The Second Resurrection

Just before coming up here, Mariah Tibidil, our new member in the congregation, asked for your prayers, and I'll ask her to write that down for me so I can post that so we know what we're praying for. I told her I'd be happy to do so. Last week I began a series offering a two-for-one special. It was to help you understand the legitimacy of the Second Resurrection. And if there are any who were not here last week, Second Resurrection is simply the easiest shorthand way of describing God's ability to give all men, women, and children who have never had one fair chance for salvation that they had.

So when we use the term, the term is the simplest way to describe nobody goes through their human existence without an opportunity—a fair, legitimate opportunity for salvation. So on the two-for-one I said I wanted to help you understand the legitimacy of that doctrine and also to understand a principle which we described as underlying philosophies. And an underlying philosophy—I gave you a go-to place so that if you said, well, what do you mean by underlying philosophies? I sent you back to Matthew 22 and I said, if you need a, this is where I go back to to get my head around the term.

It's the place where Christ was asked, what is the great commandment in the law? And he said, it was to love your neighbor or to love your God with all your heart, all your might, all your soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Now he didn't say, well, the greatest command is keep the Sabbath or the greatest command is thou shalt not bear false witness or the greatest command is thou shalt have no other gods before me. He went directly to the underlying principle that sits beneath all of the commandments and all other commands that are not a part of the ten. So I said, if you need a place to wrap your head around, what do you mean by underlying philosophy? It means something that is so broad and so deep that everything else rests on top of it.

The ten commandments are ten specifics. They're ten for instances. They're not where you stop. If that's where you stopped, none of you would ever keep a holy day. None of you would obey the dietary laws. None of you would tithe. None of you and we could go on and on and on with the none of yous. The underlying philosophy that sits under all of them is what Jesus Christ gave as a response.

And the young lawyer who baited him with the question was biblically grounded enough to recognize that what he said was dead-on, which is more than you can say for the majority of people who have been reared in the Christian world over the ages. So I gave you that as a for instance, Matthew 22, verses 35 through 40, and I said if you need a place to go back to so you can understand what do you mean by an underlying philosophy?

That's where you go. Now back to where we left off. I told Hood River this morning because there a week behind you. I said we're going to dig a hole and this whole sermon, this is last week's sermon, we're going to dig a hole and by time we finish we can't even see out of the top. And I laughed at the the ladies that were there and I said, you know next week we're going to come back to it. We're going to dig the hole even deeper. So about midway through the second sermon, we're going to be so far down in that hole that we're going to be looking for daylight.

But I said by the end of the sermon we'll throw a ladder down there, get out of the hole, and stand on top of the mound of dirt and we'll have a tremendous view from there. So we're going to dig the hole a little deeper before we crawl out of the hole. Last week we created a conundrum. We looked at a God who says, if you want to talk to me about my desire, I'll tell you what my desire is.

My desire is that every last single solitary human being who has ever been born would be saved. And then that same God said, I blind people so they can't see. I stop their ears so they can't hear. I keep their minds clouded so they can't understand. Lest I have to convert them. And so here's our God. And that's a conundrum. If he says, I don't want anybody lost, and on the other he says, I'm going to blind them all, keep them deaf and dumb so they can't hear, where is he? Who is he?

I gave you a whole string of scriptures last week so that you would understand one thing, that the answer Jesus Christ gave to the question from his disciples, why do you speak to the masses in parables, which is Matthew 13, 11 through 15. A casual reader of the Bible may be familiar with Matthew 13 because that's where the parables start. But the casual reader doesn't realize in its own right that what it says in Matthew 13 is in its own right an underlying principle. And that's why I took you from Isaiah 6 to Isaiah 14. To Isaiah 44 to John 12 to Acts 28 to Romans 11. All which repeat in different settings with different audiences and different contexts that exact same principle. Isaiah stated it. John repeated it. Paul repeated it. In Acts and in Romans. It is a broad-based principle that we live in a world that God has said are blind, and I am the one who has blinded them because I don't intend to convert them. I gave you the tip of the conundrum. Let me drive the other half of that in deeper. I drove, by spending the entire last part of the sermon, I drove the point home about blindness. I gave you just the tip of the iceberg when I read to you 2 Peter 3. I'm going to take the time to drive this spike far deeper. Let's go back and once more read 2 Peter 3 to start. 2 Peter 3 and verse 9 says, The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. This is what he desires. 1 Timothy 2.

