The Age of the Lord

Afternoon. Certainly has been a very wonderful day at this point. I truly appreciated the music, Jesus is Coming, and the Sound of Trumpets. It brings back the days of the 1980s of the Wisconsin Dells, where we went to the feast year after year. I was serving in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and the big choir in the 10,000-seat metal building, which was the choir in orchestra, was about as many as feast sites are right now, just the choir in the orchestra.

It had three to four hundred people in it. It sang this year after year, and it was part of the signature of the Wisconsin Dells, Henry W. Peterson's oratorio. They sang several of the arias from it, and these two were my favorite, and they have to do with the Feast of Trumpets, the Feast of Tabernacles, the Resurrection, and so forth. So very beautifully sung, very beautifully directed, very beautifully presented to us this afternoon, very, very inspiring and praising God for the message of this day.

I thought that I would read a Psalm first, a Psalm that my wife and I looked at just a few days ago, and said, isn't this where we are today? She said, I was reading Psalm 12. Let me read it to you, she said, and she said, okay, go ahead and read it. When I read it, or when she read it to me, I thought, wow, this really does represent today, today in the United States and the world. It's short. I'll read the eight verses. Help, O Lord, for the godly are fast disappearing.

The faithful have vanished from the earth. Neighbors lie to each other, speaking with flattering lips and deceitful hearts. May the Lord cut off their flattering lips and silence their boastful tongues. They say, we will lie to our hearts content. Our lips are our own. Who can stop us? As I think about the campaign for the Presidents of the United States, this is some of the spirit that is in the air. But in verse 5, the Lord replies, I have seen violence done to the helpless. I have heard the groans of the poor. Now I will rise to rescue them as they longed for me to do.

The Lord's promises are pure, like silver refined in a furnace, purified seven times over. Therefore, Lord, we know you will protect the oppressed, preserving them forever from this lying generation. Even though the wicked strut about, an evil is praised throughout the land. I couldn't think of a better description of where we are today on October 3rd, 2016. I was at the Feast of Tabernacles in Estonia in 2005, and we met at a convention center on the river.

And right across the hallway from our meeting was a rotary club that met right after our morning services. So I thought I'd go over there, since I am a Rotarian, and be a guest at the rotary club, which they were very happy to receive me. I told them about the Feast of Tabernacles. I was a guest, the leaders like guests, to explain who they are, where they're from, and what they're doing.

And most of the club was professors from the largest university in the Baltic States, in Tartu, Estonia. And one of the professors came up after me when he knew that I was a minister. This was just a few months after the tsunami, natural catastrophe, in which hundreds of thousands of people perished. And this professor came out to me and poked his finger into my chest. You clerics, you ministers, where is God? There are many children who perish. There are many who died. Can you explain this to me? I told him, I said, we're keeping the Feast of Tabernacles, where we're talking about a world that's different from this world.

This is not God's world. I try to get as much said in a few minutes as I could. He said, please come to our service. We meet here every morning at 10 o'clock in the morning, throughout the Feast of Tabernacles. And we talk about these things.

I said, especially come to the very last day of the Feast, because here we will explain where God is and what He is doing. He walked away, and even though I invited the entire Club to come, no one came. The question does go begging, even from what we read in Psalm 12. When is God going to do something about this? There are two questions that deter people from Christianity more than anything else. The first one is, why does God allow the evil that we see in this world today? Why can't God see, or why does not God do something about the suffering? And how can you kneel beside the death of a little child and do a funeral and say, where is God?

And why is that necessary? And why can't God a loving God do something about this? Right now, in the kingdom of God, there is an enclave that is separated from it. God, of course, is King and His kingdom, but we're not in it. That's why we pray every day, thy kingdom come. That suggests it's not here. We're not in the kingdom of God. This is not God's world. It really isn't God's world at all. We're in an enclave that is separated from the kingdom of God, and we are looking to rejoin the kingdom of God. This enclave is the world, and this is where it's been for 6,000 years.

But the time is coming when there will be no special zone outside the kingdom of God. There won't be a special zone run by others. Even Jesus, when He was speaking in His temptation to Satan the devil, the devil had offered Him the kingdoms. I'll give you all these kingdoms if you'll just bow down to me. It's very clear that this world, this world's kingdoms, are not part of the kingdom of God.

