[scroll down for pt. 2]

 

The Rise and Fall of it All, pt. 1

Daniel 2:31-40

 

A quote from a certain professor: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship.

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.” We are almost at 250. He continued, “These nations have progressed through the following sequence—from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, and from dependency back into bondage.”

By the way, this was written by a Professor Alexander Tytler nearly two hundred fifty years ago while our thirteen original colonies were still a part of Great Britain.

Every nation follows the same cycle. It might shock you to know that democracy is not God’s form of government. God’s form is theocracy where one person rules, and that person is God. The world today then is simply going through the same cycles of dissolution that it has always endured.

As we look at the world today, we see it as a vast stage, with the curtain still down. And we get the feeling that the actors are behind that curtain, preparing for the last scene in the drama of human history. The big production is almost done. There remains but one more scene. And that final scene is the latter days and the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we step close to the stage, behind the curtain we can hear the commotion of the stagehands as they set up the machinery and set the stage for that final act.

And now, as we come to Daniel 2, Daniel takes us behind the curtain before it rises. We’re going to see incredible insights, not only in Daniel 2 but to the end of the book. Jesus said there would be a time titled—Luke 21:24—“the times of the Gentiles.” It had already begun; and is now, and it will come to an end at the coming of Christ. In fact, that verse says “Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”

Interestingly enough it began with the Babylonian captivity. It began with Nebuchadnezzar. It ends with the coming of Jesus Christ. We’re living in that time right now. Israel does not possess the fullness of its inheritance, Israel does not dwell in its land in peace, Israel does not possess everything from the Mediterranean to the Tigris and Euphrates as in the original Palestinian covenant.

These are the times of the Gentiles. Gentile nations have dominated that part of the world since Nebuchadnezzar, and they will, to some degree, hold power over it until Jesus comes again. In Ezekiel chapter 21, Ezekiel tells us that the glory had departed from Israel. The glory had departed from Israel. Now God in a sense, when Israel went into captivity, just moved away. And Ichabod, the glory has departed, was written on that land. The second chapter of Daniel then indicates that God transfers the leadership of this Earth from the Jew and Israel to the Gentiles. Israel takes a back seat.

Israel goes into captivity and never returns to its former glory ever, not even today. Not until Jesus comes. Israel should have been the center of the world. Israel should have been the pattern, the leader of the world. Israel should’ve been that very special people God originally intended them to be, through whom we’re given the law and the ordinances and the covenants and the promises. Israel should have been the messenger for the world. But Israel tragically failed.

In our text, the glory days are over. Jerusalem is rubble, devastated, decimated, and the times of the Gentiles have begun. And it will not again be Israel in its fullness until the Messiah returns. Now, the sweep of history from Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity all the way to the time of Jesus Christ is covered in this one chapter. And I want you to see this. This is a very powerful section of Scripture. Everything from Nebuchadnezzar all the way to the coming of Jesus Christ is touched on in this chapter in a broad and general way.

Why does such a prophecy come at the very beginning of the times of the Gentiles? If it’s going to last for thousands of years—it’s already lasted over 2,600 years—if it’s going to last for all this period of time, why give this prophecy at the very beginning? Well, I think there’s a good reason.

God wanted them to know that this captivity was not a permanent thing. Why? Because if they felt that it was all over for Israel permanently, they would have begun to question the credibility of God. Because God at many times said He would never forsake His people, He would ever keep his covenant, He would always fulfill His promise, He would never forget Jerusalem. And so I believe that no sooner are they in captivity than God immediately reveals the fullness of the plan from beginning to end.

The children of Israel stand of the banks of the rivers of Babylon hanging their harps on the willows because they have no song to sing, and the immediate question is “Has God forever forsaken His people?” And the ringing prophecy of Daniel 2 says no.

v. 28        The latter days. That is not a phrase restricted to Nebuchadnezzar’s lifetime. In fact, the latter days is a repeated prophetic statement. You can find it in Genesis 49, Deuteronomy 4, Deuteronomy 31, Numbers 24, Jeremiah 23, Jeremiah 30, Jeremiah 48, Jeremiah 49, Ezekiel 38, Daniel 10, Hosea 3, Micah 4 and other places.

