The Hope of the Resurrections

Anytime I study anything in the Bible, I want to know the backstory. Why it happened, why Paul is saying what he writes, or why Isaiah is inspired to give what he's giving. What's the backstory? Well, the backstory for today's sermon starts back in 410. In 410, a Germanic conglomeration of warriors from different tribes was surrounding Rome. And they were a mixture of pagans and Arian Christians.

Inside Rome was a mixture of pagans and Catholic Christians. And the Germanic general was demanding, making certain demands, and the Romans said, No, we're not going to meet your demands. No one's taken this city in 800 years. And they took the city. Now, as far as sacks of ancient cities go, they got off pretty easy. I mean, they burned some buildings and they killed some people, and they looted everything they could carry off and they left. The majority of people survived.

But the shock was unbelievable. How could the greatest city in the world, with the most powerful economy, the most powerful army, how could they be taken over by people they considered barbarians? And for the Christians, the Catholic Christians, it was even worse. How could the place where Christ rules through the church be taken? How could that happen? How come God didn't stop it? Augustine was a monk who lived down in North Africa. Augustine wrote huge volumes of work. In fact, Augustine had more influence on the development of the Catholic Church than any other person.

And more development on Protestantism than people realize. Martin Luther, you know, a thousand years after Augustine, was an Augustinian monk when he broke away from Catholicism. He actually had been drained in the teachings of Augustine. Ten years after Rome fell, Augustine produced a book called The City of God. It's huge. And in it, he explains God's plan for everything. Everything. And he gives some very radical explanations of certain passages in the Bible. And one of them is Revelation 20. Now before we go there, and I explained what Augustine taught, you think, what's that have to do with what we're talking about today?

There's a connection between what most people believe today, most Christians believe today, and what the Bible actually says that's not connected there. And it's because of Augustine. 300 years before Augustine, in the 100s and the 200s and 300s, the scholars who left writings, who were all proto-Catholics, because the Catholic Church was forming over those 300 years, so they are all the ones who formed the Catholic Church, they had a real problem they couldn't fix. They looked at the Bible and said, you don't go to heaven when you die.

Most of them saw that. But they also believed because all of them, well, not all of them, the great majority, had been trained in Greek philosophy. They all believed in the immortal soul. They had a problem they couldn't fix. So what they did is they said, well, you go to hell when you die as a Christian. And there's two compartments in hell.

One is for the Christians and the good people of the Old Testament, and the other is for everybody else. And you just sort of hang out there as a ghost, as a disembodied spirit. Now that may sound strange to us, but that's exactly what the Greeks taught. I mean, if you ever were forced to read by some torturous teacher, the Iliad and the Odyssey, right? The heroes always go to hell, to visit somebody. And everybody there is unhappy because they're just a ghost. They're talking about, oh, which we could eat, when we could do this, when we could do that. You know, there's ghosts down inside of Hades.

Well, that's what a lot of Christians taught. Others said, you went to Abraham's bosom, which is a place between heaven and hell, or heaven and the earth, and you hang out there. But they all agreed on one thing. You were a ghost. You didn't have a body. Because you don't get a body till Christ comes back. They could see that. So they tried to take these two things and put them together. Well, Augustine comes along and says, no, no, no, you're missing it. Let me explain what really happens.

So let's go to Revelation 20, verse 4, and then you're going to have something you've never heard in a sermon. You're going to hear Augustine's explanation of Revelation 20. And the reason I'm going to do this, you're going to realize that nobody that I know of, no Catholic, no Protestant, teaches this today, but they teach the conclusion.

This is very interesting. They don't teach the teaching, but they teach the conclusion and it really skews everything that this day teaches us. So verse 4 of Revelation 20, And that's all thrones of they who sat on them, and judgment was committed to them, and I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and did not receive his mark on their forehead, nor on their hands, and they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. That's been read a couple times this last week.

But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection, and this is where they debated for 300 years. Okay, you die, but you come up in the first resurrection, so where do you go? The idea that death is sleep, there are a few that understood that, most did not. So they had to put you someplace where you hung out and you waited. Augustine says, it's because you don't have a deep understanding of what John writes.

This is all an allegory. The first resurrection, which is exactly—this definition comes right out of Plato—is when you die, your immortal soul leaves your body and goes to heaven. That's the first resurrection. The second resurrection is when you come back to Getty body with Jesus Christ. And you think, well, nobody believes that today, but the conclusion is still taught today throughout Christendom.

