Only 1150 Years Left

You live on an amazing planet, often called the Blue Marble. Those who have gone out and looked back at it from the Moon have been amazed by the beauty and the color and the depth and the life that is here on this planet. It's a blue marble within a universe that is essentially devoid of life. We know of no other life whatsoever. This Earth has incredible design in everything that's on it, a very unique and deep diversity, and a complexity within every living thing that is just beyond imagination.

All of these things have been sustained from antiquity. They go on and on and on. For thousands of years, some say for millions of years, these complex life forms that we come to know and these structures that are around us that support life have gone on and on and on. Hebrews 11, verse 3, says, by faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God's command. That's where all this came from. And we trust that.

We have that shield of faith. We have absolute confidence in our God that He created, He designed, and He sustains all of these things that are in our universe. Going on. That what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen. Everything came from somewhere else. Not from the physical realm, not from anything made of physics or physical matter.

It came from the unseen. It was made by something unseen. By a God through His Son who dwells in a different dimension. In a spirit world that is completely different than anything you and I know in the cosmos. When we look at our Earth, we ask the question, how old is Earth? There are many scientists in many different fields, and some geologists are focused on trying to date the age of the planets in our solar system.

We have, I believe, nine planets, depending on how science feels at the moment. How old are these? Well, that's a real head-scratcher. From the University of California in Los Angeles, the dating sequence is done through something called rubidium strontium. It's one of those properties that decays over time. It has a certain energy, a certain radiation, and it changes from one thing into another.

It's kind of like potassium argon in igneous rock. The potassium decays over time into argon. But the half-life of strontium is 47 billion years. That's the half-life. So it decays from this rubidium into strontium. I should say the half-life of rubidium is 47 billion years. So that gives them a long time, a length of time, in which to measure rocks. So they run around the Earth and they measure all these rocks and they jump into faults and they dig down deep and they try to find the oldest rock that can possibly find to see when this planet cooled from a molten mass.

And the oldest rock that they can find is 3.7 billion years old. But they know that's not when the Earth cooled because the crust has been reabsorbing and rolling over and re-ingesting the old rocks. And they haven't found those old rocks. They know they're older rocks because when they went to the Moon, they got some moon rocks. And the moon rocks dated to about 4.3 billion years.

So there's this quest to figure out how old the Earth is. You might figure 4.5 billion years is some of the guesses. How old are the stars? You look out at night, you're seeing these pinpricks of white and people wonder how old they are.

You can't really go to a star and measure it. You can't really fly up to the Sun and, you know, take a sample. They tend to be pretty hot. But it's interesting how scientists, a whole other group of scientists, is focused on dating stars in various ways in which they do that. There are many variations of doing that. One group looks at old clusters, the old clusters of stars that are in the heavens, while another one looks at white dwarfs.

And these date somewhere between 1.5 billion and 15.8 billion years old. There are other calculations that are used from Hubble, and the new Hubble data that came out in 2003 revised the general age of the universe to be between 13 and 14 billion years old. Settling right in at about 13.7 billion. There's a lot of room for variation. There's a lot of sciences that look at this from various ways. So somewhere between 11 and 15 and the 13.7 billion is one group's best estimate. I'd like to show you a photograph here.

What you're looking at is a star that's 13 billion light years away. Now, currently, and I say currently in quotes, stars explode. And this one actually is in the process of exploding. I don't know if it's finished yet. But the astronomers were watching this star explode in our current age, and it was an event that was taking place 13 billion years ago, but the light is just now reaching the Earth.

So this exploding star, which is in a galaxy near what they think is the edge of the universe, is a long way away. The point is that our Earth and the surroundings in our universe have been here for a long, long time. A long time. 13 billion years ago, something happened out there that we're seeing now. Now, we're humans. We're physical. I don't know about you, but my wife and I are very attached to here. Somebody says, oh, you might get transferred someday. Our blood curdles. We say, I don't think so. We like our congregations. We like this part of the country.

We like our people. We like our home. We just like things the way they are. And don't mess with it. It's good. It's really good. We're comfortable. I don't know how you are. Are you kind of like that? I was telling my wife this morning, I'm getting sad. I have a favorite pair of jean shorts, and the pocket is starting to tear. I know I'm not going to have them forever, but they've been my favorite shorts to wear around the house for a long, long time. And I just, we've looked for more. I don't think they make them quite like those.