And all the time when you see the latter days, it encompasses the messiah returning or the messiah’s time. So it’s a very broad term.

The New Testament uses this term the very same way. It’s used in Acts 2, the latter days. It’s used in 2 Peter, chapter 3, and every time it’s used in conjunction with the kingdom of messiah.

v. 31-33           The Aramaic word here is statue. It’s not an idol that you worship, it’s just a statue.

And then the action takes place in verses 34-35. Now that’s a very strange dream. And those people in those days believed that dreams had significance. And this one did because it was from God.

Not only is it decreasing or a deteriorating value, but there’s a corresponding lower specific gravity. Gold is heavier than silver and silver is heavier than brass and brass is heaving than iron and iron is heavier than iron and clay mixed. In fact, I did a little research on that. The approximate specific gravity of gold is 19, silver 11, brass 8.5, iron 7.8. In other words, gold at the top is more than twice as heavy as the bottom. The whole thing is top heavy.

It’s getting more and more brittle as it goes down. In fact, gold is so flexible and malleable that it can’t even be shattered. But iron and clay can. The whole history of humanity, the whole history of the Gentile world until the coming of Christ is going to be a very precariously balanced thing that is constantly and incessantly deteriorating until its final dissolution when it has smashed at its own feet and it is blown away like dust in the wind. Pretty vivid. From its head of gold to the fragile feet, the image is prone to fall over.

And that is exactly what happens. The action begins, a stone was cut out without hands. That means it had no human source. No men made that stone. It smote the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them to pieces. In fact, so much so that they became like chaff of the summer threshing floor and the wind carried them away. No place was found for them and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole Earth. The stone takes over the whole world, and all the rest of that stuff blows away.

The top-heavy image is toppled by a crushing blow at its feet. In rapid succession, the entire disintegration of the image follows and all of its dust is blown away. Now, this is a pretty amazing missile. It smashes all of the history of the Gentiles. What a dream. Now how do you interpret a dream like that?

The dream has been recalled.  Now it will be revealed in vv. 36-43

The king never says anything.  I think he couldn’t say anything. I think his mouth was hanging open because Daniel was right. As the end of the story in chapter 2 will tell us, Daniel was right, when he makes him prime minister of the whole area.

This is phenomenal. The image represents four world empires in succeeding stages, from Nebuchadnezzar to Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 14:4 refers to Nebuchadnezzar’s preoccupation with gold. But it lasted only 70 years, just long enough to fulfill God’s chastening purpose. So Nebuchadnezzar was the head of gold. It was a one-man rule. He called all the shots.

The second one in verse 39 has to refer to the Medo-Persian Empire because the Medo-Persian Empire succeeded Babylonia. There’s no other way you could interpret it. Acc’d to v. 32 it’s the breast and arms, which implies a two-fold division. And the Medo-Persian Empire was just that. Made up of the Medes and the Persians. No longer is there solidarity.

Notice the word inferior in verse 39. The word means lower. He’s simply talking about lower down the statue. You start with gold and lower you come to silver. It’s not really a commentary on quality or size or anything.

By the way, the last three empires were larger by far. In fact, they get larger as they go. Medo-Persia was larger than Babylon, Greece was larger than Medo-Persia and Rome was larger than Greece. They get continuously larger. Not only that, each of them was stronger than the one before.

Now silver in Aramaic is the same as money. Same word. The characteristic of this Medo-Persian Empire would be money or silver. And history bears this out. The Medo-Persian Empire developed a vast system of taxation. They required that their taxes be paid in silver and they literally filled their coffers with tons and tons of silver. The kings of the Medo-Persian Empire—and there were many of them—just gobbled up silver money.

