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How Nebuchadnezzar DESTROYED Solomon_s Temple and Took GOD_S TREASURES · truthunedited

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  Speaker 1: The most powerful army on earth had one mission. Find
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  Speaker 1: the treasures of God and take them. They did not
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  Speaker 1: just loot a building. They smashed the pillars that marked
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  Speaker 1: the entrance to heaven. They broke apart a bronze sea
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  Speaker 1: that weighed more than a house. They threw the golden
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  Speaker 1: cups of God into soldiers' sacks like common kitchen pots.
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  Speaker 1: And then they burned everything that was left to the ground.
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  Speaker 1: By the time Nebuchadnezzar was done, The most sacred address
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  Speaker 1: on planet Earth was a pile of ash and rubble.
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  Speaker 1: But here is what makes this story different from every
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  Speaker 1: other conquest in history. God saw it coming. God allowed it.
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  Speaker 1: And God had already left the building before the first
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  Speaker 1: torch was thrown. Nebuchadnezzar thought he was stealing the treasures
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  Speaker 1: of Israel. He had no idea he was holding objects
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  Speaker 1: that would eventually seal the death warrant of his entire empire.
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  Speaker 1: This is the story of how the greatest temple ever
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  Speaker 1: built was destroyed in a single day. Who took God's treasures?
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  Speaker 1: What happened to them in Babylon? And how every single
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  Speaker 1: one of them found their way back home? Exactly as
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  Speaker 1: God promised. To understand the horror of what was lost,
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  Speaker 1: you must first understand what had been built. In 957 B.C.,
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  Speaker 1: King Solomon did not just build a religious center. He
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  Speaker 1: built the single most ambitious construction project the ancient world
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  Speaker 1: had ever attempted. The resources consumed would equal billions of
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  Speaker 1: dollars in modern value. 180,000 men labored for seven years
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  Speaker 1: to raise the structure. They quarried stones the size of
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  Speaker 1: small houses, but out of reverence for the sacred ground,
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  Speaker 1: 1 Kings 6-7 tells us that every stone was shaped
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  Speaker 1: at the quarry before it arrived. Not a single hammer
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  Speaker 1: or chisel was heard on the building site. It was
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  Speaker 1: assembled in absolute, reverent silence, as if it were being
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  Speaker 1: built by invisible hands. The main sanctuary was 30 meters
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  Speaker 1: long and 15 meters high, but it wasn't the size
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  Speaker 1: that left foreign kings speechless. It was the interior. Every
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  Speaker 1: single centimeter of the walls, from the floor to the ceiling,
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  Speaker 1: was covered in solid hammered gold over fragrant cedar of Lebanon.
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  Speaker 1: There was not a single stone visible. Ten solid gold
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  Speaker 1: lampstands provided the only light reflecting off the golden walls
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  Speaker 1: until the room seemed to glow from within. Outside in
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  Speaker 1: the courtyard stood the Bronze Sea, a breathtaking feat of
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  Speaker 1: ancient engineering It was a massive circular basin, four and
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  Speaker 1: a half meters in diameter, holding 44,000 liters of water,
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  Speaker 1: resting on the backs of 12 meticulously sculpted bronze oxen.
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  Speaker 1: This was where the priests washed, a daily reminder that
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  Speaker 1: humanity cannot approach holiness without being cleansed. But all of this,
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  Speaker 1: the gold, the bronze, the silver, that the Bible says
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  Speaker 1: was as common as gravel in Jerusalem, was just the
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  Speaker 1: outer shell. Deep inside the temple, past the golden altar,
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  Speaker 1: past the lampstands, was a perfect cube, ten meters long,
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  Speaker 1: ten meters wide, ten meters high. It was called the
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  Speaker 1: Holy of Holies. There were no windows, no lampstands. It
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  Speaker 1: existed in total darkness, because inside was the Ark of
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  Speaker 1: the Covenant. a chest made of acacia wood overlaid with gold,
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  Speaker 1: containing the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Let this sink in.
