God Has Not Forgotten Them

I have only two words after that special music for the festival choir, and all of those who've done special music during the feast. Well done. Well done. They've certainly added a tremendous amount to our enjoyment of the feast, and I really appreciate that and that beautiful, beautiful song to end our Feast of Tabernacles' nayeth day with. 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.

This was part of a conscious effort to dehumanize them. They were no longer viewed as human beings, only as numbers. As part of this process, she had been stripped of her identity. Her family had been taken away from her, along with everything that she owned. Her clothing, the small ring and necklace that she wore, the photos of her family, her socks, her shoes, every possession that she owned, had been taken away from her. And another act of humiliation and efficiency, even the hair of her head, had been shaved off.

The better to prevent lice and sickness and disease from spreading and reducing the efficiency of the prisoners. She had just turned 15 years old, a few months before, and that had temporarily spared her life because those younger than 15 were considered too young to provide useful work. And they were taken away to be killed. She was a very intelligent young woman, a very gifted writer, but none of that mattered anymore.

She now had only one purpose in life, and that was to be a part of a machine, a machine built for the twin purposes of power and death, a machine that was very efficient at both. She was one part of hundreds of thousands of parts, a part that was to be worked and worked and worked until it succumbed to sickness or disease or was simply worn out and could work no longer.

And then that part would be discarded and another part put in its 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.

Her given name was Annalise Marie. She would later become known to history by a shorter version of her name, Anne Frank. Ironically, Anne Frank was German by birth. Her father, Otto Frank, had even served as an officer in the German army in World War I. But again, none of that mattered now. They were part of an inferior race. An inferior race, it had to be exterminated. Anne Frank's father could see the danger brewing long before most other people could.

When the Nazi party came to power in 1933, he moved his family from Germany to Amsterdam and the Netherlands. And as conditions went from bad to worse twice, he applied for visas for his family to immigrate to the United States. But at that time in our history, the United States had its own share of anti-Simlites and government, and their application, along with thousands of other Jewish families, was rejected. And when Germany overran Holland in 1940, Anne Frank's family was trapped with no way out.

They headed better than most people, at least in the beginning, because with the help of friends and Mr. Frank's business partners, they went into hiding in secret rooms at the back of a warehouse complex that he owned there in Amsterdam. And to help cover their tracks, they told others that they were fleeing to Switzerland, so that hopefully the authorities would not come looking for them, and when the opportunity could come, they could eventually make a clean getaway.

And as they hid out in their secret complex at the back of this warehouse, around them the world descended into madness. Anne 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 those dreams, she began writing to pass the time there in the family's self-imposed prison. She started keeping a diary, a diary in which she poured out her hopes, her dreams, her fears, her transition from childhood to a young woman.

Much of her diary is intensely personal. She chronicles the strain as her family there in hiding takes in another family of three, and then an elderly Jewish man into their hiding place to spare them from the Holocaust that is taking place outside. She describes the tightening deuce as conditions grow worse and worse, as the food that they carefully stored begins to run out, and it gets harder and harder to find food on the black market to smuggle into their hiding place. She describes how their clothing wears out, their shoes wear out, and they can't replace any of it because it's just impossible to find.

She describes the fear of someone in their complex getting sick because there's no way to get medicine. There's no way to call in a doctor for fear that they will be reported, and all of them be shipped off to die. She describes her fears and her nightmares as childhood friends that she's known from school are taken away and never to be seen again.

Anne Frank wrote her diary ten years before I was born. Many of you, looking out at the audience, were alive during that time, and you remember that. But many of us also were not alive during that time, and thus the horrors of that time may seem unimaginable. Something unimaginably far away, something out of ancient history, but again, it's not that long ago. Only ten years before I was born. The famous 17th century philosopher, British philosopher Thomas Hobbes, famously said in describing summing up human history, The life of man is nasty, brutish, and short.

The life of man is nasty, brutish, and short. And although our life spans maybe longer today for most of human history, that has been the story of mankind. Life for people has been nasty, brutish, and short. To remind us of what a world cut off from God is capable of, I'd like to read some excerpts from Anne Frank's diary. It's one of the most published books in history called The Diary of a Young Girl.

We have it because after the war Anne Frank's father gathered up the pages from the secret hiding place and published it so the world would know her story. Much of the diary is intensely personal, and I won't get into that, but I would like to read her thoughts as she witnessed the world, the most advanced civilization of the world there in Europe at that time, going insane. On January 13, 1943, she describes conditions deteriorating around them in their hiding place.

