Back to the Future

Good morning to all of you. It's an absolute delight to be here in Branson for the Feast of Tabernacles. My wife and I were going through the reminiscences that I think all of us do at times, trying to remember when the last time was that we have been here for a feast, and it has been many years ago. My wife's mother was a member of the Springfield congregation and lived in this area, so some memories and roots that come back to this time, and it's a pleasure to be back once more for the feast. The opening video, though very brief, was a wonderful reminder, an audible and visual reminder of why we're here. We all look forward to a wonderful time filled with peace, happiness, prosperity, as different individuals of all age groups, from those who are very young to those who are quite a bit elderly, were stating, we rehearse once every year at the feast. All the beautiful aspects of the millennium, the change of the nature of animals, cessation of warfare, universal peace, agricultural prosperity, safety in our homes, and in our cities. The list goes on from there, and the speakers during the time that we're here will remind us of all of that. Have you ever considered that you can more deeply understand the millennium by going backward in time? For eight days, we're going to be celebrating, remembering, rehearsing, walking through our Bibles to talk about what is ahead of us when Christ returns. But how often do you stop and consider that we can truly, far more deeply, understand the millennium by going backward in time? You know, God says one of His prime attributes is that He does not change. He speaks of being the same yesterday, today, and forever. And He speaks of His mindset, His approach to human beings, being the same, whether it's past, present, or future.

You know, if we can borrow a title from a 1985 blockbuster movie, we need to go back to the future. Or put another way, we can better understand the future millennium if we view God's dealings with His people in times past. So we're going to go back to the future, or if you wish to look at it in a different way, we're going to have the opportunity of seeing the future by viewing the past. I think we're all aware of the fact that the very first time that God dealt with people collectively is when He brought the body of Israelites out of Egypt and began to deal with them in the wilderness, offering them a phenomenal opportunity.

But have you ever stopped to realize that God with Israel in the wilderness offered them a virtual millennium? I think many of us, unless we go back to the account, we refer to these as the blessings and cursings chapters. Unless we go back to that point in time where God says, I want to explain to you what I want to offer you, and I want to explain to you the consequences if you turn your back and go the other way. But God offered to Israel a virtual millennium, just short of what we're celebrating right now.

Turn back with me to Leviticus chapter 26. I'm going to walk you through what God offered to Israel that they could have had, and they could have from that time forward. You know, it always makes interesting conversation to say, well, how long? And it was open-ended. God said, this is what I'm offering. If you will live by it, there's no end to the contract. Beginning in verse 3, he says, if you will walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and perform them, then I will give you, and listen to what he offers, and in your mind, compare it to what we're looking forward to.

I'll give you rain in its season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing time shall last till the time of vintage, and the vintage shall last till the time of sowing. You shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land safely. I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none will make you afraid. I will rid the land of evil beasts, and the sword will not go through your land. You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you.

Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight. Your enemies shall fall by the sword before you, for I will look on you favorably, and make you fruitful, multiply you, and confirm my covenant with you. You shall eat the old harvest, and clear out the old because of the new. You'll have so much that you'll have to get rid of last years to make room for this year's.

I will set my tabernacle among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. I will walk among you, and be your God, and you shall be my people. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves, and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you walk upright.

You know, except for the fact that there were enemies, which there will not be in the millennium. But as you listen to that, you know, the only peace that was not purely millennial was that you will have enemies. I'll just simply make sure your enemies never give you any grief. What went wrong? What went wrong? The people who had been slaves came out of slavery.

God said to use our vocabulary, I'm going to give you a millennial existence. Here it is. Let me lay it out for you. As I said, what went wrong? You know, there's a lesson in the past that's embedded there in this account for the future. What went wrong is they didn't have their heart in it. They simply didn't have their heart in it. Deuteronomy chapter 5 is one of those grand famous scriptures describing the flaw.

Deuteronomy chapter 5, it's a lament in verse 29. The lament says, "...all that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and always keep my commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever." Oh, that they had a heart.

And the results would be the well-being of these people and their children without limitation. There was no expiration date on what God was offering them. You know, the most elemental difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant is heart.