When you die, your immortal soul leaves the body and goes to heaven and comes back for a body. You know, Baptists are really—you're waiting for the bodily resurrection. Where are you waiting for the body resurrection? In heaven. But ask them, if you don't have a body, what are you? You're a ghost. So you're hanging out in heaven as a ghost. It's like one Catholic—I took a course from a Catholic scholar, and he said—he was going through Catholic doctrine—he said, we have a problem here. He says, I look at the souls of the just people under the altar in heaven, and they're not happy. When are you going to intervene for us? When are you going to—they're just crying out to God. He says, they're not happy people. He said, but there's an easy solution to this, but I'm teaching you Catholic doctrine, so I can't go there. Because there's lots of scholars that actually look at the Bible and say, uh-oh, we have a problem, but, you know, they're sort of stuck. So everybody hangs out as ghosts, and then you come back and get your real reward, which is a body. And then there's all kinds of arguments of what that body is. What is the body you get? Well, today we're going to compare the first resurrection briefly, because today is about the second resurrection. And the leftovers from Augustine's viewpoint that still is taught throughout Christianity is really a shame, because it is hidden so much of the truth that tells us what God's purpose is for humanity. Of course, the only conclusion that Augustine came to was, the great, great majority of all human beings who have ever lived are going to hell to be punished forever and ever and ever, and that's what makes God happy.

I'm not suggesting you read the city, but I will have to confess, I have not read all the city of God because I would have a mental breakdown. But if you're going to understand certain things, you have to read part of it. So I'm not suggesting you read it. Don't read the Iliad either. But anyways, so let's look at 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15. And this is called, you know, the resurrection chapter in many of your Bibles, where if you have little headings that certain publishers like to put headings into the Bible so it's easier to read, it'll call this the resurrection chapter. Because this is where Paul explains to a group of people who are having trouble with this. And the backstory is because he's writing to Greeks. When you read 1 Corinthians, there's not much said to anyone who would have had a Jewish background. Now they were expected to understand the Old Testament because he quotes the Old Testament. But there really is nothing there about the Jewish Christians, very little, that you'll find in other writings of Paul. It's basically dealing with Greek problems in Corinth, in central Greece, including the immorality and all the other issues they had. And here he says, we're going to have to skip a lot here just for time, but let's go to verse 20. But now Christ has risen from the dead and has become the first roots of those who have fallen asleep. Now this is consistent with the Old Testament. And by the way, just to let you know, the overwhelming number of biblical scholars today agree that the Old Testament doesn't say you go to heaven upon death. Almost all of them, not all, but most. They get in the New Testament and they do the same mistake Augustine did. Now the New Testament teaches the same thing. Paul says you go to sleep. That's how he compares death. You simply fade away and God keeps you and God resurrects you. That's why it's always talking about rising, awakening. Okay, those are terms used in the Old and New Testament for a reason. You will wake.

I mean, why is it that when Lazarus was resurrected, not spiritually but physically, why is it that Lazarus didn't run around yelling, I was dead for all those days? Let me tell you what heaven's like. In fact, of all the people resurrected to the New Testament, not one gives a testimony of heaven. If that's central to the gospel, that you die and go to heaven, why is it that God didn't inspire one person to do it? Because they didn't go there. Because Jesus hadn't. Jesus, the only one, has gone there according to what he said. So it's asleep. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. He says death came to humanity because Adam sinned, got kicked out of Eden, and we've been doomed to die ever since then. You and I weren't designed to live in Satan's world, and this kills us. Sin kills us. God provides salvation. And that comes from Jesus Christ, and that salvation is carried out through the resurrection of the dead. For as Adam all die, even so in Christ, all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order, Christ the first-roots, after those who are Christ at His coming. So the resurrection that he's going to talk about in this chapter is the resurrection of those who are Christ at His coming, where they are resurrect. The word resurrection is to raise up, not bring down. Not bring down. I mean, people who believe in the rapture believe you go up, and then you come down and get your body, because you don't get that until that point. No, you rise once. And there is more than one resurrection. So let's go... Well, verse 35 is interesting, because he says, but someone will say, how are the dead raised up? What's the body they come with? This would have been a normal question to Greeks, because matter, physical matter, and spirit don't coincide. You're either one or the other. So wait a minute. A body is matter. So what kind of body do they come with? What's that mean? And his answer is, well, let's think about the sun and the moon. They're totally different, right? They're totally different. But they're same. You look up in the sun, they're bodies, they're in the sky. But that doesn't really answer it either. So if we go down to verse 42, Paul writes, and so is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body. There is a spiritual body. And probably when they read that in Corinth, everybody broke out in, oh, oh, oh, talking. What's that mean? What's that mean? How could that be?

