Christ's Reconciliation of All Things

Happy Feast of Tabernacles to everyone. Don't feel too bad, Mr. McCready not remembering my name. He said when we've known each other for a long time, it's very true. We knew each other when he served in Pittsburgh, and I was a mere boy. He's an old man, so we just have to cut him some slack. That's all. You and I live in an anxious world. People are filled with anxiety.

If you go to work, if you go to school, your neighbors, my wife comes home from out walking with the neighbor lady, and she's just frustrated sometimes because she's just so anxious. Everybody's anxious about the future. We're anxious about what's going to happen next. Everybody's anxious about their jobs. They're anxious about their children. They're anxious about their parents. We have so much in this country. Here we are in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where we live or we're here for a week, eight days, in a Disneyland.

A hillbilly Disneyland, but it's a Disneyland. And everybody's spending money. You and I are going to spend money this week. We're going to eat at some pretty nice restaurants, probably see some shows, take the kids to some of the activities. Here we are spending all this money. We came in cars. Some of you flew in on airplanes. Compared to most of the people living in Southeast Asia or Africa, you and I are absolutely, unbelievably wealthy.

And yet, our society's anxious. There's something wrong. Nobody can really explain it. I find it interesting. Every place I go where I tell people, they ask what you do, and I tell them, I'm a minister.

And pretty soon they're telling me their troubles. From the girl that cuts my hair to everybody's anxious. Everybody's looking for something. I mean, the government told us that if we spent enough money and eradicated poverty, crime would go away. Didn't happen, did it? We were told that somehow that by 2011, science would have done away with cancer. We were told that 20 years ago and 30 years ago. We were told that somehow this world would be better.

I remember as a child being told by the year 2000, everybody would be driving these electric cars. And you'd come up to the freeway and you'd get on a rail and you'd punch in this code into a thing called a computer, and everything would be computerized and there'd be no pollution and everything would be perfect. It's not that way. The reason people are anxious is because they're worried about the future. They have no hope in the future. What's going to happen with their children? What's going to happen with their parents? What's going to happen with health care?

And nobody seems to have the answers. Even religion has failed. It seems like religion just produces more wars. Terrorism didn't go away. Surely by now, all these years after 9-11, we'd have terrorism under control. And it's not under control. We know the next one's going to come sooner or later. It just doesn't work. And people are anxious. And they don't know the future. You and I can be anxious. We're anxious because we see what's happening. We feel uncomfortable. You and I are watching the death of a civilization. The United States is a dying civilization. And I truly believe this is my personal opinion. I believe it's past the point of repentance. I think individuals will repent, but this country is not going to turn around.

I don't think it's going to repent. And so the Democrats tell us they can fix it, and the Republicans tell us they can fix it. And what do we basically do? Every four years, we throw the bombs out and we put the other group in. And every four years, we throw the bombs out and we put another group in. And nothing changes, does it? Things just get worse. There's a reason for this. There's a reason why education hasn't solved our problems. You think about what this country, the amount of energy and money we put into education, and yet our educational system is producing children that are way down the line compared to other children and other developed nations, even undeveloped nations.

The education doesn't work. The agricultural system doesn't work. And no matter what we do, one good hurricane can put the country into a recession. We can't stop droughts. And so we live in an anxious time. And then we start talking about the tribulation. Right? And then we really get anxious. Because we think it could happen. I mean, for the first time in my lifetime, I'm looking at the events that are lining up and I'm thinking, we could be real close to this. Right? And we start getting real anxious about that. But here at the Feast of Tabernacles, God tells us to stop. And here we are.

We're going to have a lot of fun this week. We're going to do a lot of things. We're going to go to Family Day. But whatever we do this week, we have to remember something. This week really isn't about nice stakes. It's not. This week really isn't about horseback riding. Those are nice things we get to do. But that's not what this week is about. We must never forget that what this week is about is that God looks down on this earth and says, that won't work. But there's a few people I will teach how to make it work because I'm going to change it.

See, the problems with humanity and the reason the educational system, and there's no governmental system, our republic and form of government, the democracy we have in the United States, was doomed to failure the moment they signed the Constitution. No human government will succeed. It's that simple. All they, some last longer than others. Some produce more good. This country has produced a lot of good because it did have some Biblical basis to it. But you know it will fail. Education, agriculture, religion will all fail. Because at the heart and core of this problem, and it started when God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, it started with inside human beings themselves.