She writes, 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 a little cash with them, and even then they're robbed of their possessions on the way. Families are torn apart.

Men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find out 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. Knowing on a carrot to steal their hunger pangs, 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. Ten months later, on October 29, 1943, she talks about the depressing atmosphere in their hiding place and the constant fear of being discovered. And she writes, A month later, November 27, 1943, she talks about a nightmare in which she dreamed of a childhood friend. She's a child who's been in the camp. She writes 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 them. And why have you deserted me? Help me! Help me! Rescue me from this hell!

And I can't help her. All I can do is 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've got 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 with remarkable insight for a 14-year-old girl.

She writes, what's the point of war? Why can't people live together peaceably? Why all this destruction? There's a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage and 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.

It's remarkable insight for a 14-year-old girl who didn't understand God's truth. But she knew, as she wrote here, that unless and until there's a metamorphosis, a change in human thinking, that the cycle of war and suffering and death is going to continue. The following month, she and her family heard news from London on the BBC radio. They had a radio hidden away in their secret complex at the back of the warehouse. They heard of the Allied landing at Normandy D-Day, June 6, 1944. And this got their hopes up, and she writes about their hope that maybe their long nightmare is soon to be over.

She writes, Is this really the beginning of the long-awaited liberation, the liberation we've talked about so much, which still seems too good, too much of a fairy tale to ever 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 need to be brave to endure the many fears and hardships and the suffering yet to come.

So she's hopeful now they see some light at the end of the tunnel that perhaps their long nightmare will soon come to an end. A month later, July 15, 1944, she again describes her hope that things will get better and that she, as a teenage girl, will finally be able to realize her dreams. And she writes, 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.

And 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, too. 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 when I'll be able to realize them.

Anne Frank's diary contains two more entries and then ends on August 1, 1944. Three days after that, on the morning of August 4th, a car pulled up outside the warehouse, an outstepped A German SS sergeant accompanied by three Dutch secret policemen. Someone had tipped them off that Jews were hiding in the warehouse, and they arrested the eight people there, hiding in secret rooms, and shipped them off to Auschwitz and Poland.

Of the eight people who had been hiding out there, only one, Otto Frank and his father, survived the war. The others died of disease, of exhaustion, of starvation, or they were simply worked to death. Anne Frank and her sister survived longer than most. They were healthy enough to be transferred from Auschwitz to another camp, Bergen-Belsen, which was a work camp, as opposed to Auschwitz, which was a death camp.

But the following winter of 1944 and 1945, a terrible typhus epidemic brought on by the horrible hygienic conditions of the camp killed thousands of prisoners, including Anne's sister, Margot, first, and a few days later, Anne herself. Their bodies were dumped in unmarked mass graves with thousands of others. The camp was liberated six weeks later, and three weeks after that, Germany surrendered, and the war in Europe was over.

You've probably heard that Europe is far less religious than the United States, and those of you who've been to Europe have probably seen the huge cathedrals from the Middle Ages standing largely empty. Maybe a cathedral as large as this hall here, and five or six people in it. That's the reality of religion in Europe today. 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 couldn't begin to imagine. Two generations of European young men, British, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, were slaughtered in those wars. Twenty million people died in World War I, and a generation later, seventy billion died. The Europeans witnessed this firsthand.

They felt the war. They lived the war. They saw the horrors. They saw the genocide. And they wondered if there is a God, how could He allow this to happen? How could God allow such suffering in millions of people as a result of this abandoned religion and became atheists? And 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 evil, such horrors, such sufferings to take place? And 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 observing and celebrating today.

You see, God has never forgotten all of these people, and that's the title of the sermon.

God has not forgotten them. He's not forgotten the 20 million who died in World War I, the 70 million who died in World War II, the 6 million Jews like Anne Frank who perished or were murdered in World War II. He's never forgotten the billions of other human beings who have ever lived and loved and hoped and died without ever understanding the meaning and the purpose of life and what it was all about without ever knowing the purpose of mankind, without ever knowing the wonderful and inspiring truths that we are here celebrating, that we have celebrated this last week, that God has revealed to all of us. List of mankind, as from the quote I showed of Thomas Hobbes earlier, has been, have lived lives that were nasty, brutish, and short, and they were forgotten.