There is a spiritual body. But that means it's not made out of molecules.

They did talk about atoms, the ancient Greeks. I'm not sure they would use the word molecules. But it's not made out of stuff. Spirits are not made out of stuff. Bodies are made out of stuff. Physical things. How can there be a spiritual body?

He goes on and he says, as it is so, the first man, Adam, became a living being. He became nayfish, nay-fesh. Nayfish is a body animated by the breath of God. When it dies, it dies.

Unless God resurrects it, it doesn't live again.

The last Adam, of course, he's speaking Greek here. I mean, he's writing in Greek, but he's quoting from the Old Testament. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. Okay. He became a spirit. No, he became a spirit with a body. Right? The bodily resurrection of Jesus is central to this story. Well, what's that mean? Well, Paul's explaining it to him. However, the spirit is not first, but the natural. And afterward, the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust, made of stuff, made of things. They understood. Okay. We understand that. We're made of, you know, physical things. That was very, that was a very deep concept inside the Greek world. The second man is the Lord from heaven. He came from heaven. So he was spiritual and he came from heaven. And when he was resurrected, he also has a spiritual body. As was the man of dust, so are those who are made of the dust. And as the heavenly man, so are those who are heavenly. And we have seen, have been born the images of the man of dust. We shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. So he says, you want to know what the resurrected body is like. We have to look at the fact that Jesus Christ became human for us. And then went through the process of death and resurrection, which we read here in verse, starting in verse 20. He went through this for us and then he shows us what we're going to be like. In the resurrection. He shows us what we're going to be like.

What was his body like? There's been two or three messages this week talking about his body. He's walking along with some of the disciples after the resurrection and they don't even know who he is. They don't recognize him. And he's walking, oh, they're talking. They're having a conversation. They walk for miles. And then he says, got to go now and disappears. Others are sitting in a room and he suddenly appears and they said, he's a ghost. He said, no, no, come here. You can touch this. Yeah, touch that. Feel that. But it's not molecules.

Stick your hand here. Look here. There's, see there. I'll show you what I look like with holes in me so you can see this. Um, he does have holes in him, but touch me. And then what did he do? He just walked through the wall. You try that.

I'm not sure how to describe a spirit body. All I know is I want one. And this is the promise to those in the first resurrection. This is important to understand. And it's been part of the message. In fact, this feast I've been really sort of impressed. Not sort of impressed. I have been impressed. Every message has been describing in detail the millennium. I mean, in detail. You put all these details together. We're going home with a huge understanding. Biblical understanding. And it was all from the scripture. What the millennium's going to be like. And everybody kept, it's like one led into the next. And, well, you heard this scripture. Now let me read it. And this takes us another different direction. And everybody was, and that's God's Spirit doing that. And so this is the promise of the first resurrection that happens at Christ's return. That's what He says. We'll just look at verse, let's look at verse 50 and read this very quickly because I need to get on to what this day is about. Now I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep. We shall not all have our souls leave the bodies and go to heaven. Now that's what He says. We're not all going to sleep. Some are going to be actually alive when Christ comes back. But we shall all be changed. In the moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed. For this corruptible was put on incorruption, this mortal must put on immortality. And so when this corruptible was put on incorruption and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass. The saying is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Only when we've changed, our minds have been changed and our bodies have been changed. Can we live forever? You can't live forever in this body, right? But you can't live together. I can't live together with this mind either. It has to be healed. It's too self-destructive. Satan's affected us too much. So we have to, this conversion process that we're going through of being changed for this, that's the first resurrection. Now, the second resurrection, which Augustine said is you come back for your body, is not what it means at all. Before we go to Revelation, let's go to Ezekiel 37. This is read on this day, every time somebody will go here and read Ezekiel 37.

