Fot - the Hope for Mankind

Good morning, everyone. We are in the coordinator's office here before services, and a group of ministers were in there. We were talking about what a wonderful spirit that has been here, this whole feast, and how much it's just wonderful to see people with God's spirit working together, coming to serve God and worship God together, and just what a wonderful thing that is, and how much we appreciate that.

And it's been a wonderful opportunity to be here. One of the things that I did when I left home was I told my wife this year at the feast, and especially since we had to travel about 2,000 miles to get here, it was a long drive. I was going to spend extra time making sure. I mean, I made a whole list. I actually wrote down what I was going to do. I was going to make sure I get eight hours of sleep a night. I was going to drink plenty of water. I was going to eat right.

I didn't get any desserts for a while. I was not going to eat a lot of red meat. I was going to eat a lot of vegetables, a lot of salad. I was going to exercise, and I did that and did it well. And I spent the last two days sick in bed. So go figure. I got out twice to go get something to eat and go back and collapse in bed again. But it did give me an opportunity to do something when you're sitting around the room and you're tired of watching the NFL Channel, which I don't get at home.

So it was fun for the first day. Someone had come to me after the sermon I gave at the beginning of the feast and asked me a question about the divorce that Joseph was going to have with Mary. And I said, you know, I thought about it later. I thought, well, the explanation I gave was what I heard in a lecture 30 years ago. I'll go look up what the Talmud says about it. So I went and looked up a little bit about the divorce proceedings of the first century in Judaism.

By the way, if you ever can't sleep at night, just get any of the volumes of the Talmud and look at it. It'll put you to sleep. But there were at least three different types of divorce, and the private divorce was a very interesting divorce. It was an actual divorce. But the difference was that in the writ of divorce, and if you remember Deuteronomy, there had to be a writ of divorce, you didn't give a cause. See, the public divorce, which was the most way divorces were done, was you brought someone publicly, you brought them before the elders, there were witnesses, and you actually had to give a cause.

Now, if any of you have ever studied first-century Judaism, you know there were two schools, Shami'ai and Hillel, who produced the rabbis, and they had all different kinds of arguments over what you could divorce someone over. One of the schools said if she was a bad cook, you could divorce her. So basically, you could divorce her over anything. By the way, women could divorce a man, but men could divorce women.

But the private divorce was interesting because you didn't put a specific cause, and since it was private, it could not be brought before the law. In other words, it was a shut case once that was done. So anyways, it was interesting to study that. I have been looking into the Talmud some lately. We've been working on a booklet Scott Ashley once produced on the history of the early church, first through the fourth centuries.

And well, there's why did what happened between the time of what Jesus taught and the time of Constantine when you have a totally different church, what happened in that time period. And we've been doing a great amount of research into first century, second century, BC writers, first century, and second century AD writers. Of course, the Talmud was written later, but it's basically the oral law written down. So we've been looking at that and trying to put together a lot of research so Roger Foster can write the booklet.

After the feast, I'll be giving him about 50 pages of research, which he will probably produce into about four pages of the booklet. But we're trying to make sure that we cover as much information as we can. So I think it'll be a very interesting booklet once we get it done. It's just a huge project to undertake that. We'll end up with 500 pages of research produced at 80 pages of booklet.

So bear with me today a little bit if I have a little week up here, but we'll get through it with God's help.

All of you probably have a photograph or a song or a movie that's set in your mind. Something that's set in your mind that you remember, maybe happened 20 years ago, 30 years ago. But if you hear that song or see that photograph, see that movie, it brings back memories. I have photographs that I saw a number of years ago that was just indolibally printed on my mind when I first saw it. Some of you might remember that won a Pulitzer Prize. There was a famine in the Sudan and one of the reporters was there at a Red Cross area and a little child had wandered into the camp towards where they were serving food. It's difficult to tell how old she was. I would guess somewhere between six and ten. She was emaciated. She had a bit of a pot belly, totally naked if I remember. And she had walked into the area. It was almost to where the food was and she collapsed. They knew they couldn't do anything for her and they had thousands of other people to try to feed so they just left her there to die. And when this photographer turned to take the picture, a big vulture landed beside her and was waiting for her to die. And he took the picture. It wasn't even the Pulitzer Prize. He was a photographer from Canada. Now, I thought about that picture many times over the years and it poses a very deep theological question. It's a theological question I wish to challenge all of Christianity with. Why? Why was that child's life have no value to God? Why? Because, you know, the common belief for the last 1,500 years of Christianity is that that child, no one knows she probably wasn't a Christian. The majority of people aren't. No one knows what gods or goddesses or what that child, whatever village she came from, what they worshiped. But for the last 1,500 years, the most common belief in Christianity is she is going to hell to burn and be suffered and tortured forever. As is the great majority of mankind. And my question is, how does a loving God do that?

My challenge to Christianity is how does a loving God do that? Maybe you know someone that agonizes over the death of a loved one. I know people who agonize because some uncle was a pretty bad guy and they think he's in hell suffering forever and ever. But when we stop to think about this question, it's a very large question. If you believe what the scripture says, that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life, you also believe what it says, that there's no other name under heaven except Jesus Christ by which you can be saved.