Yesterday afternoon my wife and I took a drive out to Cades Cove, along with 30,000 of our closest friends. Those of you who have been to Cades Cove know what I'm talking about.

And we stopped at a church there and walked around through a cemetery, looking at the old headstones there. And if you ever spend time in a country cemetery, and I spent many hours in cemeteries as a boy because my father was a stone mason, he made tombstones. So during my junior high and high school years I'd go out and help him. So I spent many, many, many hours in country cemeteries like those out in Cades Cove. And one phrase you'll see on a number of the tombstones, if you ever do this, is shown up here. Gone, but not forgotten. Gone, but not forgotten. And it's a nice sentiment, it's a good sentiment, it's a well-meaning sentiment, but it's one that unfortunately is not very accurate. Because most people die and they are quickly forgotten. Their children remember them, maybe their grandchildren, maybe their great-grandchildren, but beyond that memory of them disappears.

People go to the grave and they are quickly forgotten within a few generations. But there is only one being who truly remembers every one of them, and that is God. He has never forgotten all of those who have come before, all of those who have lived and died and saw their hopes and their dreams go to the grave to be buried with them. What does this day mean to them? What does this day that we are celebrating mean to those? In short, it means the fulfillment of their hopes and dreams, of everything mankind has ever wanted, ever dreamed about, ever longed for, ever hoped for, ever wished for, but could never find.

In this lifetime, they could never reach those dreams in a world that has been deceived by the God of this world, Satan the Devil. They have been imprisoned in a world of spiritual darkness and blindness, and this day is all about their hopes, their dreams, and everything they ever wanted and longed for but never realized. As Mr. B. mentioned in the sermon, we've had a feast that was about us, but today is about them. It's all about them.

It's all about those whom God has never forgotten. Those of you who know me know that I love history and archaeology. I really get into that. It comes from a kid playing in the dirt when I was young. But one thing I realized from studying archaeology of cultures, every culture, throughout every period of human history, is how pervasive belief in life after death is. Wherever you work, wherever you look, it doesn't matter what part of the world, what period of human history, what culture you examine, it seems that every people, every group who have ever lived, have believed in some form of life after death. And all those people died believing that they would live again in some form, some fashion. It's been a belief among the human race for as long back, as far back in human history, as you want to go. And why is that? Why is that? There's a verse we heard in Mr. Kubik's sermon several days ago. Ecclesiastes 3, verse 11. I just want to focus on one phrase in this. It's talking about God, and King Solomon says, he has put eternity in their hearts.

Talking about the human race. God has put eternity in their hearts. What does that mean?

The Jewish San Sino commentary says about this phrase here, God has endowed man with the sense of a future. He knows, man knows, that he is more than just a creature of a day. And what that means is there are a lot of insects, bugs, caterpillars, butterflies, things like that. They live only a few days, maybe a few weeks, and then they're gone.

And man is much different than that, though. I think this sums it up pretty well. That man, unlike other creatures, has a sense of time and of the future that other creatures simply do not have. We yearn for something more, something greater, something more meaningful than the temporary passing experiences of this life. You might say that God has wired us this way. He has wired us to think about eternity, that this life is not all that there is. That there is a future beyond this life. I can't speak for every religion, but I've studied many, many religions, and every one that I know anything about their beliefs believes in some form of life after death, that there is more to our existence and our purpose than this life alone. And God has truly wired us this way, as we see from Ecclesiastes 3 and verse 11. He has put eternity in our hearts. The innate feeling and belief, there's just got to be something more than this life. There's just more. But how will that reality come about? How will mankind find that something else that lies beyond this life, this eternity, as Solomon put it, that he has put in our hearts? How will God make it possible for mankind to finally attain everything that man has dreamed for, longed for, hoped for from the very beginning of human existence? One of the most truly haunting and unforgettable experiences I've ever had, and some of you have been there, to the children's memorial at the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. Here's a picture of it, projected on the screen behind me. It's hard to describe because it's so unlike anything that I've ever seen or experienced anywhere else. One minute you're outside walking in the hot sunshine of Jerusalem, and there's a pathway that leads down into a hillside, and this is showing the entrance to the children's memorial there in Jerusalem. And you walk into this passageway that leads into the hillside, into a chamber. And there, as you walk further in, it gets darker and darker, and finally you're almost in blackness. And you see glass walls surrounding you. And imprinted somehow on those glass walls are pictures, photographs of some of the millions of Jewish boys and girls of all ages. And beyond this, you walk past that, and you enter a long, curving hallway that's totally dark. It's unlit, and you shuffle along. It's meant to be experienced alone. You shuffle along, holding a handrail single file. The path is narrow so that you do experience this alone. And then you're in total blackness. And then as your eyes start to adjust to the gloom and the darkness, you see something unusual.

