God Has Not Forgotten Them

The United Church of God presents Scott Ashley with a sermon titled, God Has Not Forgotten Them. It was recorded in Anchorage, Alaska. The title for today's sermon is, God Has Not Forgotten Them. God has not forgotten them. Her name was, but that was the problem. She no longer had a name. She was now simply a number. And that was deliberate. She and those with her no longer had names, only numbers. God was part of a conscious effort to dehumanize them. They were no longer viewed as human beings, simply as numbers. As part of this process, she had been stripped of her identity. Everything that she owned had been taken away from her. Every item of clothing, the family photos that she had with her, the small ring and necklace that she wore, even her sock, shoes, dress, had been taken away. In another act of humiliation and efficiency, even the hair had been shaved from her head. The better to prevent lice and sickness and disease from spreading and reducing the efficiency of the prisoners. She had turned 15 just a few months before and that had temporarily spared her life because those younger than 15 were considered too young to provide meaningful work, so they were singled out and taken away to be killed. She was a very intelligent young woman, very gifted and natural writer, but that didn't matter now. She had only one purpose in life, and that was to be a part of the machine, a machine built for the twin purposes of power and death. A machine very good at both of those. She was one part of hundreds of thousands of parts. They were to be worked and worked and worked until they could work no longer, and then they would be discarded as they succumbed to sickness or disease or were simply worn out and could work no longer. Then that part would be discarded and another part put into the place so the machine could continue to do its deadly and efficient work in the war effort. Her crime was to have been born Jewish.

And in the summer of 1944 in Europe, that was a death sentence in Nazi occupied lands. Her given name was Annalise Marie. She would later become famous to history by a shorter version of her name, Ann. Ann Frank. Ironically, Ann Frank was German by birth. Her father, Otto Frank, had actually served proudly in the German Army in the First World War as an officer, but none of that mattered now. They were part of an inferior race, a race that had to be eliminated.

Otto's, Ann Frank's father, Otto, could see the danger coming before most people in that time. When he saw the Nazi Party arise to power and take control of Germany in 1933, he moved his family from Germany to Amsterdam, Holland. As conditions grew worse and worse, he twice applied for visas for his family to immigrate to the United States to escape the danger. But the United States had its own share of anti-Semites at that time, and like thousands of other Jewish families seeking freedom and refuge, they were turned away, forced to remain in the lands where they would ultimately perish. And when Germany over ran Holland in 1940, Ann Frank's family was trapped with no way out.

They hid it better than most, because Mr. Frank's had a number of business connections, and through his business partners, they went into hiding. They took his family into hiding. In a secret complex had been built, a secret complex of rooms at the back of the warehouse where Mr. Frank's family operated, his business there. To cover their tracks, they told others that they were fleeing to Switzerland, so that the authorities would not come looking for them, hoping that they could eventually make a clean getaway and find someplace safe. And while they hid out there in their secret complex in Amsterdam, around them the world descended into madness. Ann Frank was 13 years old when her family went into hiding. Like many teenagers, she had dreams, great dreams. She dreamed of being a famous writer, and in line with these dreams, she began writing to pass her time writing a diary there in the family's self-imposed prison. She started keeping this diary in which she poured out her hopes, her dreams, her fears, her transition from young woman to from young adult from childhood, whether it's a young adult to young woman. Much of her diary is intensely personal, as you might expect, but she documents the strain as her family takes in one other family into their already cramped hiding place, and then later an elderly man, an elderly Jewish man as well, to spare them from the holocaust that is developing outside. She describes her disagreements with her family and her older sister, Margo, under these very tense situations, this indescribably stressful time, and her struggles with growing up trying to forge her own identity as a young woman.

She describes the noose tightening as conditions grow worse and worse, as the food that they've carefully stored away begins to run out, and it gets harder and harder to acquire food from the black market. Their clothing wears out, and it can't be replaced, because where do you go? Where do you go to get more clothing? She describes the fear of somebody among the three families in hiding there getting sick, because getting sick could be a death sentence for everyone there, because there's no way to get medicine. How do you send out when you're in hiding to get a doctor to come and treat you if you get sick? She describes her fears, her nightmares, her friends, as friends are taken away, rounded up, never to be seen again.

Anne Frank wrote her diary only ten years before I was born. Many of you were alive during that time. Many of you who are younger may read about these things in history books, and they may seem unimaginable, something that is so incomprehensible that it must seem like ancient history to some of us. But again, it's not that long ago, only ten years before I was born. The 17th century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously said in describing the condition of humanity throughout history that the life of man is nasty, brutish, and short. The life of man is nasty, brutish, and short. And yes, our lifespans are longer today than they were in the 17th century when he wrote that, but for most of human history, that has been the story of mankind. Life, for most, has been nasty, brutish, and short. To remind us of what a world without God is capable of, I'd like to read some excerpts from Anne Frank's diary. It's titled Diary of a Young Girl. Many of you have possibly read that in previous years. If not, you can find it at a bookstore. It's been a bestseller for a number of years. But I'd like to read some of her thoughts as she witnessed the most advanced civilization on earth at that time going insane. On January 13, 1943, she describes conditions deteriorating around them as they stayed hidden there in their secret annex there in Amsterdam. She writes, quote, terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor, helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They're allowed to take only a knapsack and are little cash with them, and they're robbed of these possessions on their way.