Remember, Adam and Eve did not walk out of the Garden of Eden. God kicked them out of the Garden of Eden. He said, you want to do this on your own with Satan in charge? Go ahead. And when you get tired of it, come home. He kicked them out. And for all these thousands of years, we have proved one thing. That neither Satan nor us can make this work. We proved it. And there's a barrier between humanity and God. A barrier that is there because of this need to explore good and evil and this incredible need to control ourselves, our own lives, instead of letting God control our lives.

And in that need to control, and in that need to determine good from evil for ourselves, each generation just reproduces the same problem over and over again. There is coming a time when that cover, that barrier between God and humanity is going to be lifted. Let's go to Isaiah chapter 25. Isaiah chapter 25. This is the vision we have to take away from here eight days from now. Because that's the vision that will motivate us to live Christian lives. This is the vision that will motivate us to submit to God. This is the vision that will motivate us to obey His law. This is the vision that will motivate us to do what's right, to hold on to the teachings, the proper doctrines.

This is what will motivate us. Because there is a future we live for. When we lose that vision, Christianity begins to break down. Churches begin to break down. We get more concerned with who's in charge of the social than we do in what God is doing.

We get swallowed up by the anxiety around us. Because we lose sight of what God is doing. We try to fix everything ourselves. Because we lose sight of who really is in charge. We lose. We begin to flounder. We begin to get swallowed up in this anxious world, and it's only going to get worse. This world is going to get more and more anxious. Do you realize 50% of all Americans at some point in their lives are now mentally ill?

And I don't know about you, but I think I've been mentally ill about five or six times in my life. We weren't designed to live in this world. You and I were designed to live in the garden of Eden, a relationship with God Almighty. You and I were designed to live in this. It's breaking down. And as Satan loses his temper and gets more and more angry, it's only going to break down more. That's reality. Wow, I came to the Feast of Tabernacles just for this guy to tell me all this bad news.

Okay, here's the good news. Isaiah 25, verse 6. And in this mountain, now remember in Hebrew poetry, mountain is a symbol of a kingdom. And you will find over and over again, the mountain refers to the kingdom of God. In the Old Testament, the kingdom of God is always picturing the time when the Messiah comes to establish God's kingdom on earth in Jerusalem.

So when this was written, everybody knew exactly what was being said here. And in this mountain, the Lord of Hosts will make for all people. All people. Everybody on the face of the earth. Somalia. South Africa. Philippines. China. Brazil. England. German. The United States. And yes, even Canada. Any Canadians here? Oh, wow, I get away with it. There's no Canadians here. Okay.

The Lord of Hosts will make for all people a feast of choice pieces. A feast of wines on the leaves, of fat things, of marrow, of well-refined wines on the leaves. In other words, he's saying this is going to be a feast that you can't even eat all of it. It's just everywhere. It's overwhelming. And he will destroy on this mountain. Now notice, the surface of the covering cast over all the people and the veil that has spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever. The Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, the rebuke of his people. And he will take away from the earth, for the Lord has spoken. And it will be said in that day, verse 9, Behold, this is our God. We have waited for him, and he will save us. This is the Lord. We have waited for him, and we'll be glad and rejoice in his salvation. There are people who will be waiting for this day. They will be anticipating this day. This will be the goal of life. Now people say, well, when is it going to happen? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Because this is the way we live for that goal. This is why God called you to be prepared for that goal. All my life I have believed since I was a child that Jesus Christ was coming back in my lifetime. And since I was seven years old, I pray to God, Please, I pray to you that I will be accounted worthy to escape the tribulation and be there when Jesus Christ comes back. Because it says to do that. So I did that ever since I was seven years old. And guess what if Jesus Christ doesn't come back in my lifetime? My dying breath will be to grab my children and my grandchildren and pull them over and say, He's coming. We are in danger of losing that.

And when we lose that, we will flounder around as half Christians in a dying world. There are no half Christians. Jesus Christ is coming back. And it's got to be 100%. It's got to be everything. And it doesn't matter when He comes. I believe He's coming in my lifetime. But if He doesn't, it doesn't matter. And if we don't believe that, we'll get swallowed up in the world. We'll start buying into the world's value system and what the world does and the way it thinks. When Jesus Christ returns and His covering is removed. And with the covering removed, people can now have a relationship with God the Father. God does these things through Jesus Christ. But God not only does these things through Jesus Christ, God is going to do these things through you and me if we're there. Let's go to Revelation 20.

