The Last Great Day

What does it mean to be a Christian? Anyone who studies the Bible seriously comes to a question How is that determined? It's been a question that has plagued those who have studied the Bible from the very beginning, from the first century onward.

It's interesting that when you study the development of Christianity, historians break it down into the primitive church, which was the Jewish church, and then you have the Greek church, and then you have the Latin church. And the Latin church, of course, became the foundation for Catholicism.

And many of the early Latin theologians struggled with this, especially in Alexandria, Egypt, which was the center of Latin Christianity. You think it was Rome, but it actually wasn't. Many of the earliest of the Latin scholars actually came from Alexandria, Egypt. And they struggled with this very question. How do we determine when someone has received salvation? How does God determine that?

Augustine of Hippo, one of the great Latin theologians, determined that God decided before everybody was born. Now, Origen figured that out. He said that's the way it was. The reason why Origen believed that all souls were created, we all lived in heaven, we all went bad, so he stuck us in human beings. Origen, I find it interesting, he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church and then now was considered one of the greatest theologians of their church, which is sort of an odd turn of events over the years. The Protestant Reformers had that same question. How does God determine it?

Because it seems so arbitrary and unfair because Jesus revealed himself to certain people, and the Bible was printed and distributed to certain people. Other people, generation after generation after generation, never had an opportunity to even hear the name of Jesus. It was mentioned earlier this morning that, you know, that was the driving force of missionaries. If we can just get people to accept Jesus somehow, we can keep them from hell. During the Inquisition, the idea was they would take Jews and other groups that claim to be Christian, they would take Muslims and torture them just so that before they died, they would say, yes, I believe in Jesus, or yes, I accept Jesus, and they believed they saved them from hell.

It didn't matter that they killed them. Because they were driven by a belief, this is what we have to do. In the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin came to probably the most arbitrary conclusion about salvation I have ever heard. In the Westminster Confession of Faith, he wrote in 1646, in chapter 3, I'm going to read just a couple paragraphs. He says, In other words, he taught that before God created the earth, he looked out over the expanse of history and knew every human being that was ever going to live.

And then he said, I will save you, and you, and you, and you. Everybody else goes to hell to show what a great God I am. And he goes on, and that's how he describes it. Everybody will know the greatness of God because of this terrible punishment that these angels and human beings will go through forever and ever and ever, and that torture will show the greatness of God, and the fact that a handful of people were saved because he picked them, not even knowing them beforehand.

In fact, he says, the rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to his unsurgeable counsel of his own will, thereby he extended or withheld mercy as he pleased, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures to ordain them to dishonor and wrath with their sin, and praise of his glorious judgment. It's interesting that later on in Chapter 10 of his work, he says that infants are selected by God, and so God looks at infants and just, it has to be arbitrary.

There can never be a consideration of the child. He looks out over infants, and he says, well, these infants are going to die in their innocence, so I'll pick this one, this one, this one, this one, and they go to heaven. All the other infants I will desire to torture forever because they deserve it. He went on to say that that's the problem with Christians they don't realize. Many Christians will not be given heaven because they weren't predestined to be given heaven. Well, many pagans will go to heaven because they were predestined to go to heaven.

Now, you talk about an arbitrary view of God and a concept of justice that we recoil at that. And that's one reason why John Calvin's theology is not very extant today in the Protestant world. But this was where many of the early Protestant reformers, that's how they approached this. The result is, what do we have today? We have people recoiling at those ideas, so now we have the opposite viewpoint. Universal salvation.

It doesn't matter what path you choose. All paths lead to God. And so Oprah Winfrey gets up and says that, and 30 million Americans now believe that. So you have the New Age movement that is just growing and growing in this country. It takes a little bit of old ideas, a little bit of new ideas, a little bit of Christianity.

A lot of paganism mixes it together and says, always lead to God, as long as you have love. Now, how do you define love? Well, if you want to go to church on Saturday, that's okay. If you say other people should go to church on Saturday, you are filled with hate. If you believe that since homosexuality is good because we accept everybody, that's what love is, to say that it is wrong, you are a hate monger. Who would ever thought that Christians eventually will be persecuted because we'll be accused of being hate mongers? It's not all that odd.