3. 1 Timothy 2. 3. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

So here's the God who says, I don't want them to know, who says, I want them all to know. Ezekiel 33.

Verse 10, Therefore you, O Son of Man, say to the house of Israel, Thus you say, If our transgressions and our sins lie upon us, and we pine away in them, how can we then live? Say to them, As I live, that is the strongest oath that can be given in the universe. Of all of the oaths that can be given, God swearing by himself is the greatest of all oaths. As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways. For why should you die, O house of Israel? This is a passionate, passionate statement. Ezekiel 18.

This is the place for those of you who are more familiar where God goes through the four categories. A righteous man who stays righteous will be rewarded. A righteous man who becomes unrighteous will lose any reward for his righteousness. A wicked man who stays wicked will be punished. A wicked man who turns will have his sins forgiven. After going through all of those, he says in verse 23, Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? Says the Lord God. And not that he should turn from his way and live. Where am I on this? I don't want him to die.

He says again in verse 32, For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies, says the Lord God. Therefore turn and live. He's not talking about physical death. He's talking about eternal. Hosea 11 Here's another place it is phenomenally passionate. God says in verse 7 of Hosea 11, My people are bent on backsliding from me, though they call on the Most High, none at all exalt him. How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over Israel? How can I make you like Adma? How can I set you like Zeboim? My heart churns within me. My sympathy is stirred. I will not execute the fierceness of my anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not man, the Holy One in the midst, and I will not come with terror.

Lamentations Lamentations chapter 3 Lamentations 3 verse 31 says, For the Lord will not cast off forever. Though He cause grief, yet He will show compassion according to the multitude of His mercies, for He does not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.

And one more, since we have an equal balance, one for one for each of the scriptures I gave you last week that talks about His blinding of man.

Romans chapter 11 A naked statement that needs explaining that we will do so eventually in time. It simply goes to the bottom line. It doesn't explain how He gets to the bottom line. It simply says, This is the bottom line. Romans 11 verse 26 And so all Israel will be saved. As it is written, The deliverer will come out of Zion, and he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob, for this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. As I said, brethren, we have created a phenomenal conundrum.

We showed you a string of scriptures that didn't begin to give all the scriptures to make the point that I am blinded, I have hardened, I have stopped the ears, I have clouded over and veiled people. I have kept them from understanding. I do not intend to convert them. And on the other hand, with great passion, I desire that they all arrive at salvation. If I could have my greatest heart's desire, it would be that every single solitary man, woman, and child would arrive there. To understand this dilemma, we have to march further into the underlying philosophy of the matter. And as I said at the beginning, it may get a little murkier before it gets clearer. What do we have as evidence so far? The evidence that we have from the mouth of God, from His own word, from His own statements, from the mouth of God, the evidence we have on the table so far is, I intend to blind man so they would not be converted. That's the evidence we have from His mouth. There's an old saying that actions speak louder than words. So, what is the evidence from history? The history of man in rough terms can be divided into three 2,000-year blocks for the sake of conversation. The first 2,000-year block is from Adam to Noah. How many people in your Bible are described between Adam and Noah as righteous? Three. Three individuals for 2,000 years. You know, when people live to 900 years and they're still bearing children at 500 and 600 years old, in 2,000 years the population of the world could easily have been in the billions. You don't have any trouble getting into the millions. Tens and hundreds of millions.

Three for the first 2,000 years. Next 2,000 years is roughly from Noah to Jesus Christ. A little harder to count because you have to assume. But you only go so far in assuming. We have the patriarchs that we nod our heads because the Bible talks about them being in the kingdom. So we can nod that the Abrahams and the Isaacs and the Jacobs and the Moseses and the Joshuas and the Davids and the Isaiahs and the Jeremiahs and the Ezekiels will be there. But if you're liberal and you want to throw everybody in that pot that you can find from Genesis 12 to the last verse in Malachi, you'd be very, very, very hard-pressed to get close to 100 the next 2,000 years.

