The Last Great Day

The United Church of God presents Gary Petty with the sermon titled, The Last Great Day. It was recorded October 20, 2011, in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. This meeting has a lot of meaning to all of us. We can think about people that we wish to meet on this day.

I have a photograph that I think about every time I celebrate The Last Great Day. It's a photograph of a person I don't know. It's a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph. Some of you may remember it when I mentioned it. It's an old one, probably 15, 20 years ago. A photographer was in the Sudan when there was widespread famine.

He was at a refugee camp where people were coming in and starving. He took this incredibly dramatic picture of a little girl. I don't know how old she was. She was emaciated. She was starving to death. She looked to be under six, but there was no way to tell. She had come into the camp. They don't know where she had come from, what tribe she was from. She had no family. She had come into the camp, and just before she got up to where they were serving food, she fell over. Nobody went to get her. It was too late. The picture he took was of this little girl and a vulture sitting beside her, in the center of a camp, a few feet from food.

Christianity, throughout its history in the Western civilization, has a couple of hard questions that they've never answered. Why did God love her less? As people meet in great cathedrals and listen to sermons, as people meet in their nice churches, and they leave, and they go out, and they have their dinners together, in a society and in a world where nobody has been starving for hundreds of years in any large amount, in a society in the Western civilization, whether it be Europe or the United States, we have a very comfortable Christianity for the most part.

People can go to church. Once a week they can keep Christmas, they can keep Easter. And they don't have to answer the question, why does God seem to love me more than that little girl? We don't know what God's her family worshiped. We don't know if she was a Christian. We don't know if she'd ever heard the name Jesus Christ. Why does God love people with money more than people who don't? Why does God love people with food more than people who don't have food? Why does God love people who are at peace more than people who are dying in war?

So we won't ask that question in our society, but it's a question people need to ask. Because what kind of God is that? What kind of God is that? What about the billions of people who never heard the name Jesus Christ? Throughout history, we're not just talking about today.

What about all those years in Communist Russia? The name of Jesus Christ was suppressed. What about 500 years ago? Native American tribes here in the United States never heard the name Jesus Christ. What about a thousand years ago? A tribe that lived for generations at peace in outer Mongolia, generation after generation. Lots of disease. Their lifespan wasn't very long. They lived very hard lives. Never heard the name Jesus Christ. The common teaching throughout the history of Western civilizations Christianity is that all those people go to hell to be tortured forever and ever and ever.

And what that does is it proves the justice of God. John Calvin, the famous Protestant reformer, took it even a step farther. He said God condemned all human beings to hell. And then, in a very arbitrary way, deliberately picks people to receive eternal life. And he makes sure that some really good people go to hell and some really bad people go to heaven to show how great he is. And that shows the love of God. The pilgrims who came here, many of them were influenced by the teachings of John Calvin. In which you go to heaven or you don't go to heaven based entirely upon an arbitrary decision by God.

And he deliberately keeps some good people out to show how good he is. And he deliberately puts some bad people in to show how good he is. That's one attempt. Another attempt is purgatory. Purgatory is the idea. It is an attempt to answer a difficult question. Purgatory says, well, God wouldn't do that.

So he must put people, some really bad people go to hell and other people go to sort of a middle ground where they get purified. And then they get to go to heaven. Because it was hard and difficult to comprehend why God would take a little girl who starved to death in the Sudan and put her in hell forever.

And so theologians throughout the years tried to come up with something and in Catholicism they came up with the idea of purgatory. One of the most quoted verses in all the Bible is John 3 16, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. God wants to save the world, according to the Scripture, yet we do know that it also says there is no other name under heaven given among men that you can be saved except by Jesus Christ.

There is no universal salvation in the Bible. There is something called the Lake of Fire. There is a punishment for the incorrigibly wicked. So how do we solve this problem? This is, to me, one of the most primary core issues of what is real Christianity. What does God do with the massive amounts of humanity throughout history who never heard of him? Never heard of him? Had no opportunity?

Does he just condemn them to some kind of, we know that there is no everlasting burning fire of hell, but does he just put them all in the Lake of Fire?

How do we reconcile these ideas? You know, it's interesting, in the Middle Ages, the Crusades were driven a lot by this question. They believed they had to force people into accepting Jesus for eternal salvation. That was one of the motivations of the Inquisition. You literally tortured a person to death so that the last moment of life they said, Yes, I believe in Jesus, and then, oh good, I can kill them. Now they get eternal life. They thought they were doing people a favor. They were saving people's eternal soul. Whatever two days of torture it took to kill them was good.