And eventually, in Ephesians 1, verse 22, God the Father is going to give Jesus Christ authority over everything. In one sense He has it. He just allows Satan the devil and his world to function. He's allowing it to just continue grinding down to its inevitable end. But in Ephesians 1, verse 22, it says that He, God the Father, put all things under His feet, and He gave Him to behead over all things the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him, who fills all in all.

Ultimately, there will not be any special zone that will be separate from the control and the authority of God the Father and Jesus Christ. One of the parables that illustrates the kingdom of God is the one about the leaven, which is found in Luke 13, verse 20. It's also found in Matthew. But in Luke 13, verse 20, verse 21, a very short parable, two lines, He said, to what shall I liken the kingdom of God?

What can I compare it to? Jesus speaking. He says in verse 21, it is like a womb. It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until all was leavened. So the kingdom of God is like leaven that just fills the entire loaf as a phenomenon of leaven into yeast or into dough. You can't bake a loaf of bread, part leavened and part not leavened.

You can't have a loaf of bread on the table and say, will you please pass me a piece of the unleavened side of that loaf? It's all leavened.

It fills everything. And the kingdom of God will be much the same. The kingdom of God will fill every nook and cranny of the known, unknown universe. There won't be any special zone. There won't be any zone where people will be crying out, that kingdom come. Or how long, O Lord? Those days will be gone.

But we have been born into that time to where we are now in this special zone.

The fall festivals begin with the Feast of Trumpets, which is a landmark moment in God's working with this special zone. It's a day that's referred to in Matthew chapter 24.

Matthew 24, where Jesus, in his Olivet prophecy, lines out all the events that must take place before his return. And he did not request. His disciples came to him and said, when will be your coming and the end of the age? And Christ says this. Verse 21 of Matthew 24, For then there will be great tribulation. This is after a series of events, the false Christs, the wars and rumors of wars, the famines, disease epidemics.

But he says those days will be shortened. Those days will come to an end. They will come to a complete instantaneous stop as far as the movement of history is concerned.

And unless those days were shortened, first of all, this tribulation has not been since the beginning of the world until this time no nor ever shall be. There will come a time of horrendous problems and cataclysm and moment of reckoning to our planet, which I think down deep we know. We know that the doomsday clock is ticking to an inevitable end.

Unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved. But for the elect's sake, those days will be shortened. God is going to answer the promise and pledge of Psalm 12.

He will come and He will bring an end. This is a day of triumph. This is a day of redemption. This is a day of restoration. This is a day of hope for all Christians in a number of ways. The hope of the resurrection. The hope of the salvation of the world. The hope of God's coming kingdom. It is a landmark moment in the history of all mankind.

This day is called the Day of the Lord. The Day of the Lord. And I'll be talking about the Day of the Lord in my sermon this afternoon. It's an event that's referred to in 30 places in the Bible.

It's not just a figure of speech. It's something which is spoken of by prophet after prophet.

This is the beginning of God's day as opposed to the Day of the Lord.

It is the intervention of God to reclaim the enclave that will be rejoined to the kingdom of God.

The Day of the Lord is a day of sharp transition. And we will see a different kind of God. We will not see a God who is waiting, patient. Oh, I will wait. Do what you want to do, but please come. Please come.

Please come to our public appearance campaign. We want you so badly to come. Please!

God won't be pleading with mankind any further. But God will be bringing to pass what He has prophesied through all His prophecies.

Acts 3, the very first days of the New Testament church, the Apostle Peter spoke with great authority about what this church was all about and the message of the church of God. Acts 3, verse 19, this is the second time that he brings up the first action verb of the New Testament church, which is repentance.

Repent and be baptized is what was mentioned in the first sermon on the Day of Pentecost, but now he has something else. Another subject, however, repent is what he starts with. Repent, therefore, and be converted, Acts 3, 19, that your sins may be blotted out so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. This is going to come a time when this is going to be a complete change of scenery, a time of refreshing, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before. This would be a different Jesus from before. The humble, the one who wrote on a colt, the one who spoke with humility.