The prophecy here then is that there would come another kingdom and that kingdom would be characterized by silver. Xerxes, who was one of the kings of the Medo-Persian Empire, inherited the incredible silver fortune of his father Darius. He also inherited more silver from other Persian kings and he used it to finance his massive war against the Greeks. So they had a tremendous amount of silver. The Babylonian Empire made it till 538 B.C. And then came Cyrus the Great, and with Cyrus the Great came the Medo-Persian Empire.

That empire lasted 200 years about, until 330 B.C., when you come to the third one in verse 39. - bronze - It’s the belly and thighs. This is Greece. How do we know that? Because following the Medo-Persian Kingdom came the Greek Empire under Alexander the Great.

So moving down Babylon, Medo-Persia and Greece. Bronze is not as valuable as silver but bronze is stronger than silver.

It’s characterized by bronze, I think, for other reasons. The Persians wore a soft turban. He would have been clothed with a tunic with sleeves and trousers full and long. That would have been a Medo-Persian soldier. But when you saw a Greek soldier, he would have had on his head a helmet of brass, on his body a breastplate of brass. Before him he would be carrying a shield of brass and, believe it or not, a sword made out of brass. That is why the classic writers of ancient days refer to the brazen-coated Greeks. Brass became a sign and symbol of Greek conquests and the Greek empire. Gold, why? Because Nebuchadnezzar was preoccupied with gold. Silver, why? Because the Meads and the Persians were preoccupied with silver. Brass, why? Because it symbolized the power of the forces of Alexander the Great.

Notice that the end of verse 39 says that this third kingdom would bear rule over all the Earth. Hang onto that. They’ll rule over all the Earth? Very interesting statement because Alexander the Great commanded people to call him by this title, Alexander King of all the Earth. He ruled Europe, Egypt and all the way to India, and died in his 30s.

Finally, you come to the fourth kingdom and that is Rome. And the stress again is on strength. The Greek Empire lasted only a little under 200 years. The Medo-Persian Empire lasted about the same amount of time. Somewhere in there at 100 B.C. give or take 50 years -- Rome became a power. And by the way, Rome was never even heard of before that. They emerged out of nowhere to rule the world. And the Roman Empire, believe it or not, even went further than Alexander’s conquests. Incredible.

Rome was two legs. You know that Rome existed in a divided state, didn’t it? It was the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire. Now, Daniel says that the fourth kingdom, verse 40, shall be strong as iron. By the way, in Daniel’s day, iron was believed to be the strongest metal. And Rome, no question, was the strongest empire the world has ever known. Babylon lasted 70 years, Medo-Persia lasted around 200. The Greek empire around 200. The Roman Empire lasted 500 years in the West and all the way to 1453 until Constantinople was knocked off in the East. That’s a long time. No empire even comes close. They were strong.

He goes on to say, for example, it “breaketh in pieces,” it “subdueth.” He says, “It breaketh all these, it breaks in pieces and it bruises.” All of those terms refer to a smashing, crushing, shattering power of Rome. In fact, the verb breaketh in the Aramaic means to crush with a hammer. And Leupold the Bible scholar said, “The Roman legions were noted for their ability to crush all resistance with an iron heel.”

The Roman Empire came to crush and demolish. By the way, the legs are the longest part of the image and the Roman Empire lasted the longest. You know why the Romans lasted so long? Because they rule with an iron rod. They were strong. The iron legions of Rome were the final world power in the image. Now as you can see, folks, Rome is the last world empire.

You say, “Wait a minute. There’s got to be more to this. Rome passed away a long time ago.” Well, there’s more to the prophecy. We haven’t gotten to the toes yet. And the toes are not iron, but iron mixed with what? Clay. What does that tell us?

We’re going to see a return of the ancient Roman Empire. I believe they’ll even be ten toes to that revived empire. Here’s what I mean. Have you been watching Europe lately? Europe which once occupied the territory of the Roman Empire has revived itself in the confederacy right now known as the European Union.  There have always been at least ten member states, though it fluctuates.