If you believe that, then you believe the majority of mankind throughout history is not saved. They never knew Jesus Christ. What about that little village in Aldermangolia in the 14th century where everybody got some plague and died off? 300 people in some village that no one ever knows about. No one knows their names.

They were lost to history. They never knew Jesus Christ. Why is it that Jesus Christ has never chosen to show up in Japan like he did in Judea 2,000 years ago? So you have people, century after century, generation after generation, who never know him. Why is it that the Buddhists, the Hindus, never have a chance? Some believe, well, everybody sometime in their lifetime hears of Jesus Christ. It's not true. What about the people who lived before Jesus Christ? What about the millions and hundreds of millions who lived before he ever came?

That's a theological challenge. How does a loving God deal with that? You know, when we talk about the gospel, well, let me, before I talk about that, let me talk about how Christianity has tried to deal with that over the centuries. One of the things that launched the Crusades and the Inquisition through the Middle Ages was Christians believing that if they could torture people into accepting Jesus Christ before they died, they would get to go to heaven.

So torturing somebody for days and then killing them so that they accept Jesus Christ before their death was considered a merciful thing. It saved them from an eternity of torture. I don't know about you, but I find that a very twisted religion.

If I torture you for days and I kill you but you say Jesus Christ before you die, then you don't suffer forever. You get to go to heaven. The other idea was purgatory. They tried to come up with that as an answer. That was a logical attempt to deal with it. The problem is, it's not in the scripture, it's just not there. That God would take people that maybe weren't totally evil and He would just let them suffer for tens of thousands of years and then let them go to heaven. If you ever have read Dante's Inferno, there's a very special place in hell for Plato and Aristotle and Socrates because they were such good guys, even though they were pagans, that they don't really get tortured.

They get a really nice little compartment in hell where it's not so bad because they were trying to figure out how do you answer this question? Once you accept, there's only one name under heaven that you can be saved. Once you accept Jesus Christ came to save humanity but you have to accept Him and the majority of people never accepted Him, once you accept the idea of hell, you have a real problem.

Think of all the missionaries who have spent their lives, some of them actually dying, to go to remote places around this globe throughout the centuries just to bring the message of Jesus Christ because if the people said, I accept Jesus Christ, it didn't matter if they were still pagans, they now got to go to heaven. And there's missionaries who died to bring that message because they really believed they were saving people from eternal punishment.

Today our society is moving away from that old basic Christian belief. I say Christian, I mean a Christian of. I put quotes around that Christianity. We're moving away from that. The answer today that many people have come up with, and if you asked a lot of Christians in the United States, Protestants and Catholics, they would tell you the answer is pluralism. That as long as you're a good person, which I find interesting because the moment you say that, you're and because the works come from yourself, you're teaching salvation by works, but we won't go there.

The moment you're a good person on your own, you get to go to heaven. It doesn't matter how you approach God. If you approach Him as Buddha, that's okay. If you're Hindu, that's okay. If you're Muslim, that's okay. Now if you've ever looked at the Quran, which is even more convoluted than the Talmud, you realize that the Quran and the Bible are not compatible. They are two different religions. Yet we live in a world which says, more and more, doesn't matter what your religion is.

It doesn't matter how you experience God. If you experience God as the God of the Bible, if you experience God as just sort of a good force, sort of like Star Wars, if you experience God as the power and spark within you, if you experience God as Mother Earth, as long as you love everybody, you get to go to heaven. That's the modernistic answer to people suffering forever. They can't accept that a loving God would do that, so they end up with everybody gets to go, except maybe Adolf Hitler.

There's a few that may not get to go, but most everybody gets to go, which of course makes the Bible a lie. That makes the Bible a lie. So the challenge, the question still stands. What about the billions of people that have lived throughout the centuries, throughout the millennium, that never knew God, never knew Jesus Christ, what is going to happen to them? And when we talk about the gospel, we talk about the good news, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to this earth to die for the sins of humanity, that He's been resurrected.

He now is the leader of the church, and that He is coming as a soon-coming King to bring God's Kingdom to this earth. But you know, there is another aspect to the gospel that has basically been removed from so much of the Christian consciousness in this country. It's one of the reasons why, by the way, this country is deteriorating. It's one of the reasons why this country's morals, and there's a collapse going on inside of our society, is because we no longer believe in God's judgment.

We believe in God's mercy. We do not believe in God's judgment. We believe or want Jesus Christ as our Savior. Our country does not want to live with Jesus Christ as their master. Let's go to John 5.

Breaking in a little bit to the middle of the thought pattern that Jesus Christ is going through here.

John 5, verse 24.

Most assuredly I say to you, he who hears my word and believes in him who sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death into life. So he says, the person who comes to Christ, and of course if you study what John taught, to come to Christ is more than a belief in him.

You know, I believe in a lot of people. I believe in people I haven't met.

It doesn't mean I am a disciple or follower or in a relationship with that person.