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  Speaker 1: The actual stone tablets touched by the finger of God
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  Speaker 1: on Mount Sinai were inside this box. Above the ark,
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  Speaker 1: two enormous cherubim carved from olive wood and covered in
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  Speaker 1: gold spread their wings until they touched the walls on
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  Speaker 1: either side. And in the three-meter gap between those wings,
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  Speaker 1: in the empty air, God was there, This was the
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  Speaker 1: center of the Israelite universe. For four centuries, they believed
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  Speaker 1: that as long as this building stood, as long as
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  Speaker 1: the ark remained in the dark, they were untouchable, until
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  Speaker 1: a man from the north decided that he was greater
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  Speaker 1: than God. The man who destroyed Jerusalem did not see
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  Speaker 1: himself as just a king. He saw himself as a
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  Speaker 1: force of nature. When Nebuchadnezzar ascended to the throne of
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  Speaker 1: Babylon in 605 B.C., He didn't just inherit a kingdom,
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  Speaker 1: he inherited the most lethal, efficient, and technologically advanced war
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  Speaker 1: machine the ancient world had ever seen. Daniel chapter 2
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  Speaker 1: describes Nebuchadnezzar as the head of gold on a statue
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  Speaker 1: representing all the empires of human history. This wasn't poetry.
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  Speaker 1: It was a diagnosis of his absolute power. His army
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  Speaker 1: numbered 180,000 trained killers... But they didn't just rely on numbers.
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  Speaker 1: They were masters of psychological terror and military engineering. The
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  Speaker 1: Babylonians constructed mobile siege towers over 20 meters high. Imagine
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  Speaker 1: the psychological effect of seeing a wooden skyscraper rolling toward
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  Speaker 1: your city walls Loaded with archers firing down into your streets,
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  Speaker 1: they used enormous battering rams, massive iron-headed tree trunks suspended
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  Speaker 1: by chains, operated by dozens of men. The rhythmic, earth-shaking
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  Speaker 1: thud of a Babylonian ram striking a gate could be
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  Speaker 1: heard for miles. Nebuchadnezzar crushed Assyria. He humiliated Egypt. He
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  Speaker 1: dominated the trade routes. Entire cities threw open their gates
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  Speaker 1: and surrendered the moment they saw his banners on the horizon.
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  Speaker 1: But Jerusalem was different. Jerusalem was a theological insult to
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  Speaker 1: Nebuchadnezzar's ego. The Israelites refused to bow to his gods.
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  Speaker 1: They claimed that their god, Yahweh, ruled the entire earth
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  Speaker 1: from a single golden room on Mount Moriah. to a
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  Speaker 1: man who literally built the hanging gardens and demanded worship
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  Speaker 1: as a living deity. This was an unbearable provocation. He
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  Speaker 1: didn't just want Jerusalem's wealth. He wanted to prove that
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  Speaker 1: the God of Israel was a myth. But there was
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  Speaker 1: a plot twist that Nebuchadnezzar could never have comprehended. Jeremiah
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  Speaker 1: 25 records God speaking about the Babylonian king. God doesn't
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  Speaker 1: call him an enemy. God calls him Nebuchadnezzar, my servant.
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  Speaker 1: The king of Babylon thought he was conquering the world
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  Speaker 1: by his own brilliant ambition. He had no idea he
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  Speaker 1: was merely a scalpel in the hand of God, being
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  Speaker 1: used to cut out the cancer that had infected his people.
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  Speaker 1: God did not destroy Jerusalem without a warning. He sent
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  Speaker 1: prophet after prophet into the streets of the city, screaming
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  Speaker 1: at the kings and the priests that judgment was coming.