From the coming of Jesus Christ to the return of Jesus Christ, the last 2,000-year block. When Christ describes His own church, He describes them with such terms as small, scattered, persecuted. Those are the common adjectives used to describe His church. It is never large, popular, pervasive. We could get into all sorts of arguments within the broader Christian world as to how many people are saved. Our view is ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra conservative. On the evangelical end of the world, it would be ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra liberal. If we gave the most liberal part of the world their view, if we gave them their view, and we just said, okay, I'm not going to argue with you, I'll give it to you even though I don't believe it. In this world today, there are 2.2 billion professing Christians, and there's not an intelligent evangelical alive who will give credit that every professing Christian is a Christian. And that is in a world of over 7 billion people. So even if we gave the most liberal group their highest estimate, it is still a distinct minority. 2.2 billion people profess. Now, if you understand the nature of surveys, it's very simple. Pick A, B, C, D, or E. You go to a hospital, they ask you what your denomination is.

So you came up in a family that went to church. You stopped going to church when you were 16 years old. What box do you check? None? Or Christian? Out of those 2.2 billion, I'll guarantee you, there are hundreds of thousands that ticked the box Christian that never darkened the door, and many more that are there for Easter and Christmas only. Bottom line is, the most liberal is still a gross failure of the scriptures that I read to you about my desire. 2.2, and that's today, out of 7 billion. During the majority of the time since Jesus Christ to today, that ratio would have been far, far, far smaller. So here we are. So here we are. We've got three people headed for the kingdom of God in the first 2,000 years, probably less than 100 for the next 2,000 years, and a horrible minority, whatever size it happens to be, for the next 2,000 years.

As I said, we have the testimony from God's mouth. The testimony from history is even louder. The testimony from history is that the vast majority of humanity are lost and damned, based on the evidence on the surface.

To double-check our assumption, you know, when kids are young and they begin in mathematics, they learn how to prove their answers. They learn in division how to prove that their answer is correct, or in multiplication how to prove that answer is correct. So we need to do a little proving in this particular case that our assumption is correct. We need to understand, from the Bible perspective, who's on track to gain salvation and how they get there so that we can determine who isn't on track and not going to get there. In other words, the Bible defines for itself what the track is and how to identify who's on that track. And once we identify who is on the track to salvation, it's very easy to tell who isn't. It's a whole lot easier than who was it? Michael Angelou or Leonardo DiCaprio. He said, eventually, when asked about how to make this phenomenal statue of a man, he said, oh, it's easy, just chip away all the marble that doesn't look like a man. We're just going to chip away all the stuff that doesn't look like conversion, and it'll be easy to see what's going on.

You see, we have to ask ourselves, how does the Bible define a chance for salvation? A good place to start is very close to where we stopped reading. If you kept your Bible open, all you need to do is go back to Romans 10. In the general Christian world, a very popular—in the evangelical world, a very popular Bible verse is Romans 10.13. For whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. There's a large body of the Christian world that says there is nothing required for salvation, except simply a verbal profession. And this is one of their proof scriptures. But verse 14, after making that statement, says, How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?

That's a question. And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? We have a cascading series of things that have to be in place in order to move a person toward conversion. If you start at the bottom, because it was reverse engineering everything, it requires a preacher who is sent.

There's an asterisk you can put there. It is easy to tell a preacher who is sent by whether or not what he has to say is consistent with what God gave him to say. Just because he preaches means nothing. His preaching is only as valid as its consistency with what God gave him to preach. And so he says, it isn't going to start until there is somebody to teach the Word of God as the Word of God is written. You're not going to hear otherwise.

It's phenomenal all the different ways that this audience first heard the Word of God preached as the Bible teaches it. My grandfather was a religious hobbyist. He listened to every single solitary preacher from the time they started preaching in the evening after he stopped milking the cows until they stopped. In my childhood, I can remember name after name after name. J. Vernon McGee. A.A. Allen, God's man of faith and power. Made a lot of noise.

HMS Richards. Bishop Sheen. And on and on it went. And one day, my grandfather is saying to my dad, you ought to listen to this man Armstrong. He makes sense in one ear and out the other ear and back home. Since we visited the grandparents often enough, that statement was made again. And when my grandfather listened, my dad would sit down and listen with him. And it progressed from there. And here I am today. Your stories are all individual and unique. But somewhere, sometimes, somehow, you heard God's word preached according to what the Bible said. What you have here is a formula. To believe, you have to hear. To hear, you have to have somebody who is talking. To say what needs to be said, you have to be sent with the truth. Without that process, nothing is going to start. But remember something. All Romans 10 described is the process.