To know Jesus Christ is to be in a relationship with him. He says, Most assuredly I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father is life in himself, he is also granted the Son to have life in himself, and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man. Do not marvel at this, he said, for the hour is coming, which all who are in the graves will hear his voice, and come forth, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation. There is a resurrection to life, and there is a resurrection to condemnation.

That's the other side of the Gospel. The Gospel is good news, but you've got to tell them bad news first. The good news is God loves you, God wants to give you the Kingdom.

The bad news is you're really messed up and you need to repent. That's why the Gospel, which is good news, is never really accepted by the majority of people who hear it. They don't like the other side of it, which is repent. And there is a judgment that will come. And Jesus Christ said here, and if you read through the rest of this passage, and other parts of John's Gospel, he talks about how he is going to raise people up from the dead. There is a resurrection from the dead.

Now, what I want to do today, no new profound information, I just want to go through the concept of the first resurrection and the great white throne judgment.

Because in these two simple concepts, this simple doctrine, we face that fundamental problem of why does God not love that little child who died in the Sudan?

That question that Christianity cannot solve except by doing away with the Bible.

Oh, well, God probably loved her anyways, and she's probably a good person, so she probably went to heaven. But that's not what the Scripture says.

So, let's start in Revelation 20. Basic Review. Revelation 20. I like the basics.

The basics answer the most profound questions.

Revelation 20, verse 1.

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and the great chain of his hand, and he laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the saint and the devil, and bound him a thousand years. And so here we were this last week here, celebrating that thousand year, that millennium. But what happens after that?

He says he cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal on him, said he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. And after these things, he must be released for a little while.

So, there is a resurrection. Satan is, of course, bound for a thousand years.

He's released at the end of that thousand years for a short period of time.

Verse 4. And I saw thrones, and they that sat on them, a judgment was committed to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus, for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. Verse 5. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. So, the first resurrection is that when Christ returns and when Satan is bound at the beginning of the thousand years, there is another resurrection that happens later. The rest of the dead. Verse 6. He says, Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power. But they shall be preached of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. Then verse 7 talks about Satan being released for a short period of time. So, we have this first resurrection.

Who is in the first resurrection? The saints.

What is it like to be in the first resurrection? It is blessed. To be in the first resurrection is a special blessing from God. It is a privilege from God to be called to be part of that first resurrection. What is it like to be in that first resurrection?

Probably heard some of this on the Feast of Trumpets.

Let's go to 1 Corinthians 15 and let's review it. 1 Corinthians 15.

Let's pick it up in verse 35 because the question that the apostle Paul is dealing with here is the question of what is it like to be in the resurrection.

Paul's emphasis, of course, is on the first resurrection when Christ returns. He says in verse 35, But some will say, How are the dead raised? With what body do they come?

You know, what is it like when you are in the resurrection? What kind of body do you have?

Foolish one. This is really a foolish question. What you sow is not made alive unless it dies.

And what you sow you do not sow that body which shall be but mere grain. Perhaps wheat or some other grain.

But God gives it a body as He pleases and to each seed its own body.

He says, you know, when you go out and you plant a seed, you go out and you plant a tomato seed.

You don't grow just another tomato seed. It turns into something else.

He says, so what you plant is it what is reaped in the end?

Talking about this physical body. He goes on to explain in verse 39. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men and other flesh of animals and other fish and other birds.

He says, just look how there are different kinds of animals in the animal kingdom.

A bird is a different composition in many ways than a human being.

One thing, they have feathers. They have a beak. He says, there's also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies, but the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There's one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars, for one star differs from another star in glory.

So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption. It is raised in incorruption.

It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown in natural body. It is raised in a spiritual body. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.

So at the return of Jesus Christ, the graves open, all the saints, Old Testament, New Testament.

The church that is alive at the time is resurrected and given a spiritual body.

And it will never get a cold.

I look forward to that day.

It doesn't get old. It doesn't get sick.

We need to be reminded of this because this is the goal that we're working towards.

And the older you get, it's hard sometimes to motivate a 24-year-old to think about the resurrection.

After you pass 30, it gets a little easier. After you pass 50, it gets profound.

Because you realize this one wears out and you sure hope you get a new one someday.

That is the great resurrection when Jesus Christ returns. I was at a funeral one time and a, I think it was a Methodist minister, read this entire chapter, the longest funeral I've ever been to.

He read this entire chapter and then skipped a couple of verses.

And I don't think he did it on purpose. He just skipped them.

And at the end of reading this chapter, he said, I know this person is somewhere waiting a resurrection, but I don't know where she is.

And I don't know when she'll be resurrected.

I can only tell you she's someplace waiting to be resurrected. And it was a very, he was almost desperate in trying to explain this.

The verses he skipped, whether on purpose or by accident, started in verse 51.

This is what he missed in his sermon.

Behold, I tell you of history, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. That's the verses he did not read. And then he said, I don't know when this will happen.

And he skipped the two verses. That would have told him what would happen.