In the first century, they were accused of being cannibals, especially in the second and third centuries. The reason why is because they got together once a year and ate their Savior. They drank his blood and ate his flesh. So some Romans thought that these hideous Christians are cannibals. So Christians can be accused of a lot of things over the years. There was a scripture that was read or mentioned, and I want to go to it, Acts 4.

We're sort of building off of each other as we understand this unique teaching that we believe in. Here's the problem that we have to settle. Once you settle this, you go in a totally different direction than John Calvin or Augustine of Hippo. Acts 4 verse 8. And you go in a totally different direction than the New Age movement. Now, as I said, most people today aren't going to be that influenced by John Calvin. But the New Age movement of universal salvation, it doesn't matter. That's what we're approached with today. That's what we have to fight with today. Acts 4 verse 8. Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, these are the rulers of the, the religious rulers of the day there in Israel, in Jerusalem.

And then verse 12.

How do you deal with that? Well, William Barkley deals with it by saying that he's going to heal people who, or he's going to save people who don't know his name. But you know, that's not what the Bible says. We're trapped. We either believe that or we don't believe it. If we believe it, then we believe that there is only one way that salvation can happen, and that is through Jesus Christ. And if that is the only way, we're now confronted with the horror of what happens to the majority of humanity from all of history.

Now, if that's true, and I'm sure all of us accept this, we're now confronted with that.

Now, we can arrive at the answer that Jonathan Edwards did, or Thomas Aquinas said the same thing, these great theologians throughout the years. They both said that we will, those who go to heaven, will suffer or experience joy and absolute just happiness in watching people tortured in hell.

Both of them said that.

Because we will then bask in the love and joy of God.

Now, think about that. While you watch your sister, or your mother, or Uncle Joe, your neighbor that you were good friends with, while you watch them being tortured forever, you will experience happiness because you watched that.

Because how do you explain eternal torture when that's where the majority of people go?

And they didn't even have a chance.

Well, some people say, well, I know I believe everybody gets to hear the name of Jesus at least once before they die. Well, that's ridiculous. That's absolutely ridiculous.

And besides, how about all the people that lived before Jesus was born? What about them?

I mean, is God so weak that he couldn't have Jesus appear in Japan or Africa? Why didn't he go to those places? So we're stuck with that question.

What happens? But now we also have another serious problem we have to deal with.

And this is the question nobody wants to deal with in this issue.

And that is, and it's already been quoted, that the whole world is deceived by Satan.

Now, that means we have a God of justice that takes people who are deceived and tortures them forever because they lived for a finite little period of time in sin.

Now, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that one because I don't understand the justice of that.

By any code or concept of justice, a God who says he's loving and he's merciful, and yet he takes people who were deceived, who didn't know, and for a finite period of time that they lived, and he tortures them for eternity without end, without end, without end, and they'll be claiming, but I never knew you. I didn't know there was another way.

And according to Jonathan Edwards, we will laugh. You can see why a lot of people in the modern New Age Christianity that's growing, I say New Age Christianity because they're mixing them together, really don't...they believe that they're all paths lead to heaven because they can't accept the horribleness of those concepts because the concepts are wrong.

Of course, there are conclusions on how to solve the problem.

Because now we're dealt with, okay, if we have another problem, if they're deceived, then God has to do something, right?

He has to bring them out of deception. So we go to Matthew chapter 13.

We're just piling up the problems.

How does God bring salvation to people who are cut off, deceived, don't know?

Matthew 13, verse 10.

And the disciples came and said to him, Why do you speak to them in parables?

And he answered and said to them, Because when I teach them in parables, they will understand, and the mysteries will be open to them.

But that's not what he says.

Because it has been given to you...you didn't have this...something's been given to you that you did not have.

It has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

Not only are they deceived, Christ says, No, God didn't give them the ability to understand.

So you're deceived, you don't have the ability to understand.

God's not going to give you the ability to understand, but he's going to judge you as if you understood.