If you look at everything embedded in the Old Covenant and the New Covenant and you ask, what is the elemental difference? The elemental difference is heart. Jeremiah 31, Judah has gone into captivity or is going at this time. Jeremiah is talking to them about where they've been, and he's talking about a future that is yet ahead of them. And in this famous place in Jeremiah 31 where he describes to them, literally, he describes to them the beginning of the millennium. He says in Jeremiah 31 and in verse 31, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. That's the beginning of the millennium.

You know, we've got an early invite. It's a wonderful thing, isn't it? God has called us out of season. He's given us a chance to have that new heart. And as a result, here is a small body of people compared to the population of even the area that we're in who are celebrating days that the world is ignorant of and unaware of. But that's because God gave you an early invitation, and He also gave you a new heart to go along with that early invitation. But for the house of Israel and the house of Judah, that invitation does not come until the millennium. And so, as He said, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I'll put my laws in their mind, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquities, and their sins I will remember no more.

The elemental difference between old and new covenant was heart. God will populate Israel in the millennium with those who returned from captivity with a heart like the one he wanted from ancient Israel. You know, if you take the time to truly study through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and even into the minor prophets about those who return from captivity and who will populate the Promised Land at the beginning of the millennium, the defining element is a people whose minds have changed and who will have a literal spiritual heart transplant. It's the only way that God can use them. It's the only way the millennium can truly begin. It is that those who return from captivity have a different heart.

You know, we don't see as much as we did in the glory days back in the 50s and the 60s, the inflow of new people. It was a delight to see the young man on the screen who says, this is my first piece of tabernacles, and it's just a joy and a delight to see. But for all of us who have been in the ministry, there is absolutely no greater joy and no greater experience in all of our lives than that experience of dealing with the absolute excitement and joy and delight and eagerness of those who are brand new. There is a zeal there that is incomparable.

There's an energy there and a hunger there to be fed and filled. And those of you sitting in this room, if you have never been there before, you are going to experience the absolute total joy as sons of God when the millennium begins of sitting with people who can't get enough fast enough. And you're going to find yourself in that absolutely delightful position of being the brakeman of just telling people, hold on, hold on. You can only digest so much at one time.

And to feed them, feed them knowledgeably and understandingly of what they can handle and what they can know and what they can learn and work with them and bring them along. The fact that they have the heart as they come out of captivity to populate Israel doesn't mean they have the education. You will be their teachers. As God once said, no more will their teachers be removed. You will be their teachers. I know every one of us in the ministry can share examples of new people and their zeal that gave us tremendous delight. I'll give you one.

The number are many, many, many. But my wife and I pastored in Columbus, Ohio for 10 years.

And we had a new lady that asked for a visit. And these were in the days where we were we worked with people. We judged how much they knew and we brought them along gradually to where as they came into the congregation, they had a semblance of comparable understanding of principles and doctrines. We visited and at the end of the visit with great eagerness, the lady said, well, can I come to church? And I said, not yet. I said, we need to come back. And I gave her some literature to read and some things that we could discuss. And so we came back a second time and with even greater eagerness, she was asking, well, can I come now? And I said, almost, but there are still these things that we need to study. And so I gave her a little bit more to read. She didn't realize that I was as eager to introduce her to our congregation as she was eager to know where it was. And on the third visit, she said, can I come now? And I said, yes.

And I said, can we go into the kitchen? My wife and I were sitting there and she looked at me like, what in the world does that have to do with what we've been talking about and with my request? And she had that puzzled look on her face and I said again, I said, can we go into your kitchen?

She realized I wasn't going to give up, so we went in the kitchen. And I walked up to the kitchen sink and I pulled back the curtains and I did this. And she's all the time wondering what in the world is going on. And I said, there's our church. She looked at me and I said, our church is right there.

She lived bordering the playground on the junior high that we had been meeting in for years and years. And I couldn't wait for the day when I could walk up to her kitchen window and simply say, you're welcome to come to church. And she said, where is it? And I said, right there. And she shook her head and said, my husband, my husband at times has said, I wonder why all those people are coming to school on Saturday and they're all dressed up. I said, that's us.

