Today’s sermon, brethren is the “Winds of War.”  Why has the world known so much conflict?  Why is there so much willingness in the world to take up arms against their fellow man.  When people take up arms and they fight and kill, in their minds it is usually for very good reasons.  It is usually for very sincere reasons.  The combatants in war may say we are fighting for our freedom.  Or they may say we are throwing off oppression or seeking revenge for things done to us in the past.  They might use an economics reason. We need more natural resources or more food.  We need to have a better economy and a better life for our people.  Therefore, we go to war.

THE ROOT CAUSE OF WAR
What is the root cause of war?  It is almost always religion or an ideology.  If it is an ideology, it almost always has a religious component to it.  The only example I will go into (and there are literally hundreds of examples), would be World War II.  It is probably the most famous war ever fought in human history.

The reason given by the Germans for starting WWII was lebensraum which is a German term meaning “we need more growing room.”  We are too confined within the borders of our nation.  But the justification that they used to go to war was revenge for World War I, because in WWI, they had been soundly defeated by the allies.  They were thoroughly humiliated and impoverished by the victors, and they wanted revenge.  The actual deep down basis and fact for that war was a feeling of racial supremacy and religious intolerance.  That was the true basis of that war.  That does not mean the other factors were not also plausible reasons, but they are not the true basis.  The hatred came from racial and national supremacy, and religious hatred and intolerance.

As we peel off the layers and get deeper and deeper into the root causes of a war, we also get into what makes humanity tick.  We see what makes each human being tick as a person.  We see what is important to them.  It is uncomfortable to peel off the layers and get down to that innermost bottom layer, because when we do those things, we examine very deep ideas.  Our minds have difficulty handling it.  Our rationalizations begin to fall apart.  It causes dissonance in our mind, because cherished beliefs come into question.  It becomes, in effect, an issue of heart and soul.  Whenever our beliefs come into question, our innermost thoughts (our faith, our convictions and our emotions) become exposed.  Raw feelings are there.  So it is very difficult to peel off the real causes of war or the real causes of any hatred.

When we do seek to peel the layers off and look at ourselves, it is like looking into the mirror or scripture, and not liking what we see.  Whenever you have someone with religious convictions like a Christian or whatever, it is like looking at the “faith mirror” (the spiritual mirror), and seeing the image of yourself and not liking what you see.  For instance, being a Christian and having fought a war would bring up the question of things like the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.”  How do we deal with that?  Or Christ’s words would come up, love your enemies, turn the other cheek and be kind to those who spitefully use you.  Let’s turn to James chapter 3 to see what James had to say about this  hypocrisy.

Turn to James chapter 3, verse 8:  “But no man can tame the tongue.  It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.  With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God.  Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing.  My brethren, these things ought not to be so.”

This poison that comes out of our mouth is the ideology that can fan the hatred that causes war.  It also causes hate between individuals, between families and among the human race in every region on the planet.  It is poison that comes out of the mouth.  This often happens while blessing and praying to God!  Then we despise and hate our fellow man who is made in the very image and likeness of God.

Every war destroys human life.  Every war costs us sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, friends and families.  So many come back from war with deep emotional scars. Deep inside they knew that when they fought the enemy, they were fighting someone just like them.  They were someone whose blood was red and whose families mourn their death.  We can often find ourselves in the situation of war that it is kill or be killed.  When we kill another human being, we preserve our own life.  We rationalize that we have to kill. We rationalize why we have to do these things.  We rationalize why our side is right and why it is okay to kill those other people.

But when we kill another human being, something happens to us.  A bit of our own soul dies.  When we hate another human being, another race, another religion, a bit of our heart turns to stone and becomes hard.  We are all part of the family of man, as we just read in James 3.  To encourage hatred within ourselves and violence toward our fellow man, it is killing someone in our family.  It does not matter who they are, what race, what religion or what color.  We are killing some of our own family, the family of man.  Yet war seems to be an endless cycle, almost endless because war is about to end, brethren. The root cause of war is going to be dealt with soon, and that is why we are having this sermon today.

Turn to Isaiah chapter 2 to read about the hopeful future that lies just ahead.  Read Isaiah 2:1-4.  That is the hopeful future.  It is the Millennium that lies just ahead.  But notice what it says here, soon we will have to unlearn war.  We will have to stop learning how to wage it.  We will have to stop learning how to kill and how to hate.  We are going to have to unlearn the root cause of each of our own personal hatreds.  We are going to have to deal with the layers that we have put around those innermost parts so that we can rationalize the things that we do.  We will have to deal with the hatreds that we hold and the arguments and the grudges that we continue.  God makes no distinction between hating and arguing with your brother or sister, and killing.  One is the spiritual intent of the law, and the other is the actual law.

