I'm just going to read the beginning and the end of a very sad period in the history of Israel. Verse twelve of chapter fourteen, Arise thou therefore get thee to thine house. He's speaking to the wife of Jeroboam. And when thy feet entereth into the city, the child shall die. And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him For he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, and later on come in peace. Because in him there is found some good thing toward the Lord, God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam. Moreover the Lord shall raise him up the king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam that day, but what? Even now. Now chapter sixty and verse twenty-nine. And in the thirty-and-eight year of Asher King of Judah began Ahab, the son of Amri to reign over Israel. Ahab had the son of Amri reigned over Israel in Samaria. Twenty and two years, and Ahab, the son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord about all that were before him. It started with Jeroboam, and here it ends up with Ahab. And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, that he took to wipe Jezebel, the daughter of Al-Baal, king of the Zidonians, and great, and sir Baal, and worships him. We've been taking up the times of Elijah. This is our seventh message, and we'll be continuing, so we trust you'll come and bring your Bible. We'll be speaking on tonight, so we trust you'll return. It's very sad and tragic when we think about the days in which Elijah lived and prophesy. I'm sure most of you know some of the characters are kings of Israel, even if you weren't caught up in a Sunday screw where the Bible was taught. You've heard of King Saul of the Old Testament. One King Saul was the people's church, the first king in Israel. Before that, Israel was governed by judges. But Saul was the first king. in Israel's history, and he was chosen because of his physical duty. He was a man that stood pregnant soldiers above all others, an outstanding man. And you remember how God gave to a woman who paid for the son, that that son might be used of God to turn Israel back to God. That was Hannah when she gave birth to Samuel. the prophet. And Samuel was the one who annihilated Saul. And Saul was given by God in his anger, and God took him away in his wrath. And Saul was a man out of the flesh. And so Saul was the people's choice. But who followed Saul, David, the king? I'm sure everyone's heard of David. the bear who slew the Goliath with the stones on his sleigh, and David was God's church. David was a man after God's heart, and under David the kingdom rose to its heights. But God wouldn't let David build a temple, for John says David is a man of war, and he was a shrewd soldier. Under David the enemies of Israel were destroyed, and Israel was in its strongest point of power. But when David died, Solomon, his sons were born. And under Solomon, the kingdom of Israel, the kingdom of David, was Ezekiel. It was that way as to its power, its peace, and its prosperity. Under the reign of Solomon, it was a wonderful reign, and Solomon was the king of peace. And a time of peace and prosperity was in existence and enjoyed under the reign of Solomon who reigned forty years. But things began to decay under Solomon because it said that Solomon loved many strange women. He couldn't stand the prosperity that he had, nor the pressure on the wealth that was along with it, and women, and as women in the Bible says, turned away his heart from the living God, and he turned to all items. There he opened up that wall, there he had a son by the name of Rehoboam. Rehoboam certainly couldn't take the face of Solomon his father. This is one of the things that Solomon lamented, and he gives expression to him one of his sons, one of his fathers. He said, There's nothing more grievous than for a wise king to be followed by a foolish son. This is taxation and vanity of spirit. And that's exactly what happened. We at home, Solomon's son reigned in his steps. There's heavy taxation under Solomon. You can understand that, his mighty army and all his palaces and all his pleasures and power, his mighty navy and his armed force. So when Jeroboam turned to power, the people wanted a relief on this heavy taxation. And so there were ten tribes, no less influenced by another name Jeroboam, that this levy, this taxation might be reduced. What did Rehoboam do? Instead of Rehoboam going to the older men, the experienced men and politicians and statesmen in his day who served under David and under Solomon, instead of Rehoboam going to those men of experience and intelligence, they chose, he chose that as Rehoboam, chose the young men, his contemporaries. the young fellows that were brought up with them. And I give you that. It's in the Bible where he did that very thing. He chose the young men that were brought up with them. And here it is. In First Kings twelve and thirteen. and the king grew bold, answered the people roughly and forsook the old men's counsel that they gave him, and spake to them after the counsel of the young men, saying, My father made your youth heavy, I will add to your youth. My father also chastised you with which, then I will chastise you with Scotland. In other words, I'll add to your taxation. When he took that stank, and it was a foolish one, And I might say we have many parallels in the world today to tie them. Only two or three years ago, I, all over the country, young people didn't want to listen to anyone unless they were under thirty. Anybody over thirty didn't have any sense. They were old-fashioned, foggy-minded, and they wanted to take the advice of the young men. Well, it meant McGovern's Waterloo. That's what it meant. to listen to the voice of young people. Now we learn, thank God, for the young people. I don't think they're a bit more intelligent than