I'm not looking forward to the day when those shorts are going to have to go. I want to hang on to those. We are attached to our physical environments. We're attached to our physical bodies, aren't we? We don't want to let it go. We want to hang on to these things. We want to hang on to where we are, who we are, what we have. We tend to lock our doors at night to hopefully keep most of the stuff that we have. It's kind of like a child with a blankie. You know, we bump into new things all the time, but you know you get to go home.

You see things, you do things, you might go for a course, but you get to go back home. You get to return, and there's comfort in that. A child can go out and be in places and around new people, but you know, there's nothing like the old blankie when it comes out.

I love to watch the grandkids with the blankie, because as soon as the blankie goes on the shoulder, the thumb goes in the mouth. It's an automatic reaction. It's a blankie thumb. The little boys do it, the girls do it, everybody does it.

When visiting in Cincinnati, I like to take my granddaughter, my oldest granddaughter, on a date. She's old enough now at four to go out on a date. Take her out to breakfast in the morning. This kind of spoiler date, it costs a lot of money to go out to one of these fine big breakfast plates, but it's a big event. In we go, get the table. She's like Queen for the day. She gets this colorful menu with all these pictures, and she picks the one. It's got all the red stuff in it. They bring it out, and wow, she's excited. She tends to play with it more than eat it. Stir it and color it and make shapes out of it. This stuff is kind of nasty to eat anyway, I can see your point.

But it's just one problem. Two years ago when I did this with her, halfway through the meal she says, I want my blankie. I'm like, what? You've got your papa, you've got your Mickey Mouse ears, pancakes with the red sauce and the syrup, and everything else your mom will never let you have. I want my blankie. We still were going to do something. I don't want to take her all the way home to get her blankie, so thankfully, thankfully, there was a store nearby. Yeah.

You know, for some, a blankie isn't just that little blankie. It's their hometown. There are people who will not leave in their lifetime the town they were born in. You might think that's extreme, but it's not really. It's where they're comfortable. And outside of town and beyond is unknown. They've got enough family, they've got enough friends, they've got enough things going on, enough responsibilities on the farm or whatever it is to just be very content right there. And what you hear on the news, why would you want to go get involved in that? So you just stay in town.

There was a man from Texas who never left his town, one of you was telling me this the other day, until he got transferred in his job to Anaheim, California. Imagine that. Texas to Anaheim. That was a big event. 25 years later, he told one of our deacons here that he'd never seen the ocean. He lives right there. The ocean's just down the road a little bit. He'd never seen the ocean. That's, some people, that's kind of their blankie, you know, you're used to that.

For some, their blankie is the county. My grandmother in Texas, for instance, we called her mama, my father's mother. A lovely lady. She was a woman who was very committed to her family, mostly there on her home, on their farm property. In her entire lifetime, she never left the county that she was born in. My father moved away, got married, moved to California. Eventually, it was over the building program for the college. As the college grew out there, all the way up through the auditorium, my dad would say, Mother, I'd like you to come out here and see the family.

I'd like you to come out here and see the college campus. I'd like to see what your son's been up to for the last 20-some years. Well, Jack, that'd be nice, but I just don't leave the county. No, I'll just be fine here. And she never did.

She never did. Lovely lady, but for her, her blankie was that county line. You could drive down the road, but when you got to the county line, it was probably pretty mysterious in the next county over from Brazos or whatever the county was. For some, the blankie is the country. You know people like that. Well, I'll go anywhere for the feast, but I won't go outside the United States. You can understand that because you don't know what's out there. You don't know how to get around.

You wouldn't know what to do. That's why tours are so popular. You just hop on and they take you around. That's why friends and other countries are so helpful because you can land and they can drive you around. It's a wonderful thing. But for some, they will never leave their country, whatever that country is, because it's outside. It's frightening. And for some, the blankie is their planet. They say, you know, I am not leaving the confines of this planet. You couldn't get me to get in a spaceship or anything.