And we're looking forward to seeing you next Sabbath.

You know, you're going to experience that by the hundred folds, every one of you, because God will give to those who return a new heart. He will demand of them a humbleness and a contrition, and He will then give them the heart. That new heart will allow those who return from captivity in turn to give God what ancient Israel wouldn't. Wouldn't. Turn back to Exodus chapter 19. As you're turning back to Exodus 19, I want to remind you of the significance of that chapter. The Ten Commandments are given in Exodus 20.

Exodus 19 is God's instruction to Moses to prep the people to make the contract. So it's laying down all the ground rules. It was like Mr. Dobson coming up today to give you a briefing on the beginning of the feast, what time services are, what time they end, when we should depart from the hall so that the performances can prepare. This is what God was doing in Exodus 19.

And so as He's prepping them for the actual giving of the commandments, He said, I want you to know what your role is. We're going to make some agreements. I'm going to ask of you this, and I'm going to offer you that, and I'm going to find out whether you are in agreement with me. But I want you to understand some preliminaries before we start. And so in Exodus chapter 19, as He's going through the preliminaries, He explains to them what He has in mind for them as a role. Verse 5, Now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to me. Above all the people, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel. So God is prepping Moses. He says, look, tell them what this is all about. He said, you're a very special treasure to me, but I have a job for you. And that job is that you are to be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.

You know, with an enthusiastic new heart, all you have to do is get out of their way. Literally. There is no greater zeal than a new convert.

With an enthusiastic new heart, they will model the way of God to all the world.

The blessing God will give them and the heart-filled allegiance they will give God in return will combine to be absolutely magnetic to all the nations and people of the earth.

Zechariah chapter 8 describes the power of that magnetism.

Zechariah chapter 8, a picture that I think all of us are familiar with from the years of coming to the Feast of Tabernacles. Verse 20 of Zechariah 8, Thus says the Lord God, peoples shall come, inhabitants of many cities. The inhabitants of one city shall go to another city, saying, Let us continue and go and pray before the Lord, and seek the Lord of hosts. I myself will go also. So people will be talking country by country, nation by nation, saying, I am going up to Jerusalem. Would you like to come with me? Yes, but we need to stop in this city because I've got friends or family. Let's talk to them also. And by the way, I'm going too. Yes, many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to pray. Thus says the Lord of hosts, in those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you. So here we find the developing wave of people who are affected by those who have returned with a new heart, who, as in Exodus chapter 19, are willing to accept the role of being a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, an example to all the peoples around them. And the infectiousness of that will reach the place where, as it says here, ten people will grab on to somebody because they perceive you are one that God brought back. Would you teach us? Would you be our mentor? Would you be our guide? And the domino effect will be phenomenal. You know, there are questions about the millennium that we don't have answers to, and one of those is, How long will it take for it to cover the entire earth? The Bible doesn't say. I can't turn to a book chapter and verse that says, in five years, in ten years, but what we do know is what I'm saying right now.

God will bring back people with contrite hearts. He will give them a new heart. The zeal they will have will be infectious. People will simply grab on to them and say, I know you are one of them. Help me learn what you know.

And the domino effect will be phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal.

You know what's interesting? This is all old news.

You know, I said, if you want to understand the millennium better, you can go back to the future. Everything I've been giving you right now is just really old news.

Go back to Deuteronomy 4.

God laid all of this out. Everything I've been saying to you about the millennium, God laid all of this out before Israel ever set their first toe in the Jordan River to cross over into the Promised Land.

Deuteronomy 4, verse 4, we know that a generation died in the wilderness because of their stubborn hearts. God says, if you want to be that way, then stay here and I'll take your children in. And so Moses is reminding them that the stubborn died in the wilderness, and he's speaking to a different group of people.

But you who held fast to the Lord your God are alive today, every one of you. He said, you know, we're ready. This is the last talk that I have with you before you go into the Promised Land. And I'm talking to those of you who held fast to the Lord. And he said, you're all alive, every last single one of you.