those born a hundred years ago. They know more because of the media they have to learn from, the TV and all the literature and so on, and that's school training. But I tell you this, there's one thing you can't replace experience and wisdom for, and that's youth. You can't have youth and experience at the same time, for when you begin to gain experience, you begin to lose youth. And so here is where Rehoboam made his mistake. He followed the young people. And the result was that Jeroboam said, Get to your tents, O'Rissal, and Ten tribes broke away from the two Eritrean brothers, and Jeroboam won't rain over the train. leaving Rehoboam two tribes, Judah and Benjamin. Well, it's a sad story when you think of what happened during those years between Rehoboam and Ahab. I mentioned that folks that never didn't want to read too many passages. Under Jeroboam, his family was so wicked. that God says there's only one person in your whole household, in all your relatives, that's got any good in it, and I'm going to take him to heaven. And the best of you are lost. That was a sad thing, though. I read it to you. God says, I see some good in that child of yours, and I know it's not going to permit that child, whose best potential I am not going to admit that child will be brought up in such an unbroken atmosphere as the palace of Jehovah, and from under his evil influence to his worship of Baal. Further contracts. Yesterday we took a funeral of an unborn infant. And we mentioned the passage concerning Baal. David said, then his child died. The child died, and David said, I shall go to him. I can't get that child back as much as I'd love to. But I'm going to meet that child again. But Jeroboam didn't have that host. God took that child to heaven and the rest of them went to hell. Sometimes I often wonder if the reason some little ones die is it's not because God is salvaging them from a wicked life than a lost eater. They're going to be brought up in an atmosphere that detrimental to their spiritual life. And like this very weekend, thousands of parents have gone off the resort, taking their children away from Sundays. and the inauguration getting their children into Sunday school, letting them listen to the word of God, and be baptized and fortified by the word of God against the evils of this wicked age in which we live. If I were a child and had children, I think I'd spend most of my time praying for my children. They haven't a chance in this wicked and godly world, unless they have some influence from heaven. just take the lot of educational systems, one could go on and mention anything that our young children have got their face today. But this case just in a little way, am I? Am I implied that God took that little baby away just before birth because of its wicked environment? I don't imply that at all. As I told the parents, just as you have these little buds, All the buds upon all the flowers that were frozen by that frost a few days ago, they'll never blossom on earth again. So the killing, says killing frost of death, stripped out of the anthem, that'll never blossom or bloom in this way. and every bud will blossom and bloom in the presence of God is a deity forever to the blood of Christ. And that's true of every infant that dies. God takes the little ones to heaven. They're covered by the blood of Christ. Sometimes you wonder in taking a funeral like that how far you can go in seeing just what the little ones will be like in heaven. I don't think heaven will be heaven unless you have children there. Little wonder. You'll be a little monotonous for everybody's an adult. Children make home, and heavens are home. In the millennium we know there'll be children buried in the streets, and if that's a poor view or picture of heaven, it'll be so in heaven. How are children going to be in heaven? I never thought of this, the baptism of funeral yesterday. There will be no births in heaven, for in heaven they neither marry nor are given in our house. If there are children in heaven, how are they going to get there? They'll be transplanted from us. And I can see how peasants would recognize a child, if it be hard to hear a little one, and become the full-grown adult in heaven. I believe one of the joys and the glad surprises in eternity for the redeem will be things like this. They'll see that child in the bloom of a mortal youth, and children will help to make heaven what it truly will be home. God, no doubt on many occasions, has allowed the little ones to be taken by death. out of the family that's bent down going to hell. That's a strong statement that I believe. People today are educating their children for hell. That's all they want to do. David's child went to heaven. David says, I shall go to him. He'll never return to me. We know David went to heaven, certainly do. The end of Psalm twenty three, he said, I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And so David went to see that little David that was snatched out of his heart by the two monsters' death. But this man, terrible, his whole life was so wicked. and his past life was so wicked. His whole reign was so wicked. God says, I'm going to snatch that little pig out of the midst of that system if the only one of Jeroboam's whole family has got any good or semblance of good in it. That's how this terrible reign of fifty-five years started. It started right there, the wickedness of Jeroboam's family. When you read through this period, and I'm not going to go into all of it, you find six wicked men, their wicked and godly lives are given to us. There are two assassinations, and there are two royal families, and all their friends wiped out completely. And there was one king committed suicide. There was a civil war. Not only were the ten tribes divided from ten to two into ten to two, but the ten tribes also had a slip, and