Families are torn apart. Men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed. Their family is gone. Everyone is scared. The children in this neighborhood run around in thin shirts and wooden shoes. They have no coats, no caps, no stockings, and no one to help them. They grow gnawing on a carrot to steal their hunger pings. They walk from their cold houses through cold streets. Things have gotten so bad in Holland that hordes of children stop passers-by in the streets to beg for a piece of bread. I could spend hours telling you about the suffering the war has brought, but I'd only make myself more miserable. All we can do is wait as calmly as possible for it to end. Jews and Christians alike are waiting. The whole world is waiting.

And many are waiting for death.

Later that year, October 29, 1943, she talks about the depressing atmosphere in your hiding place and the constant fear they have of being discovered. She writes, "...all the bickering tears and nervous tension have become such a stress and strain that I fall into my bed at night crying. The atmosphere is stifling, sluggish, laddom. Outside you don't hear a single bird, and a deathly, oppressive silence hangs over us and clings to me as if it were going to drag me in the deepest regions of the netherworld. I feel like a songbird whose wings have been ripped off and who keeps hurling itself against the bars of its dark cage. Let me out where there's fresh air and laughter. A voice within me cries. I don't even bother to reply anymore but lie down. Sleep makes the silence and the terrible fear go by more quietly." A month later, November 27, she writes about a nightmare in which she dreamed of a friend whom she assumes has been captured and sent off to the concentration camps. She writes, quote, Last night, just as I was falling asleep, Hanalee suddenly appeared before me. I saw her there, dressed in rags, her face thin and worn.

She looked at me with such sadness and reproach in her enormous eyes that I could read the message in him. Oh, Anne, why have you deserted me? Help me! Help me! Rescue me from this hell! And I can't help her. I can only stand by and watch while other people suffer and die. Why have I been chosen to live while she's probably going to die?

And then she writes to herself, I have to stop dwelling on this. It won't get me anywhere. I keep seeing her enormous eyes, and they haunt me. The following spring, May 3, 1944, she reflects on the war and the human race with remarkable insight for a fourteen-year-old girl, unless she was at that time. She writes, What's the point of war? Why can't people live together peacefully? Why all this destruction? There's a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder, and kill. And until all of humanity, without exception, undergoes a metamorphosis, wars will continue to be waged. And everything that has been carefully built up, cultivated, and grown will be cut down and destroyed, only to start over again.

Again, that's remarkable insight for a fourteen-year-old girl who didn't understand the truth. But she knew, as she wrote there, that unless and until there is a metamorphosis in human nature, that the cycle of war and suffering and death is going to continue, so long as human beings exist.

The following month, in June, she and her family heard the news on BBC radio, on their illegal radio hidden there in their complex. She heard about the Allied landings in Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. And that got their hopes up, and she writes of the hope that perhaps the long nightmare will soon be over. She writes, quote, Is this really the beginning of the long-awaited liberation? The liberation we've all talked so much about, which still seems too good, too much of a fairy tale, ever to come true, will this year bring us victory? We don't know yet. But where there's hope, there's life, it fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again. We'll need to be brave to endure the many fears and hardships and the suffering yet to come. So she's hopeful now. The family sees a light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps the long nightmare will soon be over. A month later, July 15, 1944, she describes her hope that things will get better, and that she as a teenage girl will finally be able to realize her dreams. She writes, quote, It's difficult in times like these. Ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals. They seem so absurd and impractical, yet I cling to them, because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

She continues, It's utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering, and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness. I hear the approaching thunder that one day will destroy us also. I feel the suffering of millions, and yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better. That this cruelty, too, shall end. That peace and tranquility will return once more.

In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come, and I'll be able to realize them. And Frank's diary contains two more entries, and it ends on August 1, 1944. Three days after that, a car pulled to a stop outside the warehouse there in Amsterdam, outstepped a German SS sergeant accompanied by three Dutch secret police. They'd been tipped off that Jews were hiding in the building, and they searched and found the eight people taking refuge there, and shipped them off by train, first to a transition camp, and then finally to Auschwitz, in Poland. Of the eight people who'd been hiding out there in the secret annex, only the father, Otto Frank, survived the war. He returned after the war to the secret annex and found Anne's diary there, collected it and other writings, and eventually published her book. The others in the family, those hiding out there, died of disease, exhaustion, starvation, or they were gassed. Or they were simply worked to death. Anne Frank and her sister Margot survived longer than most. They were healthy enough to be transferred from Auschwitz to another camp, Bergen-Melsen, as workers. But the winter of 1944 and 1945 brought a terrible typhus epidemic, brought on by the horrible hygienic conditions there in the camp, and had killed thousands of prisoners, including Anne's sister Margot first, and a few days later, Anne herself.