Probably most of you know this by heart. As I always tell people, I haven't come up with a new scripture yet.

Revelation 20, verse 1. Revelation 19 talks about the return of Jesus Christ. Now the armies come, and humanity on the brink of destruction, an earth totally destroyed. The air can't even hardly be breathed. The water supply is destroyed and turned to blood. Between the wars and pestilence and famine that human beings have brought on themselves, and between the day of the Lord, the wrath God has poured out, this earth is almost uninhabitable. Now think about that. Billions have died. The world is almost uninhabitable, and there is one thing that will unite them. They're going to stop the Prince of Peace. It's the one thing that will unite humanity. And then Christ comes back, and here's what He does. And I saw the angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and the great chain in His hand. And He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And He cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years were finished. But after these things, he will be loosed for a little while. And that's what Jesus Christ is going to do when He comes back. Well, there's two things He does, basically simultaneously. He rips away the covering between God and man, and that means He has to get rid of Satan. It was Satan who entered into the Garden of Eden, and it was Satan who must be removed so that we can go back in. And so He removed Satan. We all celebrated that on the Day of Atonement. But let's go back to the Feast of Trumpets. When we celebrated the other thing He must do here.

Now, that may sound strange, because we have been called for salvation. But we've been called for more than that. We have been called to be prepared to help Jesus Christ change the world. You've also been called to tell everybody about this. We have been called to tell people about this. There's the great majority of humankind, knowing what we know. We'll talk about this on the last great day.

The great numbers of the majority of humankind throughout history has not yet been called yet. So why were you and I called now? Well, I know why we were called. People ask me that question. All you have to do is go back to what Paul said. He says, you know, brother, that not many wives are called. In fact, you're the small, the weak, the nothing, the base. Okay, stop. He goes on and on and on.

God called you and me for one reason. This is nice to know. Actually, there's a great comfort in this. God called you and me because we asked that. Why did He call me not my neighbor? My neighbor's actually a better person. He called us because He can prove to the world how great He is through us. That's why we were called now. We're the proof of the greatness of the living God. We're the proof of the greatness of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

That's why we were called now. So that we can then serve Jesus Christ during this time period. When He comes back, He has to reconcile all things to God. That's His job. Now, the reconcile means to take something that is in a damaged relationship and restore it. So He has to take people, He has to take humanity, He has to take individuals, He has to take the entire earth that is in a damaged relationship with God and restore it to that relationship.

Now, what's interesting is He already has that planned out, what He's going to do, because you are part of the very first step in what God is going to do. Because you're going to be changed if we're there, if we understand this, if we live for this vision. We're going to be changed when Jesus Christ comes back to reign with Him.

I've heard people say, boy, I guess I get to be a king, I get to be in charge of things. Jesus Christ is going to be in charge of things. We're His servants. We're His servants. We're His priests. We're the ones He uses to help heal the world.

Is that a commission or what? You know, we talk about we need a purpose in life. Victor Frankl, a renowned psychologist, said that he found that the number one reason for mental illness in people that wasn't organic, it wasn't caused by something that damaged the brain, the number one reason is that they didn't have a purpose in life.

And it literally drove them into psychosis. What a purpose! To be prepared by God for that. But that means every day you and I are in preparation. And these are the first two things He does to bring back humanity into a relationship. That means, by the way, that you and I have to be reconciled to God now.

The reconciliation that takes there is just a completion of a work. When the saints are changed and they're resurrected, it is a completion of a work. You and I are in that work now. This is very serious because the price of failure not to be completed for this event is frightening. The price of failure not to be completed for this event is to be discarded by God. But He called us to be there. So when Christ begins to fulfill this commission to reconcile all things to God, the first thing He has to do is remove this covering, this veil between God and humanity, and He gets rid of Satan.

And the saints who are prepared or resurrected with Him, He now has His workforce. We are His workforce on a spiritual level. Now, there's other things He has to do to carry out this work. Because the next thing He has to do is He has to create a whole new system for everybody. There has to be one world government. Now, when people talk about conspiracy theories, there is one giant conspiracy theory going on.

