things in the way that we do them based on a limited lifetime. Imagine if it were possible to live for centuries and pass on things to many generations after your time. Imagine if you could continue learning. What typically happens is we have a learning period and get to a place where, okay, I'm going to retire and it's done. And it's all over in a few decades.

But for those living in the early, in the times recorded in the early chapters of Genesis, living for centuries, you would have a long period of time to learn things, also to reproduce, by the way. So, a lot of the rates of things that we think about and the typical time frames would be quite different, right? Yes? Why did they say 70 years for the captivity? Because, I mean, if you take 605 and you subtract 556, you come up with 69 years. And so that's the one week of years that was not completed in captivity, right?

That I'd have to take a look at offhand, I'm not sure. Here's a part of it, and that's the point I was going to bring up. If you look at some of the things that are recorded in scripture, we have some areas where we're not certain, and it doesn't mean we don't know if it happened. It doesn't mean these people weren't real, but we don't have all the detail.

Example, in Genesis, it'll say, so and so was, you know, this many years old and he begat, you know, this person, and he lived so many years and then he died, right? Well, and you start adding those up. And then you come up with these dates that we have. Well, was it so many years and so many months and so many days? I mean, that's the more likely thing.

They didn't all die exactly at the year that was recorded. And so one of the things, and it may be the answer to your question that you're looking at, Stan, one of the things that happens is where we don't have exact, precise month and day information. By the time you start adding some things up, you could be off by several years, just because we don't have all the months and days recorded to be able to get things done with precision.

Now, does that make it not true? No, it doesn't change the truth of it and it doesn't change sequence of things. At times, we may end up being off from reality, if we go by those numbers, off from reality by what may accumulate to be several years. And that may be the case, for example, you see the calculations that it's, you know, 404 BC was the creation date or something of that sort. We don't have the month and the day for a lot of these things where we're adding them up. And one of the things, like in Stan and your question mark there, all it takes is to be at opposite ends of a year and you've got another year in there. So the exact numbers of it's this year to that one may not calculate out precisely. And that can be one reason.

One of the things that happens with the various kings in Israel is that in some cases we know that they reigned in what's called co-regency. In other words, they reigned together. And frequently that was done where a king was going to pass off, you know, the kingship to a son. And in order to have some kind of a training period, if you will, the son would be a co-regent.

And so there would be overlap. Well, in some cases, we know for sure that the overlap was there. In other cases, we're not sure. So that, again, makes for some uncertainty when we start adding up dates. OK. Now, I'm going to have this up here for you to take a look at. This is a long timeline. It's 20 feet long. The pews are not long enough. There's about a dozen folds in this thing that I had to just leave because we don't have a pew long enough. Really lengthy. I'm going to have a copy that I'll keep in the church office on the bookshelf in there. And so you can take a look at it there.

But I'm going to dismiss a little bit early so you have a chance to take a look at things like this and examine it. Later on, and I think you'll want to find out what else we're going to pass along and hand out. Later on, if anybody wants to buy one, I can get you a deal. Anyway, that will be available. This timeline will be made available to everyone, and it's a Christian history timeline. I won't do it quite yet, but so here's one that just goes through all of, you know, Christian history, both sides.

And so that allows you to kind of look at, okay, this is happening here, this is happening there. And so we'll distribute that. at a later point in time. Geography. We're going to provide and recommend maps at various time scales and locations. There are some really great map sets. Some of them are free. Some of them come in books. Really great ones.

Here, for example, here's the Egyptian Empire, the Assyrian Empire, and the Babylonian Empire, and it gives you an idea where they held their empire. Here's the Roman Empire, which we pointed out last week in 54 AD. The Roman Empire changed the area that it covered over time. So a lot of times you'll see maps and here's the Roman Empire.

Well, when? When? And those varied quite a bit. They would have some battle and all of a sudden the numbers would change. We pointed out last week the Roman Empire extended down to the Persian Gulf, down to Kuwait at one point in time, a couple decades after the New Testament era. So when you look at a map, an empire includes this and this, it's when is a big question. When's a big question. Okay.

Here's the migration of Abraham. A lot of maps will show paths of, and Abraham's migration is one of those. And it shows that he starts off in Ur, goes up to Haran in that area, and then ends up down in Egypt and coming back into the promised land. So you see the travels on some of these. Here's one of the third missionary journey of Paul. Maps will not only show just locations of, you know, here's where the empire was, here's where the city was, but also travels. And Paul and Abraham are a couple where their travels are significant and fairly extensive. All right.