The confusion, the profound confusion that is caused by the belief that this is the only day of salvation and the majority of humankind is tortured forever, has caused many people to give up Christianity.

Has caused many people to give up Christianity.

How could a loving God do that? We're back to the same question.

We know there is a first resurrection. We know that happens at the beginning of the millennium.

Those people are a special group of people.

They go back to the patriarchs, some of the people through the history of Israel, many, and the great majority, will be the people of the church for that first century A.D. on.

People who were called from all different backgrounds, all different nationalities, all different races, brought together to learn God's way to produce, as we talked about at the beginning of the feast, the bride for Christ to be his help into something very, very important. Yes, to be his help in carrying out the millennium.

But the millennium isn't the end of the plan.

The millennium is not the end of the plan.

In fact, everything that has happened before is aimed towards the focal point of what happens at the end of the millennium.

The whole plan of God is not just the return of Jesus Christ. That's not just the gospel.

The whole plan of God is zeroed in down on what this day is all about.

This day tells us and answers all the questions of why.

What happens to all those people? Let's go back to Revelation 20.

Revelation 20.

Verse 7-10 talks about Satan being released at the end of the millennium, and then removed forever.

You and I have never lived in a world without Satan.

I don't think any of us, I include myself in there, understand the enormous influence he's had on us.

We've never lived in a world without Satan.

Satan is now bound forever. He is removed from having any influence on the creation of God.

The whole broadcasting of his attitudes and his thoughts into humanity is removed.

Something that a majority of humanity has never even understood and recognized.

And then we have verse 11.

Now, there is sort of an idea about the Great White Throne Judgment, sometimes among very conservative fundamentalist Christians.

And I saw a tract one time that sort of summarized the viewpoint that is common among the fundamentalist on the Great White Throne Judgment.

And it showed what was supposed to be Jesus sitting in a big chair. Look, you know what it looked like? It looked like the Lincoln Memorial. You ever went to the Lincoln Memorial? He's sitting in this big chair looking very sternly, and people are lined up just to infinity. It's every human being. And he had two levers, and they were standing over a trap door. And if he pushed one, you could see people falling down to hell.

And if he pushed the other, they were drifting off into heaven.

And that's sort of the idea that everybody appears to be, oh, hell for you, heaven for you, hell for you. And of course, he's going to be pushing that hell lever all day long.

But that's where everybody goes.

But the Scripture tells us about something different than the first resurrection. And this is very important. We understand what the first resurrection is. It happens at the beginning of the Millennium, and it also is a spiritual resurrection.

The people resurrected in the first resurrection are given spiritual bodies.

That's what Paul says. They live like Christ lives.

Christ was no longer bound by physical laws.

Although he did seem to enjoy sitting down and eating food with his disciples, but he was no longer bound by physical laws. He walked through walls, went to see his father, came back.

I'm not even sure how to explain that.

He went to see his father.

And so we will be like that. We will see him face to face. We will meet our Creator. We will meet our Father face to face.

We will see the heavens as it is.

We will see angels, which we know are around us, but we don't see them.

That's what it's like to be in the first resurrection.

But there's another resurrection talked about in the Scripture, and not always in a negative sense.

And when it's described in the Scripture, it is not described in the sense of immediate judgment.

Let's go back to 2 Corinthians 4. Because I want to lay this... you know this, I mean, you all know this by heart. But I want to lay a foundation for a couple of Scriptures we're going to go through.

2 Corinthians 4.

Starting in verse 3.

Paul says, But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.

Now, what you remember, those who are dying.

We've talked about the second death, which was mentioned in Revelation 20. Here he talks about people who are dying, whose minds the God of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is in the image of God, should shine on them. And the God of this world has blinded them.

And the fact is, unless God unblinds somebody, they do not even know that they are blinded.

Unless God does something with someone's mind, that person cannot leave their blindness and come into the light.

They cannot come into sight. That's important to understand.

Now, one person who understood that was John Calvin. Many of you probably have heard of John Calvin, one of the great leaders of the Protestant Reformation.

John Calvin understood that the world was blinded, and only God could unblind them. But since he believed that this was the only day of salvation, and everybody was getting their chance now, here's the conclusion he came to. God, at the beginning of time, looked out over the sea of humanity and said, all of you are condemned to hell.

But you know, to show you I'm a merciful God, I am arbitrarily going to pick you, you, you, you, you, and you, and I'm going to give you salvation. Everybody else gets to go to hell. And the reason why is, because you can spend eternity in hell looking to those people and saying, oh, I wish God would have given me that mercy. And the people in heaven could look down on you and enjoy your suffering. Well, there's a real religion I want to be part of.

There's a God I want to worship. But that was John Calvin's answer.

See, this is a challenge to Christianity. Is that the God of the Bible?

Is that the God of the Bible?

That those in hell will spend eternity playing, oh, God, if you'd have just shown me mercy, and those who were picked arbitrarily will be enjoying the suffering of those who are suffering.

But he didn't know how to answer this scripture. They're blinded by Satan.

Only God can unblind them.