Whom heaven, verse 21, must receive until a time of the restoration of all things which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. This is one of the most monumental and most powerful passages in the New Testament, because Peter speaks about what was preached about because at that time there was no New Testament. His scriptures were that of the Old Testament, the prophets, the writings, the books of Moses, and that these times of restoration have all been predicted and spoken of by all His holy prophets since the world began.

This will become a time of restoration.

Interesting, when I go to Ukraine and speak to the religious leaders, we talk about prophecy.

It's interesting how they look very similarly to a time of a new world. And believe me, they have a lot more motivation for a new world than we even do, because we have vacations, we have wealth, we have things that we want to do. In some ways, we don't really want it to come too fast, but we want it to come, but not too fast. For them, they can't wait for the kingdom of God to come. And we talk about the kinds of things that will take place, how society must be improved and changed. And they said, you know something? We're not looking to any improvement. We're looking for a great bulldozer from heaven to come. They call it the great bulldozer. He needs to completely level everything in our country. Level its buildings, level its institutions, level everything. Government buildings, courts, parliaments, armies, there is no fixing it. It needs to be leveled.

Well, that's exactly what's going to come. And that day is coming ahead of us. I don't know when it'll come. But it's on its way. Every day that we wake up in the morning, we're one day closer to the intervention. The day's being cut short. The book of Revelation is the chronology of the day of the Lord. That's what the book is about. The day of the Lord. It starts off with, in the first chapter of the book of Revelation, where John speaks about his vision being on the isle of Patmos.

And here is what he says about what it's all about, what he saw.

Revelation 1, verse 10, And I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice as that of a trumpet. He was there on the Lord's day. It wasn't Sunday. It wasn't Sabbath. It wasn't any one particular day. It was the time period that he is going to unroll the entire chronology of God's intervention in the affairs of humanity.

On the Lord's day. I am the Alpha and Omega, verse 11. The first and the last. And what you see right in a book, and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia. So I'm going to go to the salient points about this day of the Lord. I'm going to show you something that we may not have thought of as far as what the day of the Lord means. Now, Revelation, the first chapters, is the introduction. It introduces us to the subject, which is the day of the Lord.

Chapters 2 and 3 of the book of Revelation have to do with the message to the seven churches.

Starting with Ephesus, ending with Laodicea. Chapters 4 and 5 lead to the unveiling of the seven seals. There are seven seals that are unveiled. The seventh seal is comprised of seven trumpets.

The first six seals are back on sort of man's side of the day of the Lord. There are things that happen on this side of God's coming and intervening with the affairs of this world. Wars, false christs, or false christs first, then wars. Usually after a war, there's economic disruption, there's famines, then disease follows that. There's been persecution over times throughout history, and heavenly signs are basically a chaotic world. We come through these first six seals, and they are spoken of in the book of Daniel, and they're spoken of in Matthew 24, where we see all these things that are spoken of. We come to chapter 7, which is the sealing of the 144,000.

144,000 are sealed, and that's a subject of its own. But this is just ahead of having the seventh seal exposed. Revelation 7, verse 1, after these things, I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree. They're holding back the force of God as He is about to take action. Then I saw, verse 2, another angel descending, Revelation 7, verse 2, descending from the east, having the seal of the living God. And he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, saying, do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.

Then we come to chapter 8, which is the prelude, the introduction to the seven trumpets, which comprise the seventh seal. Revelation chapter 8, verse 1, when he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Just a half an hour of quiet before God starts the intervention process. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets. Then another angel, having a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar, which was before the throne, symbolic of all the prayers of saints of that time of before.

And one of the things that we pray for, and it's very important because Christ said this is part of what you should be praying for every day. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. Let your kingdom come, be praying for it every single day. And the feast of trumpets is the answer to that prayer. This is that moment when we have this cumulative effect of all these prayers and the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints ascended before God from the angel's hand. These prayers are from all the servants and saints of God who have prayed thy kingdom come. Then, in Revelation 8, the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it to the earth. We're meaning business now. Just threw it to the earth. And there were noises, thunderings, lightnings, and an earthquake. This is not the work of men, armies. This is God's beginning to move on the affairs of this world. In verse 6, so the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. And then we have the first six trumpets. Here we have vegetation. The sea struck, the water struck, the heavens struck, locusts through the bottomless pit. And one thing after the angel from the Euphrates, you know, these final events that are leading up.