Here is a vision that is given to Ezekiel. It's specifically, it's given to him because he's prophesied in Israel. So it's specifically about Israel. But all these verses, as we know, we could spend two hours showing how all the verses that talk about the Messiah, about the coming resurrections throughout the Old and New Testament, includes everybody. All peoples are part of this. This message is for the world. But he's specifically talking about them. Verse 1 says, The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the spirit of the Lord, and sent me down in the midst of the valley, and it was full of bones. Now try to picture this a little bit. As far as you can see, there's nothing but just piles stacked up of millions of bones, human bones, all mixed together. Have you ever been to La Brea tarpet out in LA? You know, there's all these bones in this tarpet all mixed together. Different animals would fall in, another one would fall in, and they just all get mixed together. There's just, there's just, as far as you can see, millions and millions of human bones, skulls, shin bones, feet, hands, fingers.

All the 10-year-old boys are saying, well, that's cool.

I like being 10, by the way, so. 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. And he said to me, son of man, can these bones live? So I answered, oh Lord, you know. You know, this is a wise man. If God ever asks you a question, He's not asking for our opinion.

I waited for many years hoping God's going to ask me my opinion someday, and then I realized, if God ever asked me a question, my answer's going to be, oh Lord, you know.

Again, He said to me, prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. Now, breath enter into them. This is how all animals, human beings, receive life. It's the breath of God that animates us. It's the blood in us, too. That's why the argument of fetuses not being truly human. There's blood there. They're human. They're human. But Adam was created. His heart, his lungs, everything was there. He breathed in them, and everything worked. Well, in this vision, there's these millions and millions of people, all these dry bones. And if you read them through, He keeps telling Ezekiel, He keeps telling Ezekiel, now tell the next thing. Put the bones together, and all the bones come together. Now there's millions of skeletons.

And then the organs form, and the skin form, muscles and skin form, and then God breathes into them, and they all wake up. They all wake up. If we go down to verse 10, Ezekiel says, So I prophesied as he commanded, and breath came into them, and they lived and stood upon their feet in an exceedingly great army. And he said to me, said a man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They indeed say, our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off. He says, you're looking symbolically here through the history of all the descendants of Abraham.

And they died, and they have no hope. They cannot resurrect themselves. And they're not in heaven, and they're not in hell. Well, they're in Sheol, which just means the grave. They're just waiting to wake up.

So he's showing him that profound truth. He says, therefore prophesy and say to them, this is the Lord God. Behold, O my people, I will open your graves. See, so this is a, this is a, is it literal? They're all not in one big valley. So I'm going to open your graves, wherever you are, and cause you to come up from your graves and bring you into the land of Israel. And 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. And then verse 14, I want you to think, what is the first resurrection? The first resurrection is people being coming up from the graves, but they no longer are made of molecules and atoms and elements. They literally are given a spiritual body.

These people are given a physical body. To be in the first resurrection, you have to have God's Spirit in you. They don't have God's Spirit. They never received God's Spirit in their lifetime. And so here's what he promises these physical people. And 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. Now this means something. This is real important.

You receive God's Spirit. Ancient Israel never received God's Spirit. I mean, individuals did and small groups did, but as a whole, they never received God's Spirit. Because they were never truly repentant before God. God did not lead them into that level of conversion where they could then receive His Spirit. That means these people have to learn. And this is Israel. Ancient Israel didn't even know about the Messiah, who He was. They knew prophecies about Him. They're going to have to accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah, who's reigning on earth. Because remember, the second resurrection is after 1,000 years. After 1,000 years, all of humanity who hadn't knowingly rebelled against God. There are those who have had. But all those who haven't are going to come up and they're going to live again. And they're going to be told by Christ, I'm going to tell you about the Heavenly Father and I am your only hope. And that's what we're going to tell. The majority of... like Augustine taught, and it just became part of Christianity, the majority of humanity has not lost their salvation because the majority have never known God.

Generation after generation, Al or Mongolia, who never heard the name of Jesus Christ for 4,000 years. Well, even before He came. I mean, they didn't know the Bible. There was nothing there for them. This God not care for them? I guess we could be Calvinist. John Calvin taught that in the Protestant Reformation that, you know, God just looks out over people and says, I'm going to save you, you, you, you and you, and you're really bad. You're a murder, but I'm going to save you to show how great I am. And I'm going to let this good person over here go to hell to show you how just I am. And it's all our pleasure. That's not the way this is. Every human being has value. Every human being has value to God. It doesn't mean there's universal salvation. There is a lake of fire. It means everybody gets to choose. And as long as you're deceived by Satan, you really don't have free choice. We say about free will, free will, free will. Until God reveals Himself to us, we don't have free will. We don't have free will. We don't have free will. We don't have free will. Until God reveals Himself to us, we don't have real free will, do we? We have limited free will because we don't know what the real choices are. Until you know what the choices are, that was the problem with free will. Why did God allow Satan to come in to the Garden of Eden? He gave them free will and He had to give them a choice. And He sure wasn't going to expose them to evil. It's against His nature to do so. But you know, I gave you free will. You actually have to make a choice.