Their bodies were dumped in unmarked graves, mass graves, along with thousands of others.

The camp was liberated by British soldiers. Six weeks later, Germany surrendered three weeks after that. You've probably heard that Europe as a whole is much less religious than the United States, and it's true. You can go there, visit England, France, Germany. You see these huge churches, huge cathedrals that would seat literally thousands of people, and they're empty for the most part, except a few scattered people sitting here and there. Europe is much less religious than the rest of the world because they went through two world wars in the last century. They saw suffering that most of us sitting here today cannot begin to comprehend, cannot begin to fathom what they saw. Two generations of young European men, British, French, Italian, German, were slaughtered during those two world wars of the last century. 20 million died in the first world war, and a generation later, 70 million were killed. The Europeans witnessed this firsthand. They felt the war. They lived it. They saw the horrors. They saw the genocide. They saw the extermination camps. And they wondered, if there is a God, how could He let this happen? How could He allow such suffering? As a result of that, millions of people abandoned religion, abandoned Christianity, and became atheists. And it's that way to this day in Europe. Even today, one of the major arguments that atheists use against the existence of God is this very thing. If there is a God, how could He allow such things, such suffering on such massive scale? How could He allow that? It's a good question. It's a good question, and much of the answer lies in the fact that the world does not understand the meaning of this day, this day that we are here celebrating today. You see, God has not forgotten all of these people, and hence the title of this sermon, God has not forgotten them. God has not forgotten the 20 million who perished in World War I, or the 70 million who were killed. Who died a generation later in World War II, or the 6 million Jews like Anne, Anne Frank, and her family who perished in the death camps. He has never forgotten the billions of other human people who have lived and loved and hoped and died without ever knowing what it was all about.

Without ever knowing the purpose of mankind, without ever knowing why they were born, without ever knowing the precious and the wonderful truths that we have been here, hearing about, learning about, speaking about, experiencing over the last week of this Feast of Tabernacles in this eighth day, the lives of most human beings have been, as Thomas Hobbes put it, nasty, brutish, and short.

And then they were forgotten. If you visit a cemetery and take a walk through it, you'll see a phrase on many tombstones. It's probably the phrase you'll see most often in a cemetery, gone but not forgotten. It's a nice sentiment, a well-meaning sentiment, a good sentiment, but unfortunately one that's not very accurate, because people perish and they are quickly forgotten. Their children remember them, their great- their grandchildren, perhaps in a few cases great-grandchildren, but beyond that memory of them disappears.

People go to the grave and they're very quickly forgotten. But there is only one who truly remembers them. Only one, and that is our great God, who has never forgotten all of those who have come and gone before, all of those who have lived and loved and died and saw their hopes, their dreams go to the grave to perish with them. What does this day mean to them?

What does this day mean to these people? In short, it means the fulfillment of their hopes and dreams. Everything that mankind has ever dreamed for, longed for, wished for, hoped for, but could never find in this lifetime is wrapped up in the meaning of this day, this eighth day, because those people could never reach their dreams in a world that was governed and blinded by the God of this age, Satan the devil, a world in which they were cut off from God, a world in which they were imprisoned, in darkness, in spiritual blindness.

This day is all about their hopes, their dreams, and everything that they ever wanted. On the first holy day, I spoke, told you about a love story, the love story of God, for His people, His church, as revealed through the engagement and wedding practices of that day of the first century. Today, I would like to book in that with another love story, and that is the love story that God has for all of humanity, as revealed in the meaning of this day. One thing that has struck me in years of studying history and archaeology is how pervasive the belief is in life after death. Wherever you look, it doesn't matter which culture, which time period of human history, which part of the world you examine, it seems that people everywhere throughout all of human history have believed in some form of life after death, some kind of existence after the grave.

All of these people died believing that they would live again in some other way, in some other world, in some other form. It has been a universal hope and belief of mankind as far back as you want to go in human history, anywhere in the world. But why is that? Why, when mankind has so many different beliefs about everything else, why a universal belief in some type of life after death, some existence beyond this life?

The answer is actually found in Ecclesiastes 3 in verse 11. You don't need to turn there. I just want to pick up a particular phrase out of this, Ecclesiastes 3 in verse 11. But it tells us here that God has put eternity in their hearts. Speaking of the human race as a whole, God has put eternity in their hearts. That's a fascinating statement. God has put eternity in their hearts.

