They Will Not Be Forgotten

I really appreciate the beautiful special music. It has been just particularly outstanding at this feast. It's just been a very wonderful feast in every way. Wonderful experience. Great to be here with you.

Her name was...

But that was the problem. She no longer had a name. She was now simply a number, and that was deliberate.

She and those with her no longer had names, only numbers.

That was part of a conscious effort to dehumanize them.

They were no longer viewed as human beings, but simply as numbers.

And as part of this process, she had been stripped of her identity. Her family had been taken away from her.

Everything that she owned, every item of clothing, the small necklace that she wore, the small ring on her fingers, the personal photos of her family, her dress, her shoes, her socks, every possession that she owned had been taken away from her.

And then another act of humiliation and efficiency, even her hair had been shaved from her head.

The better to prevent lice, sickness, and disease from spreading and reducing the efficiency of the prisoners. She had turned 15 years old, just a few months before, and that had temporarily spared her life because those who were younger than age 15 were considered too young to be able to provide useful work so they were singled out and taken away to be killed. She was a very intelligent young woman, quite a gifted writer, but that didn't matter now. She had only one purpose in life, and that was to be part of a machine.

A machine that was built for the twin purposes of power and death.

A machine that was very efficient at both.

She was one part of hundreds of thousands, a part that was to be worked and worked until it succumbed to sickness or disease, or were simply worn out and could work no more. And then that part would be discarded, and another part put into her place so that the machine could continue doing its deadly and efficient work and the war effort. Her crime was to have been born Jewish, and in the summer of 1944 in Nazi-occupied Europe, that was a death sentence. Her given name was Annalise Marie.

She would later become famous to history by a shorter version of her name, Anne Frank. Frank was born German. She was German by birth, and her father had even served proudly as an officer in the German Army in the First World War, but none of that mattered now.

They were part of an inferior race that had to be eliminated.

Anne's father, Otto Frank, was quite an intelligent man, successful businessman, and he could see the danger brewing long before most people could in Germany.

After the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, he moved his family from Germany to Amsterdam in Holland, and as conditions grew worse and worse, he twice applied for visas for a family to immigrate to the United States to escape the danger. But the United States had its own share of anti-Semites and government at that time, and like thousands of other Jewish families, the Frank family was refused entry into the United States. And when Germany overran Holland in 1940, Anne Frank's family was trapped with nowhere to go, nowhere to go, no way out.

However, they headed better than most, and with the help of friends and Otto Frank's business partners, they went into hiding in secret rooms that had been prepared in the back of a warehouse that functioned with Mr. Frank's business, the small warehouse there in Amsterdam, and to help cover their treks. They told people they were fleeing to Switzerland, so the authorities hopefully would not come looking for them, and they hoped that eventually the time would come when they could make a clean getaway and escape the danger. And while they hid out in their secret complex at the back of the warehouse there in Amsterdam, around them the world descended into madness. Anne Frank was 13 years old, when her family went into hiding. Like many teenagers, she had dreams, great dreams. She dreamed of being a famous writer, and in line with that dream, she began writing to pass this time in their secret self-imposed prison. She started keeping a diary, a diary in which she poured out her dreams, her hopes, her fears, her transition from childhood into a young woman. Much of her diary is intensely personal. She chronicles the strain as her family takes in another family, and then later an elderly man into their hiding place to spare them from the Holocaust that is happening outside. She describes her disagreements with her family in this indescribably stressful time, and her struggles with growing up and trying to forge her own identity as a young woman in these incredibly trying times. She describes the tightening noose as conditions outside grow worse and worse as the food that they have carefully stored away begins to run out, and it gets harder and harder to acquire food, something to eat, from the outside of the black market. Their clothing wears out, and they can't replace it.

There's no way to do so. She describes the terror of someone in the complex and hiding there getting sick because getting sick could be a death sentence, because under those circumstances they can't just send out for a doctor. They can't get medicines. There's no way for a doctor to come visit them under those circumstances without endangering their lives. She describes her fears and her nightmares as friends are taken away, never to be seen again. Anne Frank wrote in her diary only 10 years before I was born. Many of you were alive during that time. Some of you weren't, and thus the horrors of this time may seem unimaginable, unimaginably far away like it was ancient history, but it wasn't. Again, this happened only 10 years before I was born.

The 17th century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes, you can see his photo here on the screens, famously said in describing the condition of humanity, The life of man is nasty, brutish, and short.

Our lifespans may be longer today than they were in the 17th century when he wrote this, but for most of human history that has been the story of mankind, that life for most has been nasty, brutish, and short. To remind us of what a world without God is capable of, I'd like to read some excerpts from Anne Frank's diary. It is a very famous word titled Diary of a Young Girl. Much of it is intensely personal, and I won't go into any of that. What I would like to read and share is her thoughts as she witnessed the most advanced civilization on earth at that time going insane. January 13, 1943, she describes conditions deteriorating around them. She writes, Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor, helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They are allowed to take only a knapsack and a roll of cash with them, and even then, they are robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart.

