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we'll be looking at Mark chapter 13 this morning looking at the first four
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verses Mark 13 ver1 and as he was going out of the temple one of his disciples said to him teacher behold what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings and Jesus said
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to him do you see these great buildings not one stone shall be left upon another which will not be torn down and as he was sitting on the Mount of Olives
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opposite the temple Peter and James and John and Andrew were questioning him privately tell us when will these things be and what will be the sign when all
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these things are going to be fulfilled let us pray father we have sung a number of hymns this
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hymns this morning exalting who you are you are the only God the great God and the great king in you dwells all Divine love all
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Divine wisdom all divine power power and as the hym writer wrote If we owned the entire Realm of the
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universe it would be a present far too small but what you have done for us what you have created for us to live in and walk in to give us through Christ Our
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Life and our being that demands our soul our life our all we pray that even this morning as we meditate upon your word as we Proclaim
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it that you would cause us to do that to give to you the glory to your name but also the attention and the thinking that is due to who you are we
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ask in Christ's name Amen in case you're wondering it's still
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but it's a different time many readers and commentators picture this as being in the evening when the sun is lowering in the
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sky and Jesus and the disciples have left the temple area they've left the sanctuary and
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they've left the city behind they've crossed that Valley the kidan valley which I'm given to understand means
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Dusky some people call it dark but there in that Valley was where G The Garden of Gethsemane was and
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they were beginning their climb up the Mount of Olives and apparently again as I can understand when Jesus has gone from Bethany where he stayed with the
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sister and goes over the Mount of Olives they took this path down to the city of Jerusalem and to the temple and now they're climbing back up the Mount of
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Olives when the disciples turn around and exclaim to Jesus what wonderful Stones these are what wonderful buildings and perhaps the the Sun at a
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low angle was glinting off of those stones and the gold and the silver that overlaid various parts of this
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Marvel marvelous Temple that Herod the Great had Great had built and the disciples start that conversation in exclaiming to Jesus what
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wonderful stones and wonderful buildings but it's Jesus who delivers what has become known as the olette
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discourse here on the Mount of Olives he sits down again and again and begins to talk to the disciples based
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disciples based on their on their exclamation but he responds not in the way that they perhaps expected him to
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respond the most complete record of the discourse is in Matthew 24 and there there Jesus speaks of really three things or there's three
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sections to the olette discourse if we could outline it that way the message of the Messiah of the Hebrews and the
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theocracy of theocracy of God the second section the church and its responsibilities and thirdly the world and the nations in
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it here Mark gives us just that part of the discourse to the Hebrews to those
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Jewish Believers speaking of the Messiah and naming himself as the Son of God but I was reminded as I looked at G
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Campbell Morgan's commentary on this section he reminds us of of that our perspective on Prophecy is not as clear here as we think it is he said it's like
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standing on a high place and you see mountain peaks a peak in front of you and then beyond a little hazily but beyond it
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another Peak and perhaps beyond that other Peaks but as we sang in Psalm 95 today that the Earth the the Lord owns the
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depths of the earth they are his and the hills are his also and we kind of we look at those mountaintops and we think okay we understand the sequence but we
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forget the valleys in between we forget what those have to instruct us and so as we come to this prophecy
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the olette discourse let us remember that there are things in here which are hard to understand and yet for our instruction and for the building up of
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his church he has left this record through Mark herod's Mark herod's Temple it was a world wonder even though
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again as some have said um it was not named above among the Ancient Wonders of the World Herod himself lived as I can
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understand it from 72 to 4 BC but he was a half Jew he was in amean his Descendants on his father's side
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from Esau and his mother was an Arab and the Orthodox Jews hated him and rightly so they hated him for the fact
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that he was a half Jew but they hated him because he was given to violence even uh killing his own wife and he employed mercenaries and
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secret police in order to enforce order in Jerusalem all of his subjects
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were given had to give the an excessive taxation I understand two annual taxes one at 10.7% and the other at 8.6% not sure where people got those
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percentages but imagine every year giving 20% of your income to Herod for his coffers the Sadducees hated him
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because he had terminated the rule of the old Royal House to which many of them were them were related and their own influence on the Sanhedrin that group of rulers in
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Jerusalem was greatly curtailed and the Pharisees hated him because he despised the law and they despise anyone who despised the
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law he's called Herod the Great but I think we could also call him Herod the master builder to win the hearts of his
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subjects especially when there was a major earthquake in 31 BC it destroyed many houses and killed many thousands of people and Herod began his extensive
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building program for which he is is famous in Jerusalem alone the king built a new market an Amphitheater a theater a
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new building where the Sanhedrin could convene a new Royal Palace and then last but not least beginning in 20 BC
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the rapture will take place on May 21st 2011 and the end of the world will take place 5 months later on October 21st
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2011 obviously that didn't happen and I guess it warms our hearts some to know that camping and the staff of family radio did post the following March 2012
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March 2012 a statement of repentance we tremble before God as we humbly ask him for forgiveness for making that sinful statement many men apparently had come
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to him and tried to tell him are you not reading the scriptures Matthew 24:36 but about that day and hour no one knows not even the angels of Heaven nor the son
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but the father alone or Mark 13 as we'll get there in verse vers 32 but about that day or hour no one knows not even the son but the father
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alone Denny Burke an associate professor of New Testament at that time at Boyce College in Louisville Kentucky wrote in his blog and this is the real tragedy of a false
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teacher like camping he gives the scoffers a reason for feeling Vindicated in their cing he gives Aid and comfort to the Judgment suppressing human heart and thereby consignes them to their own
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God ignoring delusions this is a tragedy of Eternal proportions and it is anything but
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funny we must be careful the disciples wanted to know again about the D destruction of Jerusalem they they seem to already be prepared somewhat
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for the direction that Jesus was heading and so I don't denounce them for their immediate
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their immediate reaction but when we'll see in this discourse in Mark and again in Matthew and Luke we need to understand the
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scriptures and we need to understand again as Morgan said as we don't always see prophecy as clearly as we think we
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do Alfred edersheim in his book on The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah wrote the church would not have been that of the New Testament had she known the mystery of that day and hour and not
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ever waited as for the immediate coming of her Lord and bridegroom I I believe he's right right we would not be the New Testament Church
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we we would not be what we are we would be walking by sight and not by faith we would be walking into our own understanding and not leaning on
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Christ and we'll see in this discourse that Jesus speaks of wars and rumors of rumors of wars and again in our day there are many who think that they know what is
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coming this was from Friday the Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking
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Netanyahu speaking about Israel and Palestine and the Saudis somehow signing a pack together said that unexpectedly the world is on
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the cusp of an artificial intelligence Revolution ution Revolution ution AI he says quote The Perils are great and they are before us the disruption of
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democracy the manipulation of Minds the decimation of jobs the proliferation of crime and the hacking of all the systems that facilitate Modern Life yet even
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more disturbing he goes on to say is the potential eruption of Aid driven Wars that could achieve an unimaginable scale
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behind this perhaps looms an even greater threat one once