So how do you solve that?

You know, that's why you have Calvin say, I get it. God just puts everybody in hell, picks a few, and says, That shows you how good I am.

Because he had no way to solve this problem.

Verse 12 says, For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance.

But whoever does not have, even what he has, will be taken away from him.

Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

You'd think he had spoken parables to make it clear.

Here Jesus Christ takes responsibility for saying, No, I'm not explaining it in a way that they will understand.

Boy, not only does God allow us to be deceived, I say allow us, because either Satan had the power to do it, and he's more powerful than God, or God allowed him to do it, one or the other.

So God allowed him to do it.

God allowed him to see this humanity, and then said, And I'm not going to tell them how to get out of it, right now.

And then I'm going to punish them forever, because they didn't know how to get out of it.

And this is what the majority of Christians have believed since about 300 or so AD, or even before then.

This is what they believed, because they couldn't solve this problem.

And it has been something that people have struggled with.

So let's go where we've gone over and over and over again during this feast. Let's go to Romans. Romans chapter 5.

We've been in the book of Romans and the book of Hebrews more than any other feast of tabernacles I've ever been to.

Mr. Johnson and I had a bet that Dr. Ward could not cover the book of Romans in an hour.

You owe me some money, Dave.

I'm going to give you some money.

Verse 8 of Romans chapter 5. Romans 5 verse 8.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

For if we were enemies, we were reconciled to God. Or 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. That's a very important verse. That's a whole sermon in itself there.

The idea that His death is a substitute, but it is life.

He had to be also resurrected so that He could teach us, so we could learn, so that He could live through us.

And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we now have received this reconciliation.

Therefore, just as through one man, talking about Adam, sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned. Now this is very important to stop here and say, how does Paul define sin?

Not any other writer, just stay in Paul. Well, we won't go there, but in chapter 7 he says, sin is...he talks about how the law defines sin.

So we only know sin through the law. It gives us a definition. Without that definition, we would not know. So he says here that all men sinned from Adam on, and because of that, all men died. But then notice verse 13. For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed where there is no law.

Now, wait a minute. If sin is the transgression of the law, and they're dying, but they don't know it because the law hasn't come, what's he talking about?

What he's saying is, is that the codified law that we know that God gave to Israel, human beings did not know between Adam and that time. Now, there were a few that did. Abraham did, but you notice Abraham never left us any written records.

Moses wrote down those records. So between the point of Adam and the point where Moses wrote it down, we don't have a codified law of God. He says, but it existed, but no one knew why they were dying because they didn't have it. But he also says, it is not imputed. Now, if you remember, Dr. Ward said, word imputed there, that Greek word can mean, not put to their account.

So what he's saying is, until the law was there, when they broke the law, they suffered the temporary penalties, but the eternal penalty was not yet passed. And this is a very important concept to understand. There are two types of penalties for sin, the temporary penalty and the eternal penalty.

I have lots of temporary penalties I wish I didn't have. Life would be a lot easier if we weren't carrying around all these temporary penalties from a life of sin, but we have them. But you know the eternal penalty is lifted by God as long as we continue to move in that direction.

The eternal penalty is lifted. So he said, you know, they died, they suffered the temporary penalty of sin. He says it was not imputed. In other words, God did not write it down in their account book and stand there as judge as each person died and says, you're going to hell, you're going to hell, you're going to hell, I'll pick you, I don't know why, I'll just pick you, and you'll get to go to heaven.

See, that didn't happen. It didn't happen between Adam and Moses. Because until the law was there, they didn't know why they would be judged or how they would be judged. The problem is, those people still don't know how to be judged or why to be judged. They still don't know.

So if the point is, it's not imputed until the law came, they still have to have an opportunity to know why they suffered and died. It still has to be made available to them. Because verse 14, he says, Nevertheless, death reigns from Adam to Moses, even over all those who would not send according to the likeness of the transcription of Adam, who is a type of him who is to come. But the free gift is not like the offense, for if by one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.

So it wasn't imputed. What's God going to do with these people? This is why, by the way, the concept of purgatory was created.

