Three Pillars of the Millennium

Morning, brethren. Good to see all of you on this last day of the Feast of Tabernacles.

Nice to have the microphone adjusted by a short man for another short man. That way, I'm used to always bringing it from here down to here. It's nice to have it right where we speak.

I was thoroughly enjoying the message that was given by the chorale and thinking as they sang that as you go from fecite to fecite, each fecite has a personality. And I can't think of the last time that I have been to a fecite where the entire congregation sings with as much gusto as the congregation here in Lancaster. It's just a delight to sit in the congregation and hear the hymns sung. It's been many years since my wife and I have gone to the feast on this side of the country. We had Poconos as our assigned fecite back in the day when Poconos had a tabernacle building. Since then, I think we have been to Virginia one time or two times. But overall, this is the first time in a long time we've had the pleasure of being in this part of the northeastern United States. Thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Martin's sermonette. I was sitting there chuckling the whole time he was introducing the topic.

Misery does love company. When we look at this as a feast of temporary dwellings, our first two feasts of tabernacles, our original dwelling, was one day long, year one and year two. We shared a similar story as his with our tent.

It was called a tent, but it really was a sieve.

And on the first night, it rained as he described. We had a car at that time that had reclining seats, so my mother and father, I was a teenager at the time, my mother and father abandoned the car, reclined the seats, slept there. They put my two younger brothers in the trunk, and they slept there. We had an army cot and a sleeping bag with a rubberized bottom. So they left me in the tent because the army cot was above water level. And they put the sleeping bag with a rubberized bottom on top of me so the water rolled off.

And I spent that evening with the frogs and the lizards.

My dad was determined that he was not going to repeat that mistake again a second year, and so we got a house in glade water. And the first night, there were knockings on the door periodically throughout the night. And when we got up in the morning, I was aware of the fact, as mom and dad were packing the bags furiously, that we had been rented the house by the local madam.

So we had very, very temporary dwellings our first two years at the Feast of Tabernacles.

We abandoned for other lodgings for the remainder of the feast.

You know, on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, if I can use the analogy of an automobile with stick shift, it's the time when we put the clutch in, grab the shift knob, and we move it from the gear that we have been in for the last six days. And today is the day that we shift it into a new gear. And tomorrow, four gentlemen will give messages, sermonettes and sermons describing a new festival, an entirely separate festival, within entirely separate meaning. So as a transition day, as a time, as I said, when we shift gears from the Feast of Tabernacles and prepare to enter into a new feast day, it's an ideal time to give an overarching, overview message that can stand back and look at the whole package of what we have been doing during the last six days and today on the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles, and also to take just a peek without intruding into the messages tomorrow, but to take a peek at where we're going. So today's messages is an overarching message that will look both backward and forward and over the entirety of what we are doing. We've been celebrating for the last six days a wonderful age to come that has had no comparable time period except for that short period of time that Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden. That there just simply isn't any other time in man's human existence where he has had something similar to what we are looking forward to. The nature of animals changing, universal peace prevailing, weather conditions conducive of abundant harvests, those become the norm. We're freed from the fear of weather catastrophes and disasters. You know, God has been very, very kind to us as Feast of Tabernacles.

When you look at where Lancaster is with the north-easter that came up the coast, we were just on the edge where we got a little elbow nudge that said, it's over there, but it's not here.

And I spent the morning before yesterday's message looking at every update on Panama City, and I was grumbling to my wife that the weather services do a horrible job of really giving you an accurate picture of where things are. But when Mr. Ost or Mr. Kubik, I forgot which one, got up and said, the sun is shining here? Probably Mr. Ost. The sun is shining here, and we have gone from a low temperature right up to a warm and sunny, almost 90-degree day in Panama City. We stay aware of the fact that weather and weather conditions keep us on our toes. Day is coming when that won't be the case, that the entire world will enjoy rain in due season, and the abundance that comes from it. We understand the list goes on. We look forward to a world of peace, a world of health, a world of safety, and a world of prosperity.

But all of these things that we look forward to—and they are the annual highlights as we walk through the Scriptures. We go to Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel. This year we also went through the blessings and cursings portions of Deuteronomy to look forward to that.

As we look at all of these, they can overshadow some of the fundamental elements of the millennial period. I would liken it to a building. You walk into a building as someone who is simply using the building, and what catches your eye are the decor items. You see the paint choices. You see the fabric choices. You see the flooring that has been selected, the furniture styles, and the accessories. But it's the pillars that hold the building up. Much about the Feast of Tabernacles that we enjoy the most are the decor items. But there are pillars that underpin and hold all of this time period, and that's what I'd like to talk about today. In fact, in this final message of the Feast of Tabernacles, I'd like to ask and answer the question, what are the three pillars of the millennium?