Because now they got to go to heaven, or at least to purgatory, instead of hell forever.

That's where this, if you have a twisted idea of what God's actually doing, that's where it can take you. That you can kill people thinking you're doing God a favor, thinking you're doing the person a favor.

How do we answer this? How do we deal with this problem? How do we deal with the fact that the great majority of humanity all through time have not ever heard of Jesus Christ or the God in the Bible? Let's go to John 5. John 5. John 5.

We also have another false idea that it's really permeating modern Christianity, and it's part of a New Age movement, and a new Christianity that's being formed. And that is, Jesus would never, ever judge anybody.

That Jesus just loves everybody so much that there never could be judgment. And that's one way of trying to answer this problem. Universal salvation. Everybody gets saved, no matter what. Well, that's not true either. Look what Jesus himself said in verse 24 of John chapter 5. He said so those who are his true followers will receive eternal life. Verse 25.

In the end, there's two kinds of judgments. And what is important to understand is, who makes that judgment? Jesus Christ.

It is Jesus Christ who will decide the eternal life or death of every individual, which is only fitting since he's the one who sacrificed his life for the privilege to have eternal life. And so there is coming a time of judgment. Now, when we kept the Feast of Trophids, in the beginning of the Feast of Tabernacles, we talked about the first resurrection. But we also know that there is a second resurrection. So now let's go through and start to construct, from just a handful of Scriptures, there's more we could go to, but construct what this day is all about. Why this is different than the Feast of Tabernacles. Actually, this is the focal point of everything God is doing. This is the end game of everything God is doing with humanity, is what this day pictures. Revelation chapter 20. Let's start in Revelation chapter 20.

This has already been read a couple of times, so we have to go back here. This is fundamental to these days. Verse 1 of Revelation 20, And I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who was the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.

And he cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up, and a seal was set on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more. Till the thousands here were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.

So the thousand years, what we pictured during the days of Unleavened Bread, Feast of Tabernacles, we're at the end of that. Satan is loose for a short period of time. Now at the beginning of that thousand years, we have verse 4, And I saw thrones of they that sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus, for the word of God, would not worship the beast or his image, and that received his mark, and their foreheads are on their hands.

And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. And then verse 5, So we know what the first resurrection is. I won't go there, but we know in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Paul goes to great lengths to describe this resurrection. When Jesus Christ comes back, those in the first resurrection, he says, are changed in the twinkling of an eye. And he said, let me explain to you, because I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you.

I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you. And he said, let me explain to you, people ask what kind of body they will have. Now, in the Greek world, that was an interesting question. Some believe that when you died, you had an immortal soul, but it had no body. You were just a ghostly form. Others believe that you became a star. That's one reason astrology was such a big thing in both Greece and Rome. Because those were the souls of departed people. The brighter the star, the better the person, the more important the person. So what body does a resurrected person have from a Greek viewpoint?

It was an important question. And Corinth was a Greek city. You read 1 Corinthians, and you see they had all kinds of Greek problems, different than in the Jewish world. And so he says, don't you understand? He says, look at the moon, and look at the sun. That's the difference between the body you have now and the body you have then. A piece of rock and pure energy. That's the difference. And Paul goes to great lengths to describe that resurrection.

Now that's very important to set as a premise when we begin to talk about the second resurrection. The first resurrection is when Christ comes back, and the saints are changed, and they are given a spirit body. It will be like Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ showed up, walked through the wall, sat down with His disciples, ate some food, got up, and walked back through the wall. That's a spirit body. Try doing that.

Now don't. We can't do that. We will see God as He is, and not die. If you and I saw God today as He is, it would kill us. We cannot physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, we could not withstand the presence of the Almighty God. So, that's what the first resurrection is about. So let's now pick this up in Revelation, verse 7. Revelation 20, verse 7. Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison.

He will 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 as the sand of the sea. So we have this Satan released. We had an interesting conversation twice during the feast with people. We discussed why would he do this? I have a theory for this. This is my theory. This is no... I have no biblical proof of this. But when we look at corrupted human nature, and you think how many generations throughout the time of the millennium will it take for corrupted human nature, you know, not to be affecting the next generation?