But we come now to the seventh trumpet that was spoken of by Steve Myers earlier today.

The seventh trumpet, which is the proclamation of the kingdom of God. The seventh trumpet of the seventh seal is the coming of the kingdom of God. Then the angel, seventh angel, this is Revelation 11 and verse 15. Then the seventh angel sounded, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. That's it. That's the end of man's government. This is the toppling of the statue in Daniel chapter 2. This is that stone that comes from outer space, comes and sets up to become a government that fills the entire world. The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of God, and Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords. Not a weak Jesus. And we won't be begging for people to come and hear our message. And we won't be writing articles and thinking, what can I say? What can I say? How clever can I be in writing an article or a blog or something to get people to believe what we're saying? Believe me, it'll be entirely different environment. It'll be just like in Noah's time, where for decades he preached about the sins of the society around him. No one came. No one came. But then once the water started rising in the valley below the ark, there was excellent response. The people were excited about the new truth. And they wanted to get in part of the action. Well, this is the same type of thing that's going to happen here. It's that God is going to mean business. And he won't be pleading.

He will just be doing and fulfilling the hope of all mankind. He is going to change this world. A new environment will be brought in, and the kingdom of God will be coming to this earth.

The kings of this world will be moved over. They may not like it. Putin won't like it.

Kim Jong-il is not going to like it at all. But they're going to be moved aside. No amount of working against them, as these people work with dangerous weapons right now, extremely dangerous weapons, as they are planning, as they are trying to figure out how to use even tactical nuclear weapons, not knowing they're playing with fire with the future of this planet. All that's going to come to an end. That's the good news. That unless these days were shortened, no flesh would be saved alive. And Jesus Christ will be returning, as is predicted and spoken and announced by the seventh trumpet of the seventh seal. The kingdoms of this world are becoming the kingdoms of God. Let's take a look at a few of the places where Peter referred to all the prophets from olden times have spoken about this to our time. This day. This day when God begins to intervene.

And you see a very convincing and you see a very, very solid evidence. You see solid evidence of an entire story about the intervention of God in the affairs of this world by a number of the prophets. And I can't possibly go through all 30, but I will go through some. Isaiah chapter 2 in verse 12.

Isaiah chapter 2 in verse 12. For the day of the Lord of hosts shall come upon everything proud and lofty, upon everything lifted up, and it shall be brought low. The loftiness of man will be bowed down, and the hotiness of men shall be brought low. The Lord alone will be exalted in that day. Powerful message of God beginning to move. This is not just something to help Israel at that time. This is talking about a worldwide effect. 13. Isaiah 13 in verse 6.

Whale, for the day of the Lord is at hand, it will come as destruction from the Almighty.

Therefore all hands will be limp, every man's heart will melt. Again, this is not just a local helping the little Israelite armies be able to defeat the nations around them. This is talking about a worldwide event. Verse 9 of Isaiah 13. Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel with both wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate, and he will destroy its sinners from it. Once again, these are words of hope that have kept hope in the lives of Christians throughout all time of the disciples of Jesus Christ. This is the message that we preach.

On this day, the Feast of Trumpets, we celebrate the beginning of that intervention. Was it a world that is sick in its addictions? A world that is dying? It's like helping an alcoholic or a drug abuser say, we've got to intervene. God is just moving in. We've got to take care of it right now. You don't like it, but we're going to institutionalize you. We're going to neutralize you. You cannot do this anymore. You're hurting yourself. You're hurting others.

And this is God's intervention. Isaiah 34, verse 8. Isaiah 34, verse 8 and 9. For it is the day of the Lord's vengeance, the year of recompense for the cause of Zion. Its streams shall be turned into pitch, and its dust into brimstone. Its land shall become burning pitch. Jeremiah 46, verse 10.

For this is the day of the Lord of hosts, a day of vengeance, that he may avenge himself on his adversaries. The sword shall devour, and shall be satiated and made drunk with their blood.

The world will not take well to the coming of Jesus Christ, the armies, the saints.

The start will be rocky, but it will be decisive.

Zephaniah, chapter 1, verse 7. For the day of the Lord is at hand.