To try to get a better handle on this, I looked up in the Jewish Son Sino commentary to see what it says. It had an interesting take on this. It said, quote, God has endowed man with the sense of a future.

He knows he is more than the creature of a day. And what that means, a creature of a day, if you're not aware of this, many insects, bugs, flies, caterpillars, things like that, live only for a few days. And then they die or transform into another form of creature or something like that and pass away.

So they say that man is more than just a creature of a day. Continuing on, he knows he is more than the creature of a day. And this consciousness is a cause of his dissatisfaction. And he knows he has a satisfaction with the transitory experiences which take place within the span of a lifetime.

And I think that sums it up pretty well that man, unlike other creatures, unlike our dogs, cats, birds, pets, whatever we may have, has a sense of time, has a sense of the future. We yearn for something more. We yearn for something greater, more meaningful than just this temporary and passing existence that we experience in our 3 score and 10. You might say that God has wired us this way. He has wired us to know, to understand intuitively, that there's more to it than just this life alone. He's wired us to have an innate feeling that there's something else that awaits us after this life. And again, this is fundamental to religious belief. I can't speak for every religion, but I know every religion that I know anything about has some belief in some form of other existence, some form of life after death, that God has truly wired us that way. He has built that into the human mind and consciousness. As Ecclesiastes 3, 11 said, He has put eternity in our hearts, this feeling, this knowledge, there has to be something more than just this life alone. But how will that become a reality? How will that become a reality for mankind? How will mankind find that something else that must lie beyond this life, that eternity that He has put into our hearts? How will God make it possible for every human being to finally attain everything that He has hoped for, longed for, dreamed for, from the very beginning of human existence? One of the most truly haunting and unforgettable things that I have ever seen is the Children's Memorial at the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, Israel. I have been privileged to visit there several times. How many of you have been there by any chance? Okay, I see. I know there are a few, because some of you have gone on the same trips to Israel there. And it is something that is hard to describe because it is unlike anything you will ever see anywhere else. Jerusalem is very bright and sunny city most of the year.

And you enter this Children's Memorial by walking literally through a doorway into the side of a hill. It is very warm and bright outside. And you step into this doorway, and it becomes quite dark fairly suddenly as you walk in. The first thing you see in front of you is a glass wall. And imprinted on this glass wall are photos, dozens, hundreds of photos of children taken during the 1930s and 40s. And you move to the right beyond this wall into a dark, slowly curving hallway. Very dark, unlit, and within a few steps the outside sunshine is gone. And you are shuffling along in this very narrow hallway in almost total darkness. And the pathway is so narrow that you have to walk through its single file alone because it is designed for you to experience this alone.

And then as your eyes begin to adjust from the bright darkness outside to the darkness inside after you have walked a number of steps into this hallway there, you see tiny lights.

Tiny candle lights everywhere floating all around you. Very hard to describe. Some seem so close that you can reach out and touch them. Others seem maybe 10, 15 yards away. Some are so faint so far away they look like they're at the back of the room or disappearing into the darkness of infinity there.

Thousands of these flickering tiny candle lights there. It's as though you're walking through a universe of stars except each star is a tiny candle light there. And they change positions as you slowly shuffle along in the dark. They move. Some come into existence and some disappear from your sight. And no one is saying a word. And then you hear it. Then you hear the voice. It's a woman's voice. Very deliberate, slowly reading from a list.

Rachel Weissman, 13 years old. Austria. David Berger, eight years old. Netherlands. Esther Korman, two years old. Denmark. Isaac Levy, 15 years old. Germany.

Mariam Grvitz, three years old. Poland. Benjamin Fischer, seven years old. France. Dalia Brabikovich, 10 years old. Russia. And the voice goes on and on and on, endlessly reciting the names and ages and countries of the million and a half Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust. I didn't realize it at the time, but all of the thousands of flickering lights there in that children's memorial are actually created by only five candles.

Five candles. And this memorial is actually a giant hall of mirrors, strategically placed tiny mirrors that reflect those five candles. And there are reflections of reflections of reflections of reflections multiplied thousands of times at different distances. So again, sometimes the candles seem so close to reach out and touch and others they seem very far away. And as you walk around, some along, some up here, and some disappear. It's a reflection of the Jewish belief reflected in the Talmud that the souls of the Unburied Dead never find rest in their endless wanderings about the universe. And the Jewish architect of this memorial said he designed it this way so that the thousands of tiny reflecting points of light from these candles represented the souls of the million and a half Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust. A million and a half lives cut short far too soon.

And although this is a very haunting place, and those who've been there know that, you know what I'm talking about. And it's only a very hopeful place as well, because as I visited that and reflected going through it, visiting during the feast, I reflected on the messages that I'd heard during the Feast of Tabernacles leading up to my visit there, and a scripture came to my mind. Ecclesiastes 12 and verse 7. Let's turn there and take a look at that. Ecclesiastes 12 and verse 7.