No, I won't go to the moon. No, I won't go to the space shuttle. I won't go to the space station. You just say, it's just not natural up there. You know, I'm staying here. Our blankie is what we've had since birth. And wherever you're from, it's been your constant comforter. Some people will move. They will immigrate. But when they get to the new place, they like to find a place that's much like the old place. So they can feel comfortable there. If they came from mountains, they'll look for mountains.

If they came from prairies, they'll look for prairies. If they came from cold, they'll look for cold. If they came from warm, they'll, you know, and so on and so forth. Whatever else there is, and while everything is changing, we want constants. And one thing that has been our constant is that thing that you might define as your blankie. It might get a bit aged.

It might get a bit faded. It might be you or your environment or something. But you can't give it up. You don't want to give it up. We grow, we mature, we see new horizons, but through the lens of our lifelong, solid, trusting blankie, we are comforted. It's reliable, it's attorney, it's eternal.

And we trust that. Today I want to tug a little bit at your blankie. I don't want to take it away from you, necessarily. I just want to tug at it. I want you to come contemplate some possibilities beyond it, without it. I want to help you realize the limitations of your blankie. And to do that, we're going to take a look in the Scripture at some things that tend to make us maybe a little uncomfortable if we're not careful.

I'd like you to guess the answer to this question. Just guess. Relax. It's a guesstimate, so you can just guess. And your answer will be just fine. With all that's happening in the world, with the way things are going, here's your question. How many years might be left until Christ returns? What do you think?

Can you come up with a number or a range?

You got the number?

If anybody wants to share, how many said within five years?

Ten years, if you want to share. Within 20 years? Within 30 years? Within 40 years? I think that's getting out there, isn't it? Okay, let me stretch it a little bit more for you.

Let's consider the number 50. Just because it's unrealistically far out there, I think for most people's guesstimates, and say, within the next 50 years, surely, we think Christ will come. Especially the way people are starting to talk about throwing nuclear weapons around and all. 50 years might be a real bit of a stretch, but that's okay. Let's say the outside chance, just for the guesstimate, could be 50 years. Now, here's another question. How long will the millennial reign of Christ last? There's a hint there in the name. We don't have to actually guess, because it says in Revelation 20, verse 4, and they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. So there's another number, a thousand. Verse 5 in Revelation 20 says, But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. So all of humanity is resurrected again at the end of a thousand years. Now, how long do you think they live? They live. It says in Revelation 20, verse 12, that you saw the dead standing before God, the books were open, the Bible was open to them, and they lived. How long do you think they live? Well, it's a good question. Nobody knows for sure. However, we get a clue, perhaps, in Isaiah 65, verse 20, where it says, in a prophetic way, No more shall an infant from there live but a few days, nor an old man who has not fulfilled his days. For the child shall die one hundred years old, but the sinner being one hundred years old shall be accursed. And so the church has had this term through the years called the hundred year period. And we assume that this scripture is looking at that time when humanity will be resurrected and have one hundred years in which to live again and come to know God, try out His way with His Holy Spirit, and be tested as potential children in His family. Now, let's add these numbers together. We have fifty, we have a thousand, and we have a hundred. That's eleven hundred and fifty years.

One hundred and fifty years of human life is left. Now, when I started this message, we looked backward for thirteen billion years at the age of stars. We looked backward at around four billion years for the age of this planet. We know that humans have been around for six thousand years. There's a lot of history, a lot of archaeology, a lot of paleontology, in fact, that people are involved in and looking back. It's like an old shoe. It's been around here for a while. We've been around here for a while. We can trace ancestry back a while. Kind of feels like we're always going to live here, doesn't it? But we just determined that there's eleven hundred and fifty years until there's no more humans. That's a short period of time. You know, eleven hundred and fifty years is just about the amount of time that the English have lived in Britain. That's not very long. It's not very long.

What happens at the end of the next one hundred and fifty years? Well, poof! The blankies are gone. That's what happens. If we look in Revelation 21 and verse 1, it just begins with, Now I saw a new heavens and a new earth.

Someone swiped the blankies. They're gone. We don't see physical people anymore. So, if your blankie is your hometown, your county, your country, your planet, it's got a date with destiny that's not very far in the future. But you say, not so fast. I want to take my blankie with me, and we do as humans. Here's a one to play with you a little bit more. We want to take these things forward in time, and that's okay. I'm just messing with you a little bit. How do humans tend to be? How do humans tend to picture the afterlife?