Probably one of the most fundamental and one which we celebrate with multiple scriptures. There have been multiple speakers so far who have used scriptures that have focused on or touched on the issue of peace. Enduring millennial peace rests upon one change, the change from the rule of man to the rule of God.

God will have given from the time he made Adam and Eve and said to them, in their limited world of two people, and the rulership option was simple. I give you all the real estate that's here. All I ask of you is to dress it and keep it, and the rest of it you govern as you see fit.

From that time onward, man has never succeeded at ruling himself.

We haven't touched on it this year, and I'm not going to touch on it statistically this year, but all of us who have been to feasts over the years know statistically the quotation of how many years of recorded peace there are in human history, and it's a miserable number.

Very, very few years. When men scour all the records of human history to find periods where nowhere in the world were men at conflict, it comes down to a handful of years.

Man simply is not capable of producing peace.

He not only is incapable of ruling himself peacefully, he has never been capable of ruling himself with the well-being of all mankind as his focus. You know, in Proverbs, I don't even... some of the... some scriptures I'm not going to turn to because you know them so well. We don't need to. There are two places in Proverbs. Proverbs 14, 12, and Proverbs 16, 25 that say exactly the same thing. There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, and the ends thereof are the ways of death.

That is a simple assessment in one sentence of man's capacity for self-rule. There is a way that to man seems right, and it perpetually ends up in disaster. Man is not capable of ruling himself.

James chapter 4, such a very, very simple assessment of a profound topic.

James is called by some the proverbs of the New Testament because of the brevity of his statements and the succinctness of his assessments. James chapter 4, James says in verse 1, Where do wars and fights come from among you? Why all the wars? Why the lack of peace?

He said, Don't they come from your desires for pleasure? You know, I want what I want, and you want what you want, and what you want and what I want don't agree with each other. Man's solution is, let's fight it out, and one of us is going to get what we want. And the other, well, that's tough. Maybe he can find somebody punier than he is and fight with him and get what he wants. Don't they come from your desires for pleasure that war on your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war, yet you do not have because you do not ask. And then he goes on to say, and when you do ask, you ask a miss. You ask me, me, me, me. That's the assessment of who we are. God is going to allow us to continue. And you know, the thing about it is every generation ends up as naive as the generation before it. That's the amazing thing. Every generation comes along saying, but I can solve it. No, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't, but I can solve it. And then they repeat once more what every generation has repeated before it.

And God says he's going to let that go on long enough that man is going to dangle his toes over the edge of the Grand Canyon and teeter on the edge before he grabs the back of his trousers and hangs on to keep him from falling over the edge. And then he's going to say, it's my turn.

It's my turn. I've given you enough time so that you could obliterate yourself off this planet.

Now it's my turn.

Only God and the children that he will have refined through conversion by the help of the Holy Spirit are capable of ruling with justice, mercy, impartiality, and a total lack of self-interest.

Man has never been able to do that.

The most altruistic sooner or later reach the place where something falls apart in the realm that I've just described.

Here's what Godly rule looks like.

Isaiah 16.

Let's take a very, very brief look at what Godly rule looks like.

The single scripture in Isaiah 16, and then we'll go over to Isaiah 32 after that.

In Isaiah 16, in verse 5, it says, In mercy the throne will be established, and one will sit on it in truth in the tabernacle of David, judging and seeking justice and hastening righteousness.

You know, I love some spiritual sounding verses because the spiritual sound of them is numbing, and it requires you to stop and say, whoa, whoa, let's put the spiritual sound aside and look at what the words are saying. He says, I'm going to establish my throne in mercy. The first component I have is to give you as much benefit of the doubt as I can possibly give you. I am not looking to be as strict and stringent and hard as I can be as a ruler. I am looking to be as merciful and as kind as you allow me to be. That's not the norm. That's not the norm.

You know, it's a real treat, and I'm not making a judgment as to whether this is the norm or not, but I want to give you just an example where we feel mercy. You know, it really is a good feeling when you have done something questionable on the roads and the highways, and a highway patrolman or a policeman pulls you over and has the ability to judge this thing either way and says, I'd like to extend mercy to you. My wife and I came back from the feast in Jekyll Island across the swamps of Georgia and went through, it's too grand to call it a town. It was a few shotgun shacks and a crossroad, and the road was elevated because the ground was marshy, and I didn't see a traffic sign, I didn't see a speed sign, and I went through and right at that single crossroad that existed among about seven or eight row houses was a Georgia highway patrolman.