They tried to figure out, what do you do with people that really shouldn't go to hell, but really shouldn't go to heaven? So you had to create a new place to put them, so they could somehow earn going to heaven. And during purgatory, that time, they would earn going to heaven. Or, if your relatives would pay enough money, you could get them out.

So I'm not... I don't want to impute motives to the creators of purgatory, but for at least some people purgatory became a money-making scheme. I think for some of them, it was an attempt to answer a question they could not answer. God can't do this. He can't take a baby and torture them forever. He can't.

So what does He do with them? So they've got to find a place to put them until they can finally somehow earn those steps into heaven. They can be tortured enough that they get to go to heaven.

And this is the type of things that human beings struggle with when they try to understand the love of God and the justice of God, because they're two sides of the same coin.

You can't have the justice of God without the love, and you can't have the love of God without the justice. So what do you do?

So we know that at the beginning of the Millennium, when Jesus Christ comes back, there is a resurrection of the dead. It is the resurrection of the saints. Let's go to Revelation, chapter 20.

And I'm going to pick a few phrases here. Part of this was read this morning, tying us together.

Revelation 20. Jesus Christ returns. He binds Satan.

And we understand, we tie in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians, how there is a resurrection. And part of those passages have been touched upon.

John says, I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit. Verse 2, he takes Satan and binds him.

Verse 4 says, I saw thrones, and 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, and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast, nor his image, nor had not received his mark in their foreheads and on their hands. And they lived in reign with Christ for a thousand years. Now verse 5. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection.

Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. We have the first resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15 explains that when Christ returns, we are given, as Paul called it, a spiritual body. And he compared it to the difference between the sun and the moon.

The moon is rock that reflects light. The sun is dynamic energy that gives off light. He said that's the difference. You and I are like pieces of rock now. And we will be like the sun there. That's how he described it. But that is for the saints. He says here, the rest of the dead, right, did not live again.

Now, there's also another thing that's very important. We won't touch on much today, but it is very much part of this day.

Eternal judgments is one of the basic core doctrines that's mentioned in Hebrews, when Paul lists the basic core doctrines of the church. And eternal judgments is one of them.

We're talking about today the whole concept of eternal judgments. Now, the resurrection of the saints, spirit bodies. The resurrection of the saints, they are with God. They rule with Christ.

The rest of the dead do not live again until the thousand years are done. So all those who aren't saints, we know who comes up in the first resurrection.

So all those who aren't saints aren't resurrected until the end of the thousand years.

Now, those in the first resurrection cannot die a second time. That second death is very important to understand. We don't talk about that much today, but that's important to understand.

We do not believe, because the Bible does not teach universal salvation.

This whole feast has been very encouraging, because everything's been zeroing in on us on not only these days, but the reality of what these days mean to us every day.

Mr. Taylor, Dr. Ward, especially the last part of the feast, the sermons were about, what does this mean now? How does this change your life now? You know, you and I are being judged today. The world is not.

Lest we forget, there is no universal salvation. You and I are being judged today. Now, the positive side of that is, you and I have to choose to fail. God will not let us fail if we don't want to fail. But we can choose to fail. This all comes down to choice. Do we have free will or not?

If we have free will, how can you judge someone who never had the opportunity to use their free will?

Or free will was a cruel joke. I mean, it was. Free will is a cruel joke played on, man-timed by a miserable, angry God, as Johnathan Edwards called it. The angry God.

Who gave us free will and doesn't let the majority of humanity actually ever use it?

Because they're deceived and he won't give them the understanding to come out of it. And so he condemns them before they're even born, as Calvin believes.

So who are the rest of the dead? Now, I want to just briefly go back into the Old Testament, because there are interesting prophecies made in the Old Testament about a resurrection that is totally, completely different than the first resurrection. We know what the first resurrection is because it says, you know, they're resurrected, they meet Christ in the air. They're not physical human beings anymore. Those in that resurrection are changed into something else.