It's the great problem of it. And He knew what the problem of it was and He gave it to us anyways because He didn't want pets. He wanted children.

All these people weren't lost. Now some of them will be because there's a lake of fire. But there is an opportunity for all those who didn't know, just like the people of ancient Israel are told, yeah, I'm going to have to bring you out of the grave and say, you have no idea who I am, God. You thought you knew who I was. And God's going to say, but you didn't know. And you were so rebellious. And now if you repent, I will give you my spirit and you can become, not just my children through Abraham, but my children literally forever.

In the book of Ephesians, Mr. Shabe has been talking a lot about the book of Ephesians. There's a great mystery in the book of Ephesians. Paul keeps talking about this great mystery and he says, one, it's Jesus Christ and it's two, everybody, everybody is equal before God.

He keeps writing to it, which was a Gentile church in Ephesus. He keeps writing to them, all of you, all of you are the mystery because you've been called to be part of the household of God. You've been called to be the children of God.

This day reminds us of that.

It reminds us that every person counts.

Same thing happened in the book of Matthew, where Jesus makes a comment. I just want to go there. Matthew chapter 11.

This makes no sense. There's a lot of commentaries that are like all over the place and trying to explain what Jesus is saying here. Speaking, Jesus Christ is talking about Him. Then He began to, this is verse 20, He began to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works have been done, because they did not repent. These are basically Jewish cities at the time. Woe do you, Tereisen, woe do you, Bethsaidia, for if the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago and sackcloth and ashes. Now, it's very interesting. He's talking to people who are the descendants of Abraham, who keep the Sabbath day, who keep the Ten Commandments, who go to Jerusalem for the Holy Days.

They're doing all those things, but they did not understand who He was. And He said, if I would have done these works in these Gentile cities up here, they'd all be following me. They would all be repented by now. But they had such pride in being the people of God. They thought it was about them, and it's about God. We have to be careful of that. This is about God and Jesus Christ, and our submission and love of them. That's what this is about. And then we can look at everybody else and say, you too can be a child of God.

You too can be a child of God. It's a hard thing to learn. When I first came into the ministry, there was something that bothered me. I could not ever, and I think all of us are repulsed by a child abuser. Do you know what God did? For years, I visited more child abusers in prison than anybody I've ever talked to. And I had to teach them about Jesus Christ. And when they said, could God even forgive me? I had to say, yes.

Took a while for me to really work through that. But yes, He will. You repent. You can be forgiven. And yes, you can be His child. Yes.

But you have to repent. You have to be changed. You have to receive His Holy Spirit. And you have to become a new person. You can't stay the person you are, but yes. And see, at first I didn't want to say yes. So I got beat up by God for a long time on that one. I spent a lot of time in prisons. And that's what this day is about. The value. God says, you can choose to go the other way, but you actually get to choose. That's what this day is about. It's about Satan being removed. Because that's the first thing that happens, right? Peter Trumpets tells us about that. David Tomit tells us that. And then we get in the millennium. Satan's not here for a while. At the very end, we'll get that in a minute here.

And so he says to them, don't you get it? I could go to other people and they'd get this. But because you have so much, God has given you so much, you're blind to what's right in front of you. And that's what he said to the Jewish community in front of me.

But he said that, but I say to you, verse 24, that it should be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you. Well, what's the day of judgment? If the day of judgment is simply, I remember seeing this in a tract one time. I've mentioned this numerous times. I saw this tract probably 40 years ago. It was in a truck stop bathroom. And I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I've lost it over the years. But it was about the great white throne judgment. And you opened it up. And there was what was supposed to be God. He's sitting on a throne. What's really weird, it looked just like the Lincoln Memorial. And it looked like Lincoln. You know, how he'd beard. He's staring down and thinking, God looks like Abraham Lincoln. But it looked like the Lincoln Memorial. And he had a lever in each hand. And all the people off into the distance, where you never couldn't see the end, everyone's come up to him and he's going like this or like this. And one's floating up to heaven, and the next is screaming and falling into a burning hell, and you can't Satan down into hell. And that's what they think this is. And that's not what it is. It's you choose. But you have to know me first. You have to know me first and then you choose. That's what this is.

