MESSAGES

During these elections times, we have all heard conspiracy theories. I know I have heard conspiracy theories about the vaccine, about our world currencies, about deep state agendas, about satanic pedophiles, and the list goes on and on. One common theme in so many of them are predictions about the end times, 666, the Antichrist, and the end of the world as we know it.

Many years ago, the end times were constant topics of conversation in churches, but not so much over the past 20 years. Part of the reason is that there are a lot of imagery and metaphors in the text that is open to interpretation. That, along with Hollywood movies, has caused a lot of misinformation about what the Bible actually says.

For the past few weeks, we have been doing a study on the life of Daniel in the Bible. In the first 6 chapters, Daniel talks about the past. In chapters 7-12, he talks about the future. This Sunday as we close out the Stand Firm series, we will be talking about Daniel’s vision of the future, and what he saw in his vision about the end of this world as we know it.

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We are living in a culture that is constantly forcing us to compromise our beliefs by pressuring us to conform to it’s ideals. As followers of Jesus, we are encouraged to stand firm against the pressures of this world. How do we stand firm?

Daniel provides us with a great example. In his life, he gave the ingredients of what it takes to stand firm against the tides. He was a man of character, he was courageous, and he depended on his God, who rewarded him for standing firm against his culture.

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No matter where you grew up, I am willing to bet that you have heard many wise sayings and proverbs, especially from older people. If you are also anything like me, when you were growing up, you had no idea what many of those sayings meant.

For me, growing up in Jamaica, I heard many of them. One that my mother used to tell me all the time is “chicken merry, hawk deh near!”. Which literally meant that we should stop acting like little chickens playing around like danger is not close by, rather we should pay attention because danger is imminent and is going to cause someone to hurt.

In this week’s installment in the story of Daniel, we will be talking about a famous saying “the handwriting is on the wall”, and why that is as relevant today’s as it was for Daniel 2500 years ago.

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