Romans chapter 5. You know, if Paul answers the problem, Paul answers the problem in Romans 5, and he says, basic material today, core material that this day is all about. And that's what you'll hear this afternoon, too.

Basic core material that answers these profound questions.

You know what worries me? Nobody's even asking these questions anymore.

You know, you can talk to people about the truth when they're asking the questions.

No one's even asking the questions anymore, because if you believe in pluralism, everybody gets to go to heaven anyways. So it doesn't matter.

Romans 5. Let's start with verse 8. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. This is the core of the gospel message, right? So you can become children of God and become part of His kingdom. Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath. See, judgment. There is judgment. Whose wrath is this? God's wrath. No one wants to admit that God will judge people, that God will actually put people into a lake of fire. That's a whole other subject. But there is a lake of fire. There is an eternal judgment to death, the second death. But we have to understand the difference between the first death and the second death to really understand that. For if we were enemies, for if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. Jesus Christ living through us now is what gives us salvation. It's that change. So yes, there are works to be done. To simply accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and then not do anything is voodoo. It's magic. God waves a magic wand. You are a bad person. Yeah, you're a good person. Go ahead and be a bad person, but I'll save you anyways. Well, what makes that person different than a bad person? Nothing. Christ must live in us.

A change must take place. Verse 11, and not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom now we have received the reconciliation. You and I are reconciled to God. We have a relationship with God. Therefore, just as though one man sin entered through one man, sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all have sinned. Now that's very, very important.

All men have sinned and all men have died.

The Gospel is that the people who are dying are blinded to the Gospel. All people, except the people who happen to be alive, the saints are alive at the return of Jesus Christ, and go through that immediate change, which is a death, but it's not the same as other people dying. All people die. All people have to be changed. Nobody goes into the kingdom of God corruptible. All people die because all have sinned.

Jesus Christ's sacrifice did not erase all the physical penalties we suffer because of sin.

I won't ask you to raise your hands, but how many of you, please don't raise your hand, how many of you are suffering now in your life because of sins you've committed to the panel? I can raise my hand on that one, right? Of course we're still, we still suffer some of the physical penalties, and all people wear out and die. Our bodies and our minds were not designed to live in the world we live in. Realize that. We were not designed to live in the sinful world. It kills us. It wears us out and tears us up, and we die. We were designed to live this way.

But verse 13, now remember, he says, all have sinned. Now, if you want to know what Paul's definition of sin is, you don't just have to go to Romans 7, 7, where he says, I do not know sin except by the law. In other words, Paul says, it is the law that defines sin. Without law, there is no sin. For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin was not imputed where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who was a type of him who was to come. Wait a minute, wait a minute. So the people who lived before the law was given to Moses died because they sinned, but there is no sin if there is no law. That statement can only mean one thing. The law existed before Moses, it just was not known. If they all died because they broke the law, but the law wasn't given to Moses, it means that humanity did not know the law of God before Moses. You know what? The majority of humanity today don't know the law of God. Yet they die, don't they? Because they break it.

But there's an important little half a sentence in here. Let's go back to the beginning of verse 13. For until the law sin was in the world. Remember, his own definition is, law defines sin. So there was the breaking of the law before the law was given to Moses.

We know Abraham knew the law, but he's talking about humanity here.

Sin was not imputed where there is no law.

The word imputed there is a very important word.

The Greek word that's used there needs. It is not put to their account.

It's not put to their account. All people are dying. All people are perishing.

The world is dying because they are cut off from God. Because they are blinded by the God of this world. You and I have come into the light. We're moving towards life. Paul talked about how the physical man may be dying, but we're being created so that we will be given a spirit body.

We're being created into a new creature. We heard during the feast here about the caterpillar and a butterfly. That's just a type for us of what we become.

As we're being created into this new creation. Many of you remember years and years ago an old man saying, salvation is creation. God is creating his children. So we've been brought into life. But you know what? The physical body is still dying. Because it wasn't designed to live forever.

God intended everyone to receive something else. Eternal life that doesn't die. That doesn't die. The world is dying that physical death.

They have not yet been judged.

Eternal judgment. Okay? Temporary judgment is upon them.

Temporary judgment. They've broken the law of God. They live miserable lives. They get sick. They die. They have accidents. We do too, by the way. But we're in a different relationship with God. They have a judgment on them. But it is a temporary judgment. Eternal judgment has not yet been carried out on the world. It is not carried out until the great white throne judgment. And then eternal judgment is carried out on the world. You and I are under eternal judgment now. In this life now. We are called by God to receive eternal life. We give this up.

We turn against God. We give up His Spirit. We're under a very harsh eternal judgment.

But you know, eternal judgment, we always think of the negative. There's a positive judgment.

There is a positive judgment in which people are forgiven. And people are also given eternal life.