But there's another resurrection, the second resurrection. Go back to Deuteronomy, chapter 30. I mean, this is basic. I'm not... there's no new information today, no secret, you know, code. This is so important, though, because, as was mentioned this morning, this is unique.

We don't believe in universal salvation. We believe in universal choice. We believe everybody gets a real chance to choose. And a deceived person can only choose what they're deceived to choose. They don't really have a choice. This is an interesting prophecy here where God's talking to ancient Israel before they go into the Promised Land. And he says in verse 1... Now, just think about this. They're about to go into the Promised Land. They're about to become a nation. And then he tells them this. Now, shall come to pass when all these things come upon you. He just told them blessings and cursings. Blessings if you obey me, curses if you don't obey me. And then he says... and you can almost hear the sigh... When all the curses come... When all the curses come... The blessings and the curse which I have set before you. And you call them to mind among the nations where the Lord your God drives you. Where they weren't even a nation yet. He says when you get into the Promised Land and you conquer it and you get set it up. Of course, they didn't know what was going to happen. They were going to go through the time of period of the Judges and the Kings and the divided kingdom. They didn't know all that was going to happen. He did. And he said, when you finally mess it up so bad, I'm going to let you not be a nation anymore. And it's fascinating. He's telling this before they went into the Promised Land. He says...

And 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 the Lord your God will bring you to the land in which your Father is possessed and you shall possess it. And he will prosper you and multiply you more than your Father's. You read through this and you go, okay, there's going to come a time when those people rebel against God. He'll destroy them as a nation and he'll bring them back. And then in verse 6 he says...

And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart. Now up to here you can say, okay, it's a prophecy. You or you are those people that that happens to. Notice what he says. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live.

He's talking to those people. Not just the descendants who will rebel. He's telling them right there, those people right there, you and your descendants. Every generation that's going to come along here, he said, there will come a time where I will gather you together and I will give you my spirit.

Now that hasn't happened. It didn't happen in the lifetime of those people. And it didn't happen in the lifetime of their descendants and their descendants and their descendants and their descendants. It never happened. But that's what he promised them. He didn't say, I will do this with your descendants. That's real important. He says, I will do this with you and your descendants. Now either that promise was real or it wasn't.

And if it was real, then God has to do that at some point in history. So we come hundreds of years later to Ezekiel. And there God explains what he's going to do. Go to Ezekiel, chapter 37. Now we're looking at what God told Israel and the promises he made to them. We'll look for in a minute that this goes way beyond them. But this isn't the same resurrection that's promised the saints at the return of Jesus Christ.

The resurrection promise the saints at the return of Jesus Christ is you will meet him in the sky. You will have bodies that are like the sun. You will see him as he is. Totally different concept of resurrection than what we're going to read here. Ezekiel 37. Now it's interesting that how Ezekiel 37 is now looked upon in some evangelical churches, that this is somehow a prophecy about Israel becoming a nation in the Middle East. No, this is a literal prophecy about a literal event. Ezekiel says in verse 1, The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he 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. And he caused me to pass by them all around. Behold, there were many in the open valley, and indeed they were very dry. He said to me, Son of man, can these bones live? Now, Ezekiel's smart here. If you're ever in a conversation with God and he asks you a question, the answer is, what do you think? That's the answer to the question. It's like I always say, when you look through the Scripture, whenever God says, be a man, you're in real trouble. Because when God says, stand up, be a man, that means, you know, it's like telling a kid, you're in real trouble. So here he says, he asks him a question, and of course Ezekiel says, 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 the Lord. Thus says the Lord of God to these bones, Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. And I will put sinews on you, and bring flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you all that you may live. Then you shall know that I am the Lord. This isn't a resurrection to a body like the sun. It's a resurrection to a body like the moon. It's rock, and it's dirt again. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and I prophesied, and there was a noise, and suddenly a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to bone. And deed as I looked, the sinews in the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them over. But there was no breath in them. So he says to Ezekiel, prophesied to the breath, prophesied, said a man, and said to the breath, Breath, thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may also live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came upon them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, and exceedingly great army. Verse 11, 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. Generation after generation, you and your descendants will live and become a nation, and there will come a time, right Deuteronomy, that I will take you, and I will destroy your nation, and I will take your people, and I will scatter them all over, and there will come a time where you and your descendants will know me.