People who think they're going to heaven, how do they picture that? Well, when you look at it, I keep my body, keep my health, keep my friends, keep my pet, keep my planet. But everything's shiny and new forever. We get to keep the blankie. People often limit themselves to being pretty much as they are now. Maybe a set of wings, though, when you look at some of the drawings, and you look at some of the movies, and some of the enactments of the afterlife, they haven't changed a bit. They can just sort of appear and disappear, or they just kind of float around just like they are. You see how we kind of tend as humans to drag along what we have, and limit ourselves on a certain plane.

Especially when it comes to the concept of how long we have and how long we'll be around.

We would panic, I think, if eternity didn't have what we have now in some ways. And so we try to reconstruct the future with those things. We can't imagine it without it. That toddler thing of being a grown-up would be a scary thing. I tried it on one recently. What are you going to do when you grow up? You want to get married and have a family? The child is like, I don't know. What are you going to do for a career? Oh, I don't know. Thinking of school. Well, you can see yourself going to school, taking your blankie to school. You'll be okay there, I thought, Mom. Your career, I'll use it at the fire department. It'll keep me safe from those big fires on that big red truck. It'll give me courage during that wedding ceremony when all those people are looking at me. I'll just have that blankie right there. I'll rely on it as I raise my children. It'll keep me brave if I ever have to give a sermon.

You know, it's silly in a way, but we kind of do the same thing with our physical universe blankie. We don't believe in new heavens and new earth. The Bible seems to be pretty clear about that. We can argue that. I'm not here trying to prove anything, but it does say new heavens and new earth. We like more renewed heavens and renewed earth. We're going to keep them. Hang on to those things. Keep those things. We're inspired by the stars at night. I talk to many people. It's typical when you're camping up in the high altitudes where there's no humidity and you see the stars. Wow, the Milky Way galaxy. People start saying, someday I can go up there and populate one of those stars. There's a problem with that. Let me just show you something. It could be a problem. There's one of those stars. It kind of makes you get all warm and fuzzy just thinking this could be your star to go populate. When you get a little closer, you begin to realize that a star is just a giant sun. What it is is sort of a super hydrogen bomb of 10 billion bombs going off at the same time, giving off a lot of radiation. If you ever got this close, you would be radiated to death to begin with. But before that, you'd be cooked if you could deal with just the light. Getting a little closer, if you look at that through infrared, here's what's going on in this hot, gassy cloud on the surface. It's really not a hospitable place when you get right down to the surface. These are some of the NASA shots. We don't always have a very realistic view. There are no known planets that I know of outside of our little solar system here. When we look up at stars at night and think that that's something we're going to have in the future, we're going to keep these lovely balls of hydrogen and whatever other gases that are exploding and hang on to that. They're valuable. They're just really valuable. Two-spirit beings in a spirit world, you see. Somehow this stuff is really, really valuable. It's kind of like tugging along the blankie.

The concept of the renewed earth. We know New Jerusalem is coming down from heaven. New Jerusalem is a spirit composed, spirit matter composed city that's 1,500 miles, I believe, high, and 1,500 miles. It would go past the space station by 1,200 miles deeper into space than where the space station is. That's how tall the city's going to be. It's massive, but we want to park it on a physical earth. Somehow we need a physical earth for a spiritual city. Sound a little silly? Maybe not to some, but we keep the earth that way. Kind of hang on to that. We don't want a spiritual earth. But going on, it says, the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. There are better things. They're spiritual things.

There's a new environment that's coming. We tend to maybe imagine the same environment without rust and moths and tame animals. People want to know, can I have my pet? What are we saying? You're talking about a world in which God, whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and His ways are higher than our thoughts.

As high as the heavens or above the earth, we tend to transpose ourselves as humans, kind of immortal humans, into what God has planned for us. Without just perhaps trusting that it's really going to be something unique and different. There's a problem with these concepts, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7 and 29. But this I say, brethren, the time is short, verse 31, this world and all it contains will pass away. Can I go? It doesn't make us feel real settled when we think of this, does it?