Or not conspiracy theory, it's a conspiracy. God has a conspiracy. He's sending Jesus Christ back to set up one world government. And it's going to be one economic system. It's going to be one agricultural system. It's going to be one educational system.

And, I mean, does that sound strange today? Our pluralistic democracy to talk about these things seems strange, but this is what you and I have been called to prepare for. It's why we're strangers in a strange land, aliens in our own country. It is why we are not Democrats and we are not Republicans and we are not Independents.

We are monarchists. We are monarchists. We believe in a king, and we live for that king. When he comes back, he's setting up another kingdom. Look at Isaiah 42. Isaiah 42. Verse 1. This is considered one of the most prominent prophecies concerning the Messiah. Almost all, you know, Christians, many Jews, look at this, say this is the Messiah. They know where this picture is at the time. You know, this isn't some hidden Scripture. Everybody knows what this is about. Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my elect one, and whom my soul delights. God says I put my spirit upon him and he will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.

He is for the world. This message is for everybody. The message that the bad news, that this age of anxiety we live in is only going to get worse, to what gets so bad that it says in the Old Testament prophecies that people will cry out for death.

The good news is God will say it's enough. The good news is he stops it by sending Jesus Christ back. And he says he will not cry out nor raise his voice. There cause his voice to be heard in the street. In other words, Jesus Christ is going to be gentle to the world, not to those who fight against him.

But when he comes back to this damage, destroyed, just a world in which nobody believes in anything anymore, every religion you realize will have been destroyed, every economic system, no governments will exist anymore. There will be nothing left but chaos. When he comes back into that chaos, and after he gets people to stop fighting him, he's gentle.

Those who are prepared to serve with him will have to know how to be gentle. There's a time to be hard, and there's a time to be gentle. And he says he's going to be gentle with those people. Those damaged, hollow-eyed, disease-ridden, scared, starving, war-scarred, dying world.

He says, verse 3, a bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench. He will bring forth justice for truth. He will not fail nor be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth. And the coastland shall wait for his law. A government issues laws. Jesus Christ is not going to have a legislative branch. No one will make the laws but him. There will be no legislative branch in his kingdom. Just a judiciary that judges on those laws. He says, He says he's going to come to clean up the mess. A world that has been in prison ever since we were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. And so he sets up a whole new governmental system. And this is everything. His law has to go out. More than the Ten Commandments, people are going to have to be taught basic hygiene. How to get plants to grow.

How to take care of their families.

It's hard to imagine what it was to be like in Europe after World War II. But that is going to be mild compared to the way the world is. After World War II, there were tens of millions of people. In fact, there were millions of children whose parents had either been killed or they lost. Just wandering throughout Europe. Millions of them. It took years to sort that out. People without homes. People without identities. People who had been driven almost insane with what was going on.

The whole world is going to be that way. They said, well, that makes me anxious. If we have faith in God, and we believe that Jesus Christ is coming, and we are going to follow Him, then we can see the solutions instead of the problems.

And if you think the solutions are just getting the right people elected in the United States, it's not going to work. You don't change anything to your change-basic human nature, and that's not being changed. The question is, is it being changed in us?

Because the only way we're going to be there to see this world government set up is that human nature is going to be changed in us. So we're prepared for that. And after he sets up this world government, he does something that's very interesting. He takes Abraham's physical descendants, and he reconciles them to each other. Judah and all the tribes get reconciled. All the peoples who don't even know that they were part of ancient Israel. Now, why would he do that? Why would he do that? I mean, that's a physical thing. He already has the saints. He's resurrected them. I'll tell you why he'll do it. He tells us. Ezekiel 39. Ezekiel 39. Why would he go to the trouble to find all these people that had been Israelites and bring them back together? Well, I want you to remember what Israel was supposed to be. Israel was supposed to be God's example to the world, and much of their history they failed. They failed as God's example to the world. They became just like the world. So in Ezekiel 39 verse 21, we have this prophecy. God says, I will set my glory among the nations. All the nations shall see my judgment, which I have executed, and my hand which I have laid on them. This is Ezekiel 39. So the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day forward. And the Gentiles, or the nations, shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity because they were unfaithful to me. Therefore I hid my face from them, I gave them into the hand of their enemies, and they fell by the sword. Why is God going to bring them back together? So that Israelites, or Jews, can say... Jews, of course there's a lot more Israelites than just Jews, but Israelites can say, look at us, we were God's special people. Now it's so he can tell the world, look what I can do, even with them. It's just like he's going to tell them with the church. People are going to say, wow, if he can do that with them, he can do that with me. He says I'm going to gather them all together again because just like the saints now are his spiritual representatives to the world, guess who his physical representatives are going to be? The people that were supposed to do it ever since the time of Moses. He goes on, he says, According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions, I have dealt with them and hidden my face from them. Therefore thus says the Lord God, Now I will bring back the captives of Jacob and have mercy on the whole house of Israel, and I will be jealous for my holy name. And after they have borne their shame and all their unfaithfulness, in which they were unfaithful to me, when they dwelt safely in their own land and no one made them afraid, when I brought them back from the peoples and gathered them out of their enemies' lands, I am hallowed in them in the sight of many nations. And then they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who sent them into captivity among the nations, but also brought them back to their land, and left none of them captive any longer. And I will not hide my face from them any more. For I shall pour out my spirit on the house of Israel, says the Lord God. He isn't pouring out his spirit on those people, yet. He is going to.