THE INNERMOST LAYERS OF OUR BEING
It is the hardest to deal with our belief system when we are peeling off the layers of what is wrong with us or what makes us tick as people.  Our innermost layer is our belief system.  That is the layer that Satan seeks to control.  That is the layer to which he wants his arrows to penetrate.  He wants to get right into our beliefs and our convictions, because that is what we are willing to live and die for.  That is what we are often willing to kill for, in some cases to lie, steal and slander for.  The only way to peel these layers off and fix the root cause of the problem is to be truthful and honest with ourselves.  Truth and honesty are the only ways to deal with the soul.  It is uncomfortable and stressful, but that is what will set us free, brethren.  We are set free if we deal with our innermost parts in a truthful and honest way.

Turn to John chapter 8, please.  Read John 8:31-36.  Jesus Christ wants to set us free with the truth, brethren.  If we want to continue to hold on to and believe lies about our fellow man and hold grudges in our life, we are still slaves and in bondage to sin.  This means Satan still has control over at least a portion of our innermost being.  We have not fully dealt with our personal problems.  We have to be truthful with ourselves and shine the light of the truth into our innermost parts, so that we can eventually look in a mirror and say I am beginning to reflect the image of Jesus Christ and God the Father.  I am beginning to look like Them.  I am beginning to forgive and hold no hate and no grudges.  I am no longer lying to people.  I am no longer slandering people.  I am no longer hurting my brother or sister.

The source of war, of course, is Satan the devil and the system that he has built around himself.  The Bible calls it the system of Babylon.  Mr. Herbert Armstrong used to call it the Babylon of religious confusion.  We see the results of that around the world today where people are willing to kill, to maim and to destroy in the name of whatever they call their God.  In the name of God they are willing to do these things to the rest of the family of man.

Revelation 12:9 tells us Satan has deceived the entire world.  He has deceived the whole world, brethren!  To whatever extent we still hold on to these things in our lives, we are holding on to his deceptions.  We have been tricked and duped.

Deception is an equal opportunity weapon.  Satan’s deceptions affect us all no matter who we are or what our backgrounds were.  All have been deceived whether we were Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Arab, Shia, Sunni, Hutu, Tutsi, Communist, Fascist or Democratic.  Who has not taken up arms among these groups?  In any one of these groups who has the right to impose their belief system on their fellow man?  Who has the right to subjugate, dominate, conquer or oppress anyone else in the family of man, especially in the name of God?  All of these groups and all of us are guilty as charged in one way or another.  Until we face up to that guilt, we cannot fix it.  We are helpless, and we are still allowing Satan to deceive us.

The only way we can protect ourselves from cognitive dissonance in our mind is to put layer after layer after layer over those innermost parts, so that we can rationalize and justify our actions.  In this way we bury those soft parts of our heart underneath stone.  That is what we do whenever we hate.  Whenever we argue or slander, or whenever we cause disharmony we are doing that.  Of course, the ultimate expression is war when we take the life of someone in the human race.  We take the life of someone else in the family of man.

It hurts to shine the light of truth in our innermost parts, but it is good to do so.  It actually heals us.  It is a catharsis.  It is helpful, and it is the only way to deal with the source of evil.  Each individual person must unravel their personal layers of those things that make them tick.  I have mine; you have yours.  Everybody on earth has their personal layers that they have built to allow them the justification and the rationalization to do the things that they do.

THE AUTHOR’S EXPERIENCE
We will use my own life as an example.  I was born Catholic from a good solid Catholic family.  We were good citizens.  I had to face up to certain things though as I got older and learned about the Catholic faith.  I remember being taunted by some other little children in the neighborhood saying, you are Catholic.  I did not know what they were talking about, but as I got older I began to realize that the history books talked about the crusades, the inquisitions and the schisms.

As I learned more from my Protestant friends, I began to see that maybe there was pagan symbolism in my church.  Maybe there was pagan worship in my church.  Maybe purchasing indulgences was wrong.  I saw my own mother buying many masses for a deceased person to get released from purgatory.  I could see that there was something wrong here.  I also got the sense that there was scandal, corruption and perversion.  The extent has certainly come out in the press in the last few years.

I tried to reconcile these wrongs with the many rights and the many good things that my faith was involved in.  They participate in philanthropy around the world.  The Catholic Church has probably more philanthropic arms working around the world than any other church on the planet.  Everywhere they are helping the sick, the aged, the poor, the disabled and the downtrodden.  Everywhere they are pushing for human rights.  They are one of the strongest supporters of marriage and family.  They espouse hard work, honesty and personal sacrifice, which I saw my parents exemplify very well.  There are many, many good things about the Catholic Church.

One has to weigh the good against the evil.  That causes the dissonance in our brain.  It causes confusion in our heart.  In my mind I had trouble sorting out right from wrong. What does all of this mean?  For instance, what could justify putting another human being in the cross hairs of a rifle in my hands?  What could justify that?  Or what could justify putting a city underneath my bomb sight in an airplane if I were to ever find myself in that position?  What could justify pushing the button and dropping the bombs?  What good acts that my church was involved in would justify hanging on to a faith that took sides in war?

Often my faith had adherence on both sides of a conflict shooting at one another!  They were true brothers in their own faith. It begged the question, whose prayers were being heard on each side of an imaginary front line?  Whose prayer was God listening to?

What good could possibly justify false doctrine and twisting God’s words?