It won't take a long time. But after a thousand years, there's probably a generation that will be very, very similar to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And God says everybody has to choose. So he's going to make them choose. So Satan's going to be released so that those people will actually have to make a choice, just like everybody else. Because God could get people to obey him in that environment, but love is a choice. We have to choose to love God, and then choose to obey Him out of the motivation of love. But that's my theory of that.

But then, verse 11, after the thousand years, and after this time where Satan's released for a short period, and that he's removed forever, he's gotten rid of, he's taken off, where he can't influence God's creation anymore. He said, The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one according to his works.

Then death and Hades were cast into the light of fire, which is the second death. And anyone not found written in the book of life was cast into the light of fire. So we do have an eternal punishment, not eternal punishing, but eternal punishment. There is a point where a person can become so incorrigibly evil, so twisted and self-willed, that God says, I will not give you eternal life, because you will be miserable for eternity. Now the question is, so God opens the books, and I think we sort of have this idea.

I saw a tract one time that is described a great white throne judgment. It was at a restaurant, and I picked it up, and I was looking at it, and it showed God looked amazingly like Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. The Lincoln Memorial was sort of looking down on it. He looked like that. And there were these lines of people that went off into, you know, as far as you could see, and there were two, there was like two levers in front of him.

And he went one lever, and the person went down, and there was this hell down here, and you know, demons, and they were being tortured. And the other lever, they sort of faded off and became ghosts and floated off into heaven, and God was sitting there doing this. Is that what the great white throne judgment is? Or is it something else? There's a very interesting Scripture where Paul says something in 2 Corinthians 4. Let's go to 2 Corinthians 4.

In verse 3, A Scripture has been read in Isaiah that talks about the covering between God and humanity over the earth, and how He tears that away, this veil between God and man. "...Whose minds the God of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them." They've been blinded by the God of this world. This is not God's world. Now, He didn't lose it because He was in some battle with Satan. He allowed Satan for a certain amount of time to reign. He allowed him to do so. There comes a point where He will not allow him to do so anymore. And when He removes him, you have a humanity that for all these thousands of years, have been taught a narrative of life that is based entirely upon lies. What's really interesting is when you look at where they asked Jesus about, why do you teach Him parables? He said, because I don't want them to know.

Now, if God is the God of justice, and God is not letting people know Him, then how can that be justice? How can God blind somebody and then condemn them for not seeing? Think about that. Think about a God that would blind somebody deliberately and then say, I'm going to condemn you because you can't see.

That's not the God we find in the Bible. And that's why there's a problem with the concept that everybody just goes to hell. Of course, you have this argument. Everybody in history, at one point or another, heard the name of Jesus Christ. And then they got to choose. I find that a ridiculous argument because what do you do with the thousands of years of history before Jesus Christ was born?

Nobody heard His name.

So what do we do with this dilemma? What do we do with the little girl that died in the Sudan?

Romans, chapter 5. Paul deals with this deep theological issue in a number of places. I find it interesting that Paul would write it, and he didn't do the explanation I wish he would do. I wish he would go into more depth. But Paul was usually dealing with very specific matters. So he would get to something that wasn't on his mind, and he'd write something, and then he'd go on to something else. But we get glimpses of the way Paul understood this, and he was inspired to understand it.

Romans, 5-8. I read this verse in one of the seminars about reconciliation. For when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled. We shall be saved by His life. Not only that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we now have received the reconciliation. Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, Adam, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned. For until the law sin was in the world, but sin was not imputed when there is no law.

Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who was a type of him, where Christ who was to come. Now, we read through that, and we miss a very important point. Because later in this same book, or same letter, Paul says, law defines sin. And there here he says that before the law was given, people were sinning. Now logically, that's only one conclusion you can come to. Until people knew the law, the law existed, they just didn't know they were sinning. They didn't know they were sinning.

Because he definitely says, before the law was given, those people were sinning. And by his own definition, the law defined sin. So we see where Paul's going here. He says, it's been messed up all along. Even, you know, no matter what God gives, no matter what God does, the world's messed up. But there's this little phrase here, but sin is not imputed where there is no law. That's a very interesting idea. Imputed means it's not put on your account.

Remember, there are books open, and there's a book open. Sin has two penalties. Two penalties. Two types of penalties. One is temporary. One is temporary. Someone goes out, they get drunk, they wreck their car. They lose their car, their insurance, and their license.