It's not just God sitting there. Actually, God isn't confronting the people. You confronts everybody? It's Jesus Christ. He died for us. So guess who everybody stands before to receive their judgment? God says, you have to stand before Him. Jesus Christ is the one who pronounces that. Of course, it's God's will that He's doing. But you understand, you stand before Him to receive your judgment, which is only justice. So this only makes sense if these people come up in the judgment. And how can it be more tolerable if everybody's going to hell in the traditional sense? Well, part of the explanation is there's different compartments in hell. You can thank Dante for that one. There's different compartments in hell.

There's one of the really neat compartments is for Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates, because they were so close to the truth. They have it like a really nice apartment in hell. No, it has to be. This time of judgment is the time of awakening. They are brought back to life, and now they get to see God. Now they get to choose.

They can repent to receive God's Spirit and be converted. So they, too, can become the children of God. They, too, can be changed and receive, become a spirit body, and see God face to face.

That's not just our hope. That's the hope of the world.

Let's go back to Revelation now.

Back to Revelation.

And let's go back to chapter 20.

Verse 7. So here we are at the end. Yesterday would have been celebrating the last day of the millennium. So we started with the Feast of Trumpets in this sermon. Well, actually, we started in 410. We went through the Feast of Trumpets. We've gone through the Day of Atonement. We've gone now through the entire millennium. The Thousand-Year Reign of Jesus Christ, the owner. Verse 7. Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison. Satan is taken away from humanity.

I, you know, I try to say when something's my opinion. This is my opinion, okay? Because I'm guessing at this. Because God doesn't tell us a lot of things. Why would he release Satan at the end of the thousand years when, by this point, everything's perfect, right? There hasn't been a murder in, who knows, 950 years. Everything's perfect. Why does he release Satan?

My guess is because everybody gets to choose. It's the Garden of Eden again. It's the Garden of Eden again. And they have to choose. So I'm going to let you choose between him and me. Christ is reigning on earth and he says, now you can choose. And I'm going to let Satan out. He's going to tell him because it's right here. And you have to choose now. And when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison and go out and deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle whose number is the sand of the sea. He deceives millions.

And they come to fight Jesus Christ. That tells us the power of Satan and it tells us why you and I better be close to God.

God can defeat him. You and I cannot. You can't have enough faith. You can't be righteous enough. You can't have... None of us have anything to be able to defeat him. But with God in us, it says he runs away, right? He will flee you. That's not what it's... Or he'll flee from you. That's what James wrote. But even at the end of the millennium, when God lets all these people live now in a perfect world, no hunger, no crime, he says, now you get to choose and many will choose wrong.

And they went up to the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city and fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them. And the devil who deceived them was casted like a fire and brimstone where the beasts and false prophet are and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. They're gone forever. Satan and the demons are removed and can never again affect anything in the kingdom of God. So why would he do this? There has to be a reason. God's never arbitrary. It has to be. Okay, folks, you have to choose. I gave you free will, you will choose. Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat on it from whom the face of the earth and heaven fled away. There was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great. This isn't the first resurrection. It can't be. They've already been judged. They've already received their spiritual bodies. They've already been ruling with Christ on earth. I saw the small and great standing before God and the books were opened and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works by the things which are written in the books.

What we have here is the obvious teaching that these people are going to be judged. But that doesn't mean immediately. It doesn't mean they're standing before, you know, Christ and there's these levers being pulled. It means that they will be resurrected and given access to the Spirit of God. That's what Ezekiel says. Now, I'm amazed how many evangelicals go to Ezekiel 37 and say that was fulfilled in 1948. Well, show me where the Spirit of God was poured out on the Jewish nation in 1948. It hasn't happened. That's not true. He said he's going to bring them from the graves.

And this is all people. I can't imagine what that's going to be like. I guarantee you it will be chaotic.

I'm wondering... Okay, this is me again. I'm hoping they're all raised naked.

It's hard to start punching your neighbor whenever you're wanting to stand around naked.