You see thousands upon thousands of tiny, flickering lights all around you. Some of them appear so close that you can reach out and touch them and hold them in your hand. Others seem a few yards away. Some of them seem so far away, so faint, that you can barely, barely make them out in the distance there. Thousands of these tiny, flickering lights everywhere you look. It's as though you are walking through a galaxy of tiny, glowing lights, tiny pinpoints of life all around you, constantly shifting, changing appearance, appearing and disappearing as you shuffle along in the darkness. No one is saying a word. And then you notice the voice. A quiet voice in the background. It's a woman's voice slowly reading from a list.

Rachel Weissman, 13 years old. Austria. David Berger, 8 years old. Netherlands. Esther Korman, 2 years old. Hungary. Isaac Levy, 15 years old. Germany. Miriam Gribitz, 3 years old. Poland. Benjamin Fischer, 7 years old. France.

France. Dalia Rybikovich, 10 years old. Russia. And the list goes on and on, repeating the names in the ages and the countries of some of the million and a half Jewish children who were murdered in World War II. I didn't realize it at the time, but the thousands of flickering lights that you can see there were actually created by only five candles.

Five candles. But the architect who designed the Children's Memorial there designed it so that, with a series of mirrors, so that the reflections of those five candles are reflected thousands and thousands of times as you walk through. And the candles are kept perpetually burning in remembrance of the children murdered in the Holocaust. This memorial reflects the belief in the Jewish Talmud that the souls of the unburied dead never find rest in their endless wanderings in the universe. And the Jewish architect of this memorial said that he designed it that way so that the thousands of tiny reflected lights represent the souls of those children whose lives were cut short at such young ages.

And although this is a truly haunting experience, and if you ever do it, you know what I'm talking about, in its own way it's actually a very hopeful place as well, because the first time I visited this was right after the end of the Feast of Tabernacles in Israel, right after the end of the eighth day. And as I slowly shuffled along in the dark and saw those tiny flickering pinpoints of light, the symbolism that I saw representing something else, something much more hopeful, a scripture came to mind, another scripture from Ecclesiastes 12 and verse 7. And Solomon here is talking about the faith that is common to mankind. This is in the last chapter that we heard about in Victor Kubik's sermon the other day. And Solomon is talking about that all in the end suffer the same fate. Then the dust, and the dust that he's talking about here are human bodies. The dust, our bodies, returned to the earth as it was, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and the Spirit will return to God who gave it. And the bodies of those Jewish children commemorated in the children's memorial, many of them, thousands of them, hundreds of thousands, didn't even get a decent burial.

Anne Frank and her sister Margo had their bodies dumped in the mass graves of Bergen-Belsen. Millions of other bodies were buried in their ashes, dumped in swamps or landfills. Their bodies returned to the dust of the earth, from which they came, as it says here in Ecclesiastes.

But our bodies are not what is important to God. Our bodies are not what is important. He designed our bodies to be temporary, to break down, to wear out, for parts to break, and to be replaced, dust we are, and to dust we shall return. The Spirit is what is important to God, as we read here. The Spirit will return to God who gave it. We breathe our last in this life, and that Spirit, that essence of who and what we are, goes back to the God who created it to await the resurrection, the first or the second or third, as we heard about today. And that's what all of those tiny flickering lights that I saw in the children's memorial reminded me of. I thought of those millions of lives snuffed out at such a young age that have returned to God to await the fulfillment of this day, of this day that we are celebrating here today. And as time has marched on, mankind has forgotten those people who have gone before, but God has not forgotten them, and He never will. Every day brings us one step closer to the fulfillment of this day, when those spirits that have returned to our Creator will be reunited with a physical body to live again and to hear something they've never heard before, which is the truth of God that we've been celebrating here. They'll learn things they've never heard before, never learned before. And that is to be at last able to understand God's truth, the precious truth we've been here celebrating at the Feast of Tabernacles, and they will receive their opportunity for salvation.