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  Speaker 1: Idolatry had completely infected the nation. The very temple Solomon
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  Speaker 1: built for God was now surrounded by altars to the
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  Speaker 1: pagan gods of Solomon's foreign wives. The people were worshipping
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  Speaker 1: the building while completely ignoring the God who authorized it.
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  Speaker 1: Jeremiah stood in the temple courts and delivered the ultimatum,
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  Speaker 1: Submit to Babylon and you will live. Rebel and this
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  Speaker 1: city will be turned into a graveyard. Jeremiah didn't just
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  Speaker 1: deliver warnings. He wept in the streets. He begged, and
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  Speaker 1: they laughed at him. But King Jehoiakim refused to listen.
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  Speaker 1: Jehoiakim believed a lie as old as time. He thought
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  Speaker 1: politics could save him from prophecy. He made a secret
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  Speaker 1: alliance with Egypt, believing the Pharaoh would protect him. In
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  Speaker 1: an act of spectacular arrogance, he simply stopped paying tribute
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  Speaker 1: to Babylon. The response was swift, and it was brutal.
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  Speaker 1: In 597 BC, Nebuchadnezzar marched on Jerusalem. Jehoiakim died before
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  Speaker 1: the army arrived, fulfilling Jeremiah's prophecy that he would be
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  Speaker 1: dragged away and buried like a donkey. His 18-year-old son, Jehoiakim,
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  Speaker 1: looked over the walls, saw the endless sea of Babylonian tents,
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  Speaker 1: and surrendered immediately. Nebuchadnezzar showed no mercy. He deported 10,000
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  Speaker 1: of Jerusalem's best and brightest to Babylon, the craftsmen, the soldiers,
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  Speaker 1: the elite. He walked into the temple and stripped out
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  Speaker 1: the heaviest golden objects. It was a warning shot. Nebuchadnezzar
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  Speaker 1: left the city intact. and he placed a man named
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  Speaker 1: Zedekiah on the throne as a puppet king. Zedekiah swore
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  Speaker 1: an oath of eternal loyalty to Babylon, and for eight
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  Speaker 1: years he kept it. But pride is a slow poison.
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  Speaker 1: Pressured by false prophets and the illusion of safety, Zedekiah
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  Speaker 1: repeated the exact same fatal mistake. In 588 BC, he
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  Speaker 1: broke his oath. He rebelled, He didn't just break a
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  Speaker 1: treaty with a king. Ezekiel 17 tells us that Zedekiah
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  Speaker 1: had sworn his oath in the name of God. By
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  Speaker 1: breaking it, he made God look like a liar to
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  Speaker 1: a pagan king. Nebuchadnezzar's patience snapped. He was done negotiating.
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  Speaker 1: He was done deporting. This time, he was coming to
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  Speaker 1: erase Jerusalem from the map. In January of 588 BC,
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  Speaker 1: Zedekiah looked down from the walls and saw the nightmare return.
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  Speaker 1: Only this time, Nebuchadnezzar didn't bother demanding a surrender. He
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  Speaker 1: ordered his troops to build a siege wall entirely surrounding Jerusalem.
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  Speaker 1: Nobody goes in. Nobody comes out. He wasn't going to
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  Speaker 1: waste Babylonian lives attacking the massive gates. He had a
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  Speaker 1: much cheaper, much more cruel weapon. Hunger. The siege lasted
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  Speaker 1: two and a half years, 900 days. Try to comprehend
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  Speaker 1: what happens to a city caught in a vice grip
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  Speaker 1: for 30 months. First, the grain reserves ran out. Then
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  Speaker 1: the meat. Then the water started to dry up in
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  Speaker 1: the cisterns. The biblical book of Lamentations, written by an
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  Speaker 1: eyewitness to the horror, reads like a post-apocalyptic journal. The
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  Speaker 1: hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children. That
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  Speaker 1: is not a metaphor. That is a mother in the
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  Speaker 1: city of God, in the shadow of the golden temple,
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  Speaker 1: doing something so unthinkable that the prophet who wrote it
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  Speaker 1: could barely hold the pen. This was the city of God,
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  Speaker 1: the city of the Golden Temple, reduced to absolute unthinkable
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  Speaker 1: depravity just to survive another day. The streets were filled
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  Speaker 1: with the dead. The elderly collapsed in the alleys. Children
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  Speaker 1: begged for bread and there was absolutely nothing to give them.