He said, you know what? I've taught you statutes and judgments just as the Lord my God commanded me that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore, be careful to observe them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation, now so you understand the who's talking because there's a transition here, the nations will say of Israel, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

Moses then goes on in verse 7 to say to them, what great nation is there that has God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us? Well, that was one of those duh questions. There weren't any, and they knew that. He said, for whatever reason we may call upon him. We don't have to have something very, very special in order to come and call on him. He said, for every reason we can call on him. You have a status with God that is unique.

So, clear back here in Deuteronomy chapter 4.

He was telling them exactly the same thing that we will be telling those who come out of captivity to populate the beginning of the millennium.

What did he say to them? If you put it in a formula, it would be, my laws equal your wisdom.

My laws equal your wisdom.

Verse 6, be careful to observe them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the people who will hear all these statutes.

So, is it you? It's not about you.

It's about me, God is saying.

You don't need to add to, you don't need to edit, you don't need to improvise, and you don't need to think you can make an improvement. You do and model what I have given you, and the nations will see it, and for them it will equal wisdom.

And they will then respond, this is a great nation which is wise and understanding. You know, it takes a converted heart to be able to have that kind of compliment, because without a converted heart, it goes up to here, and it's my wisdom and my understanding, and God says that's not what it's about.

I am sending you as models. I am sending you to teach by example.

It's a case of if you live it, they will come. And that's exactly what's going to happen. If you live it, they will come, because there's nothing comparable in all the earth.

When you sat looking at that screen or that screen and listening to teenagers, 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds, 40, 50, 60, probably some 70-year-olds and the respondents that were there, they were saying, this is what I yearn for. This is what I look forward to. This is what I want to see. It doesn't happen like that. It isn't just a snap of the finger, and there it is. It comes as a result of a process, and we are part of that process.

So as I've laid out for you so far, God is going to offer to those who return from captivity the millennium that we yearn for. There will have to be a heart transplant, and with a heart transplant, we're going to have the most eager, willing, happy models that this world has ever seen.

And there will be a like response. So that there will be a cascade of people from all nations wanting to come up and be taught more, who will be equally hungry because they will see, as we just saw in Deuteronomy 4, the wisdom of God modeled in the lives of the people.

At this particular point in time, I said, if they live it, they will come.

But there is one caveat in all of this that we need to introduce at this particular time.

One caveat.

That caveat focuses on those of you who are in this room, and in rooms like it all around the world. The caveat is that man is incapable of ruling himself.

He simply does not have the capacity. The very nature of the Olivet prophecy, as the disciple said, tell us the signs of the end of the age, is the implicit, if I don't come back, when I come back, there won't be an earth to come back to. I'm going to give man who's an endless Pollyanna. Every generation of man looks at the previous generation of man and says the same thing, and has been doing since man came on this earth. You made a mess of it, I'm going to do a better job.

56 years later, there's a new set of faces saying, you made a mess of it, I'm going to do a better job.

And it has happened since man came on this earth. And it's happening now. And it will happen until the last generation who bring us to the brink of total destruction, and Christ returns.

Christ will then be able to say, I have given you all the rope necessary for you to prove. You can't rule yourself. I've given every generation who comes forward with optimism, saying, we will do it right. And simply does it wrong in a different way.

I've given you all the opportunity to prove that you can't do it.

This is where you come in.

As I said earlier, you are called out of season.

You are called to provide the leadership that is necessary that humanity cannot give. We all know the very, very simple, brief description that is contained in the first four or five verses of Revelation 20. Satan is chained. Christ comes back to rule. The saints will rule with him for a thousand years.

And so we look forward. We read Revelation. It's a forward-looking picture. But as I said, if you want to understand more fully the future, go back to the past.

Daniel chapter 7.

Daniel chapter 7 said everything that Revelation said only many centuries earlier.

As God was laying out in prophetic vision to Daniel, the whole nature and structure of world ruling governments.

He gave him among the multiple visions one in Daniel chapter 7.