Ezekiel 37 gives us an astounding description of what this day will be like, what is pictured by this day. Let's read now from Ezekiel 37 about Ezekiel's remarkable vision that will become a reality in the fulfillment of this day. And we can't really talk much about this day without reading this chapter and what it reveals to us here. We'll read verses 1-14, Ezekiel 37. And Ezekiel starts off, "'The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the spirit of the Lord.'" So this is a vision that he's describing. "'And he 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 are dry because they're old. They're very old, and these people have been dead for a long time. "'And he said to me, Son of Man, can these bones live?' So I answered, O Lord God, you know. And again, he said to me, prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of God. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, Surely I will cause breath to enter into you.

And you shall live. I will put sinews on you, and bring flesh upon you, to cover you with skin, and put breath into you. And you shall live. Then you shall know that I am the Lord, the Eternal God.'" So God promises to resurrect these old, dry, decaying bones, and to form bodies out of them, and to breathe life into them again. Huge numbers of them. Sometimes we wonder, how is God going to do this? How is He going to resurrect all of these bodies and give them life again? How does He know where all the pieces go? How is He going to keep all that straight? Because after all, once we die, what happens? Our bodies return to the dust from which we are made. They decay. The molecules, the atoms that comprise our bodies go all over the place. They go into the soil, they go into the ground, they wash into the streams or the oceans. They are blown about by the wind. So how will this take place? How will God accomplish this astounding miracle? Well, if you think about it, billions of new physical bodies aren't any problem for God. You know, what is our human body?

The best of my memory, I didn't look this up, I think we are about 70% water. What is water? It is hydrogen and oxygen atoms. And they are scattered throughout the universe. Plenty of atoms there. We are basically just a bag of chemicals walking around on two legs.

In the resurrection, God doesn't have to resurrect the exact same body. All He needs is the raw materials, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, various other traces of different minerals there.

And the universe is full of those. God doesn't need the same body. All He needs is the raw material. And He has a whole planet full of it here. So how is He going to do it? How is He going to pull this off? You know, every human being has his or own unique DNA. And DNA is fascinating stuff. We are discovering more and more about it all the time here. And what is DNA? It's really, you might say, an incredibly detailed blueprint to build a living thing, whether it's a plant, whether it's an animal, whether it's a human being. It's an incredibly detailed blueprint. And scientists have shown that they've been able to extract DNA from creatures that have been dead several thousand years.

Now scientists can do that. Don't you think God can? Don't you think God can restore the same DNA and rebuild all the bodies that He wants? That is, if He chooses to do it that way. God is God. God can do things any number of ways. We just don't know. That is one possible way that He may choose to do it.

But God also has perfect memory of every one of us sitting here. He's got every hair of our head. Knows every hair of our head there. So He may choose to reconstruct every one of the billions of human beings who have ever lived, just from His perfect memory, if He chooses to do it that way. You know, if you think about it, any being who can create a universe with billions upon billions of galaxies, which is harder to create a human body or a galaxy?

Human body or a galaxy? If God can create billions of galaxies, restoring and recreating billions of human beings is no problem. No problem for our great God. If He can speak and entire galaxies can burst into existence at His word out of nothing, human bodies aren't going to be a problem for God to create in this time of the Second Resurrection. Let's continue in verse 7 here in Ezekiel 37.

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, maybe some of that rattling is Ezekiel's knees knocking and shaking as he sees this incredible sight of millions of bodies of dry bones coming together and being formed and resurrected.

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 now Ezekiel is looking out over this vast valley of human bodies, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or millions of them, but there's no breath in them. And then, verse 9, also he 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 upon their feet an exceedingly great army. What an amazing sight that Ezekiel is privileged to see here. Can you imagine what is going through Ezekiel's mind as he sees this massive army? Thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, suddenly stand upright as far as the eye can see.

And then he said to me, verse 11, Then he said to me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. And this throws some people off thinking they are only talking about physical Israel. But it's not. If you read the entire chapter, the theme that God is giving Ezekiel here is that it's talking about God's great plan and purpose for Israel in the context of how he will work with them to be an example and a model for all nations.