were divided in the civil war. A steady decline from one evil to another evil. One evil administration, part of another evil administration, the evil of one administration passed on to the next until the climax of Carmel that we'll be sticking on to more than that. We have a parallel today, I think we do. Many have said it, men are wiser than I am, that the world has progressed in every field in the last fifty years more than the whole human race has since its beginning. Now that's a tremendous thing. But let me tell you, if we've made advancement in science and the field of medicine and many other fields such as the military, if we have expanded in that way, we've also increased in wickedness, lawlessness and ungodliness. How does Isaiah describe the situation of Israel? I'll read it to you. In Isaiah chapter one and verse five, Why should ye be stricken any more? Ye will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is staked. From the sill of the foot, even unto the head, there is no soundness in it, that wounds and bruises and cuteth thine sores, that have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified, nor pointed. What's he doing? He's describing the whole nation in it. And he's breaking it onto a sick, a dying, stinking corpse, a body that still has sunlight in it, but it's fast, heavy enough. That's how we describe Israel. A rotten corpse. It's just enough light throbbing and to keep it alive, to keep it from being, of course. The whole head's sick. The whole thing is sick from the head to the throat. The fear is sick and the heart is stink. It's full of wounds and bruises and putrefying souls. The fear is breaking out all over. Let me tell you, this world is just like that. It's a sick and dying world, and it makes me understand it. And our administration, like here in the United States, It's just that. The whole thing is sick. It didn't come on overnight. No more than Israel's condition came on overnight. Their condition came on over a period of fifty-five years. There is a difference. Before the showdown on Mount Palm, and the showdown of this world, and this nation is coming at the showdown of the Battle of Armageddon, the blooming geyser every hour in the Middle East. And surely find God describing their whole head. The whole body is sick, ailing. You take our nation more than that. Social, politically, lawlessness, religiously, mentally, emotional. It's sick. Where and why do people have to do what this group did? kidnap that girl, demand money. And there are only one of many radical groups that are beginning to rip and to multiply throughout the United States. And the FBI said they're in for the most difficult period of this history of this nation, against this type of them. You don't know when someone's going to pick up your boss and demand every dime you've got. That's the result of a sick nation. And all this very deep thing is the result, not of the present administration, but the result of years past. Fifty, sixty years or longer this thing has been coming on. It didn't happen overnight. It should have worked and worked and worked and worked until you have the sick and boom systems. that you've got to do. It's a sad picture, isn't it? When you start to think of what's going on in our world, I was thinking this week of this exorcist thing, of ten costing fourteen million dollars to produce. And it's good. It's being garbled up by intelligent people. He owns it. What's it all about? Human nature is trying to explore into this. suppose supernatural into demonology, into spiritism. Any phenomenon will take up the vacuum of disappointment and disillusionment. They're seeking the answer to the mystery of life in such forms and books as that that I believe are purely of the devil and out of the text. Instead of finding the true mystery of life, in Jesus Christ. Wicked is the mystery of loneliness. God manifest in the flesh. And if you want the answer to the mystery of life, you'll find it in Jesus Christ. Then there is. How sick and ridiculous. Last night I read in the paper about these streaking characters running all over our campus. Nude young men and young women. who would trust their parents if their parents tried to rebuke them. Where are their morals from? Where is their sense of shame? Where is their fear of law and order? Where is their fear of God? That's the sixth society in every field you look at. And these students are going to be the parents of the next generation, and God has mercy on them. They start out with such face malls as that. Where are their children going to end up? And I'm not going to weep when I hear that these children die. I thank God that they're going to heaven covered by the blood of Christ when they're little and haven't reached the age of responsibility. That is the situation under terrible and the successive kings. Persons thick of it. Thirteen times you read in these chapters about these people revolting. All the synonym connection with it. Provoked, provoked and provocation, found, I took my concordance and looked it up and then read through the chapters. Thirteen times you read those words in these chapters. Thirteen is the number of rebellions. And here you see rebellion against God. That word rebellion is the same as to anoint, to irritate, to vex, and to aggravate. And all these kings did. They aggravated God. They vexed God. They rebelled against God. They anoint God. They here it is. I say, you can't do that. You've got to do it. and yet people today are reworking against God. How often in these chapters you read according to the word of the Lord as he spake by his servants the Father? Time and time again God raised up his men and warned them of what was to come. Worn them of the end of their way. But he says, you'll just revolt, that must move. The more I warn you, and I read to that about in Isaiah, How