That is a temporary penalty. You and I are walking around with temporary penalties, aren't we? The person in here that doesn't have some temporary penalty, you're still carrying because of some sin you might have committed 30 years ago. Someone has a venereal disease because of sin committed 30, 40 years ago. There are temporary penalties from sin, and God takes away some of those, and some He doesn't.

Some we carry around with us, and some we die. So He wasn't talking about the temporary penalty of sin here. Humanity's suffering is because of sin. But there is also an eternal penalty for sin. Either we are washed through the blood of Jesus Christ, and we are converted through His Spirit, and we receive eternal life, or we receive eternal death. In the Church today, we have to remember, when we celebrate this day, we're celebrating the future of humanity. Our day of salvation is now. You and I are being judged now. Our judgment will come the first time Jesus Christ comes back.

And so there is a great danger if we take our Christianity lightly, because we are living in our day of salvation. But it is not the world's day of salvation. So it is not imputed to them. They have the temporary penalties. They have not yet received the eternal penalty, the eternal consequence.

Now what we see are glimpses in the Old Testament and the New Testament about a different resurrection than that first one. 1 Corinthians talks about this incredible resurrection to spirit life. Let's go to Deuteronomy 30, where we get one of the first glimpses of this other resurrection. Deuteronomy 30. This is right after the blessings and cursings chapters, where God tells Israel, You obey me, you'll get these blessings.

You disobey me, you'll get these cursings. Now they haven't even gone into the Promised Land yet, and they get this incredible prophecy told to them. Now remember, they're not even there yet. They have a whole history ahead of them. They have a history of Joshua and the time of the Judges. They have a history of the time of Saul and David and Solomon and all the kings and the northern tribes and southern tribes separating and fighting each other.

And the northern tribes being taken into captivity, the southern tribes being taken into captivity, the southern tribes being brought back. None of that history has happened yet. In Deuteronomy 30, verse 1, God tells them, Now shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God drives you.

Now they've got to be thinking, you're going to drive us into nations. You're just, God is out of Egypt. Well, it's been a while, but, you know, we haven't got into the Promised Land yet. And you return to the Lord your God, and obey His voice according to all that I have commanded you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you.

If any of you are driven out to the farthest parts under heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you. And then the Lord your God will bring you to the land which your Father has possessed, and you shall possess it, and He will prosper you and multiply you more than your Father's.

Now, up to this point, we know He can be talking about their descendants, right? But He says, you, He means you as a people, as those people, those Israelites there. He said, you people, this is what's going to happen to you. You're going to go to the Promised Land, and over a period of time, I'm just going to scatter you among the nations. He's talking about them as a people. But verse 6 is very interesting. Because it says, and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants.

He's not talking now in just those general terms. It's very specific. You people right here, there is going to come a time when I will circumcise your heart, plus all the people I've talked about of the things that's going to happen in the future. Your heart and your descendants to love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul that you may live. Well, that never happened. That never happened. Those people died, the next generation died, the next generation died, they died for generation after generation after generation.

They were never brought together. Their heart was never circumcised. And so here we have a forerunner to what Ezekiel talks about in Ezekiel 37. Ezekiel 37. I want to just briefly touch on this. You know the chapter? It's the Valley of the Dry Bones.

And Ezekiel is given a vision. And Steve Myers isn't in his vision. He's given a vision. And in his vision he sees this valley of thousands upon thousands, maybe millions of bones from people who have died generation after generation after generation. And Ezekiel is told, this is the history of Israel. This is the history of Israel. Generation after generation died. He says, can they live again? Now Ezekiel knows something that's very important. If God or an angel from God ever asks you a question, it's probably rhetorical.

It's best probably to say, you know. He really isn't asking your opinion. You know. And he says, this is what's going to happen. You command to them and they'll come together. And he commands and they come together. And he says, can they live again? He says, command and flesh will come on them and flesh came upon them.

You can imagine this incredible vision. Now millions of people are standing there or laying there. I don't know what state they're in. They're just bodies now. They were bones. They're now full, complete bodies and they are dead. And he commands them to breathe. And it says, breath comes upon them. Verse 11, then he said to me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They indeed say, our bones are dry, our hope is lost, we ourselves are cut off. Therefore prophesy and say to them, Thus says the Lord God, behold my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out from your graves and bring you into the land of Israel.