And so the world is not yet being judged eternally. That is why they are not yet being offered the first resurrection. So what is being offered to them? The second resurrection. How is that different? Let's go back to Deuteronomy chapter 30. Deuteronomy chapter 30. God had just used Moses to tell the Israelites about blessings and cursings. He also had told them that they would someday receive or that their nation would be destroyed because they would not obey Him. They hadn't even gone into the Promised Land yet. And they're being told, there will come a time when your fathers or your children and their children and their children, there will come a time when they won't obey Me and I'm going to destroy you as a nation. And then chapter 30 of Deuteronomy verse 1.

Now it shall come to pass when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse. The curse was they were going to be destroyed as a nation, which I have set before you. And you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God drives you. So He told them, the ancient Israelites, there's going to come a time I'm just going to destroy you as a nation. I'm going to drive you out all over the world. And you return to the Lord your God and obey His voice according to all that I command you today, you and your children with all your heart and with all your soul. Now this is very interesting. He could have said you, which could have been just generic. He could have said your children, which would have meant some future generation. But He says you and your children. The point being made here is He's telling them, you and the next generation, the next generation, the next generation, all of you are going to have some experience here together. He says, verse 3, that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you again from the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you. And if any of you are driven out to the Father's parts of their heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you and from there He will bring you. And then the Lord your God will bring you to the land which your Father's possessed. You shall possess it. He will prosper you and multiply you more than your Father's. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul that you may live. He told them there's going to come a time where you're going to have a different relationship with me. The Old Testament then begins to give, from this point on, little hints until we get to the prophets. We have some very dramatic statements. Little hints of a physical resurrection. Now, this is the context of ancient Israel. If we understand this, we understand what happens in the world. Remember, the great white throne judgments, the great white throne judgment, is all humanity. All humanity. But since God was working with them at this point, He gives them the understanding of what is going to happen to them. This isn't the first resurrection.

Because the first resurrection, you're given a spiritual body. This is a resurrection to a physical body, resurrected back to physical life. It is in physical life that we choose. And it is in physical life that we receive then the judgment whether to receive that eternal inheritance, an eternal life, or to receive the second death. It has not been imputed to them yet whether they're going to receive the second death or not. It has not yet been put to their account. All men die. They are perishing those who have been blinded. But that is the first death. Look at Ezekiel 37. You know we can't have a sermon on this day without going to Ezekiel. We get to some of these latter prophets. And we have a number of statements about resurrection, eternal judgment. No Malachi talks about the second death. But here in Ezekiel 37, verse 1, Verse 1, The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and sent me down in the midst of the valley. It was full of dry bones. So Ezekiel was brought in a vision through this valley just filled with bones. Dead people. People had been dead for a long time. And he caused me to pass by them all around and behold there was very many in the open valley. And indeed they were very dry. If you ever find a, if you ever find an animal that's been dead for a long time, it's hard to find bones because other animals eat the bones. But occasionally you'll find a hollowed out dried bone. Been there a long time. And he said to me, said a man, can these bones live? Now Ezekiel will do something. But God asked you a question. It's rhetorical. Most of the time he really doesn't expect an answer. I've never seen yet where God in the Bible really came up to someone and said, you know, I'd really like to have your opinion on this. He says, can these bones live? So I answer and said, oh Lord God, you know, good answer. Again he said to me, prophesied to these bones and say to them, oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, surely I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live. And I will put sinews on you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and then you will know that I am the Lord. This is a physical resurrection, a massive physical resurrection.

So I prophesied, verse 7, Ezekiel says, and I commanded and as I was commanded, and I prophesied that there was a noise and suddenly a rattling and the bones came together, bone to bone. Indeed I looked, the sinews of the flesh came upon them and the skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. And he said to me, prophesied to the breath, prophesied, and I said to man, and sage of the breath, thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain and they shall live. So I prophesied that he commanded me, and breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.

He said to me, he said to man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.

Remember Deuteronomy? You and your descendants. You and your descendants. He says, and I will change your heart. He says, these are the whole house of Israel. They indeed say our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off. Therefore prophesied and say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold all my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves and bring you to the land of Israel, that you will know that I am the Lord, but I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up from your graves. A resurrection! But it is a physical resurrection. I will put my spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land, and that you shall know that I the Lord have spoken it and performed it, says the Lord. Israel was told that the majority of them did not have God's spirit, so their relationship with God was limited. It's not that they did not have a relationship with God. A person can have a relationship with God on a very limited basis and still not have his spirit.

We see that in the scripture.

But they were not being eternally judged yet. Now, if he says this to them, how much more does he say that to the world when he said, you didn't even know you were blinded, so I did not put it to your account? Did he say they get away with it? No. Look at the mess humanity's lived in. No one's got away with anything, folks.

No one gets away with anything. But he says, I did not pass eternal judgment on you yet.

You suffer the temporary physical results of your sin every day, and everybody dies.

But everybody gets resurrected. Everybody gets resurrected. And everybody gets an opportunity.

Why would he do that?

There is an aspect of God's nature sometimes we do not really grasp. We look at his mercy and love. That's what motivates him to do this. He loves all humanity. He loves all humanity. Every little person that's ever lived.