My earnest search for the truth began when my father died.  I was 16 years old when he died, and I had prayed very fervently for him to live.  He had cancer, and for three or four years he suffered with cancer and wasted away.  Like any good Catholic, I prayed many rosaries for him.  Many prayers were offered up for my father, and yet he wasted away constantly until he was a mere shadow of himself.  He died from lung cancer.  His lung cancer probably had its seed sown in World War II.  He was not a smoker until he served in the Armed Forces in WWII.  The GI’s would get free cigarettes.  When you are in a fox hole and life looks like it is going to be pretty short and grim, the last thing on your mind is lung cancer.  I do not think they fully understood back then that cigarettes were that bad anyway.  By the time he came home from the war, he was thoroughly hooked on cigarettes.  That is another issue altogether, killing the family of man by the things we produce to make money.  It is kind of like legalized warfare to make profit.  That is another subject.

My father was a veteran of the European Theater.  He had made four beach landings.  He fought in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and southern France and was permanently disabled in the Alps in southern France.  As I grew up I had seen much sadness on my father’s face on many a night, late at night, sipping a beer, with tears in his eyes.  When I would ask, what is wrong dad, he would say there are just so many things, Johnny, I can’t tell you.  It is so bad.  I hope you never have to go to war.

My Father was dealing with the layers.  He was reconciling what was actually irreconcilable in his mind.  I really do not know how many men’s lives he took over the years, but my father was not a killer.  The dissonance in his mind, the scars that his heart carried until the day he died, were very, very hard on him.  I know that around the world in millions of homes, this scene is replayed generation after generation.  Right now as I speak this scene is being replayed in Arab homes, Israeli homes, in Chechens, Hutus, Tutsis, Japanese, Chinese and Russian homes.  It does not matter where you live.  Every nation on the planet is effected.

After my father’s death, I picked up the Bible, and I wanted to see why my prayers had not been answered.  What I saw in the pages of the Bible contradicted my religion time after time.  It was setting up more dissonance in my mind.  I tried to sort out right from wrong.  This disillusionment set in, and it had to be dealt with.

How can good and evil exist in the same people, in the same nation, in the same race, in the same religion?  While I was embarking on that study, in the mid 1970’s I heard a loud clear voice that began to clear things up for me.  It was a voice crying out in the Babylon of religious confusion.  It was the voice of Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong.  He would tell me at night when I was listening, don’t believe me, believe your Bible.  Man must not kill. God does not change the truth.  God is not One to rationalize.  He does not change right to wrong by one iota.  He does not change it in the least little bit.

Mr. Armstrong proved to me that the Sabbath was the day that we should worship God, and God was the only One who could make anything holy.  He set the Sabbath as Saturday and set it apart from the rest.

THE TWO TREES
When I was listening to Mr. Armstrong, one big thing began to clear up for me in all of the confusion.  That was how clearly he resoundingly taught about the two trees.  He taught about the tree of life, being Jesus Christ’s way, and about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  When he talked about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it became clearer to me what happens in the world to allow both good and evil to exist in the same person, in the same race, in the same nation and in the same religion. They were picking from Satan’s tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and were trying to sort out for themselves what was right or wrong.  They were rationalizing and dealing with issues far greater than the human mind can comprehend correctly on its own.

Mr. Armstrong began to explain this enigma to me.  It explained how a good person can put another member of the family of man under their bomb sight or in the cross hairs of their rifle.  Every religion on earth had picked from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  This was the source of the problem.  We were all a mixture of good and evil.  We were all a mixture of truth and error.

Mr. Armstrong clearly showed me where my religion had set off the rail and became deceived.  He would also say, they are deceived yet today, but it is not their fault.  They have not been called yet, but if you understand my words, you may be being called and you need to check this out!  So I did.  I checked it out further.  I found out that he was correct.

When Mr. Armstrong asked me to check into the Bible to see if what he was saying was true, I found that, yes, Passover should replace Easter and not the other way around.  He taught that the Feast of Tabernacles was the big holy day season of the year and not Christmas.  He taught that the Sabbath was Saturday and not the first day of the week.  He showed me how in Revelation 17:9 that there was a Church built on seven hills.  It was a city of seven hills, and Catholicism was based in a city in Rome built on seven hills.  He taught how they had been deceived, and then because they were deceived, in all sincerity, they were deceiving others.  They spawned many other churches that broke off and were splintered off from their system.  That explained to me why, when the Lutherans under Martin Luther nailed the theses on the door of the cathedral and showed the Catholic Church where they were wrong, within just a few years they were doing the same thing!  Hundreds of thousands of people were persecuted and killed under Martin Luther.  They made the same mistake, because they may have had more or different truth, but they still had lots of error.  They sincerely believed what they thought, and it made it okay to kill someone on the other side of a divide.  Whether it is a battle line, or a religious line or racial line, it was okay to hate and kill.

Mr. Armstrong clearly taught me that unless they are called, these people really have no clue as to what the truth of God is.  They may have a portion of the truth, but they do not understand enough.  They are not led by the Holy Spirit to come out of the deception.