Now there are some people who take Ezekiel 37 and say that this applies to what happened in 1948 when the modern state of Israel was formed. It does not. It has to do with graves. It has to do with a resurrection. But notice this is totally different than the resurrection of 1 Corinthians. These people are physical and they are brought out of the graves in a physical state.

He says, verse 13, Then you shall know that I am the Lord, and I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you out from your graves. 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 God.

Now, this isn't just something for Israel. This is something for all humanity. A time when people are resurrected and they are not just standing before God going to heaven or hell with the two levers. He says, I will put my spirit in you, and you will learn about me. That's what God tells them. And they are still physical at this point. See, the great white throne judgment has to be a period of time. It's not a singular event. It has to be a period of time. We say, well, this happens to Israel. What about the rest of the world? See, God does not love the people of Israel any more than He loves anybody else. He loves every human being, every place, at all times. And they have been cut off from Him by design when He threw us out of the Garden of Eden. And they have been cut off from Him by design when He says, okay, you want to do it your way? I'll let Satan be over you. See how you like that? And He's done it by design until He says, now, I'm going to give you a real choice. This is the matter everybody gets a second chance. Everybody gets one. It's not a matter that is universal salvation. There is a lake of fire. It is a matter that God loves every individual so much that everybody gets a real choice. Everybody gets to say, either, yes, I wish you to be my Father, or no, I wish you not to be my Father. It's the choice you and I are making right now. But that's because that veil has been taken off from us. That's because God's Spirit has been given to us. That hasn't happened to the masses of people in Japan, China, Africa, South America, Europe, the United States. It hasn't happened. This is the time when they will choose. We know that this resurrection also includes more than just Israel because of what Jesus himself said. Let's go to Matthew 11. Matthew 11. In verse 20. Jesus begins to rebuke the cities in which most of his mighty works have been done because they did not repent. They liked the miracles. They saw the miracles. It was a nice magic show. But they did not repent. The gospel must contain the message to repent, to turn to God, to let God rule in your life now so you could be part of his kingdom later. He says, Woe to you, Tereisen! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which had been done entire incited, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. He said, there are other cities that God destroyed, other peoples that God destroyed. If they were to be given this chance, they would have repented. But they say to you, it will be more tolerable for a tire incited than a day of judgment than for you. Now, if Judgment Day is just a matter of heaven or hell, two levers, how does that make sense? God says, it will be easier for pagans. Now, here is how many theologians have solved this problem. There are different compartments in hell. In fact, in Dante's Inferno, Plato and Socrates and Aristotle get a special compartment in hell because they were such good men that they get like a nice condominium. Now, when you go to hell, the first level, which is almost like sort of almost as good as purgatory, and there they are. They don't have to suffer like everybody else. And depending on how wicked you were, depending you go down to these different levels. That's how they try to describe this. This is what this must mean. Notice verse 23. Notice verse 24.

Now, you understand the impact this had to have on people. God destroyed Sodom because it was so wicked, he told Abraham, I can't stand to see those people anymore.

And he's talking to people who go to the temple every Sabbath and worship that God. He's talking to people who keep the holy days. He's talking to people who worship the very God who destroyed Sodom. And he says to them, it is because of their self-righteousness.

He says because you refuse the Messiah when he's here, it'll be easier for the people from Sodom in that day than it will be for you. So how does that make sense? I want you to think about it in a minute. You're resurrected and you're from Sodom, and the last thing you saw was a big ball of fire hitting your city.

And someone comes up who speaks ancient Sodom, whatever that language is, and says, you know what happened to you? The first thing they say, I don't know, give me some clothes, then we'll talk.

I think everybody's going to be resurrected naked. That's another one of my heresies.

Because it's hard to be killing your neighbor when you're all sitting there naked.

I don't know. God may have clothes for everybody. I don't know. Say he's resurrected. Someone says, you know what happened to me? Let me explain what happened to you. And they're going to say, Ye God killed me? I want to go worship that God. That God better teach me His way. There's going to be Pharisees come up who knew Jesus Christ and said, can't be true. Not Him, not Jesus, not the carpenter's son, not the illegitimate child that we knew. It can't be Him. And God's saying, it's going to be easier for those people to repent than it's going to be for those people. Even though the Pharisees worshiped God. The true God.

It's going to be easy for a lot of people to repent. When they realize that they worshiped idols all their lives, they died in horrendous ways, as most people do. You know, for much of the last 3,000 years of history, in much of the world, the average life expectancy has been 40 years.