As I shuffled along, seeing those lights, I thought of something else.

It's reflected here in Ecclesiastes 12 and verse 7.

The context here, Solomon is talking about the inevitability of death. He says that we all will grow old. We all die, because that's the way we're designed. Our physical bodies are never meant to last forever. And he says here in Ecclesiastes 12 and verse 7, then the dust, and the dust that he's talking about is our physical, mortal human bodies, which are made of dust. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. He says, then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the Spirit will return to God who gave it. The body is not what is important to God. We designed our bodies to be temporary, to last seven or eight decades, and to wear out the parts to wear out for the body to begin breaking down. And dust we are, and to dust we shall return. But the Spirit is what is important to God. We breathe our last, and that Spirit, that essence of who and what we are, goes back to God who gave it to await the resurrection. And as I walked along through the children's memorial there in Jerusalem and saw those tiny flickering candle lights, that's what this reminded me of. This passage came to mind. I thought of the millions of lives cut off, cut short far too soon, that have returned to God to await the fulfillment of this day, of this day. When His time has marched on, those people have been forgotten.

Those people have been forgotten, but God has never forgotten them, and He never will. Every day that goes by brings us closer to the fulfillment of this day, when those spirits that have returned to God will be reunited, will be united, rather, with a physical body to live again, and to hear something they've never heard before, to learn something they've never learned before, and that is to at last be able to understand God's truth, God's wonderful truths that we've been here learning and hearing about for the Feast of Tabernacles. And these people will have their opportunity for salvation at last. Let's turn back to Ezekiel 37, which gives us a marvelous description of this event, the event pictured by this day, this eighth day. Let's read here Ezekiel's remarkable vision that he has that will become a reality when this day reaches its climax, when this day is actually a reality. We can't really talk about the meaning of this day without this chapter here, which gives us a front row seat to what that day is going to be like. Ezekiel 37 will begin reading in verse 1. Ezekiel says, The hand of the Eternal came upon me, and brought me out in the spirit of the Eternal. So this is a vision that he is seeing. It sent me down in the midst of the valley, and it was full of bones. Then he caused me to pass by them all around, and behold, there were very many in the open valley, and indeed they were very dry. What he's saying is these bones were very dry because they are very old. These people have been dead for a long time. And God said to me, Son of Man, can these bones live?

So I answered, O Lord God, you know. It's a smart answer there on Ezekiel's part, and I like that. You know, God. Verse 4 again, he said to me, Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Eternal. 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, then you shall know that I am the Eternal. So we see here that God promises, absolutely promises, to resurrect these old, dry, decayed bones, and give them bodies, and give them life again. Huge numbers of people here. Sometimes we wonder how this will happen. How will God resurrect all of these bodies, and give them life again? How will he put all of that back together again? How is he going to keep everybody straight? After all, what happens when we die? Our bodies decay. Our bodies are just made up of these atoms and molecules, and they go back into the environment. They go back into the dirt. They wash into the streams. They wash into the oceans. They get blown around by the wind. How is God going to put all of that back together? We may wonder about that, but really, assembling billions of human bodies is no problem for God. What are we? What are we? We're dust. We're just mostly a bag of atoms and molecules and chemicals, mostly water, walking around on two legs. In the resurrection, God doesn't need to resurrect the exact same body. All he needs is a raw material.

Carbon atoms, calcium atoms, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, all of those things. The universe is full of them. All he needs is raw materials. He doesn't need the same body. He just needs raw materials. Every human being who has ever lived has a unique blueprint. It's called DNA. What is DNA? It's a very, very detailed blueprint for how to build a living thing. Whether that living thing is a piece of fruit or a tree or a bush or a dog or a cat or a lion or tiger or a human being, as all of the details are all recorded right there in DNA in far greater detail than we can even begin to comprehend. Scientists can do what? Scientists have learned how to go back and extract DNA out of creatures that have been dead for thousands of years, like woolly mammoths, for instance. They're trying, experimenting, as I understand it, to think to try to clone a woolly mammoth. If scientists can resurrect DNA from creatures that have been dead for thousands of years, how big a problem is it to God?

All he needs is DNA and raw materials, and he can reassemble a human being exactly as he was.

We don't know how God is going to do it. He doesn't specify that. That's just one way that he could do it. God also has a perfect memory unlike us with our fallible human memories there. So he may choose simply to resurrect every human being and recreate them exactly just based on his perfect knowledge and memory of what we all were like before. Again, he doesn't tell us how he's going to resurrect billions of human beings, only that he is going to do that. He may have any number of methods to bring that about, but if you think about it, anybody who can build a universe with trillions of planets of suns and stars can surely build 40, 50, 70, 80 billion human beings after all of you, which is harder to create, a human body or a galaxy. So resurrecting billions of people is no problem to God. He can do it like that. No problem for him. Continuing in verse 7 here with Ezekiel's vision, so I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied, there was a noise and suddenly a rattling. And I can't help but think it's maybe some of that rattling as Ezekiel's knees knocking as he's witnessing this incredible vision of millions of people suddenly standing up, resurrected from the dry bones. And the bones came together bone to bone. Indeed, as I looked, the sinews and the flesh came upon them and the skin covered them over, but there was no breath in them. So Ezekiel's looking out over this vast valley of human bodies, but there's no breath in them. They're not breathing. They're not alive.