QUESTIONS AFTER HERBERT ARMSTRONG DIED
But many questions remained in my mind as I studied over the years and after Mr. Armstrong died.  I asked basic questions like how can a whole world take on the mark of the beast?  The Church had taught that the mark of the beast was Sunday worship.  There are as many Islamic people as there are Catholics, and they keep Friday.  Other people keep any day of the week.  If you go around the world, there are different holy days.  How would the Catholics possibly convert the Islamic world to the first day of the week, Sunday, and take on the mark of the beast?  I really did not see how that would be possible.  How would they conquer equally sincere and convicted people as the Buddhists or the Protestants of the many different stripes?  How about Confucionists, Taoists or Animists.  These people were all willing to die for their faith.  I began to realize the mark of the beast was Sunday, but also anything that is in Satan’s realm is the mark of the beast.

Keeping any error or false holiday and any false religious system puts the mark of the beast on a person. Satan has always had the mark of the beast on the world.  Six is the mark of the beast (six, six, six).  It is one short of God’s perfect number.  Six is Satan’s number.  Six, six, six means that for the first six thousand years, Satan is in charge, just as the first six days of the week show we are under Satan’s system, and anybody who has error in their belief system has the mark of the beast.  Then it made sense that the whole earth could have the mark of the beast.

This beast has been around for a long, long time, far longer than six thousand years.  But in mankind’s history, he has been around here since Adam was created.  His perversions and deceptions have filled the earth, striking into the hearts of human beings.  He has led them to believe crazy things about the rest of the family of man.  He has helped them justify and rationalize the most unconscionable acts and hatred, but he is the source. There had to be a time to know more, and I think at the end of the age God says He is going to release more knowledge.

I think at the end of the age we have come to the point where we can understand these things better.  We can understand that the whole earth has the mark of the beast, and the whole earth is suffering under Satan and his system.  We can understand that Mr. Armstrong did get it right, but he did not see the full picture and did not live long enough to see the full picture.  We can see now, his work was at the start of the latter days, but he did not live right up until Christ’s return.  There was a lot of history to be written yet and a lot of things to be learned yet.  It is still based on the things we have learned in the past.

WAYS TO ROOT OUT FALSE BELIEFS
Three things help us root out false beliefs:  experience, if we learn from experience.  I think the world is sick of war.  I think many of the people of the world want to learn how to get rid of it.  They want to unlearn war.  The second thing is knowledge of who is behind war, that is Satan (who is the true son of perdition).  Thirdly, the resurrection and the return of Jesus Christ will root out false beliefs because that will be an education for the whole world.  That is what will set apart the true servants of God, the true Church of God, the kingdom of God, the right religion, the right faith.  This will set apart truth from all error.  No matter who we are, all will see the return of Jesus Christ, as it says in Matthew 24.  All who are alive when He returns will see Him and behold Him.  That will immediately tell us that whatever it is that we held on to that was wrong was wrong, because then we will be able to see who is resurrected.  We will be able to see which Church had the truth.  It will make it possible for the whole world to heal, which is why we are told in Malachi 4 He comes with healing in His wings.

With that one act, Jesus Christ will be able to help the world start peeling off the layers and get at the root cause of what has made them tick Satan’s way for so long.  They will get at the actual source of the hatred, of the influence that has driven mankind toward all of these unspeakable acts for the last six thousand years.

We know that the truth of God is based upon the Bible and that different religions around the world have fought over those words and over those beliefs for a long time.  Everybody who gets involved in that is very sincere.  It has to be something as grand and glorious as the resurrection and the return of Christ to get the world to put down their arms.  This is what it will take to get the world to give up hatred, animosity, their deceptions and to deal with those painful things inside that we are so good at covering up. I think we can now understand more fully the end-time scenario of what is going to take place and how God says, I will heal the nations.

We look forward to the resurrection.  But we have to understand that if we want to be resurrected, we have to get rid of every spot and blemish.  We have to get rid of all the hatred in our own lives.  We have to get Satan’s influence and deception out of our lives.  We cannot harbor no ill will.  We need to work on these things while we have time yet.

THE WINDS OF WAR
The knowledge that God restored through Mr. Armstrong has made it possible to go on now and learn more things.  One of the things we have is an understanding of the winds of war, and what is blowing through the hearts and minds of mankind to lead them into all of these crazy acts and all of these horrible wars.  Wind can be a refreshing breeze on a hot summer day, or it can be a very violent and destructive hurricane.  Both are wind, but there are two different sources of wind.  One source of wind is God and His Holy Spirit. The other source of wind is Satan and his horrible deceptive spirit and spirit realm.

I want to take you now to Acts chapter 2 and read about God’s wind.  Verse 1:  “When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.  And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.  Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

Brethren, we cannot speak (that is have utterance) without having brought wind into our lungs first.  Then we exhale that wind over the vocal chords in order to speak.  It is the only way we can speak.  We must be able to breathe in order to speak.  Here Jesus Christ brought His spiritual wind and the Holy Spirit (the fire) to the brethren on that first Pentecost.  What is the first miracle that happened?  They were able to utter things (new tongues) that they had never been able to utter before.  The truth of God became a part of them.  This is a miracle, but it shows us the good wind of God.  We can now contrast that with the evil winds of Satan.  First let’s turn to John chapter 20.