When you think of everything you've ever known being changed out into something completely different. What we become, we don't really know. As John said in 1 John 3, verses 2 and 3, he says, Beloved, we are now children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. I can't stand up here and tell you what we shall be. Now, if any of this worries you, let me give you a little analogy that might be helpful.

It's the analogy of the human and the fly. It might be worried about, ooh, I don't know if I'm going to like that. I don't know if I'm going to like being different and unique and something I don't even know what a spirit being really is or what they're like, or having a mind that thinks as high, as different as the earth from the heavens with abilities and a realm that is so unique and different to us.

But just consider the analogy of the fly. Pretend for a moment that as a human, you're God. You're the God, you're the creator. You've got this little fly flying around. Maybe you have one here today. Try this if you do. If one's landing on you, just try this. Tell the fly, now fly.

If you'll do what I tell you, I will make you into a human like me. Just tell the fly, fly, can you hear me? Fly kind of buzzes and looks at you with these big eyes. Then tell him you'll teach him. He'll be able to drive a car. Tell him he'll be able to travel. He'll be able to fall in love. He'll be able to fly an airplane. He'll be able to make music. How far are you thinking of getting with this fly?

The fly, if he could think and if he could talk back to you, he might say, Well, I'm worried about this. I'm worried about not being a fly. I just have one question to put me at ease. Will there be piles of stinking garbage in the kingdom that you're talking about? Will there be? Because that's very important to me. So if you have a problem with what God is offering and where we're going with all this and the timeframe and the 1,150-year concept and what is prophesied in the Bible, just relegate your thoughts to the garbage pile with the fly. Because God says, My thoughts are so much higher than your thoughts.

They are as high as the heavens are above the earth. And I believe those are a lot different than the difference between a human brain and that of a fly. We're probably a lot closer to the fly than God is to us in our composition. We tend to appreciate but somehow transpose what God is promising into human terms. And the Bible doesn't do that. The apostles don't do that. They just don't make comments about what it's going to be. God never describes what it's going to be up front.

God promises a spiritual new, improved heavens and earth and bodies. A spiritual body. But to us it doesn't comfort sometimes because it doesn't sound like the original. When I was on a date with my little granddaughter, spotted a department store. We don't have to go home. They sell blankies. Sure enough, we went inside and there was a big display of blankies. All kinds of blankies. And there were some just like the one she had at home. So being the credible thinker that I am, I bought two. One for this car, one for that car. We're not going to have this problem again.

We're going to have blankies everywhere. Checked out, got in the car, gave her one of the blankies. All right? Started driving and she says, but I want my blankie. Oh. There's a difference, you see. We want our blankie. We want the childhood original. Humans like childhood originals. If you think of food, for instance, what sells food?

Original. Homemade. Like mama made it. Grandmas. They start putting names on things. Aunt somebody's. Mrs. Somebody's. Try to, some fat old woman maybe you saw on your neighborhood and brought a pie over. That's the person on the label. It doesn't exist. But it makes you feel that way. It's old. It's original. It's the way things always are. Of course, it's just a selling point. God's throne is in a different dimension and God is a different being than what you and I are. We don't know what He's like. All we know is that He's offered you and me some time to go through a process that will enable Him to give you a gift.

And that gift is to be like He is. Where He is. He doesn't really tell us much about that. I've looked in here all through it and I don't find any descriptions about the new neighborhood, the new body.

We don't have a list of, kind of like when you get the car, you get the TV thing or whatever. It comes with a list of all the features. Some of the lists are really long. Ooh, look at all the stuff this thing does. We don't get a feature list.

Nothing. We just have to trust. We have to have faith. We have to have faith in something we've never seen. Faith in a person we've never seen. We trust in something that we've never even heard a sound from. And through this faith, we believe that God has created, all has been created, from nothing, from the nothing where He lives. He has created the physical universe. And then in around 1150 years, He's going to take that away. And that brings us to the important part of the sermon.

What do we do with this concept? What's important to you and me in our lives? These physical and spiritual realms don't mix. They don't intertwine. You can't stay here on earth. It has a date with destiny.

It's going to go away. And anything physical is going to go away with it. So we have to be transported across into the spirit dimension to literally be born again as another species, totally different. Or we will cease to exist. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6, verse 19, that because of this, I hope that just getting across today the concept that there is a termination here, because of this, we need to do certain things.