For the Lord has prepared a sacrifice, and he has invited his guests.

And it shall be, verse 8, in the day of the Lord's sacrifice, that I will punish the princes and the king's children. This theme flows all the way through the major prophets and the minor prophets, a time of the day of the Lord, as opposed to the day of man. Zechariah 14, in verse 1.

For behold, the day of the Lord is coming, and your spoil will be divided in your midst.

For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem. The city shall be taken.

Houses rifled, the women ravished, and half the city will go into captivity.

But the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city.

And the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as he fights in the day of battle, in verse 4. And in that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, the return of Jesus Christ, which he spoke of when he gave his olive at prophecy that was predicted by Zechariah, which faces Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, making a very large valley. Half the mountain shall move to the north, and half to the south. We see cataclysmic events in the world and in Jerusalem as we see the Messiah returning. Again, not riding on a colt, not riding humbly, but coming as King of kings and Lord of Lords and establishing the reclaiming of the last enclave in this universe that does not have the kingdom of God. Obadiah, verse 15. Obadiah, verse 15. Notice how all these prophets zero in on the same nomenclature about this day of the Lord. Obadiah, 15. For the day of the Lord upon all the nations is near, as you have done and shall be done to you, your reprisals shall return upon your own head. Again, that big event, that moment of refreshing that Peter spoke of in the third chapter of Acts in the sermon that he had given. And then Joel 1, verse 15.

Joel 1 and verse 15. Alas for the day, that's this day, for the day of the Lord is at hand. It shall come as destruction from the Almighty. You can see how the New Testament Church could have been very, very excited about these prophecies, as we should be also. I don't know when these things will take place, but they will. And the evidence and the story is coherent, insure, and vital for the success of the survival of this planet.

Malachi 4, verse 5. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet. Malachi 4, chapter 4 and verse 5.

I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he will turn the hearts of the Father to the children, the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest they come and strike the earth with a curse. We usually focus on the hearts of the fathers and children turning to one another, but the context is before the day of the Lord.

This is what John was referring to. This is a vision that I saw of the day of the Lord, and he spells out the sequence of events through the book of Revelation that speak to the coming and return of Jesus Christ. The day of the Lord starts in great conflict.

It continues on with the coming of God's kingdom. There's just a whole lot more to this story.

The day of the Lord, as I have spoken of, is just the start. There's more. There's just a lot more.

This is not just one day. The day of the Lord is not one year.

The day of the Lord is, as I'll compare it to something that I experienced when I was a kid.

I had a book. Either my parents bought it for me, or it was something I checked out for the library. It was called The Day of the Dinosaurs. Now, was this one day the dinosaurs were on the earth? Was this one year? No, this was an era. This was a period of history when dinosaurs ruled or were extant on this earth. The day of the dinosaur.

Well, the day of the Lord is an era, an epoch. It starts off with one day. Certainly, you've got to start someplace. But it's just like we're coming to the end of the day of man, 6,000 years, which comprises the day of man, or the day of Satan's rule on the earth with man or over man.

And now we come to the day of the Lord, which is a new epoch of God's government and kingdom reigning on this earth, which proceeds on from this. And it actually never ends.

The day of the Lord comes here. It's not something for a thousand years.

Not something for a short time. And then we'll get our parliaments together, and then we're going to start ruling the way we had before. No, we've already tried that. Been there, done that with humanity. We're going to have the government of God, perfect government, under Jesus Christ, ruling with his saints, with him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And when he is King of Kings, he's not a king over the other kings of the earth. They're gone. They're history.

They're those of us who are kings and priests, as we will expand God's kingdom and government to the world. The day of the Lord is forever.

This is not a hopeless punishment, the day of the Lord, but a return of God to this earth.

It's so hard to explain to people, skeptics, mockers, that this is in God's world. It would be hard for me, when you would start with Richard Dawkins, to say, please, please just believe me. God isn't just here right now, but he'll be back.