But of course, there's going to have to be clothing for them, and housing for them, and food for them, and places for them to go and learn about God. The whole world has to be prepared for them. Why is it a thousand years? It takes a thousand years to prepare this world for this event. We're not going into the millennium just to, okay, now change the world and then, oh, it's all done in the first 50 years and we get to take a big vacation. No, the world must be prepared for this, the physical world. The small and great are resurrected. The small and great are given an access to God. The small and great are given access to God's Spirit to learn that way and be converted and be part of the family. And then they're judged. And then they're judged. Verse 13 says, And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades were delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works, and then death and Hades were cast into the light of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found in the book of life was cast into the light of fire. That's why there is not universal salvation. We know just those people at the end of the millennium, given access to Christ on earth, given access to God's Spirit, and they turn against God. People in this resurrection, people in this resurrection, some will not. Some will not.

That's hard to believe, but he says it. It's the great pain that God is willing to suffer to have children because he has to destroy, and through the second death, those who choose the other way. And remember, everyone has value to him. This isn't like some gleeful thing, like Augustine had everybody, you know, God just so happy that, you know, watching all these people burn forever. Well, they're not burning forever. They're dying forever.

But there's no joy in God's heart for that. But he will do it, because he will not have evil children forever. And thank him for that. It would be better to die forever than to be in evilly insane forever. It is much more merciful to let someone die forever than to literally be tortured forever. You don't have to be tortured by anybody. You'll torture yourself forever. It's horrible. It's horrible to think about what it would be like to suffer without end, cut off from God. And that's not the answer. That's how God sees things. No, you're just going to lose consciousness. You're going to sleep forever.

That's remarkable.

How many billions of people? How much chaos will that be? And we're going to help Christ bring order out of that. Teach people.

I just think of battlefields where people are going to be resurrected that were killing each other. Especially in much of history where you killed the guy in front of you because you were only a foot apart, hacking each other to death. Are you going to wake up, look at the guy next to you and pick up a rock? I mean, what are you going to do? People died without hope. People died with no concept of God.

Babies who died by the millions and millions. No chance to live.

Who's going to take care of all them? I don't know. Fortunately, Christ has an answer.

You know, I keep asking these questions and my, you know, Lord, you know, Lord, you and I have been given a privilege and honor and the grace of Almighty God because it's not because of us. To understand this and be prepared for Christ's return. Understand why it is so important we don't cheapen the grace of God. We don't cheapen the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. What was paid for us to be here right now. Is tremendous and it's the same price that's paid for every human being.

We have no right to look at everybody else and say, well, I'm a Christian and you're not. We have no right. All we can say is by the grace of God, God's using me right now in my life and he's using others in their lives and someday everybody gets to make the choice. Everybody, even the most despicable person, at least gets to make the choice. And what if they do? Are we going to stand before God and say, well, I'll accept everybody but that guy.

You don't know what you're doing with that guy. That guy should never be granted repentance.

But you know, that's not the end of it. This day, picture is one other thing.

A thousand years is done. The great white throne judgment has happened. And now, the whole point, when Adam and Eve sinned, God put in motion what he was going to do. And it has a focal point and it's right, it's at the end of this book. We think we're the focal point. We, people who lived 100 years ago, Christians thought they were the focal point. Moses thought he was the focal point and it's not.

All through all this, God has a focal point. And it comes down to, we call this, you know, the eighth day because that's what the Bible calls it sometimes we call it the last great day because it's so amazing. But God just says, oh no, it's just the focal point of where I'm headed right now. Chapter 21. This is the focal point.

Back in 1 Corinthians, Paul, we're going to Revelation 21. Back in 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote that Jesus will deliver the kingdom to God after everything is conquered, including death. So it's not until the events we celebrate at this day are completed that that can even happen. All the world, there are no world governments anymore. There's only one worshiping of one God. There's, everything's been fixed. Every human being has either been changed into a child of God or has died forever in the lake of fire. Death has finally been conquered. And this is what happens. Revelation 21 verse 1. Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, also there was no more sea. I don't know. We have a whole new world out there, a whole new creation. We think this creation is something. This is just this first step. We think this is the end. This is the end. This is just the conclusion of the first chapter of what God is doing. That's all this is. Now he has his family. Now a new heaven, a new earth. Verse 2. Then I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. We're not going to heaven to be with God. God is coming to earth to be with us. That was his plan all along. That was his plan all along. He's bringing heaven to earth. And then he describes something that really can't be made of molecules. New Jerusalem. It's spirit. It's in the spirit realm, which we have no idea what's in the spirit realm. You and I live in the fake world. God lives in the real world. This is just stuff.