the more that you will and the more will you rebel. And that's the day. Sad situation. People say, why don't you preach the love of God? And I'll tell you one thing. We've got to an age when people need to be awakened. They need to be alarmed as to what's coming upon this world. after you'll awaken the death pack that you're exhausted and then we can tell you about a God who loved us so that he gave his son that died for us on the cross. If people are not ready for that message, you've got to be convicted before you're going to be convicted. A woman has taboos before she gives birth to a child. And the Bible speaks of conviction as taboos. person being awakened through his sin and shame before God and then he's ready to be born and moved into the family of God. So you find how wicked this situation was then and how wicked the world is today. Treasuring at wrath says God against the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Just piling it on. Piling it on. This generation. Don't think that life you saw twenty years ago you'll ever see again, you're not. A lot of days evil men and seduces shall rush worse and worse. This world's not going to get anybody. The body's too far decayed. It's just too rotten. It won't respond to any medicine from any politician or magician. It's just getting worse. Now that's what the Bible says. I'm not saying it. It's backed up by this blessed book. Just think of some of these men that were in Jerusalem. He reigned twenty-two years. I read you that passage. And you know the label that he wore for the rest of his life? And he wears it still in the Jewish mind. He made Israel the sin. That's mentioned dozens of times. after Jeroboam died. Jeroboam made Israel to sin. What an evil. What a man to have tacked on to his name. Not only he sinned themselves, he wasn't content with them. He made others sinned. Yes, there are those today that are not content with sinning themselves. They want to make others sin. They're trying to involve others in their evil deeds and devices. They include others. No man lives to himself, and no man dies to himself. Don't think for a moment, parent, that you're living to yourself. You've got a child that's looking on. You don't live to yourself, and you don't die to yourself. Something is happening off on earth. If you're not living for Christ, if you don't know the Savior, if you're a sinner on the way to hell, and you're not interested in reading the Bible, you're not interested in prayer, you're not interested in going to church, don't throw me off on your children and you reap the harvest. If you're saved and godly seeking to live for the Lord and you read your Bible and you're interested in going to church, that too is what I want. on your children as father, as son, as mother, so daughter in many cases. Bring up a child in the way it shall grow when it is old, it will not depart from. Timothy was a brilliant young man, a successor of the Apostle Paul, and Timothy as a child, he knew the Holy Scriptures. Where did he learn the Scriptures? And his mother is me. And of his grandmother's leave. That's where he learned the scriptures. Is your child learning the scriptures? Well, I tell you, we're not getting the scriptures in the public schools. They're not getting the scriptures in many churches. They're getting a lot of evolution and modernism and liberalism. They're getting it in the home. That's the place where God expects children to get. their first impressions of divine things in the whole. But if the parents don't do it, then the Sunday school's got to do it. And if the Sunday school's not giving them the gospel, the Lord of mercy on them. That's the boy. So we find poor Jeddabon. He made his religious sin. Not only his own sin, he dug into it and carried, but it rubbed off and he actually enforced it on him. What a sad life to live. The faith that not only dams your own souls have been instrumental in damning others. That's what adds to Pharaoh's form. After Jeroboam turned his son, Nadab, in chapter fifteen and verse twenty-five, Nadab reigned in the stead of Jeroboam. Nadab was assassinated. He was assassinated. Not only was he assassinated, Now those Jeroboam's family and friends wiped out, but also Nadab's family and friends were wiped out. Nadab was a Sassanid. Thus through Bashar, Bashar followed Nabal. Nabal to the foot. Bashar his name means he who lays waste, and he sure did lay waste during his kingdom. And he died, he died in his bed. Then Elah his son, the son of Basha, reigned in chapter sixteen and verse eight. Elah reigned just two years, and in a drunken stupor in his home, then one of his captains assassinated him. Now you can read all that if you want. In chapter sixteen, verses nine and ten. Through the man he raised two years. You might look upon the Kings and the Chronicles as books of short biographies. The man lived, he reigned so long, he come. Short biographies. I wonder what kind of a biography, how long, how rich will your biography be when God writes it. I wonder and be true of you like it was all nineteen kings that reign over Israel, beginning with Jeroboam, and there wasn't a good one in the books. They lived, they went against God, and they told Jeroboam, and they got many of them assassinated some committed suicide. And in the sixth we're talking about, two were assassinated One was committed suicide, and the kingdom was divided, and two of the four old families were wiped out. That beat the United States. We had one president assassinated, another attempt on another candidate, and the president who assassinated his brother, who had assassinated, another leader of civil rights, he would assassinate, who could have been assassinated. pretty close to what happened back then, uncle. Then the next one, Zimri reigned. And after he reigned, how long he reigned? Seven days. And