Just prior to the first Pentecost after Jesus Christ died and was resurrected, He appeared to His disciples, and they had this little get together here.  Jesus Christ appeared to them, and here is what He did.  John 20, verse 21:  “So Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace to you!  As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.’  And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”

They did not receive the Holy Spirit at that moment.  But God was showing them, when you feel My breath in a few days on Pentecost (when you feel that wind), what you have going into you is My breath to give you utterance.  It is to make you witnesses eventually unto the end of the earth.  It is to speak the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

We need that Holy Spirit (the fire within) to guide us into the truth.  We need the breath of God, so that we can inhale that spiritual breath and exhale the truth of God as we speak. Essentially, receiving the wind is receiving the message of the Holy Spirit.  When I am speaking to you right now, you are hearing my breath pass over my vocal chords.  My mouth shapes the words that I am telling you.  You are receiving a message.

When Christ breathed on His disciples and then sent that wind, He was saying you are going to receive the message that My Holy Spirit is going to lead you into.  My Holy Spirit will dwell in your mind and heart, and it will be the fire that burns within you.  But you need to breathe in and out, inhale and exhale the truth of God.  God’s word, we are told in II Timothy 3:16 is God-breathed.  It helps us understand that scripture better.  All of God’s word is inspired and good for reproof, for correction, for doctrine and for understanding to help us have the truth of God.  It is His breath going in.  With the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, we can understand the truth and then give it utterance.  We can share it with other people. We can live it.

This divine wind is very, very important.  We must have this divine wind coming into our life to have spiritual life continue to feed the flame.  We have to have God’s breath.  It is a miracle, and it is a mystery, but it is the truth.  If we are ever cut off from that breath of God, we will have lost the ability to say the truth.  A lot of religions preach error.  Unfortunately, even the Church of God in this day and age has lost so much of the truth.  Some people have completely given it up and gone back into the pagan idolatry that they came out of originally when they were called.

There are ill winds that blow, brethren.  The ill winds blow on this planet.  In Ephesians 2:1-3 we find that Satan is the prince of the power of the air.  The air carries the vibrations of his intentions and his influence.  They pass through the air like arrows, straight to our heart and straight to those innermost layers if we let them.  They influence our mind to make us hardhearted towards the rest of the family of man.

When the Holy Spirit gives us the breath of life, we receive peace and joy, and we are moved to compassion, understanding, kindness and love.  But when Satan’s ill winds blow into our minds and hearts, they help us turn against our fellow man and against one another.  They make us become hardhearted and capable of the most cruel behavior toward one another. Satan is a cruel tyrant.  When we let his thoughts, his breath, his wind into our lives, we can become very cruel.  We have to fight that all the time, brethren.  We have to grow in holy righteous character and grow in love for the entire family of man.  We need to be willing and ready to lay down our lives for our fellow man and not take their lives.  We need to be willing to lay down our lives for them.

Ephesians 6:12 says, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”  They surround the earth, and they blow their ill winds on the people of the earth.  They blow their intentions (their influence) towards mankind to get mankind to perform these horrible acts that we see.  They want to get mankind to become hardhearted, and they want the Church to become cold.  “The love of many will grow cold.”  It is the effect of this ill wind blowing through the earth and through the Church that causes us to get cold.

The prophet Daniel speaks of these ill winds in Daniel chapter 7.  Verse 2:  “Daniel spoke, saying, ‘I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the Great Sea.’”  We have come to understand the Great Sea is mankind, pushed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, by every ill wind of hate from Satan.

Verse 3:  “‘And four great beasts came up from the sea, each different from the other. The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings.  I watched till its wings were plucked off; and it was lifted up from the earth and made to stand on two feet like a man, and a man’s heart was given to it.’”  Satan goes about like a roaring lion, but he was also the covering cherub.  He had wings at one time.  Ezekiel 28 tells us he was a covering cherub.

Continue reading Daniel 7:5.  “‘And suddenly another beast, a second, like a bear.  It was raised up on one side, and had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth.  And they said thus to it:  “Arise, devour much flesh!”  After this I looked, and there was another, like a leopard, which had on its back four wings of a bird.  The beast also had four heads, and dominion was given to it.’”  These are angelic demonic sources of power.

Verse 7:  “‘After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong.  It had huge iron teeth; it was devouring, breaking in pieces, and trampling the residue with its feet.  It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.  I was considering the horns, and there was another horn, a little one, coming up among them, before whom three of the first horns were plucked out by the roots.  And there, in this horn, were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking pompous words.’”  Daniel watched until the Ancient of Days was seated.  That is God the Father, and judgment was rendered.  But let’s skip down to verses 15-18 for the interpretation of what Daniel saw.

Daniel 7, verse 15:  “‘I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit within my body, and the visions of my head troubled me.  I came near to one of those who stood by, and asked him the truth of all this.  So he told me and made known to me the interpretation of these things:  “Those great beasts, which are four, are four kings which arise out of the earth.  But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever.”’”  Before we read more scripture we need to examine what we just read.