Noah lived this process for a hundred years. How many converts did Noah make?

Zero. So this is just the process. If somebody is going to get there, this is how they're going to get there. It doesn't say they are going to get there. It just says, if they are, this is the path they're going to have to go. And history has shown us, Noah being the grandest example of all, that you can have an entire society that has that for a hundred years. For a hundred years.

And it still all goes over their head.

Which leads us to one thing we have to remember. For God, a chance for salvation involves more than audible sounds and visible sights.

It's more than simply saying, well, you heard it, didn't you? You saw it, didn't you? I've seen a lot of things I didn't understand. And I've heard a lot of sounds that I didn't understand. In my traveling in various parts of the world, I've heard all sorts of people talking that I didn't understand a word they said.

The best I could do in some cases is say, hmm, that person is speaking German. That person is speaking French. That person is speaking Spanish. And other times, that person is speaking, and I don't have a clue even what language they're speaking. For God, a chance for salvation involves more than audible sounds and visible sights. You are an audience that understands that salvation is a process, not an event. On the front end of conversion, one of the amusing things for me as a pastor that has never stopped entertaining me at the expense of new people is the quandary that a brand new person is in over the issue of how did I come to understand what I understand. And I'll look at the person, and I'll say, I don't know how many dozens of people have said this in one form or another to them, and sometimes the lights are on and other times the lights are not. But you start out by saying, look, you understand because God opens a mind to see. Till that happens, you're not smart enough, your IQ is not high enough, and you can't live long enough to understand. You understand compliments of God. It's not compliments of how high your IQ is. It isn't compliments of how righteous and saintly you've lived your life. It is a gift. And until He turns the switch, it doesn't matter how much you see, it doesn't matter how much you hear. I love to counsel your children when they arrive here.

Because when your children arrive here, they all say the same thing to me.

They all put it in their own words. They all put it in different terminology, but they all say the same thing to me. Or let's put it this way, they all communicate the same thing to me. And I smile at them, and I chuckle or I laugh, because I can go back to when I was their age and went through exactly the same thing. They will express this head-scratching fascination and delight at finally seeing in a way that they have never seen all the things they've been listening to and hearing from the time they were children. And they're sitting there shaking their heads mentally saying, what is going on? Why is it that now all of this makes sense in a way it never made sense before? Why is it that it... and they go through this, why? Why? Why? And as a counselor, I sit there and smile. Whether I say anything to the young man or young woman or not, I sit there and smile and say, you have just handed me the evidence that God has begun to formally call you. You had the privilege of that invitation by being born of converted parents.

That doesn't automatically mean you will arrive at a destination unless there is some desire and willingness and effort in that direction. But when that time comes that God turns the switch in your mind, you'll sit there and say, there's not anything here that I didn't already know, meaning academically know. But now it means something, and now it has a depth to it, and now it has purpose, and now it has importance, and now it has clarity, all at a degree that I never realized that I didn't have. This is the first and the most powerful manifestation of calling.

I've heard more times than I've got fingers and toes and all my family, mine, my wives, my kids, from people who are past middle age on up to old age saying, why did God wait so long to let me understand this? Why did I get to this age and never see these things? Where was I? Where have I been? I don't have an answer. I have the delight that you're there. It's a joy for me to have somebody wringing their hands saying, why did God wait? Because what it means is they are there. They're perplexed that it didn't arrive earlier. I don't have any control over that, and neither do they. But I'm just thrilled that they're there because it means they do see. And now with the passion they wish they'd seen 10, 20, 30, 40 years earlier. I don't drive that bus. We just have to take delivery when it arrives at our doorstep.

That road, that road you can always park. In fact, you can put on your turn signals and you can leave that road anytime you want. God isn't going to force you to stay on it. But if you stay on it, the next sign that you will see is very obvious. One of two things will happen. Because of this great additional clarity that has been given you, you will now start to be more firmly and more powerfully convinced of the things that your parents have taught you, that your Sabbath school lessons have taught you, that magazines have taught you, that summer camp have taught you. It will drive it home like a sledgehammer on a railroad spike. And if you've dittled around and you've played church part of that growing up period, but in your private, personal life, you've lived two lives—your church life and your other life—then it will convict you. So if you have tried to live this way as a young person, all it'll do is drive it home, as I said, like a railroad spike. It will convince you of how true it is. If you've had a foot on both sides of the world, it will convict you. It will convict you that this standing on both sides of the fence is something that has to stop, and you have to get on the right side of the fence, and you have to leave the other side of the fence to other people who want the other side of the fence. So there will come a convincing or a convicting. What will happen next is action. Repentance is not an emotion. Repentance is a turning 180 degrees from the way that God says you're not supposed to be going. You know, God calls people who are 180 degrees out of sync, 120 degrees out of sync, 90, 45, and maybe 10 or 15. It doesn't matter how far out of sync you are, everyone has to come on course. So as you take your acts and you bring them in line with the Bible's acts, this is the act of repentance.