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  Speaker 1: The great deception of sin is that it makes you
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  Speaker 1: feel free right up until the moment it locks the cage.
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  Speaker 1: Zedekiah thought rebelling against Babylon would bring independence. Instead, it
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  Speaker 1: brought starvation. Finally, in July of 586 BC, after two
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  Speaker 1: and a half years of unimaginable suffering, the Babylonian battering
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  Speaker 1: rams found a weak point. The wall cracked. The sound
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  Speaker 1: of stone giving way echoed through the starving city. Zedekiah
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  Speaker 1: tried to run. Under the cover of darkness, the king
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  Speaker 1: who thought he could outsmart God attempted to flee through
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  Speaker 1: a gate near the king's garden. He was captured on
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  Speaker 1: the plains of Jericho. 2 Kings 25 records the sickening
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  Speaker 1: final moments of his reign. Nebuchadnezzar dragged Zedekiah before him.
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  Speaker 1: He forced the king to watch as his own sons
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  Speaker 1: were executed in front of him. And then Nebuchadnezzar ordered
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  Speaker 1: Zedekiah's eyes to be gouged out. The last thing King
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  Speaker 1: Zedekiah ever saw in his life was the blood of
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  Speaker 1: his children, the ultimate price of his pride. He was
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  Speaker 1: bound in bronze shackles and carried away to die in
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  Speaker 1: a Babylonian dungeon in total darkness. But the worst was
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  Speaker 1: not what happened to the king. The worst was what
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  Speaker 1: happened when they opened the doors to the room where
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  Speaker 1: God lived. A month after the city fell, Nebuchadnezzar sent
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  Speaker 1: his executioner, a man named Nebuchadnezzar, captain of the guard.
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  Speaker 1: His orders were absolute. Dismantle the city. Nebuchadnezzar walked into
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  Speaker 1: the temple courtyard. For centuries, this space had been off-limits
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  Speaker 1: to everyone, except ritually purified priests. Now, pagan soldiers with
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  Speaker 1: axes and hammers swarmed the holy ground. 2 Kings 25
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  Speaker 1: describes the systematic dismantling of a masterpiece. The mighty bronze pillars,
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  Speaker 1: Jachin and Boaz, landmarks of strength were toppled to the ground.
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  Speaker 1: Thousands of pounds of bronze crashing against the paving stones.
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  Speaker 1: The Bronze Sea, the engineering marvel of Solomon, was smashed
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  Speaker 1: into pieces just to make it easier to load onto wagons.
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  Speaker 1: The soldiers swept through the sanctuary, throwing the golden censers,
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  Speaker 1: the pure gold lampstands, and the offering bowls into coarse
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  Speaker 1: burlap sacks as common war loot. Objects that had been
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  Speaker 1: consecrated for the worship of the Creator were now trophies
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  Speaker 1: for a pagan king. And then... They approached the heavy
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  Speaker 1: veil protecting the Holy of Holies, the room of absolute darkness,
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  Speaker 1: the room where the high priest entered only once a year,
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  Speaker 1: terrified he might die if his heart was not pure.
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  Speaker 1: The Babylonian soldiers kicked the doors open. They raised their
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  Speaker 1: torches into the darkness, expecting to find the most valuable
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  Speaker 1: treasure in human history. The room was empty. The Ark
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  Speaker 1: of the Covenant was gone. The Bible records the looting
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  Speaker 1: of every cup, every spoon, and every basin from the temple.