The history of the world is reaching its climax. There’s no question about that. Can America survive? We’re succumbing already to the deadly, inevitable deterioration of man. Our people are selfish and their selfishness will self-destruct. No wonder you can’t find America in the prophecies of the end. Now, if you want to find out how it’s going to end, come back next week.

 

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The Rise and Fall of it All, pt. 2

Daniel 2

 

 

Luke 21:24: "And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled."

 

Jerusalem was initially trodden down by the Gentiles when Nebuchadnezzar came and destroyed it. And Jesus said that it would stay that way, “until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” So there would be this tremendous period of history in which Gentile power would hold sway in the city of Jerusalem.

 

I believe Jesus reiterated this very same judgment in Matthew 23:37. He said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them who are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” He continued, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

 

Jerusalem will be desolate until you recognize who I am. The times of the Gentiles ends with the coming of Christ.

 

As Zechariah puts it, “They look on Him whom they have pierced and mourn for Him as an only son.” That’s why we believe that prior to Christ coming and establishing His kingdom, during the period known as the great tribulation there will be a tremendous revival among the Jews and Israel will be redeemed. Revelation 7:14 tells us that. So beginning with Nebuchadnezzar, there came this time of the Gentiles when Jerusalem was trodden down by the Gentiles and it will exist until the return of Jesus Christ.

 

You say, “Well, aren’t there periods of time when the Jews were in Jerusalem?” Yes. Like today is one of them. The Jews went back to Jerusalem 70 years after the Babylonian captivity and tried to rebuild it. But they never had the freedom and the autonomy they had before. They were oppressed by the nations around them. They were living, really, on thin ice.

 

After the destruction of 70 A.D., an interesting thing happened. There were some remaining Jews. And they wanted to pray for the restoration of their city. They began to congregate in a place where the temple originally stood.

 

And it became such a familiar place of prayer that it got a name, the Wailing Wall. It was the place where they went to pray that their city would be restored and that it would no longer know Gentile dominion. They would weep and they would wail as the psalmists said, praying for the peace of Jerusalem, praying for God to send a deliverer so they could rebuild their temple and repossess their city. It was controlled by all different kinds of people, Arabs, Turks, even the British. The Persians had it for a while. Not until 1948 when they became a nation, did they even get a piece of much of anything.

 

But still, they didn’t get the Wailing Wall, the place where they had prayed so often for the peace of Jerusalem. On Wednesday, June 7, 1967, they broke through the Arab resistance in the Six Day War and they arrived at the Wailing Wall. And they began to pray. And they began to shout. One of them said, “For 2,000 years our people prayed for this moment.” They stood in the old city and they said, “It is now ours.” And some people said, “The times of the Gentiles is over. There’s no more Gentile dominion in the land and the nation and the city of Jerusalem.”

 

But actually the times of the Gentiles ends when the Messiah returns. Right now there is the mosque and the Dome of the Rock that sits right on the very place where the temple is supposed to be. And they can’t do a thing about it without starting a Middle East war that would be a holocaust. Here’s this great big round gold thing representing Gentile intrusion. It faces them every day. And the one thing you see when you look at Jerusalem is the Dome of the Rock. It’s the only thing in the whole city that’s got a gold top on it.

 

You know you can’t even build anything in Jerusalem today unless you use Jerusalem stone? You can’t bring anything in it at all. It has to fit the code. Everything in there looks the same. It’s all that same white stone, except the Dome of the Rock and the Mosque of Omar. The dome is gold, the mosque is silver, and it sits on the temple ground. And there’s a sign outside the temple ground for all the orthodox Jews. And it says, “Do not enter here.” And it’s signed by the chief rabbi. And the reason is you might inadvertently step on the holy of holies because they’re not too sure where it was.

 

It’s still under Gentile dominion. They’ve never really had their own self-rule and dominion that they lost when Nebuchadnezzar came. And in the future there is going to be a Gentile invasion of that land like nothing that’s ever happened in the past. In Zechariah chapter 12, verse 2, it says, “I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the peoples round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.”

