Hey everyone welcome to the Conversations that matter podcast. I'm your

who's John Harris. We're gonna have a brief podcast today. I only want to talk

about one issue and then I want to make some application I want to talk about the

book of second kings from God's word and draw some parallels between what Israel

was going through during the reign of Hezekiah and what we are going through right now in the church and in America, the visible church.

And I know that not everything in history is completely parallel, but things tend to rhyme because

human nature is such that when presented with similar scenarios we tend to act in similar ways

and that's one of the great insights I think the Old Testament gives us is

understanding the nature of people the nature of God his law his character and then the nature of people, the nature of God, his law, his character, and then the nature of people,

and how they react to not just his law, but the circumstances they find themselves in and the ways in which they sin.

And that's why we're grateful as Christians

for the redemption found in Jesus Christ,

because without it, we would be completely lost.

And there are stories, especially ones

I'm thinking of in the Old Testament the book of

judges being a great example of this that show us what happens when man is left

to himself without guidance with well really rejecting, wisdom cries in the streets as Proverbs says, but when

there is not a witness to be found and people tend to do their own thing and it's not good but even in those

circumstances God leaves himself without a witness completely because he even used imperfect people, he used judges.

Some of them, I mean, read the life of Sampson, they have their issues and yet he uses them to do things to restore, to

bring restoration to defeat enemies and anyway I want to talk about Second Kings, chapters 16 and through I think probably 18 or so,

and make some application, draw some parallels from that particular portion of

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