There's not a person that God is calling that arrives this far down the line who doesn't eventually come to the place of saying, you know what, I don't want the baggage of my past on my shoulders. I don't want to carry it around. I don't want to walk around knowing all the things that I have in my past that I now don't agree with, and I am not capable of getting that off my back.

Now, you know, it doesn't matter how deep the water is and how long we hold you under that water. The water doesn't wash it off, but it is the formal ritual that God created to give you a literal, hands-on experience so that you can understand having everything washed and flushed. And so baptism is next.

Every time a man or a woman comes out of the water, if it's warm enough, we simply stand in the baptismal pool, which has been Larry Wilson's hot tub. And in the winter, we don't stand out in that pool. In the summer and the spring and early autumn, we do. In the winter, we get out of that pool and we head for the house as fast as we can and we dry off and we go into Larry and Pat's living room. And the prayer is always the same. You have before you a man or a woman who is no more capable of living the way that they desire to live right now than they were before they went on that water. In terms of their skill, their ability, their strength, this is the same person in terms of those things that went into that water a few minutes ago. If you don't give them your spirit, they're not any better equipped to live the way they should going forward than they were equipped going backward. And God has given a very specific way in which He says, just in the same way that He said, the ritual I've chosen is to place you under the water so that you can understand burial. We joke occasionally with people. We say, you know, there's a fine line between symbolic and literal. It's about two and a half minutes. All I have to do is keep your head underwater more than three minutes. And this went from symbolic to literal. Up from the water comes a corpse. And we take it from the water to the ground and we bury it. So the symbolism that God created in baptism was strong enough to last a lifetime. You know, I go under the water and I come back out and all of that in 10 seconds, 10, 15 seconds. I'm in no physical danger, but I realize that if I had stayed down there to the count of 120 to 180, my life would have been over. It's a good ritual. It's a great memory lesson. He created the laying on of hands and the basic doctrines in Hebrews 6 as the manner in which the Holy Spirit is transferred to an individual. At this point, at the point we've arrived at, we have arrived at the place where there is a legitimate chance for salvation. A full, legitimate chance for salvation begins at this point. And now we come to a critical point.

You and I have to understand the Bible's shorthand way of identifying when a person is considered capable of heading toward salvation. I said to you when the sermon began, we're going to use a shorthand term. We're simply going to use the term second resurrection. It's the term we have chosen to describe when billions who've never even heard the word God or Christ will be able to walk this process. Now we have to look at some other shorthand. This is God's shorthand. What is God's shorthand way of identifying when a person is considered capable of starting down that path toward salvation? If I gave you a computer, an e-sword, and you knew how to use it, I said, okay, I want you to do a search. I want you to do a search, and I want you to come up with the answers to how do we know when a person is considered capable of heading toward salvation in the Bible's terminology? Where are you going to go? What are you going to look for? What words are you going to type in? If you don't know how the Bible puts into words the chance for salvation, you're walking blind.

The Bible doesn't speak so much about the process. The Bible's focal point is the determining factor. So it doesn't spend a lot of time walking through process. The where is it? The where is it is going to be identified by knowing the determining factor. That is what the Bible will describe for you. Every year, the baptized members of this congregation assemble for the Passover. Every year, at the end of the physical symbols, there is a reading from the last chapters of the book of John. And that reading begins in John 14. The selected verses are read in John 14, 15, 16, and 17. These are the last words of Jesus Christ to a beloved group of people before his arrest, beating, and crucifixion. We repeat to you at that Passover service something that Christ says over and over and over again to this body of 11 men who are sitting there with him. Two, for instances, are John 14, beginning in verse 25. But these things I have spoken to you while being present with you, but the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

Christ said, I will send the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will teach you all things. You see, this young man or young woman I was talking about who begins the conversion process with calling, and they say, why is it I didn't see it that way earlier? Why is it that it's so it's so bright and so obvious now? I will send the Holy Spirit, and it will teach you all things. John 16.