Before the saints can inherit the kingdom the four kings must arise out of the earth.  They have spiritual powers behind them.  That is why they arise out of the sea.  The four kings represent their four kingdoms which were to exist before the kingdom of God would come.  These four kings and kingdoms are beset upon by Satan’s four winds.  So his influence gets deeply embedded in them.  They especially influence some of the leaders whose hearts and minds are given over to him so that they speak pompous words.  It is his breath, his ill wind.

Now in the original manifestation when these were physical kingdoms upon the earth being driven by these winds, they began to teach to change the Sabbath.  They began to teach religious intolerance and persecution.  They led people on the crusades.  They led people into schisms and all manner of things such as inquisitions and torturing their fellow man.  These pompous words were to continue to effect mankind down through the ages, but it is Satan behind them.  We have to understand that what we are fighting today is not a political system.  It is not the physical kingdoms.  They have come, and they have gone.  The words and the effects of the wind are still there.  There are still many deceptions around the world.  It is no good to point fingers at any single religion.  We have all been duped!  All of us!  When we get called by God into the truth, that is a miracle.  But in so many cases now people are going back to allow the ill winds to blow through their minds and hearts, so that they utter what is false.

We see a diabolical spiritual perversion of what God’s Holy Spirit is doing within the saints.  We need to know this because the people of these kingdoms are not the real enemies of God.  The physical people on the earth who are still deceived by these things are not God’s enemies.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.”  He wants to free these people from these deceptions so that they learn war no more.  They will learn false religion no more, so that they can come into the truth that will set them free.

God’s arch enemy is Satan and Satan’s four winds who are the demon powers that blow his influence through mankind.  These four particular human kingdoms that were used by Satan to attack God’s first congregation (the ancient nation of Israel) also continued to attack Jesus Christ and eventually killed Him on the cross through the Roman Empire.  But it is the ill winds of Satan that caused that to happen.  Many other powerful empires have existed on the earth and are not listed in Daniel.  They are not listed as Medio-Persia, Greece or Rome.  We will look at that a little bit if we have time.  They are not listed because they did not come in contact with God’s Church.  They were not in direct opposition to Jesus Christ and the work that Jesus Christ and God the Father were doing here on earth.  They are still deceived.  There was still as much evil in say, for example, Genghis Khan and the hordes that came out of the steppes of Russia.  There was just as much evil as there was in the Roman empire.  But it was not directed at Christ, unlike the Roman Empire that was tricked by Satan and his ill winds into doing evil.  That is why they are not mentioned in the Bible to the same extent.

THE ILL WINDS CONTINUE
Because demons do not die, the chief demons that caused those ill winds to blow in the Roman Empire and who set up false religion so long ago, those ill winds are still alive.  If you look in Revelation, John calls them the four horsemen of the apocalypse.  They brought war, false religion, famine and pestilence, death and destruction.  They have been blowing around since Adam was created, and actually before that.  They have been affecting mankind, as we know mankind, since Adam.  The kingdoms that were tricked by these ill winds were ignorant of how they had been manipulated by evil and how they had been influenced.  They did not understand.

If you would, turn now to Daniel chapter 2.  These four physical kingdoms are mentioned.  You can read the whole story in Daniel about Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, but I think most of you are familiar with it, so we will start in the middle of the chapter here.

Daniel is speaking to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.  Read Daniel 2, verses 31 to 35. Satan’s system had these four components:  Babylon being the head of gold with King Nebuchadnezzar, Medio-Persia, Greece and Rome.  Eventually the system that they were the mirror image of (this one above called Babylon) would get blown away.  As on the threshing floor, it would get blown away so that no evidence of it would ever exist again.  That is when Satan’s ill winds are done doing their damage on the earth.  God’s Holy Spirit and His wind will be blowing through the earth, harvesting the earth like it was a threshing floor, getting rid of this image of the beast.

Continuing on, read verses 36 to 45 of Daniel 2.  If we were to back up to verse 28, we would see that these, indeed, are the latter days as you can figure out reading verses 40 to 45. Verse 28 says:  “‘But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.  Your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, were these…’”  That is when he started to tell the king what he had seen.

Brethren, the Roman Empire has been gone for a long time, yet we are told that we see what is going to happen in the latter days.  Brethren, the seeds that the ill winds have sown (the tares that fought the apostles and who brought in false doctrine) started at the end of the Roman Empire.  It started when Paul, John and James were dealing with the evils (the false doctrines) coming into the Church.  John says, they are starting even now! They are fighting us even now.  In II Thessalonians chapter 2 Paul says, we are fighting these things even now.  The ill wind (the doctrines) that blew through the Roman Empire affected Constantine to give legitimacy to the Catholic Church.  It affected him to switch the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.  These ill winds are the power behind these thrones.