They just don't believe it. They don't know it. They're blind to it. One of the great truths that we have is through the Holy Days is to understand the sequence of the most important cardinal events in mankind's history, beginning with Passover, a reconciliation with our God, and coming down here now to the kingdom of God, Jesus Christ's return to this earth, which will make right all the things that have been wrong. The context of time, I'm not here to explain all the details about explaining suffering to people, because I've been a pastor for several decades, over 45 years or so, in the ministry. I have been there to do a funeral for a 12-year-old boy. I've been there to do funerals for little children, and I've had to be with their parents. I had to be with a family just a few years ago that had three deaths in a four-month period. A baby, a few months later, the father, through an unrelated disease, and then the mother through an unrelated disease. What do you do? How can you explain it? It's tough. It's hard. I know. And that deters people from becoming a Christian when they see situations like that. Some of you have had tragedy and trauma in your family. I have.

Say, God, why did this have to happen? I could have figured out a better way, but I won't go into telling you all the things I have learned from it, so forth. I have faith in His greater good. I also have faith in the fact of the resurrection.

I have faith in a historical perspective that compares 6,000 years, or maybe 10-15 years of my life, or maybe one, two, three years, or two, three months of my life and the trauma that I go through with millions of years and eternity and important lessons of salvation and being reunited with our loved ones and death being the last enemy. But that's a different story.

But it's an important one because that's our hope, and that's what we are telling the world, and that's what we come to the world with.

The dark side of the day of the Lord is only the beginning. It is a time of God's intervention.

It enters into the age of the Lord.

I'd rather say this sermon is not about the day of the Lord, it's about the age of the Lord when the kingdom of God comes to this earth.

The prophets didn't only speak about this dark side. I read some scriptures that were pretty grim from Malachi, from Joel, about the day of the Lord being a time that was a day of destruction, of death, and intervention. But the day of the Lord is far, far more, and there are illustrations.

There's a panorama that is revealed in the Old Testament as well about the beauty of the kingdom of God, which is the day of the Lord. This also is the day of the Lord. For example, Isaiah chapter 2. Isaiah chapter 2, verse 1, the future house of God.

The future house of God, chapter 2 of Isaiah, verse 1. The word of Isaiah, the son of Amos, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. Verse 2, Now shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on top of the mountains. It shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations will flow to it. Every nation is going to be attracted to it.

Many people shall come and say, Come, and let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the kingdom of God, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways. They're onto something. They know something that we don't. We see the way that we have lived. And we shall walk in his path, for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

Verse 4, He shall judge between the nations and rebuke many people. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. Oft quoted, not practiced. It's right in front of the United Nations. It's quoted in two places in the Bible beautifully, but mankind has never learned that. And they never will. The only way that that knowledge will come to them is by the intervention of God into human beings that are addicted to doing wrong, who are addicted and under the grip of sin. That will come to an end. Isaiah speaks again about the future glory of Zion, chapter 35, Isaiah 35, verse 1. The wilderness, the wasteland, will be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as a rose. This is all the day of the Lord.

See, once we get certain things right, we get government reoriented. We'll be glad for them.

It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice. These are not just poetic illustrations about feel good in the future. This is about a total change, the bulldozer of God coming and scraping off this earth of everything that's in it, its philosophy, its business practices, its dealings, its morality, its lack of integrity and character. And God is going to establish a completely different hegemony, a completely different society based upon His principles, and He will show that it works. And we will have studies about what happened in the last 6,000 years, but why things went so badly. Isaiah 25, another beautiful illustration about the day of the Lord.

Isaiah 25, verse 6, And in this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all people a feast of choice pieces. Now these are passages that are read at the feast, the Feast of Tabernacles. No doubt we will be reading and having someone preach from Isaiah 25. But this is also the day of the Lord. This is God's regime on this earth, a feast of wines and alleys, of fat things full of marrow. Verse 9, And it will be said in that day, what day is it? The day of the Lord.

Behold, this is our God. We have waited for Him, and He will save us. This is the Lord. We have waited for Him. We will be glad and rejoice in His salvation. This is the theme of this day.

We are rejoicing. We have been waiting. And this day pictures a time when it actually does come.