Men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed. Their family is gone.

Everyone is afraid. The children in this neighborhood run around in thin shirts and wooden shoes. They have no coats, no caps, no stockings, and no one to help them.

No, I got a carrot to steal their hunger pangs. They walk from their cold houses through cold streets. Things have gotten so bad in Holland that hordes of children stop passers-by in the streets to beg for a piece of bread. I could spend hours telling you about the suffering the war has brought, but I'd only make myself more miserable.

All we can do is wait, as calmly as possible, for it to end. Jews and Christians alike are waiting. The whole world is waiting. And many are waiting for death.

Ten months later, October 29, 1943, she talks about the depressing atmosphere in the building where they are hiding out and the constant fear of being discovered. She writes, All the bickering tears and nervous tension have become such a stress and strain that I fall into my bed at night crying. The atmosphere is stifling, stuck, sluggish, let in. Outside, you don't hear a single bird, and a deathly, oppressive silence hangs over us and clings to me as if it were going to drag me into the deepest regions of the underworld. I feel like a songbird whose wings have been ripped off and who keeps hurling itself against the bars of its dark cage.

Let me out where there's fresh air and laughter. A voice within me cries.

I don't even bother to reply anymore, but lie down. Sleep makes the silence and the terrible fear go by more quickly. A month later, November 27, 1943, she talks about a nightmare in which she dreamed of a childhood friend of hers, whom she assumes has been captured and sent to the concentration camps. She writes, Last night, just as I was falling asleep, Annalee suddenly appeared before me. I saw her there, dressed in rags, her face thin and worn.

She looked at me with such sadness and reproach in her enormous eyes that I could read the message in them. Oh, Ann, why have you deserted me? Help me, help me, rescue me from this hell. And I can't help her. I can only stand by and watch while other people suffer and die.

Why have I been chosen to live when she is probably going to die?

And then she says to herself in her diary, I have to stop dwelling on this. It won't get me anywhere.

I keep seeing her enormous eyes, and they haunt me. The following spring, six months later, my third, 1944, she reflects on war with remarkable insight for a fourteen-year-old girl.

She writes, What's the point of war? Why can't people live together peaceably?

Why hold this destruction? There's a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder, and kill. And until all of humanity, without exception, undergoes a metamorphosis, wars will continue to be waged. And everything that has been carefully built up, cultivated, and grown will be cut down and destroyed, only to start over again.

It's remarkable insight for a fourteen-year-old girl who didn't understand the truth.

But she knew, as she wrote here, that unless and until there is a complete change in human nature, that this cycle of war and suffering and death is going to continue, and more and more will suffer and die. The following month, she and her family heard news over a radio they had smuggled into their hiding place. They were listening to BBC out of London, and they learned of the Allied landing at Normandy, June 6, 1944. And that raised their hopes, and she writes of their hope that maybe their long nightmare will soon be over. And she wrote in her diary, Is this really the beginning of the long-awaited liberation? The liberation we've all talked about, which still seems too good, too much of a fairy tale ever to come true? Will this year bring us victory? We don't know yet, but where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage, and makes us strong again. We'll need to be brave to endure the many fears and hardships, and the suffering yet to come. So she's hopeful now. The family is beginning to see what is hopefully a light at the end of the tunnel, and perhaps the nightmare they've been living under will soon come to an end. A month later, July 15, 1944, she describes her hope that things will get better, and that she, as a teenage girl now on the verge of womanhood, will finally be able to realize her dreams. And she wrote in her diary, It's difficult in times like these, Ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality.

It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals. They seem so absurd and impractical, and yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

She continues, It's utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering, and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness.

I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us, too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty, too, shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I'll be able to realize them. And Frank's diary contains two more entries and then ends on August 4, 1944.

Three days after that, on the morning of August 4, a car pulled up outside the building housing their secret rooms and outstepped a German SS sergeant, accompanied by three Dutch secret police. Someone had tipped them off that Jews were hiding in the building, and they arrested the eight people there in the secret rooms and shipped them off by train to Auschwitz in Poland.

Of the eight people who had been hiding out there, only the father, Otto Frank, survived the war.

The others died of disease, of exhaustion, or starvation, or they were gassed.

Or they were simply worked to death. Anne Frank and her sister survived longer than most. They were healthy enough to be transferred from Auschwitz to another camp, Bergen-Belsen, as workers. But the winter of 1944 and 1945, a terrible typhus epidemic brought on by the horrible, hygienic conditions of the camp, swept through the camp, killing thousands of prisoners, including Anne's sister, Margot, first, and then a few days later, Anne herself.

Their bodies were dumped in unmarked mass graves, along with thousands of others.