Verse 13. However, when he the Spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth. Now, the he's and here are unfortunate because the Holy Spirit is neuter. So let me read it in the neuter. However, when it comes, when the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth comes, it will guide you into all truth. It will not speak on its own authority. So it is going to guide you into all truth.

When the Bible introduces the opportunity for salvation, I asked you earlier, what are you looking for? What's the determining factor? When the Bible wants to talk about the conversion of masses of people, the determining factor that comes into the text is the Holy Spirit. Whether it is referred to as the Holy Spirit or whether it is referred to as my spirit or the Spirit, when we find those places where God is going to work with people, the determining factor that is the difference between the light switch that is off in a dark room and the switch up and the lights on is the activity of the Holy Spirit. There are people who at times, it's rare, but there are people at times who want to argue about the necessity of baptism. And their approach is almost universally consistent.

And sadly, their almost universally consistent approach speaks to their own ignorance. They will say, well, I already have the Holy Spirit. Well, if you have not gone through what God described as the mechanism to get the Holy Spirit, I'm sorry you don't have the Holy Spirit. They will be all offended.

But you know what they're not realizing and what they don't recognize? It is from the time that they began to understand the vehicle they were riding to get there was the Holy Spirit. Would I argue with them for a moment that the Holy Spirit had been active in their life from the moment they began to understand? No, never. Not for a moment. You don't come to any understanding on your own intelligence. It is a gift, and the deliverer and the vehicle is the Holy Spirit. So has the Holy Spirit been with you? Yes. Has it been working with you? Yes. Is the Holy Spirit in you? No. Not until the process that God mandated has been followed. You don't have enough authority to sidetrack His prescription. And if you do, then you don't need Him anyway because you can give yourself eternal life.

God works with us from the moment our mind says, I think there's something I don't know, and I think I'm beginning to understand it, and I think I'm beginning to understand that I've been wrong. The Holy Spirit has started to work in the life of that individual. So here we have the process.

The underlying philosophy up to this point. As I said, the second resurrection is simply our shorthand way of speaking to one real, honest, legitimate chance for every man, woman, and child. God has no problem with us saying there are people who have not received a fair chance. After all, He is the one that said, I blinded everybody. So if I say that not everyone has had a fair chance, and you know for the people who are in the once saved, always saved camp, that's like turpentining the cat, as the old saying goes. You know, that's an irritant. But if I say not everybody's had a chance, where am I inconsistent with God saying, I blinded them, I stopped their ears, and I closed their minds so they can't see and they can't hear? Where am I not saying the same thing He's saying?

But it's also God who expresses His desire to see them all saved.

There is no conflict, and this is a critical, pivotal point. There is no conflict between those two polar opposites if you add a resurrection. Let me say that again. There is no conflict between those two polar opposites if you add a resurrection.

Do you know one of the biggest songs and dances in the Christian world is the song and dance about what to do with babies and infants who died in innocence? You know the answer you'll get will be based totally on the emotion of the individual who's giving you the answer. The hard-nosed will say, tough luck, too bad, burning hell forever. The soft will say, oh poor kid, he didn't have a chance. God will find a way around it all and He'll take them up to heaven. Book chapter and verse, they don't have any. They have a tender heart, which frankly, that's not a bad thing, but it's a blind tender heart. And so where people send people who've never heard, the native who died the day before the missionary arrived. That's a classic missionary mess. The baby who died without getting baptized. A social mess everywhere. Your answers as to what happens to them, as I said, are simply up to how hard or soft the heart of the person giving the answer happens to be, unless they go to the Word of God and an underlying principle. The underlying principle is, I'm not going to lose them. Well, they're already dead. Well, the only way you take a dead person and not lose them is to resurrect them. Because if they're dead, they're dead. Our evidence right now is that the majority of men are lost. The underlying philosophy of God's Word is that He doesn't intend them to be lost.

So if the evidence is they're dead and therefore lost, and God's underlying philosophy is, I don't desire that they be lost. There has to be a vehicle. And this is where the second resurrection comes into play, as the only practical vehicle God can use to fulfill His intent.