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  Speaker 1: But it says absolutely nothing about the ark being taken
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  Speaker 1: to Babylon. It simply vanished from history. To this day,
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  Speaker 1: no one knows where it went. Some believe Jeremiah hid
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  Speaker 1: it in a cave on Mount Nebo. Some believe it
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  Speaker 1: was hidden away in Ethiopia. But the truth is much heavier.
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  Speaker 1: God did not allow his throne to become a Babylonian trophy.
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  Speaker 1: The Ark was gone because the Presence was gone. Nebuzaradan
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  Speaker 1: gave the final order. The torches were thrown against the
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  Speaker 1: cedar walls. The wood that Hiram of Tyre had floated
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  Speaker 1: down the coast centuries earlier caught fire. The heat became
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  Speaker 1: so intense that the gold lining the walls literally melted,
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  Speaker 1: running down into the cracks of the floor. The great
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  Speaker 1: roof collapsed inward. Black smoke rose into the sky. a
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  Speaker 1: funeral pyre visible for miles. The era of Solomon was over.
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  Speaker 1: When you read this history, the natural question is, where
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  Speaker 1: was God? How could he let his house burn? The
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  Speaker 1: prophet Ezekiel gives us the chilling answer. In Ezekiel chapter 10,
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  Speaker 1: before the Babylonians arrived, Ezekiel saw a vision. He saw
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  Speaker 1: the glory of God literally lift up from the golden cherubim,
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  Speaker 1: move to the threshold of the temple, and then slowly
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  Speaker 1: depart from the city, resting on the Mount of Olives.
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  Speaker 1: God didn't lose a war. God isn't trapped in a box.
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  Speaker 1: When the hearts of the people became completely corrupted, God
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  Speaker 1: packed his bags and left the building. Nebuchadnezzar didn't burn
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  Speaker 1: down the house of God. He burned down an empty shell.
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  Speaker 1: For nearly five decades, The golden vessels of Solomon's temple
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  Speaker 1: sat in a museum in Babylon, trophies in the temple
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  Speaker 1: of the pagan god Marduk. Every time a Babylonian king
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  Speaker 1: walked past them, he smiled. Proof that their empire was supreme.
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  Speaker 1: Proof that Yahweh of Israel was dead. But God is patient.
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  Speaker 1: And God's calendar does not rush for any human empire.
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  Speaker 1: In 539 BC, 47 years after the fire, the Babylonian
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  Speaker 1: Empire threw a party. Belshazzar, the arrogant grandson of Nebuchadnezzar,
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  Speaker 1: decided to throw a massive feast for a thousand of
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  Speaker 1: his lords. But wine wasn't enough for Belshazzar. He wanted blasphemy.
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  Speaker 1: Daniel chapter 5 tells us he ordered the sacred golden
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  Speaker 1: cups taken from Solomon's temple to be brought into the
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  Speaker 1: banquet hall. He, his wives, and his lords drank from
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  Speaker 1: the cups consecrated to the living God, raising them in
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  Speaker 1: the air to toast to gods of silver, gold, and wood.
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  Speaker 1: The divine response was instantaneous. Right in front of the
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  Speaker 1: lampstand in the brightest part of the room, fingers of
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  Speaker 1: a human hand appeared out of thin air. The king's
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  Speaker 1: face went pale. His knees literally knocked together in terror.
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  Speaker 1: The floating hand wrote four words. into the plaster of
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  Speaker 1: the wall. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin. The 80-year-old prophet Daniel
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  Speaker 1: was brought in to read the sentence. He looked at
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  Speaker 1: the trembling king and delivered the verdict of heaven. God
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  Speaker 1: has numbered the days of your reign and brought it
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  Speaker 1: to an end. You have been weighed on the scales
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  Speaker 1: and found wanting. Your kingdom is given to the Medes
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  Speaker 1: and Persians. That exact night, the unsinkable empire died. Cyrus
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  Speaker 1: the Persian had diverted the Euphrates River and marched his
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: army underneath the impenetrable walls of Babylon while the city
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  Speaker 1: was drunk. Belshazzar was assassinated before the sun came up,
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  Speaker 1: Jerusalem burned, but Babylon was erased, and then God executed
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  Speaker 1: the final phase of a plan he had written centuries before.