The camp was liberated by British soldiers six weeks later. Three weeks after that, Nazi Germany surrendered, and the war in Europe was over.

You've probably heard that Europe is much less religious in the United States, and it's very true. If you go through Europe, travel there today, you can see huge cathedrals, massive churches, that sit empty for the most part. Europe is much less religious than the rest of the world, because they went through two world wars in the last century, and they saw suffering that most of us could not begin to imagine. Two generations of young European men, British, French, German, Italian, were slaughtered during those wars.

Twenty million people or more died in the First World War, and seventy million in the Second World War a generation later.

The Europeans witnessed this firsthand, and they felt the war. They lived it. They saw the horrors.

They saw the genocide, and they wondered, if there is a god, how could he allow this kind of suffering?

And millions of people abandoned religion and became atheists. And even today, one of the major arguments that atheists use against the existence of god is this very question. If there is a god, how could he allow things like this to take place? And it's a good question.

It's an excellent question, and much of the answer lies in the fact that the world does not understand the meaning of this day. The world doesn't understand the meaning of this day.

Because, you see, god has not forgotten those people. He's not forgotten the twenty million who perished in World War I, or the seventy million who died in World War II, or the six million Jews like Anne Frank and her family who perished in the death camps of Nazi Germany.

He's never forgotten the billions of other people who have lived and loved and hoped and died without ever knowing what life was all about. Without ever knowing the purpose of mankind, without ever knowing the wonderful and the precious truths that we have been here celebrating and reminding ourselves of for this last week, the wonderful truths that god has chosen to reveal to each of us here in this room. Most of mankind has indeed lived lives that, as Thomas Hobbes wrote, were nasty, brutish, and short. Nasty, brutish, and short.

If you visit a cemetery today, and when I was a child, my father made tombstones. So I spent a lot of time as a child wandering through cemeteries while my dad worked. And one thing I remember very clearly is a phrase that was very common on so many tombstones. If you've ever been to a cemetery, you've probably seen it a number of times. And it says, gone, but not forgotten.

Gone, but not forgotten. And it's a nice sentiment. It's a good sentiment, a well-meaning sentiment, but not a sentiment that's all that accurate. Because most people die, and they are quickly forgotten. Their children, remember them, maybe their grandchildren, maybe their great-grandchildren, but beyond that, memory of them largely disappears. People go to the grave, and they are quickly forgotten. But there is only one who does remember them. And that is God.

That is God. He has never forgotten all of those who have gone before, all of those who have lived and died, and saw their hopes and their dreams go to the grave to be buried with them.

What does this day mean for those people? What does it mean for them? In short, it means the fulfillment of their hopes and dreams. Everything that mankind has ever wanted, has ever wished for, has ever hoped for, but could never find in this life. In a world that is blinded by Satan, and cut off from God. People who have lived in a world of darkness and spiritual blindness.

Cut off from God, for the most part. In this day, if you think about it, it is really about all about their hopes, all about their dreams, all about everything that they have ever wanted, but could never attain in the world of the God of this age, Satan the devil.

One thing that has struck me in everything I have read from studying history and archaeology, which is one of my passions, ancient history and archaeology, is how pervasive belief is in life after death. And it doesn't matter which ancient culture you look at, what time period of human history, what part of the world you look at, it seems that basically all men everywhere, all people everywhere, believed in some form of life after death. The earliest graves we find of human beings have tools, equipment, pottery, things like that that people could use in their life beyond the grave, because he had some concept of a life beyond the grave. These people died believing there was life after death, that there was something beyond this life only, that they would live again in some form, in some way. And it has been a universal hope and belief of mankind as far back as you want to go in human history. And why is that? Why is that?

I want to draw our attention to a phrase in Ecclesiastes 3 and verse 11. I'll be projecting the scriptures up on the screens here this morning. I want to quote only one part of a phrase in here, and it tells us here that God has put eternity in their hearts, referring to the heart of man. That's a fascinating statement. God has put eternity in their hearts. Man, unlike any other creature, any other living thing, has a sense of time and a sense of the future. We yearn for something more, for something greater, for something more meaningful than the the temporary and passing existence of this life. You might say that God has wired us this way, and I think that's what is being said here in Ecclesiastes 3.11. God has wired us to think that there is something beyond this life, something bigger, that this life is not all there is. And this is fundamental to religious belief. I can't speak for every single religion, but every religion I'm familiar with in any way has some form of a belief in life after death, that there is more to our existence and our purpose than this life in the here and now. God has truly wired us this way. As said here in Ecclesiastes 3.11, He has put eternity in our hearts, this feeling, this knowledge, that there has to be something beyond just this life alone. But how will that become a reality for mankind?