The whole world will see he was able to sort through the physical descendants of Abraham, to bring them back together to do the job that they never accomplished. And then he took this church, which were just descendants from everybody, right? We're just descendants from Adam and Eve. Some are Israelites, some are Israelites. We're just a mix of people. And he was able to do that with them, with his spirit. Let's go to the mountain of the Lord, where we can learn his ways.

And he begins to reconcile those people back to each other and his people to him. And the next thing that happens from that, all this is a progressive. You get rid of, you resurrect the saints and get rid of Satan. Then you start reconciling this back together, piece by piece. He then begins to bring all the nations to him. All people. There isn't a person on this earth, even the most despicable one, that if they will not repent, doesn't have, if they will repent, I mean, has value to God.

There are people he's going to put in the lake of fire, and that's a reality.

But God said he wants all to repent. There isn't a person that doesn't have value to God, if they will repent. We forget that.

We forget the value God puts on a person.

He's wanting them to repent.

That's how he sees the world. I think of Jesus Christ sitting there and crying before Jerusalem, and I just want to gather you together, he said. I just want to reconcile you to me and to God, and he says, it's not time, and I can't do it. And he couldn't do it. It wasn't his time to do that yet. Reconciliation can't take place until he can sacrifice, so he had to do that first.

So he starts to bring all the nations together. Isaiah 2, this is always read two, three times, during the Feast of Tabernacles, Isaiah 2.

If we could just believe this, when we ride the Alpine Slide, which I guess I have to do, I have a confession to make. I've never done a zipline, so I guess I have to do that some time here. I've always wanted to do that. That's on my bucket list. You have a bucket list? I've always never done a zipline. These are fun. These are wonderful. We need to do these things, but that's not why we're here. We're here to rejoice before the Lord. If we rejoice and we're here to rejoice before the Lord, if we rejoice and it's not before the Lord, we're here for the wrong reasons.

This is about us and God. This is about us and Jesus Christ.

And it's a whole lot more about God and Jesus Christ than it is about us.

Isaiah 2, verse 2. Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on top of all the mountains. All nations will be ruled by Jesus Christ. And shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow to it. And many people shall come and say, Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths. Everybody is going to say, Let's go there! Let's find out what this is about. Who's going to teach them? If we don't learn it now, how do we teach that to them?

If our lives are no different than the rest of the world, how do we teach that to them? If we don't have the power of God's Spirit in us, how do we teach that to them? How?

If we war among ourselves, how do we teach the Arabs and the Jews not to war? How do we do that? If our marriages don't work, how do we teach theirs not to work? You and I are in training to teach the world God's way.

To teach them how they can be forgiven, because we've been forgiven. We have to teach them how to overcome, because we, through the power of God, have overcome. We'll never say to them, Let me tell you how I overcame. We will go to them and say, Let me tell you how God helped me overcome. That's what we'll do.

Let me tell you what God did. When this is about what we did, when we're fighting for us and our righteousness, we're in trouble. This is about what God does.

We have this honor being part of this.

At the last part of verse 3, he says, For out of Zion shall go forth the law of the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he will judge the nations. And he says they won't fight anymore. In fact, if you read through this, he talks about how they will take and they will change their fighting implements into agricultural implements.

Do you realize how the economy of the world would change right now if there were no more wars?