Matthew 6, verse 19, He says, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. Why is that? Obviously those treasures won't exist in 1150 years. Whatever it was, it will not exist. He says where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, even in the short term, those things are not going to last. This week, for instance, the really cool computer that I have finally crashed again, wiped out everything on my hard drive, and reinstalled it two or three times trying to get it to work, and it finally worked.

Finally got the programs loaded back on and went to print something very important, and the printer went out. Now, what's the chance that the printer would go out? And I was so... I called the company and I went through with this guy in India for a long, long time, just to confirm that it went out. And yes, it really, really went out. And sorry, but it's not under warranty, he said.

I wish it were, I'd send you a new one, but I can't. So I took it back to the store I bought it from, and sure enough, they said the guy on the phone was wrong. It was under warranty. They took it back, and I got a better printer that was on sale. Yesterday evening, got it in, got it set up, plugged it in.

Finally, a brand new, really nice printer. Turned it on, sun was not even down, and as it booted up, it said, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. The scanner is defunct. This printer does not work. Fresh out of the box. It's a bad printer. You know, you can go through this life and things aren't going to even last 11 or 150 years.

They might even last a day. It's just the way things are. So, his point is, don't be putting all of your efforts into things that are very temporary here on this earth. James 5, verses 1 and 8, you don't have to turn there, but I would encourage you to read that passage. It really shows the futility of pouring yourself into physical treasure that certainly has no lasting purpose. But Jesus says in verse 20, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Now, where's heaven? Where's heaven? Well, it really doesn't matter where it is. If you could go there, you couldn't see it.

You wouldn't know you were there. Because it is a different dimension, isn't it? It's not made of physics. It's not made of physical material. It's from that realm where the unseen is that makes things that you and I can see, but it's unseen. So, he's saying, lay up treasure in heaven, which to you and I is an otherworldly place. I mean, it's just not available to us. That is a unique concept.

How we lay up treasure in heaven, obviously, is by developing relationships with God and creating a pattern that is pleasing, a pattern of life that's pleasing in His sight. And when we do those things that are pleasing in His sight, he says, then there's a reward for that. And we get to be resurrected, not a physical, but an immortal, and live in that other dimension. Janet Anjango is a lady in Africa, the wife of one of our deacons, and she wrote, I received a message from her this morning, she wrote concerning the aid and the projects that are going on in East Africa, and she said this, We know that all of the blessings come from God, and they do help many within the community, and some of the brethren also will benefit from them.

This is the Life Net's projects. All of these physical blessings are just for use in the meantime, while we are still in the human body which needs to be assisted. But we really know that soon they will pass away, and we will wait and enjoy the everlasting blessing which our Lord Jesus will bring to us on that day, the eternal life, which is our goal and focus.

This is the primary need for us all. I thought that was beautiful. Coming from a lady who lives out in a very rural part of Africa, has no electricity, she has grown up without any kind of labor-saving devices, she gets up very early in the morning and goes about her washing and cleaning and providing for many others around, she helps run a school nearby, this woman just works sunup to sundown. And with a mind that could focus on physical things that are coming in, that her husband and she are managing, she comes with that.

We know soon that they will pass away, and we will wait and enjoy the everlasting blessing which our Lord Jesus will bring to us on that day, the eternal life. We all see that. It's wonderful, though, to have it right in the forefront of our minds. Let's take a glimpse at what life beyond what we know could be. In verse 2 of Revelation 21, then I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven. Now, this is a unique thing. Here's a man in a fairly basic society, not complicated like you and I, and he's in a vision.

And he actually sees New Jerusalem coming down to a new earth, and he's trying to describe it. You and I would have a lot more descriptive stuff today because of the civilization that we are familiar with. But he's just trying to put this in perspective. He says it's coming down from heaven. It's made of spirit matter. It's eternal. It's invisible within the physical realm.