 

It says in Zechariah 14, “The day of the Lord will come. And I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth to captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the Earth. And then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.”  That’s the battle of Armageddon.

 

Now, we pick back up from part 1 [review] …

 

Verse 41          The Revived Roman Empire.

They were strong once. But in the final form, there’s going to be weakness. “The seed of men.” I think the problem in the final form of the Roman Empire is going to be that there are too many people involved in the issues.  Mankind today cannot get together behind anything, it seems.

 

The final form of the Roman Empire has ten toes. I believe the Bible is telling us by the ten toes [the ten kings in Daniel 7,] that the final form of the Roman Empire would have a ten-nation confederacy. Rev. 17 shows ten horns.

 

Today, there is no Roman Empire.” But listen. The prophecy says the Roman Empire will be around when the stone comes [vv. 34, 45] and smashes this statue.

Who is the stone? Jesus Christ. Paul says, “That rock was Christ.” He is the stone the builders rejected. Christ comes and smashes a final form of the Roman Empire.

 

In Revelation, the Bible tells us that a beast - in chapter 13 - came and he was wounded and went into death but he rose again of that death. That could be a picture of Rome dying as it were, only to rise again. And in its final form it will be ten nations. Or, it could be the literal beast, the Antichrist…or both!

 

The Bible tells us that there’s going to be a ten-nation confederacy in the end and out of those ten nations is going to rise one ruler. He’s called in Daniel, the little horn, he’s called the son of perdition, he’s called the man of sin, the beast out of the sea. We know him as the antichrist. He’ll be a great world ruler that will come on the scene in Europe/MidEast to pull together that coalition, which will perpetuate the battle of Armageddon.

 

We’ve learned that there will be a continuous succession of world dominions from Nebuchadnezzar to the coming of Christ. That’s why it says that his dream is regarding the latter days.  The revived Roman Empire will be very weak, clay, only lasting 3.5 years.

Verse 34          The only thing left is to find out who the stone is. The stone comes and obliterates all of this and then fills the earth.

Well, I know who it is. So do you. Because Jesus said, “Your house will be desolate until you look at Me and say, ‘Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.’” He’s the only one that can destroy the governments of the world. And Isaiah said it, “The government shall be upon His,” -- What? – “Shoulder.” He’s the only one that has the right to rule.

In Revelation 5 they were searching heaven to find somebody who could open the scroll and in came the Lamb. And the Lamb could open the scroll. Why? Because he had a right to open the scroll because it was the title deed to the Earth. And he and he alone had the right to possess the Earth. It’s Christ, Himself, who is the stone. In Genesis 49:24, God is called the stone of Israel. In Psalm 118, “The stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner.” And Peter quotes that and it refers to Christ. Jesus used that of Himself. He said, “I am the stone that the builders rejected, but I have become the head of the corner.”

God said to the prophet Isaiah, chapter 28, verse 16, “I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation stone.” Paul said in first Corinthians 10:4, that rock was Christ. Christ is the stone. And I believe it is at the coming of Jesus Christ that he smashes the empires of the world. “His feet,” – as Zechariah 14 says, -- “land on the Mount of Olives.”  Today we know something about that mount that was never known before.  Jesus ascended from there.  He will return to the same spot. 

Ezekiel 44

¹Then he brought me back the way of the gate of the outward sanctuary which looketh toward the east; and it was shut.

² Then said the Lord unto me; This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because the Lord, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut.

He ‘hath’ entered the east gate?  It’s prophetic foreshadowing.  In God’s mind it’s as good as done.

Of course, that gate was bricked up by the Muslim Suleman, who feared the Messiah’s coming.  He’s trying to prevent it from happening.

Zechariah 14:4

⁴ And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.

In 1964 some Jews wanted to build a hotel on that mountain, and had to get a geological survey done.  They discovered a faultline right there, east to west, right down to the east gate.  The Bible talks about in the last days the earth being shaken.  Perhaps all those stones will crumble.