The just shall live by faith. That's what I live by. Those are my prayers. Thy kingdom come. I look forward to that time. I look forward in the leadership and the direction of this church to preach this message to the world as we have been instructed to and ask God to help us to be able to get this message out to the world as is our duty. And we will continue to do this. And in His way, in His own time, He will do the work. We won't be able to move the hearts of people. We just do our very best to be able to get the information to them with all the skills that we have. But God is the one who will turn the knobs in people's minds to come to understand. But the greatest challenge or the greatest hump to get over will be to intervene in this addicted society to sin and make an intervention of God's way, the kingdom of God. And that will occur at the beginning of the day of the Lord. Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 18. The apostle Paul understood this future world, this future time of God's rule, Jesus Christ's supremacy, God the Father, Jesus Christ's ruling. In Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 18, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened. Ephesians 1 is one of my favorite chapters because it gives us the whole plan of God, of God's thoughts about what He's doing with mankind.

That you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. We get it. Others don't. And what is the exceeding greatness, verse 19 of Ephesians 1, greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at the right hand in the heavenly places. That's what we look to, Jesus Christ, who is up in heaven, sitting with God the Father, far above all principality. And that's my candidate.

He's not running this year. We have the candidates that are described in Psalm 12, the lying, the dishonesty, the corruption, and the sins, and being proud of it. There was ever a reason not to vote. This year is it. Far above all principality and power, and might and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age, as we as Christians understand, but also in that which is to come, the day of the Lord.

We in the day of man understand this. You do. You understand so much more than anybody around you about who you are, where you're at, where we're going, what your purpose is. But you also have an understanding of the age which is to come.

And verse 22, which is about Jesus, And he put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who feels all in all, which we have already read.

The day of the Lord continues through the millennium.

Satan is bound for a thousand years in Revelation chapter 20.

There are the three different epochs that are described there.

The thousand-year period, the millennial period that is there, that is part of the day of the Lord.

That is the day of the Lord.

When Satan is put away, and then the saints reign with Christ for some reason.

The great white throne judgment is the day of the Lord.

The day of the Lord is part, encompasses the great white throne judgment.

And then finally, we come to Revelation 21.

The latter chapters of the book of Revelation, which speak about the end of the story that is put together in a most unusual way from 40 authors, written over 1500 people, that tied all their themes together into a saga that could not have been thought through by any one person or any one group of people. There's just been too many periods of history. There's just been too many things that have happened. But the same spirit that inspired those who wrote the Pentateuch to those who inspired the apocalypse, the revelation of John, tells an unusual and beautiful story of how God created man in his own image, and how God put him into the Garden of Eden. This was the kingdom of God. This was the kingdom of God. And he gave man access to the Tree of Life. He says, you have access to it. It wasn't denied the Tree of Life. But he's told not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Don't eat of the tree that speaks of experimentation, of figuring things out for yourself.

And it was so well brought out in the sermon about the Antichrist. We cannot go beyond Christ, because Adam and Eve did go beyond Christ. They did go beyond God. They want to figure things out for themselves. They wanted to find out what would make them wise, because Satan the Devil told him, you eat this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it'll make you wise. You'll know things that you don't know now. Oh yeah, what are we being denied? We don't go beyond Christ.

We also don't minimize Christ. We have Christ in the way that he presented him to us.

Mankind made the wrong choices from the very beginning and was expelled from the Garden of Eden.

And he'd been trying to figure it out for himself in the way that he governs himself, in his sets of morality, government, economics, everything you can imagine. Knowledge, acquisition of knowledge. And so, as a result, we have the mass world that we have. We have, right now, access to more knowledge than we have ever had before of what's in the universe and also what's in the microscopic aspects of life. And mankind still can't find God. Still can't find him. But you know, you have. And you didn't need to have a college degree. You didn't have to have a lot of letters after your name. You believe, you know, and you know his plan.

God began to work through a nation, Israel, that disappointed him because he also wanted to figure out things for themselves. They wanted to figure it out by having a king and experimenting with other gods around them. They just didn't believe their God. They didn't have the faith.

So God sent a Redeemer. He sent him into captivity first, but then he sent a Redeemer. The new covenant was established. And we have been brought back as sinners from this world, from ourselves.

And we have come to the point of where we have accepted a relationship with Jesus Christ, with God the Father. And we pray to him every day, our Father, which art in heaven, and the elements of the prayer that we pray. We understand what the future is.

Ultimately, a loving God is going to provide this for everyone.

Now, we know that some will make it, but God is opening the way for all of mankind, which will be explained by the White Throne Judgment period, by the eighth day.