The effective power (the ill wind that started back then) is still alive and doing very well because it is spiritual.  The source is demonic.  That is why the system continues to get fought right until the end of the age, but it is the ill winds behind it that matter.  We do not have to wait for the Roman Empire to get resurrected to conquer the world and make the whole world Catholic.  It is not going to happen.  The whole world is under the mark of the beast!

When the false winds that sowed the false doctrines (the tares) into the Church back then eventually succeed, these false doctrines (the pompous words) fight God’s people right from Jesus Christ’s death to this very day.  When they eventually beat God’s people down and pulverize them, you know it is over.  That is why Daniel 12:7 says when the power of the holy people is completely shattered and scattered, it is over.  We do not have to look for a physical Roman system to take us captive.  We can go captive by the pompous words.

Turn to Daniel chapter 7.  I want to read about these pompous words a little bit here. Daniel 7, verse 25:  “‘He shall speak pompous words against the Most High, shall persecute the saints of the Most High, and shall intend to change times and law.  Then the saints shall be given into his hand for a time and times and half a time.  But the court shall be seated, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and destroy it forever.’”  Then God’s kingdom gets established.  Brethren, that is the end of the age.

These pompous words are what we are fighting now.  We are fighting the trinity doctrine.  We are fighting people who are teaching the world to observe Easter and Christmas.  We are fighting people who think it is okay to kill others of a different religion on the other side of an imaginary line.  They preach that they do this in the name of God.  The truth of God is fighting all of these things, but it is the ideologies (the false religion, the ignorance).  We are not fighting the people themselves.  We should never take up arms against another human being.  This is why we need the truth of God established by the return of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of His saints.  Then the world will be able to see the source of good wind as opposed to the source of evil wind.

THE WORN DOWN CHURCH
This term here “persecute the saints” actually comes from a Hebrew word meaning to wear them down mentally, which is what has been happening to the Church of God for the last twenty or thirty years.  We have been worn down mentally.  We have been scared out of our minds thinking that some physical power out of somewhere is going to line God’s people up and start shooting them down or torture them to death like what happened in ancient days.  What is really happening is that Satan is trying to take us with his pompous words by wearing us down, by exhausting us to a frazzle.  He is wearing us down by putting fear in us, so we run when there is no enemy.  There are scriptures that talk about running when there is no enemy or one of them putting a thousand to flight.  It has happened, brethren.  It has happened to us because we were tricked.  We were looking for false signs and lying wonders.

Based upon the historical past, Satan scared us into thinking he had the power to destroy the entire world with nuclear war.  He scared us into thinking he would make everyone knuckle under through torture.  It is not going to happen.  He succeeds by getting us to breathe out his pompous words, by getting us to condemn one another, and by getting us to condemn mankind.  He succeeds by getting us to turn cold and have hearts of stone.  We need to fight growing cold, brethren.  We need to fight slandering one another.  We need to fight the forces that tear the Church apart.  We need to put love back in the Church.  We need to be willing to die for our fellow man.  When we are doing these things, we are fighting Satan’s ill winds.

When we allow Satan’s ill winds to blow through the Church, we are going to continue to have it break up into smaller and smaller parts.  We are going to grow weaker and weaker until Christ says, will I find faith when I return?  He did not say, how many of you will survive?  How many of you will be in the place of safety?  How many of you people will get raptured or protected in Petra?  No, He says, will I find faith?  Will I find a Church that has not grown cold?  Will I find a Church that speaks the truth?  Will I find a Church that has My breath going through them?  This is why in Revelation 11 when the two witnesses get on their feet, it is because the breath of God (His wind) comes back into them.

Brethren, there is much more to this than we have ever realized before, but we have to stop looking at false signs and lying wonders.  We have to stop being selfishly fearful for ourselves and for our own lives.

Christ also has the parable of the wedding supper.  The father finds that there is a number of people that do not want to come.  Why?  They bought land, or they bought a house or a team of oxen.  I have heard all kinds of excuses.  I want to go back to college so I can get a better job.  I want to get promoted.  I want a new car.  These are the things people care about, and that is how Satan is taking us down.  Christ also says, will I find faith?  Will I find people willing to be led by the truth and utter the truth?  Will I find a Church with My breath still in them?

Brethren, Jesus Christ is on the other side of a spiritual door, and He is knocking very loudly at this point in time.  We have to open that door and let Him into our minds and hearts.  We have to let Him help us peel off the layers and help us see our real selves.  We have to let Him help us deal with the ill winds that are still blowing through our lives to this very day, so that we can accomplish something for God that will be dramatic here at the end of the age.  We need to bring the truth, help and knowledge to a Church laid flat, prostrate.  The ten virgins are asleep, as it says in Matthew 25.  We have been blind-sided by events and looking fearfully for fulfillments of terrifying signs and wonders (false signs and wonders that are physical things).

Satan has been killing mankind with war, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes and pestilence for a long time.  We need to look for the true signs and wonders and the truth of God.  Frankly we need to help God by letting Him work through us before He runs out of time and has to replace us!  That is our job.  We need to let the breath of life come back into us and breathe out the truth of God.  Utter the truth just like the early Church did at that first Pentecost, and fight Satan’s ill winds.  We can do this because it is a miracle of God, brethren.  He will help us.