I have a new King James at the beginning of Daniel chapter 7. It has a little header that says the four beasts. And so here we have Daniel seeing a vision about four different stages of world ruling empires. Empires that began back with Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon. And as Daniel repeatedly was shown from the beginning of Daniel to the end, the terminus point for all of this is when Jesus Christ returns to this earth. So I'll lay out for you the empires. I'll lay out for you the progressions. I'll even lay out for you the subdivisions. But all of it will come to a point where it will end with the coming of Jesus Christ. Interwoven through Daniel 7, as he's describing these four kingdoms, is this continual being brought back to the point of reminding them that, hey, this all ends at the same place.

The first time he does it, is Daniel 7, verses 13 and 14.

I was watching in the night vision, Daniel 7 and verse 13, And behold, one like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven, He came to the ancient of days, and they brought him before him. And then to him was given dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed. So I'm showing you these world-ruling empires, but I want you to know where it's all going to end. It's going to be ending when one is brought before the ancient of days, and given dominion and rulership in a kingdom that will never end.

In verse 17, Those great beasts which are four, are four kings which shall arise out of the earth. So he's telling them these are four kingdoms. But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever. So he says, I'll show you the four periods of time, but I want you to know that when those four periods of time are over, then the saints are going to come on the scene, and they will have dominion forever and ever. And ever.

Again in verse 21, I was watching, and the same horn was making war against the saints, and prevailing against them, until the ancient of days came, and a judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom. And finally, the last of the incidences, reminders in Daniel chapter 7 is in verses 27 and 28.

He says, this is the end of the story. You want to know how all the world-ruling empires, no matter who they were, Babylonians, Persians, whether they were Greeks or Romans, and whoever they were, whatever century or millennium, you want to know how it will end? Here's how it will end. Here's how it will end.

Then the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms, unto the whole earth, shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High.

His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him.

You will be teachers.

You will be adjudicators.

You will be rulers.

Your role will be to guide the governance of this world under Jesus Christ.

Under whatever hierarchy, you know, we have just a few little windows. One of them is when he talked to the 12 disciples, and he said to them, I want you to understand something. In the kingdom, you will sit on 12 thrones, each over one of the tribes of Israel. So they know exactly what they're going to be doing.

They will have responsibility directly over a specific tribe.

You and I will be down somewhere below all of that, but the functions will be the same, to provide the guidance, the direction, the instruction, the teaching. That this physical world is incapable of giving itself.

So what's the basis of what you're teaching?

The basis of what you're teaching is the basis of what you've been living.

Where was it first stated?

To a collective people?

Well, again, we have to go backward.

We go backward, and I'm not even requiring you to turn here. This is one that you should all know.

Back in Deuteronomy 6, verse 5, God said to Israel, you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your might and all your soul.

Eighteen or so hundred years later, a group of Pharisees tried to entrap Jesus Christ by asking him what was the great commandment of the law.

And he repeated Deuteronomy 6, verse 5, with an addendum.

He said, The great commandment of the law is you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your might, and all your soul. And the second is like unto it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I remember many years ago in the World Tomorrow broadcast a comment that was made every so often just to reset the minds of people about the laws of God.

That natural reluctance in the Christian world to be under the laws of God was countered with a statement that you know it's interesting there's not a person alive who doesn't wish that everyone else would live by the Ten Commandments.

Forget yourself.

You know anybody that doesn't want everyone else to live by the Ten Commandments? In transit, I pulled up my emails and my neighbor said, just wanted to let you know that somebody broke into the mailboxes last night. We have one of those community mailboxes that sits on a steel pillar and we all have our numbered box and then we have a couple of bigger boxes and we have an outbox. And I mailed back. I said, well, gratefully my wife stopped our mail before we left. So we took everything out and we didn't put anything back in and he said, well, we'll be notifying the police and the postal service. He said, this is the second time that has happened in any mentioned the amount of time.

I don't know anyone that doesn't wish that everyone else lived by the Commandment, thou shall not steal.

And I can walk through the rest of the Love Your Neighbor commandments. And I don't know of anyone that doesn't want everyone else to live by all the rest of the Thou Shall Love Thy Neighbor commandments.

The only problem is when it's our turn to live that way, society has proven that I want everyone else to do it, but I want to be the exception.