The next slide, we'll see several maps of empires which involved the Jews and the land which God gave to them. first promise in Genesis 12.1.

In reality, the boundaries of any empire varied with time and in some cases cannot be easily determined with the data now available to us. Did they have maps like we have during biblical times? Not so much. We actually do find some, like they'll find some, here's a piece of stone and it has you know, something scratched out on it, not like we have. And so you write something down.

Well, a lot of what they have in areas shown on maps are determined from, here's some Assyrian text that said, you know, this year I did this, you know, and so then they have to go, okay, where is this? And so in some cases they don't know, or it might be ambiguous. Example, have you heard of, Jesus, after his resurrection, going with two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Was there a biblical town called Emmaus? Yes. The problem is, several of them. So which one was it? Which one was it, becomes the question. So a lot of times it may be hard to tell.

Here is the Egyptian Empire and you'll notice that it goes way up including Israel and Lebanon and up into Syria and what is now Turkey. But there's something about, and we're going to take a look at this, something about what the Egyptians did. The Egyptians were not interested in just going and getting as much land as they could.

That little piece that goes up along the eastern part of the Mediterranean is there. because they just wanted to keep things protected. You know, this is an area where enemies could come. So they had a line of forts going along there. It doesn't mean that they went around, you know, making sure everybody was under their thumb. They just didn't want anybody coming in into Egypt. And so that was their buffer zone.

Here is the Assyrian Empire. And notice there's a date on it, that 650 BC date includes, what you see there, Egypt. Egypt's strategy didn't ultimately work. So the Assyrian Empire was the force for ending the northern kingdom of Israel. This was the northern kingdom north of Jerusalem. and for the military and economic suppression of the southern kingdom of Judah. What they did with Judah is they said, if you'll pay us, pay us off, we won't attack you. Well then, so Hezekiah says, we're not paying. So okay, we're going to attack you, right?

So that was the Assyrian Empire. So now the Babylonian Empire, this was the empire under which the Jews of the southern kingdom of Judah, starting with royalty, that's why Daniel went, right, were exiled to Babylon. So this is the extent at that time. Then came the Persian Empire. We mentioned that they were differences.

Now here's something that's interesting. that Babylonians had the strategy that you take everybody you capture and you pull the populations to around Babylon. So Babylon becomes this big city and every place else is desolate. That was their strategy of empire. Keep your enemies close.

And so that's what they did. Well guess what? The Persians came in And their religion, I mean they had like a doctrinal statement, and one of their doctrinal beliefs was, you do not take people out of the land where they're from. That's right, I mean that's one of their key points of doctrine.

You do not take people out of the land where they're from, which is why they were just livid with the Babylonians. Because that's exactly what the Babylonians did. So what did the Persians do? They told the Jews, you can go back to the land where you're from. So that's how God had them return. So they sent them back in waves.

So here's the Persian Empire, and they're overcome by the empire of Alexander the Great. And now we're getting into the time between the Testaments. Alexander the Great, who was taught by Aristotle. He came in and he said, the Greek language has a bit too much variation. If we're really going to make this language stick, we're going to make it like this. And so he actually dictated changes in the language and to make it more uniform. And it made the setup for New Testament Greek. And so then he essentially took over much of what was the Persian Empire. Let me go here, there. Much of what was the Persian Empire now gets taken over by Alexander the Great.

Who, by the way, has a very good relationship with the Jews. Why? Here's why. Jotawa is the high priest, according to Josephus, when Alexander the Great came in. And Jotawa basically told Alexander the Great, we were expecting you. What? Yeah. Because here's Daniel, says you're coming. I am? So the Jews had a very favorable relationship with Alexander the Great. Instead of being slaughtered and destroyed like so many. And that has consequences. And so finally, then we have the Roman Empire, which also changed with time.

I'll distribute this one to everybody who would like one. This is on the Dead Sea Scrolls. And then we had some people who weren't here last week when we distributed This one, and what I'll do is I will place that up here and if you weren't here, you can pick up a copy and then we'll have this timeline spread out here. Again, we'll keep a copy in the church office and then after you've seen all the other timelines, you can decide if you're interested, if you want to purchase it.

Questions, comments, exasperations, inspirations. Overwhelmed. Okay, let's pray. Lord, we thank you for just that you are in charge of time as we sit here and look at these timelines and as we look at the things that have happened in history. We're thankful, Lord, that you are the master of all time and that you are summing up everything in Christ, managing history to that end. We thank you, Lord, that we can put every confidence in you, because you're also the master of our own history. And we just entrust everything to you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.