What does it mean that He was cut out without hands? I believe, first of all, it is a reflection of His virgin birth. This stone was not a manmade stone. Secondly, I believe it is a reflection on His resurrection, that there was no human effort involved in His resurrection. His own power brought Him from the grave. And notice when the stone comes, it doesn’t hit the head, the shoulders, or anything like that. But it smashes the final portion, the weakest part, the feet, and the entire Gentile tower comes down.

The Bible says He is a crushing stone. But at the same time, He is a restoring stone.

Nebuchadnezzar had this strange dream. Did he really understand it? Nebuchadnezzar’s chief God – according to the archaeologists who have found a lot of things about that time, was a God that he called Shadu Rabu. That means the great mountain.

Nebuchadnezzar thought Shadu Rabu was the great mountain. But Daniel said to him, “That stone that hit that image filled the whole earth and became a great mountain.” Your God is replaced. And he used His own terminology, God did, so he’d understand. And Daniel says, “There’s only one Shadu Rabu and you haven’t seen him yet.”

And when Daniel used this in the presence of Nebuchadnezzar, believe me, he understood it. And Nebuchadnezzar had worked with stone. He was one of the greatest builders in ancient history. And he would have understood what it was to be a stone cut out without hands because he would have known the incredible effort necessary to cut out stones by hand. And here was one that just happened without effort.

It says in verse 35 that the wind came along and after the image was smashed to pieces, the wind blew it away. This pointed again to Nebuchadnezzar’s system of theology. His god got in a battle with another god known as the dragon of chaos. And the way that he defeated him was to send a hurricane, and then it says a wind, and then a fourfold wind, and then a sevenfold wind, and blew the dragon away.

And Daniel was saying when it comes to blowing, you ain’t seen anything. You see, God gave Nebuchadnezzar a vision in his own terms so he would understand.

How does the story end? Well, I love this, too. Verse 45. By this time, somebody might be saying, “Boy, I’ve heard some things in my time. But this takes the cake. This is the wildest thing ever dreamt up by the imagination of some person who tried to push it off as if it were true. Crazy image, ridiculous story, with an incredible, fanciful interpretation.”

And just in case that’s where you are, there’s a little P.S. at the bottom of verse 45 that’s meant to nail you to the wall. It says this, “and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.” Don’t mess with this. There are no mistakes. It’s sure and it’s certain.

We’ve seen the dream received, the dream recalled, the dream revealed.

Now, the dream rewarded. Look at verse 46.

He believed it. You say, “What’s he doing worshipping Daniel?” Well, he doesn’t know Daniel’s God, so he figures the only way to get to Daniel’s God is through Daniel.

v. 47        He says, “Your God is the God of Gods. Your God is the Shadu Rabu. Your God is the Lord of the Wind. Your God is the revealer of secrets.”

Don’t get too excited, this is a short conversion. It’s the emotion of the moment because he bails out, as we’ll see very soon in the very next chapter. But in this moment, he is literally overwhelmed at the display of God’s power through Daniel.

v. 48        This is quite a promotion, from being the bottom guy on the totem pole to running the show. He was the prime minister of the Babylonian Empire.

v. 49        He said, “I got three guys I’d like to be my vice regents,” and he brought his friends into strategic places to be used by God.

If you just obey God, He’ll put you beyond what you ever dreamed. Imagine Daniel sitting in Jerusalem and saying, “I got to figure how I can get to be the prime minister of Babylon. First, I got to get taken captive, and then go to the right school. Then I got to meet the right people. I got to marry the right girl. Strategy.” No, Daniel said, “I don’t care what the king says, I’m not eating that stuff.”

Daniel became the prime minister of Babylon because God put him there. And since he didn’t put himself there, he didn’t have to worry about staying. Because it wasn’t something he wanted anyway. It was what God gave him. And as long as God gave it to him, God would let him keep it until his time was done. Don’t seek things. Let God gives them to you as you obey His will.