I want to talk about the well-known parable, the emperor has no clothes, aka the emperor's new clothes.

And what I want to do is talk specifically about how this well-known parable applies to Bible prophecy. And by that I mean, I'm hoping to connect the moral of the story,

as it were, with what's happening prophetically in the world today. So what we'll do is start with an abbreviated

and edited version of the original by Danish author Hans Christian Anderson. It was

actually published in April of 1837.

Many years ago, there was an emperor so exceedingly fond of new clothes.

Every day strangers came to town and among them one day came two swindlers.

They let it be known they were weavers.

And they said they could weave the most magnificent fabrics imaginable.

Not only were their colors and patterns uncommonly fine.

But clothes made of this cloth had a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unfit

for his office or who was unusually stupid. Those would be just the clothes for me,

thought the emperor. If I wore them, I would be able to discover which men in my empire

are unfit for their posts.

And I could tell the wise men from the fools.

He paid the two swindlers a large sum of money to start work at once.

They set up two looms and pretended to weave, though there was nothing on the looms.

I'd like to know how those weavers are getting on with the cloth, the emperor thought,

but he felt slightly uncomfortable when he remembered that those who were unfit for their position would not be able

to see the fabric. It couldn't have been that he doubted himself, yet he thought he'd

rather send someone else to see how things were going. The whole town knew about the

cloth's peculiar power and all were impatient

...