That's what God told them. And now Ezekiel, hundreds of years later, is told how that's going to happen. They weren't told that. Moses wasn't given the information of how it was going to happen. They're going to be resurrected back to physical life, to be given the opportunity to choose. Now we look at the Israelites and we say, they had the opportunity to choose. They still were in the world, they were still in the bubble. They were still in the bubble watching shadows. Only a few of them were taken out of that bubble, right? Satan's sphere of insulates. Only a few were. The majority of them actually never were taken out of that. What God shows through them is that a group of people, given God's way without His Spirit, will still fail. Any group of people, any group of people, given God's way without God's Spirit, will still fail. We are in complete creations. Remember, salvation is creation, and we're in complete. We have to have something else to complete that creation in us. And we don't have it. And God has to give it to us. And He proved it through those people. It's rather arbitrary now to send them to hell forever, isn't it? Okay, I showed you, you can't do it without my Spirit. So I'm going to send them all to hell. And you know there's a lot of people who believe that. They believe all those Israelites are in hell, being punished by God. But He never gave them the key. He never gave them what they needed to take the next step. Except for a few. You see the few. He says in verse 12, Therefore prophesy and say to them, Thus says the Lord God, Behold all my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from the graves, and bring you into 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. You get the idea that the resurrection of the dead is the point here? When I bring you up from the graves, He has to say it about three or four times, When I bring you up from the graves, I want you to understand how this happens. But this isn't spiritual resurrection. Verse 14, And I will put my Spirit in you, then they will get to choose, and some of them will probably choose wrong. There is a lake of fire, but they will really get to choose. I just believe that the majority of mankind is going to choose when they actually know what it's like to live physical life and die, and suffer and die, and then not have the deceiver around, and have the Messiah Himself on earth with a perfect world, as perfect as you can have with human beings on it. I think for a lot of them it's going to be a fairly easy choice, but they still have to choose. He says, I will put my Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it, and performed it, says the Lord. Now we have another question. We could go through and other scriptures and show, but this proves it. We know that God told ancient Israel, you're going to fail, you don't have my Spirit, I'll give you my ways, but someday I'm going to bring you all up out of those graves, and then I'll teach you. But what about everybody else? Is that only Israel? There's two interesting passages in the New Testament, both recorded by Matthew, that we'll look at very quickly here. Matthew 11. Matthew 11. See, I understand the anguish that sometimes men like Augustine struggled when they tried to answer these questions.

How does a just God do this? Purgatory is an intelligent attempt to answer the biblical problem in a non-biblical way. It just isn't biblical. It just doesn't work. But it's an attempt to deal with the problem by people who can't understand how this works. In Matthew 11, verse 20, Jesus Christ begins to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works have been done because they did not repent. Woe to you, Corizon, woe to you, Bessidia. For if the mighty works, this is Jesus Christ, which were done in you, have been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

Tyre and Sidon were Gentile cities. To his audience, the next statement was a slap in the face. He said, these Gentile cities, they would have turned to God if God would have sent me to them, but Christ is saying, but God didn't send me to them. Verse 22, But I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.

He says the same thing in verse 23 about Sodom. Now, I think that probably in Israelites, the worst thing you could call them was an Egyptian or someone from Sodom. He says in verse 24, But I say to you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment for you. So in the day of judgment, the people of Sodom are resurrected, or this makes no sense. In the day of judgment, the people from Tyre and Sidon are resurrected, or this makes no sense.

Now remember, when God destroyed Sodom, it was centuries and centuries before the time of Tyre and Sidon. So he's covering history here. He's covering history saying all the Gentiles, all the peoples, will be resurrected in that day of judgment. The day that Ezekiel talked about. So the day of the Great White Throne Judgment is not just for Israel. It's for everybody. And he makes a remarkable statement there. You know what? It's going to be easier for the people of Sodom than you when you come up in that judgment. That statement, if you believe...

