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Today, if we can, by the Lord's help, we must attempt to consider the third major movement of the book of Joshua, which movement completes the first half of the book. Though surely, if time permits, we will allow ourselves at leaf- least a brief glance before we finish into the second major ha- half of the book of Joshua. So this morning I would like to begin by a number of readings. First, a short reading from each of the six major movements of the book that will help us to put some of the details of the third movement into their proper context.
So from the first movement in the book, shall we read chapter two, verses twelve to thirteen? Two twelve. Now therefore I pray you, this is Rahab speaking, swear unto me by the Lord, since I have dealt kindly with you, that ye also will deal kindly with my father's house and give me a true token, and that ye will save alive my father and my mother and my brethren and my sisters and all that they have, and will deliver our lives from death.
From the second movement in the book, chapter six and verse twenty five. But Rahab the harlot and her father's household and all that she had did Joshua save alive, and she dwelt in the midst of Israel unto this day, because she hid the messengers which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. And from the third movement in the book, the one we shall be considering this morning, chapter nine and verse fifteen.
Joshua nine fifteen: and Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them to let them live. From the fourth movement in the book, chapter fourteen, verse ten, It is Caleb who speaks. And now behold, the Lord hath kept me alive as he spake these forty and five years, from the time that the Lord spake this word unto Moses while Israel walked in the wilderness, and now lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old, as yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me.
As my strength was then, even so is my strength now for war, and to go out and to come in. And from the Fifth Movement, chapter twenty and verse nine, twenty verse nine, these were the appointed cities for all the children of Israel and for the stranger that sojourneth among them, that whosoever killeth any person unwittingly might flee thither and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood until he stood before the congregation.
Finally, from the sixth movement in the book, chapter twenty two and verse thirty one. Phineas, the son of Eleazar, the priest said unto the children of Reuben, and to the children of Gad, and to the children of Manasseh, This day we know that the Lord is in the midst of us, because you have not committed this trespass against the Lord. Now have you delivered the children of Israel out of the hand of the Lord. In the second place, I would like to read with you a passage from Deuteronomy.
Which will help us to understand the behavior of the Gibeonites, who had heard what Moses had said, had heard presumably what now we are to read in the book of Deuteronomy. It is Deuteronomy chapter twenty beginning in verse ten. mhm When thou drawest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace and open unto thee, then it shall be that all the people that is found therein shall become tributary to thee and shall serve thee.
But if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it. And when the Lord thy God delivereth it into thine hand, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword. But the women and the little ones and the cattle and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take for a prey unto thyself. And thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, for an in- uh, which the, uh, which are not of the cities of these nations.
But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. Then let's read two passages from the third movement itself, chapter nine, verse twenty two. Joshua nine twenty two, and Joshua called for them, that is the Gibeonites, and he spake unto them, saying, wherefore have you beguiled us, saying, we are very far from you, when you dwell among us?
Now therefore you are cursed, and there shall never fail to be of you bondmen, both hewers of waters, wo- wo- hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God. And they answered Joshua and said, because it was certainly told thy servants how that the Lord thy God commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you. Therefore we were sore afraid for our lives because of you, and have done this thing. And now behold, we are in thine hand, as it seemeth good and right unto thee to do unto us, do.
And so he did unto them, and delivered them out of the hand of the children of Israel, that they slew them not. And Joshua made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the Lord, unto this day in the place which he should choose. God give us wisdom to interpret his word aright. Today we come to study, in the main, the third great movement in the book of Joshua, and our first interest shall be to consider what was the objective of that third movement.
You will remember, of course, just to remind you in any case, that the objective in the first movement was to get the Israelites over Jordan into their inheritance, and the record tells us how that objective was gloriously achieved. The ark stood in the bed of the River Jordan until all Israel were passed clean over Jordan. The objective in the second movement was to establish the law of Moses in the land of Canaan. For that purpose, Israel positively attacked, taking the initiative in the attack.
