<TITLE>02. Par 14-21</TITLE>L-14 There had been preliminaries, all the entertainment. They probably had little monkeys that--that played little tricks. And they had different things that they entertained themselves with, fighting, wrestling, and--and--and maybe dueling to death, and many other things that--that they had been entertained with all day, for it was a great day, but now the main event come.

L-15   You know how we all wait patiently while the preliminaries are going on. And they wait for the--the main event, and that's when everybody sets up and takes notice. We watch it in our religious services, of when we have our--our singing, and our testimonials, and the preaching, and so forth; but the main event is see what the Lord is going to do, see what He has gathered us together for. We're all under anticipations to see just what the end is going to be, the main event. It's that way in anything. We always watch for the main event.

L-16 And they all raised up to look forward, to see what was taking place, because the main event was being brought to them, and what did they see but a blind man being led by a little boy.

L-17   The halls had echoed all afternoon, with drunken revelry, how that they passed the whiskey and their high drinks; and their fine, painted-up and jeweled women, and great dignified war lords, and all. It was a great celebration. They were celebrating the victory. Oh, how I hate to say this! The victory that the fish-god Dagon had got, over the servant of God. It just goes plumb down to the bottom of me, to have to say that, but it's truth. Celebrating such a way as that, a victory over Jehovah's servant. What a shameful thing! Drinking, revelry, and painted women, and jeweled-up, and great dignitaries, the fires was burning under the fish-god, and what a celebration it must have been.

L-18 But the heart-breaking part, as thousands of years later that we have to think back of such an event as that, and when the great God of Heaven, Who had purposed in His heart to destroy that nation because they were heathens, and had sent a man to do the job, and here the fish-god idol was celebrating a victory over Jehovah's servant. Jehovah never lost; the servant that He sent to do it, lost the victory.

L-19   What a sight, what a shameful thing it was! The lad led the stumbling, blind man across the--the hall, to these big center posts, whereon all the great upside-down mushroom or umbrella-like set, where the people looked down like this, from the great-like pilasters run up and held the thing in order, laid by stone that could not be reproduced again today. No one could build it like that. But what a great thing it was! And thousands of the celebrity priests who had served an idol, with their chests all swelled out, and all their ceremonies and rituals over their idol, that he had conquered Jehovah. What a great day it was, drinking, revelry, and carrying on!

L-20   And here comes Jehovah's servant, blind, stumbling, led by a little boy, out to this great post, to make sport. The main event of entertainment was to make sport out of Jehovah's ordained purpose to destroy the nation. And, yet, the nation has taken the thing that God had placed in to destroy them, and now they had conquered him and was making sport out of him, their main event at their celebration.

L-21 Doesn't that just kill you, nearly, to have to look at that? To think what could, this story never really should have never had to be told. But it was probably told for--for our admonition, is wrote that way. Humiliated, broken, standing now defeated, right between the two posts that held the building.


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