Physical matter throughout the universe is in bondage. It's in decay, all of it. It's suffering corruption. Continuing in verse 2, now he says, this is prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. You know, is the city a bride? No. He's using some description here. This place is really, really, really decked out. He doesn't even know how to describe it. This looks really cool. Awesome! Like a bride. The one time a bride is probably dressed up more and really a knockout and really goes way beyond the way Christ, even in the Bible, talks about a bride that's adorned with so many things. Wow! This is how the city is. And what I gather from what he's saying here, it's just too cool for words. I mean, it's just too wonderful and beautiful. And all he can say is it's like a beautiful, beautiful bride that's adorned for her wedding. So much better than the physical city that he and the other disciples told Jesus. Look how nice this temple and all these buildings are that Herod has built. Remember they told him that? And then he said they're all going to come down. Well, in verse 5, Then he who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. All things. Everything's going to be new. Brand new from the start, from scratch. Spirit matter, new. And then he said something else. In case you don't believe this, he makes the following station. The God who sits on the throne said, and he said to me, You write this down, for these words are true and faithful. He says it twice. They're true, and you can trust in them. They are faithful. You and I have to have the trust in God that he knows what he's doing, that our future is in his hands, that we can take a deep breath, that we can go about believing in him, that he exists, believing that his nature really is a nature that we want to adopt. Every bit of it, every part of it, and nothing that we have in our nature is worth holding on to. And then we trust that at the end of our life, that when we have to go through and die, that he is going to have a desire to the work of his hands, and when that seventh trumpet blows, the first fruits in Christ are going to rise. And they're going to rise to an incorruptible inheritance. They're going to have been human and physical like Adam, but Paul says they're going to be like Christ is. We will know him, we will see him like he is, we're going to be like he is. That is unique. That's different. It's really wonderful.

But here's the big question for you and me from God. Peter raises it, and he raises it through Peter in 2 Peter 3 and verse 10. 2 Peter 3 and verse 10. The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. We might think we have 1150 years. We might think we have 50 years until Jesus comes, or 40 or 30 or whatever the guesstimate is.

But it's going to come at a time when we're not expecting it. And it could be very fast. I think what's more important is not when it comes, but will we be caught unawares? If you knew that Christ is going to come in a month, you'd probably get a little game plan going, wouldn't you? Fasting is going to be on your schedule. Some good works, lots of prayers, Bible study, quit cussing after all these years, or whatever it is.

You'd really be focused on some things. But if you said, well, maybe 50 years, well, take a little break, be a little easy. Jesus Christ said so many times, in a time when people aren't expecting it, boom, there he is. In other words, he wants to know who you and I really are. He wants us to be genuine people of real character, not some kind of fake that knew there was a certain countdown and therefore was sort of faking it in order to get something.

Do we really want to be like God? Going on. The day of the Lord is going to come at a time when you and I don't expect it. At a time Jesus said, no man knows, he didn't even know when he was on earth. In which the heavens will pass away with a great noise. The heavens, with a huge noise, are going to pass away, it says. And the elements will melt, or as it says later, dissolve with fervent heat. I am not a physicist, but I think most of us know how an atomic or nuclear weapon goes off. You take a nucleus, an atom, you break them apart, and somehow you get a whole lot of heat and a whole lot of sound.

And it kind of sounds to me, just in my layman thought, that if you're going to get rid of all these physical elements there are in the universe, all you've got to do is pull the atoms loose and let a lot of heat and noise come from them. Could be, don't know. But look what he says.

Both the earth and the works in it will be burnt up. Burnt up. Again, how do you burn up atoms? I don't know. Let them go. It would be quite a deal, wouldn't it? This whole concept of the lake of fire, rather than a lake, it's everything. Including you or me, if we're still around.

And that's the end of it. Pretty clean when you're done, isn't it? Just a lot of heat and a lot of light and a lot of noise, and then there's nothing. Therefore, verse 11, since all these things will be dissolved, the heavens, the earth, the works, since all these things will be dissolved, good-bye, blankie.

What manner of persons ought you to be? That's the question. Are we really serious? Do we really understand? You know, holy conduct and godliness. Looking for and hastening for the coming of the day of the Lord, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat. So, good questions. Very good questions. It puts the whole purpose for your and my creation, the whole purpose for this laboratory or this nursery that God has made for us to live in, which we love and we're comfortable here, we enjoy, we appreciate.