They attacked Jericho first and Ai second. And when they had defeated those two cities, they made their way forth with and immediately, without waiting to attack any other city, and came to Ebal and Gerizim, and did as Moses commanded, and established the law of Moses in the land. Objective number two. And now we come to the third movement and the third objective, which was to give Israel the whole of the land to inherit. For that purpose, it was necessary that Israel capture all the cities and strongholds that hitherto were in the possession of the Canaanites.
For that purpose also, it was necessary to destroy all the kings of those cities and the inhabitants of those cities. And this, we are told in the third movement what we have noticed in each of the preceding two. In each of the preceding two movements, there is, there are two major stories.
In the first movement, the first story is the salvation of Rahab. She was saved from death, or given assurance that she would be by the oath of the Lord uttered by the spy. And in the second place in that first movement was the bringing of Israel, uh, into Canaan, and we were f- we found that they were saved, not so to mu- so to speak, from death, but through death. Vivid picture language reminding us of our Christian salvation. It is true in the one sense that we are saved from death.
It is true in the other sense that we are saved through death. In the second movement, as we saw yesterday, there were two major cities to be attacked. There was Jericho, there was Ai. With Jericho, it was a question of penetrating the city's defenses, entering through the walls, and destroying the occupants. With Ai, it was the other way round. To capture Ai, you had to draw the king and the people out of their city and thus destroy them in the open plain.
And we found reason to think that the picture language pointed us to the double technique by which God saves us from this present world with all its evil. God forbid, we read in Galatians, that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, the means by which two things have happened. The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. We shall find the same pattern of things here in the third movement, of course.
For now we are told that the cities were taken and their occupants captured. But the central, uh, uh, interest is not the long lists of individual cities that are recorded, but the two major confederacies of kings that came against Joshua. There was the first confederacy of kings, who came, strictly speaking, not against Joshua at all. They came against the Gibeonites. You see, the Gibeonites made peace with Israel, and the rest of the southern cities found that a profoundly disturbing thing.
They had armed themselves to the teeth to resist this invasion by the Israelites that now for some years they had heard to be threatening. And they were all massing their troops ready to attack the Israelites when they heard that the Gibeonites had made peace and gone over to the other side. And it was specially disturbing, says the historian, because the Gib- Gibeon was a great city, like to a royal city, and all the men of Gibeon were about seven feet tall, and not all missionaries are that height. And so the united armies of the First Confederacy came up and attacked not Gibeon, not not Joshua and Israel, but Gibeon.
And in that story, what a strange turning of the tables we shall find, the Lord fought, and he fought for Gibeon. And if the First Confederacy tells us of God's exceeding great mercy on the Gibeonites, in the Second Confederacy we read these words: None made peace with Israel, save the Gibeonites. For it was that the Lord who hardened their hearts that they should come against Israel, that he might destroy them, according to all that Moses commanded.
And you see that there are not only two confederacies, one based on the south and one on the north, but the stories of those confederacies put, uh, two sides of a story. The mercy of God to Gibeonites who deserve nothing but judgment. The judicial hardening of God that hardened the hearts of the second confederacy, that they came against Israel, foolish men. And thus came to their destruction, as Moses had commanded and prophesied they would.
Consider, my brethren, the kindness and the severity of God. Now I shall have to admit right from the start and be honest that the Gibeonites have, down the centuries, had a very bad press. Or rather, should I say, the Israelites have gained to themselves a very bad reputation for making peace with the Gibeonites. The Gibeonites, they say, were a terrible old crowd. They came, the liars, and perpetrated that terrible deceit upon Israel with their moldy bread and patched clothes and all the rest of it.
What consummate liars and deceivers they were. Yes, of course they ought to have been put to death and every throat of every man be slit. Now that you might have expected of Canaanites. The fault, surely, say the commentators, is to be found with Israel. That they made peace with the Gibeonites. They took their bread, and as the text says, they asked not counsel of the Lord. Ah, says the exhorter. And that's typically us, isn't it?
We've just come from some great victory, after days and months of prayer and waiting upon the Lord, and then flushed with success, we forget to continue to wait upon the Lord in utter dependence. We forget not to rely upon our own wisdom, but going along with the tide of success and independence of the Lord, and without asking him counsel, we go and do something, make an arrangement that proves a disaster and mistake, and the result remains with us perhaps for the rest of our life. Don't do, is the moral, what the Israelites did.