You know, I think of the Crusades, the Christian armies would come up. They did this in Turkey. Well, what is now modern day Turkey? It was Turkey at the time. But one of the Crusades, they came up to every village, and the priest would bless the village. The God would save every Christian that was in the village, but allow them to kill every Muslim and every Jew.

And then they would march into the village and kill everybody.

And they had destroyed dozens of villages before they found out that entire part of the Ottoman Empire, well, no, this was before the Ottoman Empire, that entire part of what is now Turkey had all converted to Christianity. They killed them by the thousands. They'd already converted.

But they blessed it.

I think of how does God allow that by that definition, by that theology? How does God allow that?

Think of all those people. Think of people you know.

People who died, beat us to death. You know, I've done funerals for people that nobody was there.

Maybe one or two old people that vaguely remembered the person.

A person who died and no one even remembered.

All their friends were already gone. Their family was already gone.

Generations come, generations go. All we are is that rock thrown into a lake, right?

You see the ripples and then it's calm again. If that's all there is, as evolution teaches, boy, this is a sorry life. I mean, it's a great life. There's lots of fun, but eventually you wear out.

And there's so much evil. There's so much pain. God's love motivates him.

But that's not entirely just the reason why he gives everybody that chance. There's not a second chance. There's no chance. Why does he give everybody that chance? It's because God understands and created, it's part of his mind, the concept of justice. That's why we all suffer results of our sins. And that's why all of us suffer death. Even if it's that change at the resurrection, it's a type of dying. There is justice. You know, if God wanted to do away with the law, it's simple. All he had to do is say, I do away with the law. He surely wouldn't have had to send Jesus Christ here to go through all that suffering. Jesus Christ did not suffer and die to do away with the law. Jesus Christ came to suffer and die because of justice, because the righteous God requires for us, these flawed human beings to come before him. He requires us to bring a sacrifice. And the only sacrifice you and I can bring worth bringing is our own lives. It's all we got.

It's all we got. Bringing a lamb is a pretty poor substitute. But Jesus Christ paid it.

Justice is served so that the law is satisfied because the law is an expression of the mind of God. But so is justice. He carried out that ultimate act of justice motivated by love so that we're allowed to go have a relationship with him, be forgiven, and be changed. Why would he deny that opportunity to the world? Who are blinded by Satan? You know, when these people come up, there is no Satan. I cannot imagine what it is like to be a human being without Saint Messing with our minds all the time.

Because he's messing with our minds all the time.

All the time. Especially in attitudes.

And you're the hardest sin to deal with is self-righteousness because you believe you're absolutely right. He's playing with our minds all the time. Those people come up without Satan around. They come up into a world that has been prepared for them for a thousand years.

And guess who's going to help create that world? The saints.

Then the real work begins. The thousand years isn't the real work. The thousand years is the preparation for the real work. All humanity comes up and they get to choose. I have no idea how they're resurrected. I've wondered if they're all resurrected naked. It would tend to cut down on fights. You know. The poor guy that was eaten by a shark. Where does he come up?

From the shore, I suppose. Probably not out in the ocean.

We're not talking about a few million or a hundred million. We're talking about billions of people. A world prepared for them. No Satan around. And the justice of God is very interesting. You know, even in the United States, we have in our system of law, the concept of the person who has severe mental handicaps is not judged by the law in the same way a rational person is. Right? Justice demands that. Let me give an example, just not even a handicap. My two-year-old granddaughter, last year at the feast, we walked into a store and there were a bunch of little children standing around. And she looked at them and there was a big vat of toys, little stuffed animals. She ran over and, before I could stop her, grabbed toys and gave them to each of the children. They came over to grandpa with this big smile like, look what a good girl I am! She just stood there smiling! Now, she and grandpa had already had a run-in once about the concept of stealing. Okay, so we'd already had that little talk. She thought she was now doing something good. She was being generous. The idea that she was doing it with someone else's stuff didn't enter the little brain. At that point, punishing her would serve no purpose.

Explaining to her that that's not her stuff, then the panic took over. She had to go gather all the stuff back up, right, and put it back. Or she's really in trouble. Now what's grandpa gonna do?

Then she came to grandpa and I said, go ahead and pick a toy. I'll buy you one for you. And then she got it and I paid for it. Now it's hers. But I did not punish her because she did not understand the concept. We understand if a person who is severely handicapped got angry with someone and killed them. They don't suffer the same penalty under the law of the United States as someone who is rational, do they? And we understand that.

We wouldn't expect the same penalty if the person doesn't know the difference between right and wrong.

You know why we understand that? Justice. The person who does it on purpose deserves the full measure of the law. The person who doesn't understand, well, we put them in a a home or something. We don't give them the death penalty. Just like I would take that two-year-old and punish her. Now I'd already punished her for stealing once. So now she knew the concept. She hadn't had the concept before. She knew it now. Now when she realized she was stealing, what did she do? She scared her to death. Grandpa's really going to be upset with me. Take all the toys back. How is God?

How does a righteous God look on all humanity, blinded by the God of this world?