Also, verse 9, God said to me, prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. What an incredible sight! To see millions, billions of human beings standing aright, as far as the eye can see. Then verse 11, Then he said to me, son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.

Now, this shows some people off thinking this is just about Israel, but it's not. If you read the context, if you read the entire chapter, he's talking about God's great plan and purpose for Israel in the context of how he will work for them. Work, work with them, rather. It doesn't mean this is limited strictly to Israel, and no one else will experience this resurrection. He's describing what he's going to do with the nation of Israel as a model for all the nations, and what the entire world will eventually experience. Continuing on, they indeed say, Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off. In other words, they've died in a state of hopelessness, cut off from God. Their dreams, their hopes, their goals lost in the dust of the grave.

But again, God has never forgotten them. He's never forgotten their goals, their hopes, their dreams.

Verse 12, Therefore prophesy and say to them, Thus says the Lord God, Behold, O my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves and bring you into the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Eternal, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up from your graves. Think about that statement for a minute there. It says, Then they shall know that I am the Lord. What is this saying? What's one of the biggest cultural debates going on in our society today? It's whether or not there is a God. Whether or not there's a God. Many people don't believe in God. Many people just don't know. Many people don't accept that miracles can happen, or the Bible is God's Word. But these people that are being described here are going to be different.

They're going to be different because they will know that there is a God in a way that none of us sitting here today can know that there is a God. Why is that? Because every single one of them will know that God exists because they have been raised from the dead. They have been raised from the dead. You think about proof that God exists. These people will know that God exists in a way that none of us can experience in this life. They know God exists because they've been raised from the dead.

When you're raised from the dead, you have all the proof you need that God is real, that God exists. Talk about a receptive audience. Are they going to be willing to listen? You bet they will.

You bet they will. Just think about it. What is the last conscious thought of most of these people? It will have been their awareness that they were dying. Many will have suffered long from diseases that sapped the life out of them. Many will have died in epidemics. Many will have died in battle or warfare where they lay their wounded watching their blood ooze out and knowing that they are dying. And the very next thing they know, these people, here they are standing upright again, alive again, well again, healed of whatever diseases they might have had, healed of whatever injuries that might have killed them, accidents or warfare or whatever. Billions of these people would have perished in diseases or from diseases. Many will have lived with chronic ailments, crippling diseases, blindness, deafness, other problems. How will they feel in their resurrection? They will have died knowing their condition, knowing they couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't walk, couldn't breathe, and then their next moment they'll be standing alive. And not only alive, but well and whole again, healed of whatever it was that took their lives. Are they going to be willing to listen to God? In the words of a famous Alaskan, you betcha!

You bet they will. You bet they will. In this resurrection, people won't be wondering whether God exists. Each of them will be living proof that God is real and that He is an all-powerful and all-loving God because He is raised down from the dead. Continuing in verse 14, I will put my spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you will know that I, the Eternal, have spoken it and performed it, says the Eternal. And now they will have their opportunity for salvation, their first opportunity, the same opportunity that we are blessed to experience right now. For the first time ever, they will come to know and to understand the true God. They will have their first opportunity to repent and receive God's Spirit. As it says here in this verse, they will have their opportunity, have their dreams, their hopes, their goals, finally become a reality.

And who will be in this resurrection? We just read here that it says the whole house of Israel. But does this mean that Israel alone will be in this resurrection?

Well, again, Ezekiel 37 is just describing Israel as a model for what will happen to other nations. Jesus Christ tells us who will be in this resurrection over in Matthew 12, verse 41. Let's turn over there and see what he says. Matthew 12, verse 41. And the context here is that Jesus has performed many great miracles, but people still refuse to believe, particularly the religious establishment of his day, the scribes, the Pharisees. And they come to Jesus wanting a miracle, but Jesus had already given them miracles, and yet they still refuse to acknowledge them and to believe. So then he warns them about the consequences of their refusal to believe. And he says, Matthew 12, verse 41, The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and indeed a greater one than Jonah is here. The queen of the south will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and indeed a greater one than Solomon is here.