That's it.

It's been about 40 years over the last 3,000 years. In western-world societies, we live longer. A few people live longer in other places, but most people die pretty early in life.

Child mortality rates throughout history have been much higher than they are now.

It's amazing when you look up records from people who lived in the 1800s, almost all of them have at least one or two children. They had these big families, but they had two children, three children that died either in childbirth or very early as children. That was normal throughout much of history.

He says here, everybody's going to have to face God, and it's going to be easier for some people to face God than others.

Chapter 12 here of Matthew, verse 38. Chapter 12, verse 38. The sum of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, Teacher, we want to see a sign from you. We've been telling all of our friends here about some of the magic you do. They're doing a little show for us. Show us how you are such a great man of God. But he answered and said to them, An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. Whereas Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Now, he doesn't stop there. He continues on in the same context of what he's talking about. The men of Nineveh. He talked about Jonah, which makes, by the way, Jonah a real person. It also makes him being swallowed by fish a reality. Or his analogy breaks down, doesn't it? So he goes right into the story of Jonah. They knew the story of Jonah, who was Jonah sent to? Nineveh. He says the men of Nineveh, the Israelites hated the ancient Assyrians. Ancient Assyrians had been wiped off the map by this time, but they still remember their whole history. It was about how the dreaded hated Assyrians.

And Nineveh was their capital. The men of Nineveh will rise up in judgment, in the judgment, with this generation. They will rise up. They will be resurrected. In the judgment, with this generation, and condemn it. Now, can you imagine telling it to a worshipper of God? How this was a slap in the face they almost couldn't bear. He said, you don't really know God. You think you do.

The Shekinah may have come into the temple in the past, but the Shekinah isn't in you. The Spirit of God is not inside of you. And he said, when those men from Nineveh come up, they will condemn you because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and indeed, a greater of Jonah than Jonah is here. And the Queen of the South will rise up in judgment with this generation and condemn it. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and indeed, a greater than Solomon is here. He said, when do you come up in that resurrection? Boy, do you have a shock coming to you. Now, this isn't the first resurrection, can't be. We already saw what the first resurrection was like. This is that great white throne judgment, Ezekiel 37. But notice the ancient Assyrians are there. The people from Tyre and Sidon are there. All throughout history, all people come up, billions upon billions of people. A world has been prepared for them for a thousand years. And now, they will have their opportunity to choose. They've already suffered the temporary results of sin, the consequences. They've already even died. They've lived miserable lives, and terrible things happened to them, and they died. And now they're resurrected, and God says, do you want that, or do you want what I want to give you? Now you get to choose. Let me teach you. Let me teach you the way.

You know, even by the laws of the land, for a person to receive the death penalty, they have to have the ability to know the difference between right and wrong. Think about that. Now if we had someone who had brain damage, and they're playing with somebody, and they think they're playing, and they hit the person, and they kill them, and they don't know what happened, they can't figure out why they won't wake up. There's no court in the land that would put the death penalty on that person, because they'd say he can't tell the difference between right and wrong. Now if we as human beings understand that as a fundamental concept of justice, and we have a God that deliberately blinded humanity according to Jesus, who let the God of this world reign over them for these thousands of years, is he going to condemn somebody for eternal eternity? For this little temporary amount of sin they did, they get tortured forever without ever letting them know the difference and letting them choose. You see, in reality, the great majority of mankind has never known the difference. They figure some of it out, right? We figure out you steal from your neighbor, it's not good, depending on what society you live in. Of course, if you were a Sioux Indian 500 years ago, you wouldn't steal from your neighbor and your tribe, but any other tribe was fair game. In fact, it was considered a virtue to steal from another tribe. All of our societies get bits and pieces of it, but we don't get it all together. And in the end, we all fail. In the end, they all fail. They all come up now, and God is a God of justice and love. Therefore, justice demands that they can choose. And you can't choose if you've never really known God.

So they come up, and that's the only way Jesus' statements can make sense. There's been attempts to turn this into a discussion of purgatory and all kinds of ways to try to explain these verses we just went through. But they all come up together. And we know in Ezekiel 37, God says, I pour out my Spirit upon them. They have the opportunity to have salvation through Jesus Christ, just like we do now. It doesn't matter whether they're Hindu, it doesn't matter whether they're Buddhist. They now get to choose. Some will not choose. You realize that. Just like some today called by God will choose to rebel against God, give up God's Spirit. I can't imagine. I hope I've never met somebody that's done that. I can't even imagine somebody doing it. But the Bible says there are people who actually give up God's Spirit. I hope I never know somebody like that, because they're going to like a fire. I never do that. That thought has kept me awake at night sometimes.