he and another conspired to reign the kingdom, reign over the kingdom, and take the place of Edo, that Zimri reigned only seven days, and he committed suicide. And Amri reigned in his stead. These were the two that tried to split the ten kings up, ten fives up, a civil war. Ahab reigned next, but he reigned twice years. And then who comes after Ahab? Ahab, this wicked character that beat them up. Can you imagine that? He was the worst of all. Ahab, the son of Ahab, in verse twenty-eight of chapter sixty. What a succession of lawlessness, each one outdid the other, each son outdid the father. Isn't that all? What a wretched succession. People and people into sin pulled it and pulled it from God during those fifty-five years. Where they go away from God, where they got into sin, where they got from God, and the closer they got to Baalism and idolatry. To trap all this crime to crime, Ahab married the most wicked woman whose name blocks the pages of history, Jezebel. An alliance that God found them. And Ahab married Jezebel. Ahab embraced all Jezebel's gods. He's a patron of foreign God. She brought these things into the place, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And here's a postcard requesting a living unto God. Then the showdown, as we'll be seeing there really next year, the showdown on Mount Carmel. Who's going to win this conflict? And it's a wonderful story. As you know, Ahab embraced all of God's. Certainly there's a warning today in connection with this union between Ahab and Jezebel. I've got about any body like a Christian, marrying a non-Christian, an unequal youth. I don't think for a moment that Ahab was a Christian. But I know he disobeyed God when he married one of another nation. Jezebel was. And that girl hadn't got a very good reputation as we see one night and take up one whole evening on that girl. You notice a connection with Baird. Baird is a plurality like Elohim, referring to the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Baird is an also of a plurality as the full deity. You read these three, for instance. You read Baird Baird in Judgesley. The Lord of the Covenant, there are four, Lord of the opening in Numbers twenty-five three, there is Ebon, Lord of flies in second Kings one through, they have a trinity in each. This world we're living in today has a trinity of evil. We read about the God of this age, Satan. We read about the prince and we read about the power of the earth. There is the second person of the evil Trinity. Then we read about the spirit that now worked within the children of disobedience. There is the evil false Trinity, employed and engaged today in this universe. Satan, the God of this age, blinded the minds of them that believed not, lest the life of the glorious gospel of Christ should sign unto them a nation, you see. Hiring the Father in the evil Trinity is the Son, the Prince! He's the trick to the power of the air. And following the sun is the spirit that now wept in the trick of disobedience. The reason you're not Christian this morning, you're a child of disobedience. Man got away from God by disobedience. And Adam and Eve disobeyed God. He'll get back to God through obedience, obeying the gospel in the grace of God. Mention in the paper this substance. You can never be right on the wrong road. And that's true. All these men were on the wrong road, and therefore they did nothing right. Then you can do nothing right in the sight of God all the time. You're on the wrong road. Don't think that you can be on the road broad road that leads to destruction and do one thing right in the sight of God you can. for the very tiring of the wickedest sins of God. Anything wrong with a man firing at a field load. But he's an unconverting sinner, and God says even that. He's a good old sinner. He's a rebel. He doesn't believe. And everything you do is legitimate thing. If you're not a born-again child of God, it's sin. If you're only on home, everything you do is wrong. Even any money you get to the pool. or give to charity, or give to a good cause. I don't want it, says the very offerings of the wicked are in a combination. The only way you can be right and do right is to be on the right road. Or know the right person. And that person is the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is the way. He's the truth. He's the life. No man come to them to the Father, but by him. Then if you want to be on the left room and do right things, you have to know Christ. If you don't, you're on the wrong road, you're doing wrong things. And do you know your company throughout eternity? The devil and his age and these characters we've been reading about this morning, all of whom died in their sins. That will be your companionship, your society throughout eternity. Are you going to be in another place called heaven with the Holy Trinity, with God's holy people, in a place that's holy in every aspect? Jesus! There is a rejoicing in that. No sickness, no dying, no death and no time. That's what's ahead of all those who are on the right road. Jesus Christ. Jesus, I am the way. There's no other way. Will you come to Christ this morning? Been on the broadway long enough. You felt the chilling influence of others on that broadway. Will you come to Christ this morning and get on the narrow way? And there's something of the warm influence of those who are on that very narrow way. going unto life. The choice is yours. It's Christ, or it's the death. It's heaven, or it's hell. It's the world, or it is the word of the living God, which is his only name. Our Father in heaven, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we come to be. We ask thy blessing upon thy birth. May it please thee to use it, and the salvation of souls and the benefit and blessing And by beloved people, the absolute and our Lord Jesus, precious name, amen.