Let's end this sermon by looking at the places where God makes His will visible. When God says it is not my desire that men be lost, where does His will become visible?

It shows itself when God takes the very tool He used to call you and me and the apostles and uses the same tool to call the masses.

When you see God use that tool on the masses, you know that salvation is now available. I want you to start in Titus chapter 3 because this gives us the formula. Once we have the formula, then we'll look at the illustrations of application. Titus chapter 3, beginning in verse 4, But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal. Most translations will put the word correctly in here by and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. So when God shows His kindness toward mankind and it appears, it will appear not because of how good men are, but it will appear because of His mercy, and it will appear through the washing of regeneration and through renewing people by the Holy Spirit. This is the formula in very short terms. This is the formula. Go back with me now to Isaiah chapter 32, and let's walk through just a handful of illustrations. Isaiah chapter 32.

You don't have to follow this route too terribly far before you begin to see a very tight and small handful of terms of the art. In other words, terms that describe the same thing. Isaiah will introduce us to a couple. Isaiah 32 and verse 12. I'm going to see if I want to read this much. Isaiah 32, 12. People shall mourn upon their breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. On the land of my people will come up thorns and briars, yes, on all the happy homes in the joyous cities. Because the palaces will be forsaken, the bustling city will be deserted, the forts and towers will become lairs forever, the joy of wild donkeys, a pleasure, a pasture of flocks, until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high. This is millennial. The wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is counted as forest. Then justice will dwell in the wilderness. Righteousness will remain in the fruitful field. The work of righteousness will be peace and the effect of righteousness, quietness, and assurance forever. I read that many scriptures so that you would understand that this is not something about what happened between Isaiah and the intertestamental period. This is forever. This is universal. And so we're talking about a millennial time, and the tipping point will be the point when I pour out my Spirit from on high. Ezekiel 11.

Hey, while you're going to Ezekiel, just keep on chugging. Go to Ezekiel... No, that was right. Ezekiel 11.

Ezekiel 11.

Verse 14. Again, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of man, your brethren, your relatives, your kinsmen, and all the house of Israel in its entirety are those about whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, Get far away from the Lord. This land has been given to us as a possession. Therefore, say, Thus says the Lord God, although I have cast them far off among the Gentiles, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet I shall be a little sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone. Therefore, say, Thus says the Lord God, I will gather you from the peoples, assemble you from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. That is millennial. The 10 tribes of Israel, the lost tribes of Israel, never returned en masse to this land and reestablished it. So we're looking toward the time of Christ's return. And they will go there, and they will take away all its detestable things and all its abominations from there, and then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh. Then, at that time, this is what will happen, that they may walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. Millennial. Future. Isaiah 36. Excuse me. Ezekiel 36.

Verse 26.

I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you. Each of these addresses the same issue with different degrees of thoroughness. This one takes us to the highest level of thoroughness so far. To remove a stony heart, and to put in it a pliable heart. You know, we're not going to go over to Jeremiah 31, 31 through 33, where I will make a new covenant with a house of Israel, where I will take out their stony heart, and I will give them a new heart. But all of this is talking about conversion. Here in Ezekiel 36, the defining element is put in there clearly. I will put my spirit within you. When you know God's formula, and that's why I gave it to you to begin with, you know that that is the culmination. You know that it goes from calling, to conviction, to repentance, to baptism, to God's Spirit within. So this isn't just the Spirit being there or available. This is conversion in the fullest sense of the Word. Ezekiel 39.

Verse 25.

Therefore, thus says the Lord God, now I will bring back the captives of Jacob, and have mercy on the whole house of Israel, and I will be jealous for my holy name, after they have borne their shame, and all their unfaithfulness, in which they were unfaithful to me, when they dwelt safely in their own land, and no one made them afraid. When I brought them back from the peoples, and gathered them out of their enemy's lands, and I am hallowed in them in the sight of many nations, then they shall know that I am the Lord God who sent them into captivity among the nations, but also brought them back to their own land, and left none of them captive any longer. And I will not hide my face from them any more, for I shall have poured out my spirit on the house of Israel, says the Lord God. Here we have the sermon of last week introduced. I will not hide my face from them any more. From this point onward, no longer will the principle of seeing they won't see, hearing they won't hear apply. From this point forward, they shall see me, and I will pour out on them my spirit.