So it isn't just Israel that this is talking about. We won't turn there, but you can look at Matthew 12, verses 41 and 42, where Jesus Christ himself talks about people from the time of the Queen of Sheba of Solomon's day, a thousand years before him, and those of Nineveh from the 700s B.C. arising together with the people of Christ's own day in the first century A.D., all of them being resurrected together for his period of judgment here. So it's not limited to just Israel here.

Israel is used as a model for what God is going to do with all peoples. And they indeed, continuing verse 11, they indeed say, our bones are dry and our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off. In other words, they have died in a state of hopelessness, being cut off from God, their hopes, their goals, their dreams lost in the dust of the grave. But again, God has never forgotten them. He's never forgotten them. 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 unto the land of Israel.

Then you shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up from your graves. Now let's think about that statement for a minute. That they shall know that I am the Lord. What is this saying? What does it mean in this context? I talk about context a lot because it's important.

One of today's great cultural and societal debates is whether or not God exists. Is God real? Many people just don't know. I'm agnostic. It means I don't know. Many of them don't accept that miracles can happen. But these people that are being talked about here, however, are going to be different. They will know that God exists, listen to this carefully, they will know that God exists in a way that none of us sitting here today can possibly know in this life.

We know God exists by faith. The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But these people will know that God exists in a way that those of us sitting here will never know in this life. Why is that? Every single one of them will know that God exists because they have been raised from the dead. They will experience the ultimate miracle being raised from the dead. You talk about proof that God exists. When you are raised to lie from the dead, you will have all the proof you have ever needed that God exists.

And yes, God is real. Talk about a receptive audience. Are they going to be willing to listen? Having been raised from the dead, you bet they will. You bet they will. Think about it. What is the last conscious thought of people as they die? It's interesting. I've been there at the bedside when people have died. And you know what? They realize they are dying. I saw this with my own father 20-plus years ago, sitting at his bedside. And he suddenly says, I'm dying. And a few minutes later he was gone.

He knew somehow in his last moment of consciousness that he was dying. Many people over the centuries have suffered long from the diseases that sapped the life out of them. Many have died in epidemics. Many have died in wars or in battle where they lay their wounded on the ground watching their blood. It was out of their bodies. And they knew they were dying. And the next conscious moment they are going to have, they are going to be standing alive again, well again, whole again, cured of whatever diseases killed them, cured of whatever injuries fell them.

Maybe they were blind, maybe they were deaf, and they are going to stand aright and hear and see and be whole again. They will have died knowing their condition that they couldn't see or couldn't walk or couldn't hear or couldn't breathe. And the next moment they are raised, they will be alive and whole and well again.

They will not only know that they were resurrected to life again, but also know that they have been divinely healed of whatever it was that killed them. In this resurrection people aren't going to wonder whether God exists. They are living proof of it. Each of them will be living proof that an all-powerful and all-loving God exists because God will have raised them from the dead.

And they will know not only that they were resurrected to life again, but that they have been divinely healed of whatever it was that killed them.

God won't have to do a lot of convincing to cause people to believe in them. He will have their attention, as it says here, that you shall know that I am the Lord. Let's read one last verse here. And I will put my spirit in you. The next phase, I will put my spirit in you. And you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. And you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it, says the Lord. And now they will have their opportunity for salvation, to receive God's Spirit put into them the same opportunity that we are blessed to have right now in our time.

And for the first time ever, they will come to know God and to understand the true God, and to have the opportunity to repent and to receive God's Spirit freely offered to mankind, as it says here in this verse. They will have the opportunity for their hopes, their dreams, their goals, their desires, to finally become a reality. What does this day teach us this day about them?

But it's also a day that teaches us a great deal about God, about His nature, about His character. Stick a few minutes and explore this aspect of what this day teaches us. I'd like to tell you the story of Junior. Junior wasn't his name, it was his nickname, because he was named after his father. He grew up in West Texas, not far from Lubbock, Amarillo area out there. Grew up there in the West Texas farmland and ranch land, and as a young man, as a teenager, he simply didn't have much use for church.

He wasn't a bad person, it's just that like most people, most young men, particularly, he just simply didn't care for church. There were simply far more interesting things to do in life. And when World War II came along, like many other young men, he was drafted. And it was sent to the Pacific Theater to be a part of the island-hopping campaign as the U.S. Army tried to recapture the islands of the Pacific from the Japanese. I hope many of you were able to see the Pearl Harbor exhibit at the aquarium the other day.