And he pulled me over. He looked just like the policeman in some of the Burt Reynolds...

I'm a really... I think he had a jaw on the side of his jaw, and he pulled me over and he said, do you see that stop? Did you see that speed limit sign back there, boy? And I said, no sir, I didn't. And I didn't. I didn't see a sign, so I gave him an honest answer. He said, well, there was one, and it was back there. He said, now I'm going to give you a choice. He said, you can go back there and do it over again. Or we can go down to the courthouse. And I thanked him sincerely and genuinely. I said, I'll be happy to go back and do it over again. And we drove back slowly looking for it. It was a hard sign to see, but when we found it, we turned around and we came back. But that was mercy. And I, you know, that that's happened probably 40 years ago now. So you understand my appreciation for the mercy. You don't forget those things. In mercy, the throne will be established and one will sit on it in truth. You know, I've been in a courtroom a number of times, not a large number of times, but I've been in a courtroom a number of times. I've been there to support somebody who was there. I've been there to observe back in college days, and I've been there also for, you know, a few cases where, again, you had to be there to assist somebody else. And you see the traditional, would you raise your right hand and repeat after me? I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. And from there, that's the last time truth enters into some of the discussions. He says, I'm going to sit in truth.

For the first time in human history, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth will be what you will hear from rulership. And you're part of the rulership. Judging and seeking justice, you know, I appreciate certain comments back in the law books, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, where God shows a level of impartiality that we don't see. Sometimes in mercy, we go beyond mercy. And I don't even know what to call it when we go beyond mercy. But God, if you look at Moses' instruction, He says, you judge justly, no matter who you're judging. And He even goes over that if you have the poor and the needy, where you may be blind to what is fair, you say they are to be judged fair also.

And He meant that both ways. In fact, He described it both ways. If they're wrong, they're wrong. Even if they're poor and needy, they're wrong. If they're right, they're right, and you need to uphold their rights when they would lose their rights. So He said, on either side of that scale, justice is what I'm asking for. And He says, hastening. Beautiful term. Hastening righteousness.

In other words, I am going to put my foot on the accelerator, and I am going to bring about the establishment of right. The word righteous is, again, one of those pious words. Take the us-nus off of it. It just says right. I am going to hasten the establishment of things done right.

Let's turn to Isaiah 32. I think these two examples are sufficient to make the point that I'm making. That enduring peace rests upon a change from the rule of man to the rule of God.

And these two scriptures in Isaiah give us, I think, a sufficient primer on what constitutes the rule of God. Isaiah 32 and verse 16.

He says, then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field.

So, he says, even in the wilderness, there will be justice.

I grew up in the northwestern part of the United States. I enjoyed National Geographic and other publications. I always looked this direction in the country and longed to see and visit and be in a place that had the history and the antiquity that the New England states, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware had. The state I was born in didn't even become a state until 1890.

It was the wilderness, and justice did not prevail in the wilderness. When you go back and read some of the stories of some of the people they have glorified as men of the Wild West, they were anything but just men. I was sitting down to lunch one day and turned on the TV for company, and an old TV program came up, and it was Bat Masterson. I thought, you know, I'm going to get up my iPad and Google. What a horror! What a horror!

When you read the life of the man that was glorified back in the 60s or so with the TV special, he wore a badge multiple times, and he was probably as lawless as the people he was prosecuting. He says, with me, justice is going to dwell in the wilderness. Just because there aren't a lot of people around to enforce it, it will be there, and righteousness will remain in the fruitful field.

The work of righteousness will be peace.

Again, take the religious phraseology off the word. The work of doing things right produces peace.

You know, when you sit down and you arbitrate, one of the best places to see this is, arbitrate if you've got small children, either children or small grandchildren, either one, and you have to be arbitrator. The work of righteousness brings peace. Most of the squabbles are because one wants to take advantage of the other. When you sit them both down and say, no, we're going to do this fair.

And here's what fair is. You get treated fairly, and you get treated fairly.

You can ratchet down all sorts of head bangings between a brother and sister, or two brothers or two sisters. The effect of righteousness, or the work of righteousness, will be peace. And the effect of righteousness, quietness, and assurance, forever.

You know, you could sit and meditate on verse 17 for a long time and extrapolate what all it is saying.

When things are done right, there's quiet.