And since the majority want to be the exception, the law is not worth much.

Not in society.

It has to be administered and governed by people who have lived it, learned it, absorbed it, and made it a part of the very fabric of their being. That's going to be your job. Your job.

You know, all the laws of God are built on the foundation of love for God and love of fellow man.

If we go back to the past, we find a very interesting story.

We will see that when the millennium comes, God will take all the fundamental principles of law that he gave to ancient Israel to guide the people who are going to be in the millennium.

Whether you realize it or not, God is going to get a head start on administering his reinstituted ways even before the remnant returned from captivity. He will begin with a reminder that man is never more than a leaseholder to the land on this planet.

That's where he will begin. I don't know if you heard it because we weren't focusing on it, but I read to you in Exodus 19 when I read to you the role that God gives to us. In the first of the two verses, God said to them, you need to understand something, all the land is mine.

I own it.

You're a leaseholder.

God is going to begin teaching man the realities of that leaseholder position, even before he has made it fully out of captivity and back to the promised land.

Let's begin looking at the laws of God in Leviticus chapter 26.

In the blessings and cursings chapter once more, there's a powerful statement.

He says in verse 33, So he says a very bleak picture of your land is totally desolate, your cities are unoccupied, and God will begin at that point in time building the laws, the statutes, commandments by which he will govern the people, millenially. Because he says God says, you know what? I'm going to start out the millennium, even before the millennium starts.

By giving your land the rest that you would not give it. He said, that land belongs to me, and you have trod upon it, you have abused it in many, many different ways. I will start by giving it a rest, and I will give it a rest as long as I deem that rest needs to last, so that I have restored the land to the level that I want it to be.

It's an excellent starting place, because in accompaniment with the land sabbaths is probably the most beautiful and the most powerful of all of the governing laws of the millennium.

A system that ancient Israel, though they were given, simply were too self-centered, too greedy to institute and live by. There are probably rare times in history where it was applied at a minimal level, but God says, I want you to understand something. I function totally differently than the world that you have. Leviticus 25, verse 1, And the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a sabbath to the Lord.

Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyards and gather in its fruit. But in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to the Lord. You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyards. What grows of its own accord of your harvest you shall not reap, nor gather the grapes of your untended vines, for it is a year of rest to the land. You know what follows? Every seven of those comes a jubilee.

Probably one of the most phenomenal pieces of the structure of the law of God is that not one single one of us through our ineptness or our mismanagement can rob our children's children of their inheritance. He said, I will allot to you, much like it was in the early days in America as expansion took place and the government gave land allotments to anyone who would go and settle.

My family entered this nation. My father's line of the family entered this nation by being given land allotments by the railroad to go ahead and develop farmlands along the railroad so that the railroad would have business and commerce. God will allot everyone land, and He will say to them, I don't care how badly you mismanage it, I don't care what kind of indebtedness you create, every 50 years we reset. Every 50 years whatever was in your family comes back to your family. Every 50 years whatever indebtedness there is, is erased and we start again with zero on personal indebtedness.

I have read from ancient times that Israel, seeing those laws and knowing they should be kept, simply froze credit as they moved toward the 50th year. They simply said, I'm not going to loan money to people and then have Jubilee come and wipe it out, and therefore I will simply freeze the system. God will not only institute the system, He will make the system work.

You know, as we walk through the Bible, and I have no intention of doing anything more than giving you just enough to whet your appetite to understand that what God gave ancient Israel in principle will be as applicable in the millennium as it was then.

God has a system, God had a system of liability laws that is as different as night and day from ours. Our liability laws are very simple. You create a criminal liability, you're arrested. After arrest, you're tried. If you're found guilty, you're convicted, and then you're imprisoned. That's our system. Arrest, try, convict, and imprison. God's system, if you have a liability, you have a responsibility to restore it. God has all sorts of levels of liability law. He says if you find anything that is lost, it is your responsibility. This is the very bottom least punitive level. If you find anything that has been lost, you are to take care of it until the owner can find it and it's restored, whether it's a physical possession or an animal. He says, I don't care if it happens to be the horse that belongs to your enemy. If you found it, you feed it until he finds out where it is and then you give it back to him. If you borrow something and you broke it, then you're obligated to replace it with something of equal value. If you're negligent and you're negligent, destroys something that belonged to your neighbor, you're burning a field and it goes on over into the wheat field of your neighbor, then you're to restore as much as he lost from the best of your field. If you stole something and it was found, you give it back to the person you stole it from plus one more new one.