How will mankind find that something else that is wired into us that we know must lie beyond this life, this eternity that He has put in our hearts? How will God make it possible for mankind to finally obtain everything that we have longed for and hoped for and dreamed for over the centuries from the very beginning? One of the most truly haunting and unforgettable things I've ever seen is the children's memorial at the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. It's hard to describe because it's unlike anything you'll ever see anywhere else. One minute you're outside in the bright, warm sunshine of Jerusalem, and the next you walk into a doorway into a hillside there at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial. You walk into a chamber there, and there you see a wall of glass, and imprinted on the glass are black and white photos of children, boys and girls of all ages.

And beyond this, you walk into a dark, curving, unlit hallway, and within just a few steps, the outside light is gone, and you're in what seems to be almost total blackness. And the pathway is narrow, so you go through its single file. And it's designed to be that way for you to experience this alone, in the dark, all by yourself. And then, as your eyes adjust to the darkness, something interesting happens. You become aware of tiny lights. It's a new floating all around you. Some that seem so close that you can reach out and touch them. Some maybe a few yards away, in a step or two, you can reach out and touch those. And some very tiny, and flickering, and vanishing, and reappearing. Thousands of them. It's like you're walking through a universe of tiny flickering stars all around you. Everywhere you look in the darkness, you see these tiny flickering lights. And they change positions as you slowly shuffle along. They're in the dark. They appear. They fade into nothing. And no one is saying a word.

And then you hear the voice.

A woman's voice, softly speaking, in the background. Very deliberate. Slowly reading from a list. Rachel Weisman, 13 years old. Austria. David Berger, 8 years old. Netherlands. Esther Korman, 2 years old. Hungary. Itzhak Nevi, 15 years old. Germany. Mariam Gribitz, 3 years old. Poland. Benjamin Fischer, 7 years old. France. Dahlia Repikovich, 10 years old. Russia. And the list goes on and on and on, repeating the names and the ages and the countries of some of the million and a half Jewish children who are murdered in the Holocaust.

I didn't realize it at the time, but all of the thousands of flickering lights in the children's memorial there are created by what is actually only five candles. Five candles. But this hall has thousands and thousands of mirrors strategically placed to reflect those five flickering candles and to reflect them and to multiply them at various distances, various angles, and so on.

And these candles are kept perpetually burning there as a memorial to the children who were murdered in the Holocaust. The Jewish childhood and Jewish belief states that the souls of the unburied dead never find rest in their endless wanderings around the universe.

And the Jewish architect who designed this memorial said he designed it in this way so that the thousands of tiny flickering candle flames represented the souls of those children whose lives were cut short so soon. And although this is a truly haunting place, and it is, if you've ever been there, ever, I have the opportunity to see it. You'll know that. But in a way, in an odd way, it's a very hopeful place as well. The first time I visited it was after the Feast of Tabernacles a number of years ago in Israel with the lessons and messages of the Feast of Tabernacles and of the eighth day fresh on my mind. As I slowly shuffled around long in the dark, seeing these flickering lights everywhere, hearing the names, the ages, the countries of those murdered children, and seeing this universe of sparkling lights all around, the symbolism of those lights took on a different meaning for me, something else, something very hopeful for me. And a scripture came to mind, Ecclesiastes 12, verse 7. This verse came to mind as I thought about these flickering, tiny lights floating all around me in this memorial to the murdered innocents of the Holocaust.

The context here for Ecclesiastes 12, verse 7, Solomon is talking about the inevitability of death. He says that we will grow old and we will die because that's the way we were designed.

Our human bodies were never designed to live forever. And he says here in Ecclesiastes 12, verse 7, the dust, or then the dust, and the dust that he's talking about is our human bodies.

The dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.

The bodies of many of those Jewish children commemorated there in the children's memorial did not get a decent burial. Not so much as that. And Frank and her sister Margot had their bodies dumped in the mass graves of Bergen-Belsen. Millions of others did not even get that. Their bodies were burned in the crematoria, burned to ash, and the ashes were then dumped in slops or used for landfill. Their bodies returned to the dust from which they had came, as it says here in Ecclesiastes. But the body is not what is important to God. He designed our bodies to be temporary, to last seven or eight decades, and to wear out and to break down.

Dust we are, and to dust we shall return. What is important to God is the spirit.

As we see there in Ecclesiastes, we breathe our last, and that spirit then returns to God. That essence of who and what we are goes back to God who created it to await the resurrection, to await the resurrection of the dead. And that's what all those those tiny flickering lights in the children's memorial reminded me of. I thought of those millions of lives snuffed out at such a young age that have returned to God to await the time that will be the fulfillment of this day. And as time has marched on, man has largely forgotten them.

But God has never forgotten them, and he never will. Every day brings us a day closer to the fulfillment of this day when those spirits will be reunited with the physical body to live again and to hear something they've never heard before, and to learn something they've never learned before. And to understand things that they've never understood before. To understand God's precious truths, the wonderful truths that we've been here celebrating at this feast of tabernacles, and have their opportunity for salvation.