Now, traditional Christianity doesn't have a clue what to do with this passage here, because it just simply makes no sense. You cannot reconcile this with belief in an immortal soul and the doctrines of heaven and hell. The men of Nineveh that Jesus is referring to here had lived and died about 800 years earlier. And yet Jesus' are going to come up in the period of judgment with the people who are standing there listening to Jesus at that moment in the first century. And he goes on to say that the queen of the south, the queen of Sheba who came to visit Solomon a thousand years earlier, is going to stand there with the people of this generation as well that Christ was talking to at that time. So you have people from a thousand years earlier, from 800 years earlier, they're all going to rise in the judgment there. And again, traditional Christianity has no clue what to do with this. No clue.

It just can't make sense of this, because according to their beliefs, these people were already judged centuries earlier. They were already sent to hell or to heaven or whatever.

They've long since died and been judged. So what's this about? So why are they going to be resurrected in the future to be judged? Again, it makes no sense, without understanding the meaning of this day. Of this day. This day shows that God is far greater, far more loving, than people give Him credit for. And it shows that all people have the same wonderful opportunity for eternal life in their own time, regardless of when and where they lived throughout human history. So there will come a time of judgment for those who have lived and died. Not a time of sentencing. That's not what is being talked about here, which is something entirely different, but a time of judgment. Because for sentencing to take place, you have to have a time of judgment before that. Those are two different things. You have to have judgment before you can have a sentence assigned and carried out. And just as we today are being judged by God's Word, people will be judged by the same standard. Then they will be judged by what they do with what they know. And since they have never heard, never understood God's truth, they will first have to be raised to life, to be exposed to God's Word and God's truth. So there will be a standard, God's standard, by which all can be judged. And according to His own timetable, God will give every human being His own opportunity to learn and to choose. As we heard about in the sermonette today, to choose either God's way and life or to choose our own way and death. And so far, only a very few have really been given that choice, offered that choice. The vast majority have lived in a world blinded by Satan the Devil. But God in His love and mercy has a plan to remedy that. What does this day teach us about the nature and the character of the God that we worship?

Junior was a young man who grew up in West Texas. He was called Junior because he was named after his father. Out there in West Texas, in the ranch land, in the farmland there, he didn't have much use for church. He wasn't a bad person, it's just that as a young man, late teens, early 20s, he simply didn't care much for church. There were just a lot more interesting things to do than going to church. And when World War II came along, like many other young men, he was drafted. He was sent to the Pacific Theater to be part of the island-hopping campaign as the U.S. Army went back and recaptured the many islands of the Pacific Ocean that had been captured from the Japanese. The telegram arrived at the home of Junior's parents, like it arrived at the homes of so many during that war. In the Philippines, in the last year of the war, Junior's time ran out.

He was felled by a piece of shrapnel from a Japanese artillery shell, and his body was shipped back home to be buried in that tiny little West Texas town.

And yes, it was tragic what happened to Junior, but what was perhaps more tragic is what happened to his mother. Junior, who had never cared much for church, had never been saved.

And his mother was a sincere churchgoer. She believed, as her religion taught, that those who were not saved would spend the rest of their life, the rest of eternity, in the fires in Torre de Fel. In her mind, that's where her beloved firstborn son, 25 years old, now was.

And she couldn't deal with it. She suffered a mental breakdown.

So severe she had to be hospitalized. So severe that she never really got over it. She eventually learned to cope, yes, but she never really got over it. She just simply could not process the thought that her 25-year-old firstborn son was being tormented in hell forever because he had not been saved. Junior's mother was my wife Connie's grandmother. My wife never knew Junior. He was killed ten years before she came along. And Connie and her grandmother, Junior, were quite close. My wife used to visit her whenever she could before she passed away. Connie's grandmother knew that we as a church had somewhat unconventional beliefs when it came to life after death. On more than one occasion, she would sit down with Connie and say, Connie, explain to me again that about the second chance. Explain that to me again about the second chance. I want to know more about that second chance. That's the way she termed our belief in the meaning of this day. Connie would sit and patiently go through the scriptures and explain to her grandmother. Connie's grandmother would intently listen and she would almost inevitably say, I sure hope that's true. I sure hope that's true. She never came to fully understand it, but to the end of her days, this dear, sweet, kind, and gentle woman held on to some kind of hope that her son wasn't really burning in the flames of hell. To me, this is one of the most damnable heresies ever conceived in the perverted minds of men because it makes God into a monster.

It makes God into a sadistic being who would torture people forever for whatever sins they committed in this life. In the case of Junior, he has 25 short years of life, and he's going to suffer for eternity in the fires of hell for whatever sins he committed during that short period of time. But this is the picture that millions of people have of God. That he's willing to torture people for eternity for a few short years of the sins they've committed in this life. But this is not the God of the Bible. Far from it. The God we worship is far different. God's attitude toward mankind, we find over in 2 Peter 3 and verse 9. You don't have to turn there, but 2 Peter 3, 9.