Always remember to ask counsel of the Lord. Yesterday's success is no reason for proceeding further on our own strength. And I have a difficult task this morning, because truth to tell, the lesson that I have just preached in the name of others is a very good lesson, isn't it? And it's true to life. And hence the reason why many commentators have been persuaded that this is what the passage teaches. But my brothers and sisters, as far as I can see, that interpretation runs into very sore difficulties.
And I want you at least to allow me to plead the case of the Gibeonites. And though perhaps I shall never convince you before we get home to heaven, though there I think I shall. Because the Gibeonites will be there to back me up. Yet nonetheless, allow me to put the difficulty before you. It is the fact, you see, that when the Gibeonites made peace, all the other kings of the southern confederacy came up, as I have said, to attack the Gibeonites.
And what happened then? Why God told Joshua suddenly to raise his troops and attack the Confederacy? And when Joshua started, he found himself overtaken, because as the Confederacy was shattered and they began to flee for their lives to try and get into their cities, the Lord himself rained down stones from heaven upon them, and they were more that were killed by the stones which came down from heaven than they were by all Joshua's armies put together. The Lord fought for the Gibeonites. Come, how will you explain that?
Let me try an explanation and see if you agree. The Lord was intending to destroy the Gibeonites and would have done so. Alas, his people under Joshua didn't seek counsel of the Lord, and they went and saved the Gibeonites, and God highly disapproved. Why, to make matters worse, Israel swore an oath in the name of Jehovah that the Gibeonites would be protected, saved, and preserved. And God said, what foolish men for swearing an oath in my name.
I wanted to destroy them. Then the sudden Southern Confederacy came against them, and God said to himself, if I leave this to Joshua, dear, dear, dear, the Gibeonites will be, uh, they'll be defeated, uh, I shall have to do something about it. I wish those Israelites hadn't gone and sworn an oath in my name. That's put me in a very difficult position. I wanted to destroy the Gibeonites, and lo and behold, I am obliged to save them. Do you think that was a situation? I should find it very difficult to argue that case even on Earth.
I think it will be extraordinarily difficult standing before the throne of the Almighty. God fought for the Gibeonites to honor his oath to let them live. Oh, magnificent grace of God. Let me put it into the context, and you'll see now the reason why we read all those other verses. In this book of Joshua, dark with the judgments of God, and well-deserved judgments at that, every single movement of the book records a case of the magnificent grace of God in his mercy to undeserving sinners, and he let them live.
In all our exposition of the book, while we must talk of the grave judgments of God, all letters magnify the grace of God that let sinners who repented live. So what is the true interpretation, you say then? Well, first of all, let's think of the Gibeonites' motivation for what they did. When Joshua at length discovered that they had perpetrated a trick upon him and had extracted an oath and now were eternally secure because Israel couldn't go back upon the oath, Joshua summoned them to his tent to have a council with them.
Now, gentlemen, he said, you're safe now so you can tell the truth for the first time, you see. Uh, tell me, he said, what made you do this and perpetrate this trick? And to his astonishment, they started to quote the Bible. We did it according to the Bible, Joshua. They said, you see, it was fully told by servants what Moses had said. And what had Moses said? Strange language to hear from Gibeonites. What had Moses said? Well, Moses has said to Israel quite distinctly, when you go to war against a city that is afar off, first you shall offer it peace and preach peace to them that are afar off.
And if the city take advantage of your offer of peace and come out to you, you shall, uh, save them alive on the condition that they become tributary to you and they become your servants. Of course, if they reject your offer of peace, then you shall destroy the city and the males of the city, but save the rest of the city alive, plus the booty. But, said Moses, that's what you shall do to a city that is afar off. But with those cities that are near at hand, you shall slay and destroy them without mercy.
And the Gibeonites had heard it. Now I'm going to ask you to be very honest. What would you have done if you were a Gibeonite? You say, I would have been honest. I would have gone and told Joshua, we are a city near to you. Would you? Well, the Gibeonites didn't. They had a council among themselves, and they said, look here, things are getting very grave. This is no myth. Behind Israel is the living God come to execute judgment on our ungodly society. How can we save ourselves?