Ezekiel 37 gives us an incredible description of what will happen on this day, the event pictured by this day. Let's read briefly about this remarkable vision that will become a reality in the fulfillment of the meaning of this day. And we can't really talk about this day without reading parts of Ezekiel 37. I'll read excerpts of it from Ezekiel 37, 1-14.

Ezekiel says here, The hand of the Lord came upon me, and brought me out in the spirit of the Lord. So this is a vision that he is seeing. And he sent me down in the midst of the valley, and it was full of bones. Then he caused me to pass by them all around, and behold, there were very many in the open valley, and indeed they were very dry. They are very dry bones because they are very old. They are ancient. They are crumbly. These people have been dead for a long, long time. Here's the point here. Verse 3. And he said to me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, you know. Again he said to me, verse 4, prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. I will put sinews on you, and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live.

Then you shall know that I am the Lord. So what we see here is that God promises to resurrect these old ancient dry bones and to give them bodies, physical bodies, and to give them life again, vast huge numbers of them. Sometimes we wonder how this will happen. How will God resurrect all of these bodies and give them life again? How will he put all of us back together again? How is he going to do that? After all, our bodies decay once we die, and those atoms and molecules go all over the place. To dust we are, and to dust we return. They go back to the ground.

They wash into the streams and the oceans. They are blown around by the wind. So how is God going to pull this off? How is he going to do that? You know, really, assembling billions of new physical beings. There is no problem for God, because what are our bodies? It is mostly water.

Mostly water with a few other elements. Carbon, nitrogen carbon, things like that. Calcium.

In the resurrection, God doesn't need to resurrect the exact same body. All he needs is a raw material. Oxygen atoms, and carbon atoms, and hydrogen atoms, and calcium atoms, and that sort of thing. And the universe is full of those. Absolutely full of it. He doesn't need the same bodies. All he needs is a raw material. There is only a universe full of it.

And every human being who has ever lived has his or her own unique DNA.

And this is something I find so fascinating. The more scientists learn about DNA, the more incredible and awe-inspiring it is. Because what is DNA? DNA is actually an incredibly detailed blueprint for a living creature. For every detail, down to the color of our eyes, and our skin tone, and our makeup, and our height, and our width, and the number of hairs on our head. And everything is just an incredibly detailed blueprint of who and what we are. It's a blueprint for building a unique living body. A unique living body. And if scientists can, as we're learning, they're able to extract DNA from creatures that have been dead for up to several thousand years. Do you think God cannot do the same thing if he wants to? That is, if he wants to do it that way. We know the Bible doesn't tell us how God is going to resurrect all of these bodies and recreate all of these people who have ever lived. But that is just one way that he could do it, that we know of. Because, again, DNA is a perfect blueprint for every human being who's ever lived. But God could do it other ways. He has perfect memory, unlike most of us here. So he may choose to reconstruct every person just based on his perfect memory of them. We just don't know. God doesn't give us those details. He just tells us, this is what I'm going to do. Stand back and be amazed. When I do these things, he may have any number of methods by which he can bring that apart. But just think about it. Any being who can create a universe with trillions of planets and galaxies can surely build 30 or 40 or 50 or 70 or 80 billion human bodies.

That's nothing which is harder to build. A galaxy or a human body. It's no problem for God. If he can speak, an entire galaxy can burst into existence out of nothing. I don't think human bodies are going to be a problem for God to create. Let's continue in verse 7 of Ezekiel 37. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied, there was a noise and suddenly a rattling, and the bones came together bone to bone. Indeed, as I looked, the sinews and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them over, but there was no breath in them. So now Ezekiel is looking over this vast valley of bodies, thousands, maybe millions of them, but there's no breath, there's no life in them. Also he said to me, verse 9, prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath came into them, and they lived and stood upon their feet an exceedingly great army.

What an amazing sight! Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what is going through Ezekiel's mind as he sees hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, rise from the dead and stand there before him, suddenly standing upright as far as the eye can see. Continuing, verse 11, Then he said to me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.

And this throws some people off thinking this only applies to Israel, but it's not. If you read the entire chapter, what this is talking about is God's great plan and purpose for Israel and the context of how he will work with them as a model for how he will work with all nations in the future to come. It doesn't mean that this is limited strictly to Israel and that no one else will experience this resurrection. We'll see that proven in just a few minutes. They indeed say, our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off. In other words, they have died in a state of hopelessness, cut off from God, their hopes, their dreams, their goals lost in the dust of the grave. But God has never forgotten them. He has never forgotten their goals, their hopes, their dreams.

Verse 12, 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 up from your 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 their graves. Let's think about that statement for a minute there. Then they shall know that I am the Lord. What is this saying? Think about it. One of today's greatest cultural and societal debates these days is whether or not God exists.