For hundreds of years Bible scholars have understood that the giant image in Daniel represented these four worldly kingdoms.  The enigma that has troubled mankind since that time is, what do all of these have to do with the end of the world?  God is now helping us to understand what it has to do with the end of the world.  They are the pompous words that Satan brought into those false empires and are blowing through the Church of God today and blowing around the world influencing mankind.  That is how they effect us to this very day, and that is why the seed of iron tries to mix with God’s seed at the end of the age.  The seed of hatred and cruelty and harsh judgment tries to push its way into the ten virgins.  We have a whole sermon on that subject, and we would be glad to help you with that.

The understanding, brethren, is that we need to fear what is happening to the Church and not to the world.  The world has been in Satan’s back pocket for six thousand years.  That is why when you continue reading in Daniel it concludes with, when the power of the holy people is completely shattered and scattered, it is over!  It is not when NATO takes over the world.  It is not when Russia and China field a two hundred million man army and take over the world.  It is not when the world starts shooting missiles at a returning Jesus Christ.  It is not going to happen.  Those are speculations, usually done in sincerity, that just could not be understood.  They were ahead of their time.

The world was headed for utter destruction until Elijah’s work was completed.  That is what Malachi 4 tells us.  Elijah’s work has been accomplished.  The Father has turned to His children and the children to their Father, so the utter curse is lifted.  So physical destruction is not going to occur.  There will be wars and famines right up until Christ’s return, but this world is not going up in smoke.  What we have to look for in signs is what has happened to the Church.

POWERS OF OBSERVATION
If you are hearing this sermon, and you do not have a background in it, let us know.  We would be glad to send you a sermon called “The Powers of Observation.”  It will teach you what spiritual powers of observations are, so that you can see what the true signs are that Jesus Christ was talking about.  You will learn what it means when a fig tree starts coming back to life just before Jesus Christ’s return.  It is not a physical fig tree on the earth.  A fig tree represents His Church and His soon-to-be worldwide government.  When it starts getting the breath of life back into it, and it starts to become green and fruitful once again, you know it is about over.  Do not be fooled by wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes and pestilence.  Do not let the ill winds of Satan’s pompous words affect you anymore.  Do not be in fear.  God did not give us a spirit of fear but of power and might.

Satan has organized this world so that it is influenced by principalities which we cannot see, but the organized physical world reflects his image above.  It is the image that we cannot see.  That image is the image in Daniel.  That physical statue that Nebuchadnezzar saw in his mind’s eye represented Satan’s government.  Satan is the king of Babylon.  Nebuchadnezzar was just a puny physical king of Babylon, but Satan is the god behind Babylon.  His capital city is called Babylon, and it is about to fall!

When we see Jesus Christ return and the sky splits open, that does not mean it is going to split apart atomically.  It is going to split apart so that we can see what is going on in the spirit world.  We will see Satan go down!  As we are told on the Day of Atonement, we are going to see him where we can gaze at him.  We will say is, this the man responsible for all of this carnage on the earth?  Is this the being that tricked us for so long?  We will be able to see him hauled off and his demons with him in chains.  That is what we are looking for, brethren.  It is coming very, very shortly.  We have a little time left to get rid of fear and to understand the true signs.  We need to stop letting Satan use us by blowing his ill winds through the Church, and we need to try to educate the world to the truth.  Brethren, the world is ready for the truth.  They are sick of war, and they understand that the stakes are very, very high now.

TRUTH WILL SET US FREE
The beast that drove the world to insanity with the ill winds of war is going to be locked up.  By recognizing the truth of that beast (the son of perdition) and what he has done to
the world, that truth will help us fight back.  He had the audacity to manhandle and destroy the Church at the end of the age, but the truth will help us fight back.

Jesus Christ vomited us out of His mouth, but He did not abandon us.  He will never abandon us!  He is on the other side of a spiritual door, and He is knocking very hard right now.  He wants us to open that door, so He will come in and sup with us.  He will give us good food (good doctrine, good wind).  He will put the breath of life back into the Church.  He wants us to have good clean garments and lots of gold and silver, so that we can have a decent reward.  Then we can help bring peace, kindness, love and healing to this world that needs it so badly.  We can help wipe the tears from billions of eyes and not destroy the earth!

When we understand the truth, we can do something about the horrible things that have happened.  The truth really will set us free.  The truth really is the breath of God, and the Holy Spirit will help us understand the message.  Pray for understanding, because Laodicea is told you are poor, blind, wretched, naked and miserable and you do not even know it!  Brethren, it is high time we stop letting Satan have his way with the Church of God.  It is time we help put his empire where it belongs when Jesus Christ returns.  We can help hasten the day to end the world’s suffering by getting rid of every spot and blemish, because some day the world really will rejoice.  That day is coming soon.  As we are told in Revelation 19, the bride has made herself ready.  How wonderful, the bride has made herself ready!  This wretchedness can end!  It is a big responsibility that we have been handed, brethren.  It is a huge responsibility, and it is up to us to take it seriously and help alleviate and end the world’s suffering.