Now here's how a lot of people think of the Great White Throne Judgment. It's a tract I saw one time in a bathroom in a truck stop. And it was supposed to be God, and it looked remarkably... Have you ever seen the Lincoln Memorial? It looked remarkably like the Lincoln Memorial. He was sitting there gruff. I remember looking at it and thinking, I'm going to be judged by Abraham Lincoln? So he's sitting there, and he's looking gruff.

And he's got two levers. And there were these people just lined up as far as you could see. And when he pulled one lever, the door opened, and you could see them going in the hell. And when he pulled the other lever, they floated up like ghosts. And that's how people see the Great White Throne Judgment. He says, no, no, no, no, no. It's going to be easier for them to understand what God is doing than for you who were taught what God was doing and didn't understand it.

And now we begin to come into real concepts of justice. Let's go over to chapter 12, verse 38. Well, let's start in verse 41, just to capture here. He's saying the same thing. The men of Nineveh, okay, Nineveh, the ancient Assyrians, will rise up in the judgment with this generation. They're coming up at the same time these people come up. Now, he's talking to Jews who come up, you know, they know they're all going to, according to Ezekiel and Deuteronomy and other places, they're all going to be resurrected at some point in the future. And he's telling them at this time of judgment, all people are resurrected. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah and, indeed, a greater than Jonah is here.

And the queen of the south will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and, indeed, a greater than Solomon is here. These statements are put into the teachings that he's making about judgment, but they're very important because they show that Jesus Christ was teaching a time of judgment when all people are resurrected. Can't be the first resurrection. Can't be. First resurrection are saints to eternal life. So there is a second resurrection. No, according to Revelation, it's at the end of the thousand years, and it's called the Great White Throne Judgment. When we talk about justice, we talk about the punishment fitting the crime.

We also talk about the concept that a person has to know that they committed a crime. If you realize in the United States of America, if you have a person with brain damage and they can't tell the difference between...we're not talking about insanity plea. We're talking about a person whose brain is damaged and they can't tell the difference between right and wrong.

Give me an example. You have someone with a very, I mean, brain-damaged, autistic maybe...well, not that autism is, you know, had different levels of that, but I have to put this in some context, so I'll use this. A person who cannot understand the difference between right and wrong, and someone gets into their space and they don't understand it, and they punch them, knock them down, they hit their head, and they kill...you know, the person's dead.

And then they go on doing what they were doing. There's no court in the land that would take that person and give them the death penalty. And there's nobody here that would say, well, that's just. The person did not understand what they did. We know, even in humanly speaking, you can't judge a person who does not know, who does not have the capability of knowing right from wrong. Now, if a person does know the difference between right and wrong, that's different.

They are judged by the law. Humanity does not know. And they will have to know. It's a time of judgment. And they will have to be taught what they are judged by. And remember what was said, I will pour out my Spirit upon you. He's going to pour out His Spirit on the world so that these people, as these billions and billions of people come up, as they repent and turn to God, they will have God's Spirit poured out upon them so that they can know and they can make an honest choice.

And we still choose wrong because there is a lake of fire. I find that amazing. I find that amazing. But it's the problem with free will. Once God gives it to us, He means it. We get to choose. Humanity, ever since God kicked us out of Eden, we haven't really been choosing. We think we have. Humanity thinks they have control over their own lives. But they've been under the influence and reign of Satan. Until the deceiver is removed and they are taught the judgments by which they will be judged, then God says, this is just.

That's remarkable. It all makes sense now. God can be the God of love and the God of justice at the same time. He won't condemn the world until He has given them the opportunity. That simple idea that we have through this and a couple dozen other scriptures that we put together, we have forgotten how different that makes us in our worldview. I mean Christians who hate Muslims and say they're going to hell. I look at Muslims and I feel pity. And I wait the day in which they are resurrected. That's different. Because every human being now counts. You realize that? Every human being counts. Every human being has value. Every human being means something to God.