He says in verse 4, And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain. For the former things have passed away. That he who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he says to John, write, For these words are true and faithful. And he said to John, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, And I will give of the fountain of the water of life, freely to him who thirsts. You have to choose this. Now that is not salvation by works. I really get upset when someone says, Well, you say you have to choose that's salvation by works. No, the Gospel is one sick person who got better, telling another sick person how to get in touch with the doctor. That's what this is. Or it's one starving person telling a person, I was starving, too. Here's a piece of bread. Because all of it's by works. They took the bread. That is a convoluted way of thinking. God offers us this grace. Well, if I take God's grace, I'm earning my salvation. It's a ridiculous argument. Well, you people believe in the Ten Commandments. You're trying to earn your salvation. No, we believe in the Ten Commandments because we believe in God. God has to heal everything, including us. And we can't deny. It'd be like going to a doctor, and he says, Look, I know you can't afford me. I'm the best doctor in the world. And you have a rare disease, and there's only one person in the world who can heal it. And here, take this cure, and you're okay. That's all you have to do. Take this cure, then go home and change your lifestyle. And you can call me anytime. I'll come see you anytime. We'll have this great relationship. Here, take the medicine. Oh, I can't take the medicine because that would be earning my healing.

Oh, I can't do the list of things you want me to do. That'd be, I'm earning my healing. I just want you to heal me. And God says, No, no, I have to heal your mind. You have to participate. We have to participate in the healing of our minds, but we can't heal our minds. We just participate. That doesn't mean we're earning this. So we're not earning our salvation through law keeping. That is not what we're doing. That wasn't in my notes. But anyways. He says, He who overcomes shall inherit all things. Now, what is it God's holding back from us?

He says, first of all, there's another place where he says in the New Testament, he says, God has given us everything we need for salvation. God's going to give you and me everything we need to be here at this point. If we're not there, it's only because we didn't. We refused it.

And he says, I'm going to give you all things. What is he holding back? Explain to me what is held back from all things. Like I'm going to give you 90% of things?

I'm going to give you all things. We don't even know what that is.

We're entering into the spirit world at that point. We don't even know what that means. The best we know, we can walk through walls.

And if you want to, you can get together with your friends and have a nice physical meal, right? When Jesus said, oh, that's fish smells good. Give me a piece. And then he disappeared. He sure didn't need to eat fish for fuel. But we're going to enter that world. And then he tells us why. And I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

There's a purpose in all this, and it's very simple. It's actually the heart of the gospel. The heart of the gospel is something very simple. God wanted children. That's it. Now it gets a little complicated because free choice means we have to make a choice, and free choice means He allows Satan to come in, and free choice is we get all messed up, and He saves us through this process, and then He ends up with children. And no matter what Satan does, he can't stop him from having children. He can only convince individuals not to go that way. But he's not going to stop the process. He's not going to stop what God's going to end up with in the end. Do you have children? Children who can't sin. Because if we went back to 1 Corinthians, it talks about how God will be all in all. If He's in all of us, we can't sin. It's not like when we're changed, we lose God's spirit. And now we get all, make all our decisions ourselves. God will be in us forever. So in the end, you know what we're doing? We're giving up some of our free will. I'd give it up like that if I knew how. Can you imagine giving up the capacity to sin? The capacity to be depressed, have anxiety, have anger. Can you imagine giving all that up? That's what we're doing. We're saying, no, replace that with the fruits of your spirit. And when I am changed, I will be that. I will be that. And we're giving up that part of the free will that says, that says, I wish to sin, and it won't be there anymore. I didn't bring that argument out because Augustine said, none of us really have free will. God either makes us do it or he doesn't. Is that true? God lets us choose, and then He changes us so that we actually lose choice. Thank God someday we won't have choice. I look forward to that because we'll be in the spirit realm. This day is very important to God. It's His focal point. It's just the end of chapter one. I don't know how many chapters He has written, but I'm sure it's way out there.

We'll never know. We'll never totally grasp the grandeur of God or the remarkable divine Jesus Christ. We will never understand all of it.

There will still be times, I think, when God asks a question, we'll say, you know, Lord, we will be like Him, and we will see Him as He is. And so will the majority of humankind who thinks they're caught off, who thinks they have no hope, who think that there is no God for them, because this day, someday, will really happen.