Just the one verse, it says, The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness, but is long suffering, patient toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. God doesn't want a single human being to perish, much less be tortured for all eternity in hell fire, but that all should come to repentance, to choose life, to choose life, to have their hopes, their dreams, their goals, their desire for something beyond this life to come to a reality. What is your picture of God? We've just talked about the picture many people have of God, that he is a being who would allow billions to be tortured in the fires of hell for all eternity. But what is your picture of God? We find a fascinating insight into God's character over in Psalm 56 and verse 8. Let's turn there and look at this. Psalm 56 and verse 8. And to understand this, we need to understand the context. David here is talking about many of the trials that he's going through, how he's persecuted, how he's fleeing for his life, how his enemies are surrounding him, pursuing him, wanting to kill him. And yet he has hope. But why does he have hope? He has hope because he knows the nature and the character of the God that he worship, that he worships, a God who will never let him down, who loves him dearly. And then he says here, I just want to pick up this one phrase here, Psalm 56 and verse 8, Put my tears into your bottle. Are they not in your book?

Now, this science sounds puzzling to us because we don't understand the cultural reference it's being talked about here. I have here a reproduction, and I apologize this is quite small, you can't see this, it's about three inches high. This is a reproduction of what is called a tear bottle. And archeologists have found these by the thousands, they're in the land of Israel. In David's time, David lived about a thousand years before this type of tear bottle was manufactured. In David's time they appeared to have been made out of clay, or in some cases actually tiny wine skin, believe it or not. Later in Christ's time these were made out of Roman glass, blown Roman glass. You can actually see them at the antiquity shops there in Jerusalem. You know what to look for, and they looked like this. They were hollow, made out of glass. And what happened is that when a person died in that day, the mourners would collect their tears. That's why it's called a tear bottle. They would hold the bottle up and let their tears fall and drip down into this bottle. And then these would be left in the tomb with a person who died. And it was left there as a reminder to God of how much the person, the man, the woman, the child who was buried there was loved by the mourners, by the tears that they had shed for the mourner there. And apparently David is referring to this custom, or something very similar to it, saying essentially that God collects our tears in his bottle.

In other words, that God remembers all the suffering, all the sadness, all the sorrow that we go through in this life, that God remembers the tears that we shed, and he saves them in his bottle. And he records them, as David wrote here in your book, so that he will never forget. So that he will never forget. God is saying essentially that God sees our tears of sorrow that we shed in this life, and he remembers them, that he doesn't forget what we go through in this life.

The pain, the suffering, the heartache, and he records that in his book. And that although mankind will forget those who have gone before, and will forget those who shed those tears, that God will never forget. That God remembers them, and that he promises in his plan to ultimately make all suffering in all tears go away. And this day helps us show us how that will ultimately come about. I look forward to the day when Anne Frank will rise in the resurrection to the greatest freedom that mankind has ever known. Anne Frank lived in the prison of her family's secret hiding place where they were in constant terror, constant fear of being discovered.

She lived in the prison of the concentration camps where she and most of her family suffered humiliation and death. But she also lived, as every human being has, in the prison of a world that is enslaved in the spiritual darkness of Satan, the god of this age. And this day pictures the freeing of those prisoners, the proclaiming of liberty to those held in that captivity, the recovery of sight to the blind, the healing of the broken-hearted, the fulfillment of all the hopes and the dreams of all of those who have ever lived.

And yes, Jesus Christ quoted that prophecy, and we know that it applies to His Second Coming. It's depicted by the Feast of Tabernacles, but it also applies, if you think about it, on a far greater scale to this day. To this day, the eighth day, when the billions who have lived and died and been forgotten by mankind will be freed from that prison in which they lived, will be freed and the blind will see and the broken-hearted will be healed, and their hopes and their dreams will finally come true.

All the scriptures that we've heard about during this Feast, about the conditions during the Millennium, will also apply to those raised to life in this period of judgment. But there will be a big difference, because those who live during the Millennium will know only a perfect world.

But those brought up in this resurrection, the second resurrection, who have lived in what the Bible calls this present evil age, the age of the God of this world, will have known firsthand where man's ways lead, where man's choices lead. They will have lived and died knowing that, but they will be brought to life again, in a world where the ills of this world will no longer exist. Those who have lived in a world of fear and of war will live in a world of peace. Those who have lived in a world of sickness and disease will live in a world of health and of happiness.

Those who've lived in a world of crime and of fear and of war will live in a world of love and respect for human beings. Those who've lived in a world of famine and starvation will live in a world of pleaanty. Those who've lived in a world of spiritual blindness, cut off from the knowledge of the true God, will live again What choice will they make?

I look forward to the day when billions of people will choose life, eternal life, and the family of God. I look forward to the day when the hopes and dreams of all those who have ever lived, all of those whom mankind has forgotten, will at last come true. What a wonderful truth we have revealed to us in the meaning of this day! And what an awesome and wonderful God we worship!