There's a natural calm when things are done right. It is soothing and refreshing.

And what does it produce after that? Assurance.

When you see it done consistently, and when you see it done over and over again, there comes a place in time where you just take a deep breath, your whole body relaxes, and your whole body understands this is the way it's going to be. I don't have to get up in the morning and say, is it going to be that way today?

Get up the next morning and say, well, are we going to have two days of it? Three days of it?

You wake up in the morning and say, this is the way it always is.

Absolutely beautiful.

But one of the pillars of this period of time that we celebrate as the Feast of Tabernacles is that the only way we will have all of those, what I refer to as, decor items, is for man's rulership to end and for the rulership of God to begin.

The second pillar is that Israel gets a do-over.

Israel gets a do-over. I listened to Mr. Deamer. We have a teleconference and we discuss our messages. Mr. McCoy has all of us discuss what we're going to speak on. And I wrote to Mr. Deamer and I said, well, we're going to plow some of the same ground and I'm excited to hear what you're going to give because you'll be paving the way for me and we will talk about some of the same things.

And he made a comment at the beginning of his message and I smiled. It went by so quickly. It may not have sunk in, but I am both excited by and frustrated in a good sense by the fact that all the jewels are sprinkled like gold dust on the ground through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the minor prophets, and you have to pick them out. You have to pick them out and collect them. I haven't gotten that far in it. I always get distracted, but I've done a cut and paste where I pick them out and I make my own list of all the beautiful scriptures that point to the beauty of what God will eventually do. But one thing about God, God has an objective and a goal and he's going to get his objective and goal one way or the other, and he doesn't quit until he does.

I think many of us have learned in life that as we work on character issues if we flunk, God gives us a do-over. He said, well, you didn't pass the exam that time. Let's create another situation where you can try it again and again and again and again and again and again sometimes.

Because God is looking for a destination and a goal both in history in the world and in our lives. And do-overs are just a part of all of that. You know, we all know the grand chapter in the book of Exodus is Exodus 20 and the giving of the Ten Commandments. It's very valuable when you read the Ten Commandments to stop and read the lead-in because you really don't get the value out of the Ten Commandments that you should get if you don't read the lead-in. Exodus 19, verse 3, And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel, so he said, I want you to prep them so that when they stand at the base of the mountain and I give the Ten Commandments, they know why they're there, they know why I have them there, and they know where they're going. He said, You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my commandments, then you shall be a special treasure to me above all people for the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel. That's now a point where God is ready to give them the Ten Commandments. I gave you a job assignment. Now I'm going to give you the how-tos of how to be that. Well, you know what? Israel has an absolutely perfect record on the assignment.

They flunked it as a combined nation. They divided into the houses of Israel and Judah. Israel flunked it as the house of Israel, went into captivity. Judah then flunked it as the house of Judah went into captivity. 70 years later, they came back from captivity, and between that time and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, they flunked it again. And we are flunking it royally today. Multiple sermons have talked about the specifics of how grandly we are flunking that assignment today. So we have a perfect record. We flunked it every single solitary time.

You know what that means? We got a do-over.

I don't know how many of you back in the middle 90s saw the movie Groundhog Day.

The do-over? That's our people's Groundhog Day?

God is going to bring us back repeatedly over and over and over and over until we get the job done right. And the millennium is that beautiful point in time where Israel's Groundhog Day ends.

You know the movie? You've got an arrogant, self-centered weatherman who goes to Punxsutawney to see Phil on Groundhog Day, and he's such a mess that for who knows how many days in the movie, he wakes up every morning at 6 a.m. on the clock radio to exactly the same announcement and lives the day over again until one day he wakes up and it flips over to 601.

And the news goes on. We've been living. Since Exodus chapter 19, we have been living as a people in Groundhog Day. And the millennium is when it ends. God will prepare a remnant of Israel to do the job the way he's always wanted it to be done. There are dozens and dozens, and this is where if you ever want to do a sort, this is a fabulous sort, and it's an exciting sort.

But you can pick out of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the minor prophets, those places where God describes how he will succeed. One of the fine points that gets lost in all of the fragmentation of this is that first, God will sort and refine in captivity. And Mr. Deemer touched on that and gave some scriptures on it. But I don't think most of us realize that God is not going to bring back from captivity anyone who is not fully humbled and ready to do the job right.

Turn with me to Ezekiel chapter 36. Ezekiel 36, verse 31. He's going to bring back a people who have been humbled to the point where they are convertible, not long-term convertible, short-term, immediate.