And the answer they came up with, according to Moses, they said, you've heard, you see, that if we could persuade them that we're a city afar off, they would offer us peace. Hence their lie. You say they oughtn't have told lies. Well, perhaps they didn't. But Rahab told a lie, didn't she? And the Holy Spirit says that she acted in faith. And the Gibeonites told a lie. But they were acting to save their skin. Well, what is more, as you will see from the record, when at first they came to Israel, they said, please make peace with us.
And the men of Israel said unto the Hivites, peradventure you dwell among us, and how shall we make a covenant with you? Ah, they said to Joshua, we are thy servants. So they'd read their book, hadn't they? Because they had seen this according to what Moses said, that if it were a city afar off, yes, they could have peace on one condition, that they were prepared to become and be servants to the people of God. And when Joshua said to them, how can I make peace with you? It could be perhaps that you are a city near to us.
They said, but Joshua, we're your servants. Were they sincere? Or was that only a ploy? They were sincere, weren't they? For we read that when Joshua finally laid down terms, they said, yes, Joshua, we are quite happy with that. You have saved our lives. We are happy to be your slaves, Joshua, and you must be slaves and servants to the altar of the Lord. Exactly so, said the Gibeons, and we're happy to spend the rest of our lives on earth, slaves to the people of God and slaves to the altar of the Lord.
And so they persisted for many, many, many generations. They were genuine men, weren't they? Proving by their behavior that they had genuinely repented. For you see what was involved, don't you, when they came as ambassadors to put the case that really they were afar off, you know, though they happened to be near, but really they were afar off. They saw vividly the implications of it right from the very start. It meant surrendering every right they ever possessed. Surrendering their city and giving it up.
Hitherto it had been like a royal city. But if they would have peace, they must take the position it wasn't their city anymore, they were a far off. For the rest of their lives, they would be servants. You say, but the verse says Israel didn't inquire of the Lord, and I say, what a merciful providence that was. Because if Israel had inquired of the Lord, Israel would have felt, uh, duty-bound to destroy them. It was of God's good providence that they were not destroyed. Ah.
You say, Mr. Preacher, you are a very cunning pleader, but I don't agree with your interpretations. All right. You make your own peace with the Gibeonites. I want to examine you. Hm. You sit there in peace with God. And sure of his oath to protect you through time and eternity. How did you manage to make peace with God? Oh, you say, that's easily answered, you know. We were genuinely afar off. Ah. Yes, call to remembrance, brethren, the time when it was so.
Once upon a time, far off, weren't you? Alienated from God, strangers from the covenants of Israel, without God, without the Messiah, and without hope in the world. Ungodly in your way of life, you were children of wrath, even as the others. Why didn't wrath descend upon your head and destroy you? Ah, you say, the difference between me and the other man. He was a far off too, really, alienated from God. He didn't realize he was, and by God's grace, I realized I was, and I took that far off position and owned I was worthy of God's judgment.
When I did that, there came one, his name was Joshua Jesus, and he preached peace, not only to them that were nigh, but to those that were afar off. And now you're no more strangers, are you? But you are fellow citizens of the same. And like the Gibeonites, you live amongst the people of God, both now and eternally. Do you begrudge to the Gibeonites what you've gone and done yourself?
Ah, but I want to examine you a little bit further. Are you sure that you are as genuine as the Gibeonites were? How did you come to Christ? You say, ah, well, I heard there was coming wrath, and I said, well, I'll come to Jesus for salvation first. I'll apply to Jesus for salvation, but I'm not quite ready to accept him as Lord, or necessarily to be his servant and slave. So you came to Jesus, did you, and uh, you, you received him as Savior, but you, you said, now I want a few years to think over whether I'm prepared to have you as Lord.
Is that how you came? Let the ancient story remind us there is no salvation on those terms. We would be saved from the coming wrath. It means taking the far off place, and what does that mean? It means acknowledging I have no rights whatsoever. I give up my city. I give up my possessions. I own myself a bankrupt sinner under the wrath of God.