The child that died because Genghis Khan rode into their little village and they were some pagan tribe and he killed the little six-year-old child as the horses ran through the village and ran on. That child has value. The old person who died from bubonic plague who never heard the name of Jesus, that person has value.

The person to drown on some ship out at sea a thousand years ago, that person has value. The people who've done terrible, evil things, God will still give them value. He will still resurrect them and say, now you can choose. And it will be easier for the people of Sodom. It's going to be easier for some of the people we think are terribly evil than it will be for those sometimes who think they know God.

One last scripture, because this is why God is doing it. This is what it comes down to. We've been here for eight days, and these whole eight days come down to this. This is why God is doing what he's doing. This is why we've been here. This is what we must take home. Because you and I live in a dying world. But it is not a world that has been condemned to hell forever.

It has not been a world that God hates the individual so much that he will spend eternity in glee torturing them. That is not the God we know, and it is not the God we worship. He is a God of justice. There is a lake of fire. But he wants all to come to him who will come. And these people don't know. They are deceived, and they are cut off, and they don't know. And so we are here because we look forward beyond the Great White Throne Judgment. What happens at the end of the Great White Throne Judgment? All those who are incorrigibly evil are thrown into like a fire and cease to exist.

Isn't that tortured? They simply cease to exist. They cannot fulfill their original purpose, so God destroys them. But what about everybody else? Because that is the second death. What about the great majority of mankind? John says in verse 1, I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and also there was no more sea. This is Revelation 21. Revelation 21 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.

Humanity isn't going to heaven. Heaven is coming to the earth. This earth is unique in all of the universe. We have a hard time grasping that, because only here are the children of God being created at this time. Only here. And this is where God is going to live. The throne of God is coming to this earth. And when the great white throne judgment is over, Christ gives the kingdom to the Father. He doesn't keep it for himself. It's His dance. It's His Father's kingdom.

He gives it to Him. And God brings His throne to this earth. And now He's going to tell us why He doesn't. He says, verse 3, 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. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Does this sound like a God that says, I will wipe away every tear from your eyes so that we can watch others be tortured forever? God says, I will take my children, and they will have obtained their purpose. And there will no longer be need for tears because no one will ever suffer again.

There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain for the former things have passed away. 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 then He says to John, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And I will give the fount of water of life freely to Him who thirsts. And then verse 7, God tells us why. This is it. This is why He created the universe. This is why He created the earth. This is why He created all the animals. This is why He created human beings. This is why He let Satan come in and deceive them. He let him do it because that's the problem with re-choice. We've got to have something to choose. And He knew we were going to choose wrong. So from the foundation of the earth, He had Jesus Christ's link. From the foundation of the earth, He knew the plan. And He kicked us out. And then He picked a few of us not so we could go to heaven and everybody else could suffer. Wow. You talk about being part of an elite. He picks a few here and there so that we can help. Do this. We can help Him establish that kingdom. We can help Jesus Christ bring many sons and daughters to glory. It's not so that we can be better than the world. It's so that we can help convert the world.

And this is why we're doing what we're doing. Because this is why God is doing everything that He's doing. He says, He who overcomes shall inherit all things. And I will be His God, and He shall be my Son. Tell me what is left out of all things. What's not involved in all things? You see, God says why He's doing this. The whole purpose of all this is because the Creator of the universe wanted children. And that's what humanity is. And His children had to know the difference between right and wrong.

So He had to let us experience wrong. He had to let us go through all this so that we can learn it. So that we can spend eternity without it. And when we get there, we won't want anything to do with evil. We won't want anything that we will have rejected it, turned our back on it, and we will say, God, be in me. You know, it says He will be in all, all in all. God will live in all of us for eternity. And we will be His children. You know, what we're talking about here is the only hope for the world. This is it. It's understanding our purpose. It's understanding what God is doing. And the Great White Throne Judgment lets us glimpse that this isn't about God failing with human beings. To create a humanity and then torture the majority of them forever is failure. This is about God succeeding. This is about God creating His family. It's about God having universal choice without the deceiver around. And then going on for eternity as His children. It's a real family He's creating. Take this home. Live this the next year. And we'll see you again next year.