If you stole something and it wasn't found, you give him back five.

So the whole system of liability was to train and educate, respect what belongs to your neighbor at every level from a simple loss to a theft. God will establish liability laws with the intent to restore to the person, not to incarcerate and then leave the other person with a loss that is never returned. You know what? You're sitting here as a result of God's tax laws, aren't you?

It weren't for God's tax laws. You wouldn't even be here. When your neighbors find out how that tax law works, they say, I can't believe that, but it is the way it works. God's tax laws, 20% every year and an additional 10% on the third and sixth year of a seven-year cycle. Averaged out per year comes out to 22.9% a year as God's tax rate. But if you're fair-minded, you lop 10% off of that because that stays in your pocket to take care of you, your family, your friends, and those who are needy. How many of you are familiar with Tax Freedom Day on our calendar? Not very many of you. Every day on our calendar, there is a holiday, I put that in quotes, called Tax Freedom Day. It's the theoretical day in the year when every penny you've made since January 1 all goes toward paying your tax debt for that year. And Tax Freedom Day is the day that the last penny owed in taxes is paid. And the rest of the year, the money goes to you. 2017, that day, was April 23. So in theory, every penny you made between January 1 and April 23 last year was to pay taxes in some form or another. If we take the full taxation of God, the 10% included that you get to keep, Tax Freedom Day is March 23, a month earlier. If you're fair and you realize that 10% is mine, then God's system, Tax Freedom Day, is February the 15th. Two months and a week earlier than it is right now. God has a much, much better taxation system, and everyone will learn it. God has humane laws. You know, I said that He stated the land is His. If you went back, I won't take you there, but if you went back to Psalm chapter 50 verses 10 through 12, He says, you know something else? You make sacrifices to me. He was talking to ancient Israel, but you need to understand something about me in terms of feeding. He said, I own all the animals. All the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air belong to me. I don't rely upon your sacrifices for sustenance. He said, I own all of the beasts of the field. God has humane laws established to care for animals, with God reminding Israel that not only is the land His, but the animals are His. And as long as they are alive, to care for them in a humane fashion, and for those who understand Jewish laws of slaughtering animals, that even the termination of their life is done in a humane fashion. Labor laws were also established.

God repeatedly talked, especially in the prophets where it wasn't being done correctly, about the need to pay a man a just wage in a timely fashion. He said, do not withhold wages from a man, and give a man a just wage for just labor. Welfare laws are embedded in the tithing laws, aren't they? The third tithe is a way of taking care of the widow, the fatherless, the needy. And so God embedded welfare laws, even within His taxation system. And in addition to that, and the agricultural laws, He said, do not harvest the corners of your fields. Don't take all the fruit off your trees, nor all the grapes off your vines. Those who are in need should be able to come in and harvest the corners of your fields. They should be able to take from your trees and from your vines those things that are left after you have made a reasonable harvest. Those of you who live in fruit areas know that you'll have a main burst when most fruit is ripe, and that's the time you pick. There will always be things that ripen a little later. And He said, leave those. Care for those who don't have what you have. Brethren, as you can see, the list goes on and on. Laws all based on teaching man to love his God and treat his fellow man as he would be treated.

As you can see, God has in store a wonderful future. The millennial peace and prosperity that was mentioned on the screens, a new heart that I have mentioned in the sermon, the spreading of God's way to all the world by those who have returned from captivity who will live and model, as he said, my just and wise commandments until the place where the knowledge of the Lord fills the earth as the waters fill the sea. The kingdom of God, which we are celebrating for these eight days, is going to be absolutely awesome.

If you want to understand it to the fullest, all you need to do is go back to the future.