If the sword of his judgment fell, I should have nothing but an eternal hell. And if the terms are, they are, my brethren, that if you become Christ's, you renounce all you have right from the start. Yes, you have salvation free and for nothing, but forever after you'll be a slave of Jesus Christ. And you will be a servant of his people, and a servant of the altar, the cross of Christ.
Yes. There is no salvation on any other term. You can't be redeemed and not redeemed. You say, what do you mean? Well, you haven't forgotten what redemption means, have you? Redemption means to be bought. You can't be bought and not be bought. And if you've been bought, you are no longer your own. You are bought with a price. But then, uh, let's consider for a moment the consequent battle. It's a heartwarming story, isn't it?
For when the other Gentile nations heard that the Gibeonites had got converted and had made peace and are now with Israel. The Gibe- the Confederacy turned all their wrath and spite against the Gibeonites. And Israel was sent, and they put the enemy to flight, and as I say, the Lord himself joined in the battle, not against the Gibeonites, but for them. Oh, what a marvelous oath of God. Permit me the simplicity of enjoying it this morning. As I face eternity, as I face every possible created thing, height, length, depth, breadth, life here, life to come.
I can say with confidence, if God be for me, who can be against me? I love the picture that Colossians chapter two conjures up, don't you? There we were dead in the uncircumcision, marvelous Gentiles, weren't we, of our hearts. And there was the handwriting against us, all the handwriting that Master Moses had piled up. And there were the principalities and powers against us. What chance had our little bankrupt, Gentile, guilty soul?
And when we were helpless, the very Lord from heaven came to the cross, and as the principalities and powers besieged him with their fell confederacy, then God moved in, and he stripped principalities and powers, made a show of them openly, triumphed over them in it, extort magnificently to the very throne of God. Oh, hallelujah, my brothers, what a savior.
And talking about that, I love that other miracle because I'm not a scientist, you see. So I should be interested one day to hear the report of the scientists. But as the enemy fled, with Joshua's swords and the stones of the Almighty thundering behind them, Joshua felt there wouldn't be time to get at them and destroy them before they got back into the strongholds of their city. And so he took the altogether unusual steps, standing on earth, we are told, chapter ten and verse twelve, Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Aijalon.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies. Marvelous miracle, wasn't it? And all put on to save the Gibeonites, if you please. But God was determined to destroy the very last enemy that had ever come against them or ever would. What's the point of the miracle? Wherein lies the big miracle? Well, you say, I mean, can you even believe it? I mean, if the sun were to stand still, why, that would mean the Earth planet had stopped in her axis, and New York would be destroyed, and the skyscrapers come tumbling down and all that.
Now, how could it possibly have been? And what about the astronomical, uh, implications of the moon and the sun standing still together? How could it be done? Therein lies the miracle hitherto unexplained. You've missed the biggest miracle, haven't you? As the historian himself says, he says there was no day like that, before it or after it, that the Lord, the Lord what? Hearken to the voice of a man. So Joshua wasn't fallen out of favor with the Lord just at that point, had he, for swearing that oath, I mean.
To protect the Gibeonites. For in process of protecting them, got Jo- Joshua, with two feet on earth, dares address the Almighty and ask for the sun and moon to be stayed until the last enemy is destroyed and the Lord hearkened. Do you know there was never a day like that before or after? Ah yes, it's inspired scripture that says so, but that was written centuries ago. That record's been overtaken since then, hasn't it? For there came another day, when another man stood on earth, and he saw the people that had trusted him, and he saw their enemies, and he prayed that they might be kept from the evil one.
And he said, as he lifted his eyes to heaven, Father, glorify thou me with the glory I had with thee before the world was. Oh, what a day when God listened to the voice of a man and glorified the blessed Savior to shine as the sun in the firmament of heaven forever. And all to protect us. Coming to the end of that prayer, he prayed again.
Father, he said, I will that they whom thou has given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory. And at that moment, the moon appeared in the sky, didn't it? In full face of the sun. Seated already with Christ in heavenly places, far above all principalities, powers, mights, and dominions. And one day you shall be bodily where you already are spiritually. Or that old moon looking at the sun, and the sun plastering it with its glory.