Verse 31 of Ezekiel 36, then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and your abominations. That's total repentance. That's total repentance. That's a people coming back saying, I got what I deserved. I got less than I deserved. I don't deserve to be walking back to the promised land. But you know what? None of us are of any value to God as long as we think we're valuable.

If we think inherently within ourselves that we have something innate to give to God of lasting permanent value, we don't get it. And he says, I'll bring them to that place. Ezekiel chapter 20.

This is a powerful one. Those of you who are familiar with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and you're familiar with Elijah's acted parable where he cuts all the hair off of his body, and a third goes here, and a third year, and a third year, and the supporting scriptures that go along with it, know how God is going to bring about that time period and that there is a remnant. Ezekiel chapter 20 and verse 33, As I live, says the Lord God, there is nothing more certain in the entire universe than those three words. As I live.

No more secure bank in all the universe, the Word of God. As I live, says the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out, I will rule over them. I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you are scattered, with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will plead my case with you face to face. Just as I pleaded my case with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will plead my case with you, says the Lord God.

So he says, I'm going to bring you out, and we're going to have a face to face. But it's scary, short term, the results of that face to face. He says, I'm going to make you pass under the rod. That's a sorting. And I will bring you into the bond of covenant. I'm going to sort. I'm going to run you under the rod, and what comes out on the proper side of the rod, we will enter the bond of covenant.

What was Exodus chapter 19, the first four verses? And what was Exodus 20? It was the bond of covenant. First he said, I gave you the job. Exodus 19, Exodus 20, I give you the covenant. I will make you pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of covenant. I will purge the rebels from among you and those who transgress against me. I will bring them out of the country where they sojourn, but they shall not enter the land of Israel.

Then you will know that I am the Lord. When you consider the job that Israel has, that it has failed from the day of Exodus onward, and that it will succeed in, it will succeed in because God will only bring back from captivity totally converted people. He says, we're going to have a face-to-face, and I'm going to do a sort, and I want you to know nobody's going in except those who are totally equipped and ready to do the job. You know, it's not a whole lot different than when Israel was in the wilderness, and the spies came back from the land, and they said, oh, we can't go in, we can't go in, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And God said, all right, then stay here. If you use your children as an excuse, I'll take your children in. But your excuses are finished. But your excuses are finished. You will simply live the rest of your life here in the wilderness. You will never enter the land. That's going to happen again. Only it's not going to be living out your life. Mr. Deamer asked me, he said, are you going to use Ezekiel such and such?

And I said, I smiled, and I said, no, no, that one's yours. I can go over. I said, we've got three or four we can go to on that one. So you take Ezekiel, and I'll take Jeremiah, and we'll accomplish the same mission. Because once that sort is finished, you know, then we come to Jeremiah 31. And this is a scripture that you all know. This is the powerful New Covenant scripture. Jeremiah 31, 31.

Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. You know, we get an early preview. We are those that have been honored with the opportunity to get the preview of things to come. But the covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, that covenant is not going to be made until God is dealing with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

And He says, this one's not going to be according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand of bringing them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days. I'll put my law in their minds, write it in the hearts, I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

And no more will every man teach his neighbor and his brother saying, know the Lord, because they're all going to know me. That's a house of Israel equipped to be a testament and a witness to everyone else. When everyone in the entire land knows the Lord God and has entered into covenant with him and have the laws written on their hearts and their minds, this is the most powerful tool God could have. It's the one he wanted from the beginning. It's the one they would never get of him. I go back far enough in the ministry to have spent my early years at a time when we spent a considerable amount of our visiting time with people who are brand new, first-time visits.

I will tell you something, brethren. You know, one of the early messages said I was pondering what can I do in the millennium. So, a city planner, would I go there?

Then other things. What you will do in the millennium has have a delight that you can't even imagine. The thrill that you get when you've got somebody so hungry for this way of life that they can't get enough of it fast enough is an experience that is absolutely intoxicating.

And when you have an entire nation that way, they're going to be sitting there saying, teach me, teach me, teach me, teach me. The joy when you go to somebody's home and you sit there for three or four hours and you finally have to say enough, they want to know every booklet you've got in print and you know that they have no capacity to absorb them all. And by practice, we gave them three. We said, well, read these three booklets. And then next time we came back, if they had read them and we could see that they had digested them, then we fed them more. But they wanted us to take the whole gallon can and pour it in. That's no, no, no. You tell people, look, don't try to convert your relatives. You get in your car to drive back home with your assistant. You both be shaking your head saying, they'll try to convert their relatives.