Quite fascinating. And after that, billions of young men were drafted and sent away to war, like Junior here. The telegram arrived at Junior's parents' house like it arrived at so many homes 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 home to the small hometown cemetery there in West Texas. And yes, it was tragic what happened to this young man like so many other millions during that war, but perhaps even more tragic was what happened to his mother. Because Junior, after all, who never cared much for church, had never been saved, to use the religious term.

His mother was a sincere churchgoer, and she believed, as her religion taught, that those who aren't saved go to hell at death, and in that hell they will suffer the torment of the flames for all eternity. And in her belief system, that is where her beloved firstborn son, 25 years old, was now, writhing in the torment of hell because he had never been saved. And she couldn't deal with it. She mentally, emotionally couldn't deal with it. She had a nervous breakdown, so severe that she had to be hospitalized, so severe that she never fully got over it. She eventually learned to cope, yes, but she never fully got over it. She simply couldn't process the thought that her 25-year-old son was burning in hell forever because he hadn't been saved.

How do I know this story? Well, Junior's mother was my wife, Connie's grandmother. My wife never knew Junior. I never met him. He was killed in the war years before we were born. But Connie and her grandmother were quite close, especially in her later years. My wife used to visit her there in West Texas whenever she could. Connie's grandmother knew that we had somewhat unconventional beliefs about what happens after life and life after death. On more than one occasion, she would say, Connie, explain to me again about that second chance.

That's what she termed our belief in the second resurrection and the meaning of this day. Connie explained to me again about that second chance. Connie would patiently explain, and her grandmother would listen intently and almost inevitably she would say, I sure hope that's true. I sure hope that's true.

Now, she never really fully understood it, but to the end of her days this sweet, dear lady still wanted some hope, something to hold on to, that her son was not burning in the flames of hell. And to me this is one of the most damnable teachings of all time. And I use that word deliberately, and it's a damnable teaching because it makes God into a monster. A monster, a sadistic being who would torture people for all eternity for the sins they've committed in this short life.

Or in the case of Junior, his twenty-five short years of life. But this is the picture that millions of people have of God. That He's allowing these people to be tortured in flames forever. But this is not the God of the Bible. This is not the God whom we worship.

God is far different. God, His attitude toward mankind is far different than that. We heard one passage this morning. I'd like to read you another, 2 Peter 3 and verse 9. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but His long suffering is incredibly patient toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And that saying that all should come to repentance, God doesn't want anyone to perish, much less be tortured for all eternity and hellfire.

But He wants all to come to repentance, to choose life, as we've heard several times during this week, to have all of their dreams, all of their hopes of peace and meaning in life, and life everlasting to become a reality. What is your picture of God? How do you envision God when you pray to Him? We just talked about the horribly distorted picture that many people have of God.

That He's a being who would allow millions, billions of people to be tortured for all eternity. But is that your picture of God? We find a fascinating insight into God's character and nature over in Psalm 56 and verse 8. And to understand what is pictured here, what is being said here, we need to understand the context.

The context. Again, I'm really into context because it explains so many puzzling scriptures for us. And David here in this Psalm, Psalm 56, describes many of the trials that he's going through in life, how he's being persecuted, how he's fleeing for his life, how his enemies are surrounding him and pursuing him, and wanting to kill him. And yet David has great hope because he knows the nature and the character of the God whom he worships, a God who loves him dearly and who will never let him down.

That's the context. So now let's read this passage, just one verse. Isaiah 56 and verse 8. David says, and I'll pick out just this phrase, put my tears into your bottle. Are they not in your book? Now this sounds totally puzzling to us. We have no clue what David is talking about here because we're 3,000 years removed from when David wrote these words. I have here a reproduction of an archaeological artifact. This one's made out of glass, but it's too fragile to bring.

This is a reproduction. And it's called a tear bottle. An archaeologist has found quite a few of these in ancient tombs in Israel. In David's time, they appeared to have been made either out of clay, like of clay pottery, or perhaps even a tiny wineskin. By the time of Christ's Day, they were made out of Roman glass. And this is a reproduction. I'll show you what it looks like there. You can see the bubbles in there. About this size. And it's called a tear bottle. Why is it called a tear bottle?