What God is doing to establish his kingdom on this earth, it also expanded to all beyond all galaxies. All in all. Where it's like leaven, it'll fill everything. Nothing is going to be nothing is going to be outside the leavening, which is positive use of leaven, of the kingdom of God.

And finally, so beautifully written, the last chapters of the book of Revelation speak to man's restoration to the Garden of Eden, where once again he has access to the tree of life.

And trees are planted in the Garden of Eden for the healing of the nations. And then God himself will come and dwell with man. There is no story that is more beautiful, that is more powerful, that impacts you right now than this story about man and God. This saga, this journey to eternity, that you have been brought into by inside knowledge, not because we're all smart, none of us are, but we've been given very special knowledge by a book that is distributed 100 million copies a year in this world. There is no other book quite like it, like the Bible.

Revelation 21, verse 1, Now I saw a new heaven and new earth. This is, again, the day of the Lord.

For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God, is with men. And he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people. And God himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, from every parent who's lost a child, from everyone who's lost a mate, a loved one, a brother, a sister, and says, God, why does this have to happen now? It's going to happen sometime. But God will make sense to it all. God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. For there shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.

Beautiful, beautiful restoration, the restoration of all things.

Mortality is something for now.

The New Testament gospel is about salvation. That means to go beyond the temporary aspect of nature.

Eternity. And then in Revelation 22, in verse 1, He showed me a pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. God the Father is God the Father and Jesus Christ, right there. This is the Garden of Eden.

In the middle of the street, of its street and on either side of the river, was the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life appears again. Who could have thought about starting the Bible with this story of a Tree of Life and ending it so beautifully? The bringing of man back to the Tree of Life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the Tree were for the healing of the nations. When I think of all the nations, and I have come from family that has been from a nation that's been oppressed, Ukraine. There are many oppressed nations in the world, oppressed either economically or governmentally, of many millions of people who have suffered.

We need God's government. And the good news is that the government of God is coming.

We're not going to vote it in. Jesus Christ and God the Father aren't going to be campaigning, having draw rallies around them. They'll bring it back. They're going to bring back Revelation 21 and 22, the healing of the nations. That is what is coming. Satan the devil, Lucifer, is the one who weakened the nations. He's the one who's brought war and famine and disease. But the God of heaven is the one who loves mankind so much he made him in his own image. And he's working with everyone individually to give us eternity, eternal life, individually, but on a grand scale to bring the healing of the entire world, of the healing of the nations. Verse 6, He said to me, These words are faithful and true, and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to show his servants the things which must shortly take place. By your reading the book of Revelation, you will understand. Behold, I am coming quickly. Blessed is he who keeps, who understands, who practices the words of the prophecy of this book. Then Jesus' testimony to his church, we're getting to the end of the Bible. Behold, I am coming quickly, and my reward is with me to give to everyone according to his work. I'm the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Verse 14, Blessed, this is a message to us, are those who do his commandments.

This is the message of the Feast of Tabernacles. This is the message of the book of Ecclesiastes, and I'll be speaking of it's a feast. That they may have right to the tree of life, because when you eat of the tree of life, you perpetuate eternity, and may enter through the gates of the city. Verse 16, I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you, those things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright and morning star. Certainly, I wish that I could explain to people the grand panorama of God's plan to those who are skeptics, to those who are agnostics and atheists, who choose not to believe, who are angry at a God that they don't believe exists. Doesn't even make sense.

But nonetheless, we do understand a greater purpose and can see his love and see how he works.

We can be thankful for what we do have, and we can't pray for protection. But also, more importantly than anything else, we see the grand plan for all of mankind.

Some of us have been called to serve in the leadership and in the service of God's church.

Our job in these end days, as we come to the ticking down of the doomsday clock, doomsday clock, is to be able to tell the world what it is about to be. God is the one who will make that word flourish. He is the one that is preparing us and doing what he can.

So let's rejoice on this day, which is a celebration of the Day of the Lord.

And actually, I would like to rename this sermon not the Day of the Lord, but the Age of the Lord, because it's really a transition from the age of man, the day of man, to the Day of the Lord, the Age of God, ruling forever and ever. And this day is that pivot.

So grace to you and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ. May you be blessed on this day.