Is there a God? Is he real? Many people just don't know. Many claim to be agnostic. I don't know. You can't prove whether there's a God or not. Many of them don't accept that miracles happen. They don't accept the Bible as the Word of God. But these people who are being talked about here, who are raised to life in this second resurrection, are going to be different.

What will be different? They will know that God exists in a way that none of us sitting here today can possibly know in this life. Why is that? Well, it's very simple. Every single one of them will know that God exists because they have been raised from the dead. They have been raised from the dead. You talk about proof that God exists.

If you're raised from the dead, you know there's a power out there bigger than you. You know something unusual is going on here. You have all the proof you need that God exists. You talk about a receptive audience. Are they going to be willing to listen and to learn? You bet they will. You bet they will. Think about the last conscious thought of many of these people. I've been there with some people who died. And it's a stark reality that people know they are dying. They know they are dying. Many will have suffered long from diseases that have set the life out of them. Many will have died in disease epidemics.

Many will have died in wars, in battle where they were wounded. And they lay there in the dirt watching their lifeblood drip out. And they knew that they were dying. And then the very next thing they know, here they are standing upright again and alive. Yes, that's going to be a very receptive audience.

Billions of people in this resurrection will perish from disease. Many will have lived with crippling ailments, with chronic illnesses, with things like blindness and deafness and other problems. And how will these people feel in the resurrection? They will have died knowing their condition, knowing they were blind, knowing they were deaf, knowing they couldn't hear, or couldn't walk, or couldn't breathe well.

And in the next waking moment they are alive and they are whole again. And they know they've been healed of whatever it was that killed them, or whatever condition they had at death. They will not only know that they have been resurrected to life again, but also that they have been divinely healed of whatever it was that killed them. So in this resurrection it's not going to be a matter of people wondering whether God exists or not. They're going to know that God exists by the very fact that they are there, and are alive and well and whole again.

That will be a question. Every one of them will be themselves living proof that there is a God who has raised them to life. So again, God won't have to do a lot of convincing to get them to listen to them. He will have their attention. Continuing in verse 14, God says, after you will know that I am the Lord, He then 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.

And now they will have their opportunity for salvation, the same opportunity that we have been blessed with right now. And for the first time ever, they will come to know and to understand God. They will have the opportunity to repent and to receive God's Holy Spirit freely offered, as is described here in this verse. And they will have the opportunity for their hopes and their dreams to finally be a reality.

Who will be in this resurrection? We just read about the whole house of Israel, as was described here. Is Israel the only group that will live in this resurrection? No, because if you read the context here, it describes the resurrection in the context of God's greater plan for Israel as a model nation. And Jesus Christ Himself explains, we heard this alluded to in the sermonette today, but over in Matthew 12 in verse 41, Jesus is here talking about the great miracles that He has performed, but how people still refuse to believe them, particularly the scribes and the Pharisees. They came to Jesus wanting to see a miracle, but Jesus had already given them miracles, and they still refuse to believe.

And then He warns about the consequences of their refusal to believe. And He says, Matthew 12, verse 41, 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 one than Jonah is here. 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 one than Solomon is here.

And traditional Christianity just doesn't have a clue what to do with this passage, because you simply cannot fit the traditional belief of heaven and hell and the immortal soul into this passage. It just doesn't fit. The men of Nineveh that Jesus is referring to here were people who had lived and died about 800 years earlier. These are the Assyrians who came and took the Israelites away, the northern ten tribes. And Jesus said, they will rise in the judgment with this generation of people he's talking to right then. Together they will rise. People who lived and died eight centuries earlier with those people. And the queen of the south, he refers to here, is the queen of Sheba, who lived in Solomon's time roughly a thousand years earlier. And she will be resurrected alongside those from Jesus's age. And they will all have the opportunity then. So you have all these people who lived and died almost a thousand years apart being resurrected together in a period of judgment. And how do you fit that into the traditional idea of heaven and hell? It just doesn't work. Traditional Christianity can't make any sense of that because according to their beliefs those people were already judged centuries earlier.

And the same with those of Jesus Christ day. They've already been judged. They've long since died and already gone to heaven or hell. So why are they going to be resurrected in the future to be judged? It just doesn't fit. It doesn't square with what we read here in Jesus's own words. And none of this makes any sense without an understanding of the meaning of this day.

This day that we're celebrating today, this day shows that God is far greater and far more loving than people give Him credit for. And it shows that God will give all people the same wonderful opportunity for eternal life in their own time regardless of when they lived throughout human history. So there will come a future time of judgment for those who have ever lived and died.