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  Speaker 1: Cyrus the Great took the throne. and his very first
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  Speaker 1: act regarding the Jews completely defied human logic. Ezra chapter
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  Speaker 1: 1 records the decree, The Lord, the God of heaven,
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  Speaker 1: has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and
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  Speaker 1: he has appointed me to build a temple for him
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  Speaker 1: at Jerusalem. Cyrus went into the treasury of Marduk. He
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  Speaker 1: took out the golden cups, the silver bowls, the censers.
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  Speaker 1: He packed them up and sent them back to Jerusalem
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  Speaker 1: with the exiles. Exactly 70 years, just as Jeremiah had
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  Speaker 1: prophesied while he was standing in the streets of a
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  Speaker 1: burning city. Every word of God proved true. The exiles returned.
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  Speaker 1: They wept when they saw the ruins. They cleared the
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  Speaker 1: ash and they rebuilt the walls. The second temple was completed.
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  Speaker 1: The golden vessels were returned to their places. The priests
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  Speaker 1: resumed the sacrifices. The incense burned again. But something was different.
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  Speaker 1: When they finished the second temple, no cloud of glory fell.
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  Speaker 1: No priests collapsed on the floor. And when the high
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  Speaker 1: priest walked into the Holy of Holies, there was no
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  Speaker 1: Ark of the Covenant. The room was completely, utterly empty.
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  Speaker 1: Just a stone sticking out of the floor where the
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  Speaker 1: golden box used to sit. For 500 years, Israel worshipped
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  Speaker 1: in a building that had no presence. They waited, they prayed,
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  Speaker 1: they watched the sky. Why didn't God return to the building?
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  Speaker 1: Because God was done living in houses made of stone.
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  Speaker 1: The temple, the gold, the cherubim, the sacrifices, they were
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  Speaker 1: all a shadow. They were a rehearsal. And God doesn't
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  Speaker 1: go backward. When the presence of God finally returned to
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  Speaker 1: Jerusalem five centuries later, he didn't come as a cloud.
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  Speaker 1: He didn't dwell between golden statues in the dark. He
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  Speaker 1: came in human flesh. Jesus Christ stood in the courtyards
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  Speaker 1: of that rebuilt temple, looked at the massive stones, and said,
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  Speaker 1: Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in
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  Speaker 1: three days. The religious leaders thought he was talking about architecture.
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  Speaker 1: He was talking about his own body. When Jesus died
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  Speaker 1: on the cross, the massive veil protecting the empty Holy
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  Speaker 1: of Holies ripped in two from top to bottom. because
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  Speaker 1: God was officially moving out. His new address wasn't on
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  Speaker 1: a mountain in Jerusalem. His new address is inside the
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  Speaker 1: chest of anyone who believes in him. You are the
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  Speaker 1: temple of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes God will let the
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  Speaker 1: things we build burn down, our careers, our reputations, our
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  Speaker 1: 10-year plans. It feels like destruction. It feels like abandonment.
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  Speaker 1: But sometimes God allows the fire to consume the building,
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  Speaker 1: to show us that we were worshipping the structure instead
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  Speaker 1: of the God who lived inside it. He will strip
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  Speaker 1: us of everything we rely on until we realize He
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  Speaker 1: is the only thing we actually need. Let me ask
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  Speaker 1: you a question, and I want you to answer honestly.
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  Speaker 1: Have you ever had something fall apart in your life?
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  Speaker 1: Something you thought you couldn't survive losing? only to realize
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  Speaker 1: later that God was using the fire to save you.
• 22:46
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