You know what's really scary, folks? If there were no more wars, the United States economy would absolutely collapse.

We're the biggest arms dealer in the world. There are wars going on, and we're supplying both sides. What do you think God thinks of that? What do you think the Almighty God thinks of that?

There's going to come a time when He will not protect this country. I think we're in that time. I tell you what makes me anxious. It's the time when He decides to stretch out His hand against the country. That frightens me. It's one thing for God to no longer protect us. It's another thing when He stretches out His hand, and He will.

He will.

And we have to recognize that.

We don't want to be part of this society when it happens. When He begins to reconcile these nations together, it begins to break down even more. Because one of the great things that He's going to have to do is He's going to have to put families together.

You know, when you start reconciling people, eventually it comes down to you reconcile individuals. God isn't just interested in reconciling nations. It's each individual, to God and to each other. What kind of society will that produce? He has a goal in mind. What will be produced when He starts to create families coming together? You and I live in a society where families are falling apart. They're just coming apart. We have to recognize that.

What will He create? Zechariah chapter 8.

Zechariah chapter 8.

Now, you'll probably hear many of these, or some of these throughout the feast. I stole every major Scripture. It's the benefit of speaking first.

No, there's plenty in there for all of us. Besides, I don't know if we can repeat any of these enough during these days. I don't know if we can say them enough.

Unless we're callous to them, unless we're callous to them, how do we say them enough? Zechariah chapter 8 verse 1.

He says, Again, the word of the Lord of Hosts came, saying, Thus says the Lord of Hosts, I am zealous for Zion with great zeal, with great fervor I am zealous for her. Thus says the Lord.

He's zealous for the descendants of Abraham, but I tell you what, he's zealous for his saints even more.

He's zealous for the whole world. There isn't a person who doesn't want to come back home.

He has to reverse the damage from Eden.

He says, He says, Thus says the Lord of Hosts, Would you go to Detroit and play in the streets?

Would you go to many major cities and play in the streets? Let your children play in the streets. How many of us older people, and the really old people like Mr. McCrady, how many of us have been someplace at night and said, I shouldn't be here?

Can you imagine a world where your child, you know, there's been in the news this baby that was stolen.

And I can't stand to watch anymore. I just turn off. I cannot stand to watch the agony those people are going through.

I have a three-month-old grandbaby, and I can imagine what they're going through.

Can you imagine your child wanders off in the middle of the city, and you don't have to worry?

Well, maybe a little. Maybe someone is feeding them some more candy than you want them to have. I mean, that's your biggest worry. Calm down. We'll find your mom down here to have another sucker. I mean, that's your greatest worry. Can you imagine a world like that?

The truth is, unless you can, you may not be there.

In here, and in here, we have to imagine it. Because we have to live it now, and we have to tell people about it. And when the church gets to it and doesn't want to tell people about it, that means it's not in our minds and it's not in our hearts. Because if it's in our minds and in our hearts, guess what? You can't hold it back. God's Spirit won't let you hold it back. Well, we won't, when we get to the place where we're like Jesus said, but if you're ashamed of me, I'll be ashamed of you. Well, we're ashamed of the message. God's ashamed of us.

We should not be able to hold this back.

We can't. We must tell the world.

I don't care how we do it. It doesn't matter to me if I'm on television next week or not. I'll get a sandwich board and walk up and down the streets of San Antonio.

It doesn't matter. Because we've got to tell it.

He goes on and talks about that... Verse 10 is very interesting. You can read all through this section here, where he talks about this time period. For he says, Before those days there was no wages for man or hire for beast. There was no peace from the enemy, for whoever went out or came in. For I said, All men, everyone against his neighbor.

He says, People will remember when there weren't any jobs and there wasn't enough food and they watched their children start. They'll remember the gangs that came in and took what little they had.

He says, I've stopped all that. Do you want to stop that?

We think we can't, but you've been called to do just that. You can't do it now. I can't stop anything.

I can't get my 2 1⁄2-year-old grandson to go to bed on time.

But we can.

The last thing he has to do in all this, to make this reconciliation complete, he's got to heal the earth.

He's got to heal the earth. The earth itself will be almost uninhabitable by the time he comes back.

Besides, what are you going to do with animals, with the nature they have now? And so, Isaiah 11.

Isaiah 11.

The picture we have here to the right, my right.