Not a time of sentencing, which is something very different, but a time of judgment. Those are two different things. Yes, both will happen, but it's not talking about one and the same. You have to have a time of judgment before you can have a time of sentencing to be carried out. And just as we are being judged today in the Church, people will be judged by the same standard. They will be judged by what they do with what they know. And since they have never known God's truth, they will first have to have that knowledge revealed to them so that there will be a standard, God's standard, of God's Word by which they can be judged. And according to God's own timetable, God will give every human being his own opportunity to learn and to choose whether to choose God's way of life or to choose their own way in death. And so far, only a very few people in human history have had that opportunity to make that choice. The vast majority have lived in a world blinded by Satan and imprisoned by his deception. But God, in his love and mercy, has a plan to remedy all of that.

What does this day teach us? Let's shift gears just a little bit. What does this day teach us about the nature of the God whom we worship? I'd like to tell you the story of Junior. Junior was a young man who grew up in West Texas, a little town of Natto, not far from Lubbock.

He was called Junior because he was named after his father. And out there in that West Texas farm land and ranch land, he didn't have much use for church. There were just, he wasn't a bad person, there were just, like most young men, there were just simply more interesting things to do, more fun things to do than go to church. So he just, he wasn't opposed to church or religion, he just didn't care for it, didn't have much use for it. And then World War II came along, and like many other millions of young men, Junior was drafted. And he was sent to the Pacific Theater, part of the U.S. Army campaign of island hopping to recapture the islands that the Japanese had conquered in the earlier years of the war. And the telegram arrived at Junior's parents' house, like it arrived at so many homes during the war. In the Philippines, in the last year of the war, Junior's time ran out. He was felled by a piece of shrapnel from a Japanese artillery shell, and his body was shipped home to be buried in a small hometown cemetery here in Meadow, Texas. And I visited that cemetery, and it was tragic what happened to this young man. But perhaps what was even more tragic was what happened to his mother. Junior, you see, who had never cared much for church, had never been saved, according to the beliefs of the family of denomination. His mother was a very sincere church-goer, and she believed, as her religion taught, that those who weren't saved went to hell at death, where they would suffer the torment of hellfire for all eternity. And in her mind, that is where her firstborn son, 25 years old, was.

He was now rioting in the flames of hell, because he had never been saved.

And that would be his fate for all eternity. For 25 years, he would suffer for billions of years an eternity of torment, and the beliefs of her denomination. And she couldn't deal with it. She couldn't deal with it. She had what was called at that time a nervous breakdown.

A nervous breakdown so severe that she had to be hospitalized.

A nervous breakdown so severe that she never fully got over it.

She eventually learned to cope, but she never fully got over it. The idea she just couldn't process at her 25 year old son was being tormented for eternity in the flames of hell, because he hadn't been saved. How do I know the story of Junior? Well, Junior was my wife's uncle, an uncle she never met because he died in the war about 10 years before she was born.

Junior's mother was my wife's, Connie's, grandmother. They were quite close, and my wife over the years used to visit her grandmother there in West Texas whenever she could. Connie's grandmother knew we had somewhat unconventional beliefs about life after death, and on more than one occasion they would be talking and she would say, Connie, explain to me again about that second chance. I want to know more about that second chance. And that's what she called our understanding of the second resurrection. Connie would patiently explain and go through the scriptures, and her grandmother would listen intently and then almost inevitably say, I sure hope that's true.

I sure hope that's true, and Connie's grandmother could never fully understand it, never quite grasp it. But to the end of our days, this gentle, sweet, kind woman still wanted some hope, something to hold on to, that her son wasn't really burning in the flames of hell for all eternity. And to me, this is one of the most damnable teachings ever, because it makes God into a monster, into a sadistic being who will torture people for all eternity for whatever sins it committed in this short life, in Junior's case, 25 years. And he's going to suffer for all eternity? What?

How is that possible? How could anybody worship a God who would do that?

But this is a picture that millions of people have about God, but this is not the God of the Bible.

The God we worship is far different. And God's attitude toward mankind is found over in 2 Peter 3, verse 9. The Lord is not slack concerning His promises, some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

That all should come to repentance. God doesn't want a single human being to perish, much less be tormented, tortured for all eternity in hellfire, but for all to come to repentance, to choose life, to have all of their hopes and dreams and goals of peace and meaning and life everlasting to become a reality. What is your picture of God? What kind of God do you worship?

We just talked about the picture that millions of people have of God, that He is a being who would allow billions of people to be tortured for all eternity.

But what is your picture of God? We find a fascinating insight into God's character and nature over in Psalm 56 and verse 8. To understand what is taking place here, we need to understand the historical context. David here is describing many of the trials that he is going through. We talked about this in the Friday Night Bible study, how David is being pursued by Saul out in the wilderness, how he is fleeing for his life, how his enemies are chasing him, pursuing him, trying to hunt him down, wanting to kill him. Yet here David shows that he has hope because he knows the nature and character of the God whom he worships, a God who loves him dearly and will never let him down. Then David says something quite puzzling to us here in Psalm 56 and verse 8. I'll just want to pick out a phrase out of here. He says, put my tears into your bottle.