It puts it all in perspective, doesn't it? It's only here for a short time. Now, our universe has existed for billions of years. We kind of get comfortable with that. You know, it's been there billions of years. We just kind of think it's going to keep on being there. Yet, if we check the edition, 1150 years, nothing physical will exist forever. What's important? What's important? It's time to prioritize your life.

The Bible talks about redeeming the time. It means to spare from loss. Don't waste time, we would say, in the modern vernacular. There's so much time ahead. Don't waste it. Use it. Use it for important things. Don't spin it on developing a bunch of treasures here on Earth that are very temporary. However, as you, I'm sure, have already figured out, there's a big problem with the 1150-year concept.

Because how much longer will you personally live? I don't think my body will live 1150 years. How long can you hang on until your body gives out? James 4, verse 14, asks the question, what is your life? What is your life and mine? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. You don't have 1150 years. You might not even have the 50 years that we thought about until Christ returns. 50 could be a stretch.

How long did you say, until Christ would return? Some said maybe 5 to 10, 10 to 20. Well, that's a lot shorter than maybe you would normally stay alive. But that's the only time that those who are called and baptized now have to do God's will. Because when Christ returns, that judgment period is over. So if he comes next week, next month, next year, the next decade, or whatever it is, that's the only time in which we have.

Or if we should die in the meantime, that's the only time in which we have. The point is, your personal time is short. That's what I'm realizing. Time is short. And it doesn't matter how much longer even the physical realm will go on. My time and your time is very, very short. Your end is near. We could make yourself a little sign. We could hold them up. The end is near. It would be true. Irrespective of those who are not converted today that may live on into the millennium, that does not apply to you if you're baptized.

Your personal time is short. We can appreciate these things that we come to enjoy, our blankies of life. God has made a very wonderful environment to support this life. But let's remember 1 Corinthians 13, verse 11. 1 Corinthians 13, verse 11, the Apostle Paul. He says, When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I understood as a child. I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Now he's tracking here on a certain part of maturity and spiritual maturity. Then he says, For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. He's also putting this in a change of maturing. As we are growing up spiritually and looking forward, we don't have the luxury of knowing what's ahead.

We are putting away our childish things. We are growing to be more like our God and trusting. But then he says, We see in a mirror dimly. We see through a glass darkly, I believe another translation says. We just don't really see all the details. But ultimately then, we will see them face to face. We will be part of them.

The future is going to arrive soon, and the rewards, Jesus said, are going to be with him when he comes. To give to people as they have lived. There is still some time. We need to be using that time and redeeming that time. To conclude, these events are coming. They are serious. I'm not saying they are coming right away. But we need to be faithful. We need to be trusting. We need to be genuine people, always, at all times. What should we be doing? Let's go to 1 Peter 4 and verse 7 to conclude. 1 Peter 4 and verse 7.

Scripture we've read many times in the last few months. But the end of all things is at hand. You see what he's saying? The end of all things. It's coming. It's coming soon. There is a terminal point for the physical universe. It's coming. Therefore, be serious. We need to be serious. Not just mindless, going along like the world, aimless and involved in all kinds of things that appeal to our five senses. But serious. Next he says watchful. Watchful. Meaning alert. Being on alert as a watchman. Being alert of what we are thinking, what we're saying, what we're doing, what we're becoming in our relationship with God and with each other. Alertful. That's what he's talking about. In our prayers. Being the children of God. Praying for others and praying for the things that Jesus Christ told us to pray about in that prayer outline in Matthew 6. And above all things, have fervent love for one another. Fervent is combined here with the word agape. That is what we ascribe to God, his kind of love, his total self-sacrificing concern for others. And we are to be fervent in developing that love from the God has put his spirit within us. For, he says, love will cover a multitude of sins. God is looking for that fruit, in other words, and he's going to ignore a whole lot of mistakes, a whole lot of what we would call imperfections of people who are really trying. When he sees that fruit of his nature, that love, something that can be harvested, he's not going to worry that there's also some chaff there with it. So, brethren, as we go through this wonderful season that is sort of free and easy as it were in some ways, as we look at our lives and appreciate the blessings that we have and enjoy those blessings, as we look at the environment around us and sample, enjoy it, and we're very comfortable here, and realize your time is short, it's limited, it's brief. So be diligent to love God, love your neighbor, and live forever.