And to think that you were once afar off, under the threat of God's judgment, alienated from God and no hope in the world. And today you are eternally secure and seated with Christ in heavenly places. It's fit to make your lungs burst with joy, isn't it, Warren? You say, I'm not in heaven yet, brother. Well, not bodily. No, and you've got a lot more fighting to do yet, haven't you? Some of these rascally old kings fled away and hid themselves in a cave, and Joshua put a stone on the mouth till he dealt with the others, and then he had them dragged out in the light of the sun and crucified.
And he brought the out. He said, put your feet on the necks of these kings. And they came near, and timidly they did it. Thus shall the Lord do to all your enemies, and one day the last enemy itself shall be destroyed. There's still a lot of old kings lurking in sundry caves around Pennsylvania, aren't there, what ho? Those that used to have dominion over us. But sin shall not have dominion over you, my brother. If it seemed to now, it shall not eternally. It shall not permanently.
Rise up and put your foot on its neck, for there is a secret of being delivered, though learning the secret and learning to put it into practice is perhaps a lifetime's job, but it shall be done. Sin shall not reign as a king over you. Come and put your trembling foot on his neck and learn progressively as God gives you deliverance from it. Dominion of sin. Ah, dominion of death. We haven't got that yet fully done, have we? Because they will come. The last enemy itself shall be destroyed.
And the dominion of law, in the sense of command plus penalty plus curse. Oh, my brother, you've been delivered from it forever. Wake up and find your freedom. It was another story with the other Confederacy. For they came and positively attacked Joshua. Now you will notice that Jericho didn't do that, did it? And Ai didn't do that.
Joshua attacked them. Uh, this northern confederacy came and attacked Israel and found their disaster. How did it happen? Well, it was of the Lord, for he hardened their heart. You see, they'd heard the gospel just like Rahab had heard the gospel, and they could have been saved like Rahab. They had heard what Moses said about coming judgment, and they could have been saved like the Gibeonites. But they rejected the gospel, and determined to attack and destroy Joshua and Israel.
There came a point where God hardened their hearts, and coming finally against Joshua, they were destroyed. It can happen to anybody, can it not? It will happen historically in a very big way. There was, says the Acts of the Apostles, a tremendous confederacy against Joshua, our Jesus Joshua, when he came first, and the heathen raged, and the people imagined a vain thing. And they rose up against God and against his anointed, and they put the blessed Lord Jesus on the cross.
And God answered it by raising him to the very heaven. And the gospel has gone out. But at the end of this age, when men have deliberately, with eyes opened, rejected the gospel and refused the love of the truth that they might be saved, God shall send them a strong delusion. They shall believe the lie. The beast shall lead his armies against the coming blessed Savior Jesus.
What fatuous folly, thinking with his space age equipment to be able to resist the glorious coming of Jesus Christ our Lord. It will spell for him instantaneous destruction. Behold the goodness and the severity of God. And I said at the beginning of the lecture that I hope to talk about the second half of the book.
If I could persuade the sun and the moon to stand still, so I would. But I can't. I can briefly report that Joshua then distributed the land to the tribes, and the further objectives were achieved. With the two and a half tribes, the tribe of Judah and the tribes of Joseph in their inheritance, they set up the tabernacle of meeting in Shiloh. Glorious objective achieved. With the seven tribes given their inheritance, they set up the cities of refuge, and then the cities for the Levites, that there might be men to serve God in the tabernacle that they had set up in Shiloh.
And then the third objective was this, that that service of God should be maintained down the generations. I can report some success. For Joshua died, but such was the provision that Israel went on serving God all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders that outlived him. But then, alas, things went into decline. You say it wasn't much of an old victory then, was it? Uh. Have you read about better days in assemblies than you, you, than you know today?
And how in all the movements of God, uh, people carry on serving the Lord, while those who were used of God to lead the movement pass away, and they go on serving until the elders, uh, passed away. And then the thing goes downhill. I end on a happier note. We have a Joshua. No elder will ever outlive him, thank God. And while he lives, he will have the ultimate victory.
All thanks be unto God that through Jesus Christ our Lord gives us the victory with him. Mm.