With these references in mind, we have the opportunity to see the underlying philosophy come into play. But we see it come into play with the people who are returning from captivity at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. In all of these scriptures, what we're seeing is God saying, when my son returns and I restore you from captivity, our relationship from that point forward will change. I will not hide my face from you any longer. I will pour my spirit out upon you. You will know me. I will know you. You will claim me as your God, and I will claim you as my people. God here is making his personal philosophy known. And in that sense, we could say one of the underlying philosophies of the millennium is the universal availability of the Holy Spirit. All of us, because it's repeated virtually once, at least every Feast of Tabernacles, are familiar with the classic millennial scene in Isaiah 11. I'm not going to read it. Isaiah 11 verses 5 through 9. As I said, it is one of the greatest of millennial scenes. The nature of animals changing, peace, tranquility, all of those good things. And it ends with the statement that the knowledge of God will fill the earth as waters fill the sea. No more will men say, No, the Lord, for the knowledge of me will be universal. So one of the underlying philosophies of the millennium is the universal availability of God to mankind. And the scriptures I've read you from Isaiah and Ezekiel have been scriptures to demonstrate that I bring you back, I establish a relationship, I give you my spirit.

But all of this has absolutely nothing to do with the billions who've lived and died previously.

That is why we go to Ezekiel 37. I could have taken you. In fact, I've mentioned Ezekiel 37 earlier in the first sermon.

When you have the underlying philosophy in place, then Ezekiel 37 has a home. We're all familiar with the vision of the valley of dry bones. I'm not going to read every single part of it. It's not necessary because much of it is about the mechanical process of reassembling a dead body. And Ezekiel is saying, I don't know what I'm seeing. And he says, well, just watch, because I'm going to take out of the dust and I'm going to reassemble human beings. You know, you and I are in a position to understand this in a way that no generation prior to us could even remotely understand. As they have taken the genome and they have taken the biological and genetic codes that make up a human being, God is simply going to remake every single solitary person who's ever lived. And he's got a pattern for every single one of them that is absolutely the perfect pattern because it's theirs. It's their genome. And so in the terms that a man of this time could understand in vision, he gets to see the mechanical bones to bones, sinew connecting, flesh surrounding, and an endless sea of zombies. Until God says, I breathe into them life. And now every single solitary one of them is a living, breathing, heart-pumping, blood-circulating, living human being. And in verse 11, he then said to me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Now they say our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off. I like that statement. It tickles me. It tickles me because of what I think I understand about human psychology. I grew up in a family that was very, very convicted that upon death we were going to heaven or hell. I remember asking my mom when I was five years old, Mommy, what do I have to do to get to heaven? And she said, Bobby, and then she told me what I needed to do. At five, that was a concern.

I know that everybody that was reared like I was reared and died with that same rearing is going to wake up, come out of the ground, pinch themselves, see their flesh and blood, and say, whoops, I'm in trouble. Because that's not what they were taught, and that's not how they died. They didn't die believing that the next time I can think I'm going to be breathing, I can pinch myself and I have feelings, I can't get off the ground, I can't fly, I'm in trouble. So I understand the despair.

Therefore, prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, O my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come out of your graves and bring you into the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Lord when I opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up from your graves. 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.

Peter made a comment about Paul that we all know. He said, Our brother Paul has written many things hard to be understood, which unlearned and unstable men rest and twist to their own destruction. Paul is not above making a naked statement every so often and not bothering to explain it. He said to the church in Rome, the following, I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion. That hardening in part, and you can take the term in part and you can work at different directions, meaning I'm partly hardened or I'm hardened for part of the time. This is a reference to time. That hardening for a period of time happened to Israel until, you see, until is a time word, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And here's where he throws out the naked statement, and so all Israel will be saved. As it is written, he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob, for this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. Paul's reference is to Isaiah 59 and Isaiah 27. Those are millennial references that he is referencing.

His statement, though, that all Israel would be saved is horribly, horribly hollow if it doesn't start counting until after Christ returns, because there has been Israel every generation back to when God said, hello to Abraham. And he says, they're all going to get that opportunity. God's underlying philosophy, or among his underlying philosophies, is that he desires all to be saved. He doesn't will, as you write out a will, he doesn't will anyone to be lost.

While he blinded men for a time, he also made a time for them to see and to be converted. This is how God's underlying philosophy and the second resurrection finally merge.