Isaiah 11, verse 1.

He talks about how the Messiah is coming, who's going to be descended from David.

It talks about how wonderful he's going to rule. And then if you skip down to verse 6, he says, The wolf, all she'll she'll dwell with the lamb, The leopard shall die down with the goat, The calf and the young lion and the fatling together, And the little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, Their young one shall lay down together, And the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

My 5-year-old granddaughter is scared to go outside of our cabin up here because she's heard of the bears.

My 2-1 by 2-1-year-old grandson, one of the first things he said to me was, I want to see bears.

Can you imagine that when you don't have to worry about that?

You don't have to worry about what an animal will do to your child.

God's going to make... He's going to heal the earth. There's other places, like in the book of Amos, it says that they'll plant food, it'll grow up so fast, that they can't keep up with the cycles of planting and harvesting.

And they won't have to use bug sprays.

They won't have to poison our foods and then poison us when we eat it.

There won't be these huge places where they bring cattle in and feed them and make them sick and then we eat the meat.

It's not going to happen. There'll be enough food for everybody, every human being. Now, it's going to take a lot of spiritual leadership to make that happen.

It's going to take a lot of healing.

And people are going to have to be healed, physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, socially, one person at a time.

That's what we'll have to do.

One of the things I've always looked forward to is making sure at that time, and I've thought about this a lot, people say, well, I want to do this during the, you know, when Christ comes back and I want to do this and I want to do that, and, you know, the Germans want to go beat up on the French and the French want to beat up on the Germans, and I just want to make sure a child never starves again.

It's not going to be easy. People are going to fight against Him, and at times we're going to have to be tough.

Remember, when Jesus comes back, He has an army with Him. Guess who it is? It's us.

It's the saints. Fortunately, we don't have to do fighting. He doesn't.

It's going to be tough. These people are going to change overnight. They don't even know. What are you going to do when your job is to go in to a town that was all Buddhists?

And you say, I'm going to go in and I'm going to teach Him God's way.

The first thing you may have to teach them is how to dig latrines.

That's how messed up the world will be. First thing I'm going to teach them is to get rid of Buddha. Okay, let's get rid of Buddha and then let's dig latrines.

This is going to be easy.

We have to believe it. We have to live for it. If we're just living Christianity for the good it gives us today, then we have something wrong in what we're understanding. Because let's face it, this life does give us a better life. You go through life either with God or without God. Troubles come either way. That's the only difference. Young people don't understand that. They think, well, if I don't live this way, I have a better life. And that's not true. Either way there's troubles. One's with God and one's without God. No, I can tell you it's better with God. It's a whole lot better with God. Jesus Christ is going to come back, and He's going to start this work of reconciliation. The world cannot make progress towards peace, equality, prosperity, until people become absolutely aware that the problem lies within each individual. You and I will never reach the potential that God wants for us until you and I come to grips with, instead of looking at the sin of others, look at the problem that's inside every one of us. Every one of us still has a corrupt human nature, and it must be changed. It's not easy, especially after years of doing this, that you still have it. I wouldn't ask you to show your hands. I still have it. It's got to be changed. The reason we can't change it is because the core of humanity's problem is spiritual, and the nature has to change. We have to go back to Eden before Satan. When Christ comes, universal peace won't happen overnight. We know that each generation will take it one step further away. Each generation will be one step more perfect. And at the end of the thousand years, God has to let Satan loose again in order to get them to go through the process of choosing him. The reason God wants us to choose is because love is a choice. He wants us to love him with all our heart and our mind and our soul. That takes a choice. We have to choose to love him. We have to choose to obey him. We have to choose to follow him. Don't be anxious, overly anxious. We can't stop all of it because we're just human beings. They'll be overly anxious because the world is coming apart around us. There's hope. You and I have been called to be reconciled to God right now in the two seminars we're going to be talking about. There's two seminars this week about reconciliation on a personal level. Because if we're going to be part of what Christ is doing, we'd better be doing it on a personal level between us and God right now. Jesus Christ is returning to establish God's government on this earth. And whatever you do this week, whatever fun you have, whatever fellowship you have, whatever meals you eat, whatever you do over the next eight days, remember you are here to celebrate, not this anxiety of the future. You are here to celebrate the wonderful time when Jesus Christ establishes God's kingdom on this earth, and you and I participate in that wonderful kingdom.