God, do not take away your Spirit for me. Remember David praying that? I think all of us need to think about that once in a while. God, do not take your Spirit away from me, because I have nothing then. I am doomed.

But these people will have that chance. All of humanity, all people. And all of them then will have the opportunity to become the children of God. Because here's the end game. Revelation 21. This was read once. We're going to go back to it again. I forget who read this. Revelation 21. This is the end game of all of it. Right now, we look for the return of Jesus Christ, and we look towards that because we know that's our salvation. So intently that we tend to think that's the end game. Oh, Christ is here. Good. Oh, that's just the beginning of it. We've got a thousand years of shaping and molding humanity back to what they're supposed to be like. Then Satan's loose for a while. Now we've got to clean that mess up. And then we have billions of people coming up, and we've got to teach them. Here is the way of God. Do you want what you had before, or do you want that? How many people are going to be coming up because they were drowning, because a ship they were on was torpedoed? How many people are going to come up? Thousands, millions of people, because the last thing they remember is the guy with his shield and sword hitting them with that sword. It's the last thing they remember. Do you realize what death of women and childbirth has been over the course of history? The ancient Roman world at the time of Jesus, in Rome they had 130 men for every woman. You think, wow, how could that happen? Because so many women died in childbirth, that's why. And through abortions, botched abortions.

What about all these people? And the horror of how many of them died or the lives that they lived? All they know is violence, all they know is hunger, all they know is hatred. And they come up. This is God's focal point, because this is the end game.

Revelation 21 verse 1, John says, oh, Mr. Cowan read this. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven, the first earth, had passed away. Also there was no more sea, and I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adored for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying, Behold, a 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. 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. What will be the result of the masses of humanity who accept God in the great white throne judgment? They will be changed, and they will become part of the family of God.

They will be like the people who went through the first resurrection. They will be like us. They will see God face to face. They will see us face to face.

They will live eternity with us. There will be those who won't.

But they will be no longer remembered.

Verse 5 says, Then 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 says, It is done, and the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, And I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely through them of thirst. He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my Son. There's the end game. But see, we can't just think of that as the end game for us. That's very selfish. It's the end game for all those who God calls now in Satan's world who turned to him. And it's the end game for all humanity who turned to him.

I personally believe that for people who come up in the white throne judgment, most of them are going to turn to God. I mean, after you've lived the lives that most people have lived, and you've died, that's got to have an impact on you. That's got to change the way you think, and you're resurrected into a different world.

But some of them, most will.

The name of the South African photojournalist who took that picture of that little girl, the Sudanese girl, was Kevin Carter. Kevin Carter, in his day, was considered probably one of the greatest photojournalists of all time, as he traveled the world. Traveled the world. Going to wars, going to troubled spots, going to famines, going to earthquakes, going to places and taking pictures of humanity's suffering. He was disturbed by what he saw. He wrote once that he had vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain, of starving, of wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen.

And the picture, the Pulitzer Prize-winning picture that he's most remembered for, is the little girl who just toppled over, and there's this vulture her size, sitting there waiting for her to die.

In H-03, Kevin Carter committed suicide.

I don't know whether these people...

I believe, with all my heart... ...that we have to stop beating our chests as the people of God, with this pride and arrogance that we have.

We have to see what God is doing. It's not about us. It's about God. It's always been about God.

We have to think about these people, the world. I don't know what kind of girl that was. I don't know what kind of man Kevin Carter was. I believe there's a time that both of them will be resurrected.

I actually would like to meet both of them.

I don't know them, but I would like to meet them. The photographer and the child that are burned in my brain.

God loves humanity. Every human being has value. Not every human being gets salvation, because some human beings will not accept the value that God has given to them. That's incredible. But it should be a warning to us. There is hope for this dying world. There is hope. There is no purgatory. There's no everlasting burning hell. There is a chance. There is an opportunity for every person. There is a time for the seldom known truth that hardly anybody knows, when the billions and billions of the living and the dead will have a chance to choose their maker.