Are they not in your book? This sounds puzzling to us because we don't understand the cultural reference of what was done at that time and that David is referring to. I have here a reproduction tiny object called a tear bottle. This is a reproduction I actually have a 2000 year old one at home. I didn't want to bring with the airlines. And archaeologists have found a number of these in ancient tombs in the land of Israel. In David's time, David is about a thousand years earlier than this, they appear to have been made of clay or possibly even tiny wine skins. But later in the time of Jesus Christ when they find many of these, they were made of glass, Roman glass. Romans were quite good skilled glass makers. And this is a reproduction of what this looked like. Again, it's called a tear bottle.

And what happened and why this is called a tear bottle is that when a person died and they had the memorial for the person as they would be buried, the mourners would shed their tears into a bottle like this. They would cry and their tears would flow into the bottle like this. And then these tear bottles would be left there in the tomb of the dead. They would be left there and it was to remind God of how much the person was loved as evidenced by all the tears that were shed at the passing of his or her. And apparently, David, although David is writing a thousand years earlier than this, this custom seems to have been passed down in some form. This custom or something similar to it. What David is seeing here essentially is that God figuratively collects our tears into his bottle. As it says here, put my tears into your bottle. Are they not in your book? And apparently, David is saying, God figuratively collects our tears into his bottle and collects them into his book, saying that God remembers all the suffering, all the sadness that we go through in this life, and he remembers the tears we shed in sorrow when he saves them in his bottle and he records them in his book, so that he will never forget. So that he will never forget. God is saying essentially that God sees our tears in this life, and he remembers that. And he doesn't forget what we go through in his life. And although mankind will forget, and mankind will forget those who shed their tears, and those whom the tears were shed for, that God will never forget. God remembers them, and he promises in his plan to ultimately make all suffering, and all tears go away.

And this day helps us to understand how that will ultimately come about. And I look forward to the time when Anne Frank will rise in that resurrection to the greatest freedom that mankind has ever known. Anne Frank lived in the prison of her family's secret hiding place, where they were constantly in terror of the thought of being discovered. She lived in a prison of the concentration camps, where she and most of her family suffered humiliation and death.

But she also lived as every human being who has ever lived has in the prison of a world that is enslaved in spiritual darkness and blindness, in the prison of the God of this age, Satan the Devil. And this day that we celebrate today pictures the freeing of those prisoners, the proclaiming of liberty to those held in captivity, the recovery of sight to the blind, the healing of the brokenhearted, and the fulfillment of the hopes and the dreams.

Of every person who has ever lived. And yes, Jesus quoted that prophecy from Isaiah, and we know that it will apply at its second coming as King of Kings and Lord of Lords at the seventh trumpet to usher in the millennium. But it actually applies, if you think about it, on a far greater scale to the meaning of this day. When all the billions who have ever lived and died will be freed from that prison of Satan's deception, when the blind will see, when the brokenhearted will be healed, and all of their hopes and all of their dreams will finally come true. And all the scriptures that we have read about and have heard and have heard sung during this feast about conditions during the millennium will also apply to those who are raised to life in the fulfillment of this day. But there will be a big difference.

There will be a big difference because most of those who live in the millennium, or at least at the beginning of the millennium, excuse me, those later on in the millennium, brother, will only know a perfect world. But those in the second resurrection, as pictured by this day, will have lived in what the Bible refers to as this present evil age. The age of the God of this world.

And they will have known firsthand where man's way leads. They will have lived and died knowing that. But they will be brought to life in a world where all of the ills and the suffering that we see in this world today will no longer exist. Those who have lived in a world of fear of war will then live in a world of peace. Those who have lived in a world of sickness and disease will then live in a world of health and of happiness and of healing. Those who have lived in a world of crime and of fear will then live in a world of love and of respect for fellow human beings.

Those who have lived in a world of famine and of starvation and hunger and want will live in a world of plenty. Those who have lived in a world of spiritual blindness cut off from the knowledge of the true God will live in a world in which the knowledge of God will fill the world as the waters cover the sea. And those raised to life in this, in the fulfillment of this day, will have known and lived the contrast between those two very different worlds. The world of man today where life is nasty, brutish, and short, and the world of God's way of life.

They will have lived in this present evil age under the reign of Satan the devil, the God of this age. But they will then live under the age of the righteous reign of Jesus Christ in a perfect world. And they will know which way leads to life and which way leads to death.

What choice will they make? I think it's obvious that billions will choose life.

That they will choose eternal life in the family of God.

And the hopes and the dreams of all of those who have ever lived, all of those who mankind has forgotten, will at last come true. And what a wonderful truth we have revealed to us in the meaning of this day. And what an awesome and incredible and wonderful God we worship.