Well, what happened in the first century during Jesus Christ's Day, and apparently this is what David is referring to, even though he lived a thousand years earlier. But apparently this is a custom, and how these were used. And what happened is that when a person died, they would gather the mourners to the tomb to bury the person. And the mourners would gather around, and they would hold a little bottle, the tear bottle, up to their eyes, and allow their tears to run into the bottle.

And then these bottles were placed in the tomb with a deceased person as a reminder to God of the tears that were shed over that person's passing, of how much he or she was loved. And they were there not for the person, because the person's dead, doesn't know anything, but they were there as a reminder to God of how much the person was loved by those left behind. And apparently David is referring to this custom, or something very similar to that, we don't know for sure, but saying, essentially, when he says, put my tears into your bottle, are they not written, or are they not in your book?

Apparently what David is saying here is that God figuratively collects our tears in his bottle. And he remembers all of the sorrow, all of the sadness, all of the suffering that we go through in this life, that God remembers the tears that we shed in sorrow in this life because of the experiences that we go through, and he saves them figuratively in a bottle and records them in his book, so that he will never forget.

So that he will never forget. And David is saying, essentially, that God sees our tears, and he remembers them, and he doesn't forget the sadness and the sorrowful experiences that we go through in this life. And although mankind will forget, and mankind will forget those who shed those tears, that God will never forget. God will never forget. God remembers those tears. He remembers those people. And he promises in his plan to ultimately make all suffering and all sorrow and all tears and all crying go away forever.

And this day helps us understand how that will ultimately come about. I look forward to the day to the time when Anne Frank will rise in the resurrection to the greatest freedom that mankind has ever known. Anne Frank lived in a prison. She lived in the prison of her family's secret hiding place, where they were constantly, and terror of the thought of being discovered. She lived in the prison of the concentration camps, where she and most of her family suffered humiliation and ultimately death. But she also lived, as every human being throughout history has lived, in a prison of a world that is enslaved in spiritual darkness under the God of this age, this current human age, Satan the Devil.

And this day pictures the freeing of those prisoners, the proclaiming of liberty throughout the land, to those held in that captivity, of the recovery of sight for the blind, of the healing of the brokenhearted, of the fulfillment of 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 will apply in the Second and His Second Coming at the return of Jesus Christ to usher in the Millennium. But if you think about it, it also applies, and applies on a far greater scale, to the meaning of this day, when billions of people who have ever lived and died and hoped and dreamed will be freed from that prison.

And the blind will see and the brokenhearted will be healed, and all of their hopes and all of their dreams will finally come true when they learn the truth of God. And all of the scriptures we've heard heard during this week about the feast, about conditions during the Millennium, will also apply to those raised to life in the resurrection, symbolized by this day. But there will be a big difference. There will be a big difference, because those who live during the Millennium will only know of a perfect world once Jesus Christ returns and establishes His Kingdom.

But those who are raised to life in the Second Resurrection will have lived in what the Bible calls this present evil world, the age of the God of this world. And they will have known firsthand where man's ways lead to suffering, to sorrow, to death. And they will have lived and died knowing that. But they will be brought to life again in a world where those things no longer exist. Those who have lived in a world of fear of war will then live in a world of peace. Those who have lived in a world of sickness and disease will then live in a world of health and of happiness.

And those who have lived in a world of crime and fear will then live in a world of Hive Love and of respect for human beings, of loving your brother. Those who have lived in a world of famine and starvation and hunger will live in a world of plenty. And those who have lived in a world of spiritual blindness cut off from God and the saving knowledge of the true God will live again in a world in which the knowledge of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the seas, filling every nook and cranny.

Those raised to life in the fulfillment of this day will have known and lived that contrast between two very different ways of life. They will have lived in this present evil age under the reign of the God of this world. In the second resurrection they will then live under the reign of Jesus Christ in a perfect world. And they will know which choice leads to life and which leads to death. What choice will they make? I think that billions will choose life, eternal life in the family of God.

And the hopes and the dreams of all of those who have ever lived, all of those who mankind has forgotten will at last come true. And what a wonderful truth we have revealed to us in the meaning of this day. And what an awesome and incredibly wonderful and loving God we worship.

So as you return home, think about the messages you have heard this week. Review them. Apply them. Live them. Be doers of the Word, not hearers only. And shine as lights in the darkness of this world in which we live. Keep that vision that we have heard about shining brightly in your life. Keep in mind God's great plan that we have heard about and the awesome God that we have worshipped. And go with God until we meet again.