All humanity who's in a state of insanity. If you look at what the millennium is going to be like, if you look at this world, this is insane. Who lives in an insane asylum and says, I'm going to torture you forever. He doesn't do that. All they suffer, just like we suffer, but it's not put to their account. There comes a time they must choose, just like you and I are choosing now. There comes a time they must choose. Yes, there is a lake of fire. Yes, there is eternal judgment, but they are not receiving their eternal judgment right now because God is just.

He will not judge someone until they have the right to choose, and a blinded person cannot see. How do you judge a blind person and say, describe the color red?

And I'm going to pass judgment on you if you can or can't.

We wouldn't do that. They can't tell the difference. So God's eternal judgment is not on them yet. This is a real great message, and this core message is different than any other Christian church out there, except for a handful that see this.

We see the world totally different. Oh, we hate the evil. We should be angry with the people who are doing evil. But what do we want from them? I can't wait till God tortures them, or I can't wait till God gives them the opportunity to repent. Do you really want anybody to die forever, the second death? I can't think of anybody. There are going to be people ending up that way.

I wish, I hope everybody repents. I hope they do, but they won't. They won't. But God is fair, and God will give everyone a fair chance. There is an even playing field when it comes to eternity. And that's what the great white throne judgment is all about. God's going to ask them, are you sick of it enough to repent? Do you want to leave the insane asylum and come into his kingdom? And there will be some who don't. Just like today, there will be some who will go back to the insane asylum. And God will have to judge what he does with them. What is it like after the great white throne judgment? It is a period of time. It's not Christ sitting there with two levers. It's a time of teaching so choices can be made. What's it like after that? Revelation chapter 21.

Revelation chapter 21.

Verse 1.

This is the beginning.

Everything that's happened with humanity up to this point is just preparation.

This is the beginning of what God is going to do.

He now has a family and a universe.

Now, I saw a new heaven and a new earth, but the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, the 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. All people, the people from China, We're going to be talking about the people who worshiped trees and rocks, and to this day still worship pagan gods. Four out of five people. It's a little more than that. Almost four and a half out of six people on the face of the earth today are either atheists or pagans. He says, and God will... Most of those people, I assume most, who come up in that resurrection and see... They're out of the insane asylum for the first time. They get a chance to choose with a clear mind. They see Jesus Christ is living with the earth. They see the earth as it was intended to be. There are spirit beings to teach them and to train them. There are physical human beings who were born during the millennium, who were there to help them. And they come up by the billions. Do you really think it's going to be hard for a lot of them? Having died has got to have a profound effect on you, by the way. Right? Having died and being resurrected, and then God saying, by the way, the second time you don't wake up, has got to have a profound effect on you. The second time you don't wake up, folks. So let's sit and talk. I think about it in Isaiah. He said, let's sit and talk. What do you want here? Let me teach you the right way. I have a whole people. I have spirit beings I have prepared just for you, so that humanity can become his children. Verse 4, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death, or sorrow, or crying. There shall be no more pain, and the former things have passed away. He says, Then he who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said to be right, for these things are true and faithful. And he says to John, It is done. I am the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning, and the end. I will give of the fountain of the water of life, freely to him who thirst. He who overcomes shall inherit all things. And then he tells why he does this for the... This is why God created Adam and Eve. This is why he's done everything he's done through history. Through the patriarchs, through Israel, through the church, the millennium. This is why. He who overcomes shall inherit all things. And I will be his God, and he shall be my son. The reason God made this in the first place is because he wanted kids. Do you think he's going to take the majority of these kids and condemn them? The idea of hell is cruel. But condemn them without giving them a chance to know him? That doesn't fit the God of the Bible. It doesn't fit the God, the Creator, who wants children. He's also a God of judgment. But he wants children. I started this sermon by talking about the South African... I said it was Canadian. It was actually South African, I believe. Kevin Carter was his name. The journalist who took the picture of that little girl in the Sudan was on the cover of Time or Newsweek. Like I said, it won the Pulitzer Prize. Kevin Carter traveled all over the world, taking pictures of war and starvation and human suffering at its worst.

He wrote, of vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain, of starving, of wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen.

At age 33, Kevin Carter killed himself.

He could not take the pain.

Do we think...

And we challenge Christianity? You know, you and I shouldn't be ashamed of what we believe. I think sometimes we're afraid. We challenge Christianity. There is something wrong with a Christianity...

...that says, those people have no value.

This day is the hope of an insane and sick and dying world. And if it doesn't bother you, the world you live in, they get closer to God because there's something wrong with you.

If this world doesn't bother you, there's something wrong with you. But that doesn't mean that God has given up on these people.

There is a hope. The majority of humanity who has never had the opportunity to know their Creator is going to have a chance to know their Creator in the Great White Throne Judgment.

This almost unknown truth is the reason we are here.

Because we're just the next step in the play-in that culminates at this time.

This is the reason we're here. God loves all humanity. Every human being, I don't care when she lived or he lived or where or how despicable they are or were, will have an opportunity to repent and an opportunity to know God is their Father. That's the hope of this day. That's the culmination of the plan of God. And it's why we're here.