They heard every word we said and they could repeat it back to us. And it was totally over their heads. They were so full of excitement at what they were learning and what they were seeing and the thrill of it all that they could not contain. Dumpeting on people, we're not going to be happy to have a dump on them. And so the second or third business, we were in damage control.

There's nothing about the millennium that I look forward to more and more excited about than the people that I've just been describing to you. There's nothing in my ministerial career that I have enjoyed more and had more satisfaction from than trying to feed the bottomless pit of first love and to see a whole nation there. Absolutely unbelievable.

That's the second pillar. Israel gets a do-over. And you and I get to teach them, and you know what? Watch out world.

We have those scriptures. I won't cite them. Zechariah 8, verse 23, we have that classic picture of 10 people grabbing a hold of the skirts of a Jew saying, teach us, teach us.

We know who your God is. And we can't get enough instruction. And we know where you come from, and we're not letting go.

One of the stories in Seattle was a person who was being visited in the day where we put them off until we thought they were ready to come. And he thought he was ready to come earlier, and the minister wouldn't let him come to services. So, one Sabbath, the minister went out to get in his car to go to church, and there was a car blocking his driveway. And he got out and said, I'll let you go when you tell me how to get to church. And the minister said, I think you're ready to come to church. The third of the pillars, brethren, is the Millennium is a day of salvation.

The Millennium is a day of salvation. It is such an awesome, beautiful time that in all the good things we see related to the Millennium, it is easy for us to not stop long enough to say, now wait a minute. This is one whole body of people's day of salvation. With all that that means, and with all that's involved in having a day of salvation. It's been years and years ago, and I have Googled every way I possibly could to try to find the source and to no avail. But that was many years ago, and it's probably going on 30 now that I saw a television commercial. I don't even know what the product was, but it was Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And it was rather ditzy, naive Adam, and a rather worldly wise Eve.

And Adam's doing the bubble head, and Eve looks at him, and what she said to him I've never forgotten, because they're in the Garden of Eden. She says, well, Adam, this is paradise. It's not fantasy land.

Do you ever turn the millennium from paradise into fantasy land?

The many, many, many times when the feast comes up, I ponder that the line between paradise and fantasy land. It is a day of salvation for one body of people.

We've already in our history witnessed reality, and so the very end of the millennium should not come as a shock to us.

You see, God has seasoned us, and we understand a reality.

We have a thousand years of peace, justice, mercy, the rule of God. It will be over people who are being given an opportunity to repent, be baptized, receive the Holy Spirit, and to live this way of life. It's not forced upon them any more than it was forced upon us.

You see, we have all lived with the reality of being among a far larger body where everyone seemed to be walking the same way, until an option was offered. And I don't think we will ever get over the shock and the head wagging of saying, I can't understand it. I thought all of us were in lockstep, heading the same direction. And when an option came, I found out the majority were very thrilled to go another way.

Revelation chapter 20 tells us how the millennium ends.

Revelation chapter 20 verse 7 through 9.

Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations, which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea.

And they went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints, and the beloved city and fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.

Satan is going to be released on this day. We've had song leaders telling us where we are in the continuum. Well, we're in the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. At the end of this day, the Feast of Tabernacles, Satan is let loose. He is allowed to be commanding general of those who have complied, but are very happy to have an alternative.

And it says from the four corners of the world.

Uses the term Gog and Magog, probably uses it in the same way that Jerusalem was once called Sodom and Egypt, the city where our Savior was crucified. A term that simply describes rebellion, resistance, obstinance. But they will come from the four corners of the earth, and God will simply eliminate them.

You know, God is the master of efficiency. He is doing two things at one time. They have had their day of salvation, and they've had their opportunity to choose. Our hope is that the majority will choose the way that we've chosen. But they have to make a choice. Just because they live millennia, millenially, isn't a shoe in. They must make a choice.

But God, as I said, is a master of efficiency. And at this particular point in time, as the millennium is ending, He's looking forward to what the men who will be speaking tomorrow will be talking about. Probably the most glorious day in all of human existence. A time when all mankind will have an opportunity for salvation.

You know what damages a person's chance for salvation more than anything else?

Think about that a second. What is the greatest possible damage you can do to someone's opportunity for salvation? And while you're thinking about it, I want you to turn back to Proverbs 6. Because God knows this, God is keenly aware of it, and God is going to make sure that that damage does not occur. Proverbs 6. This is one of those sections where it gives things that God hates. These six things the Lord hates, and seven are an abomination to Him.

So He said, six I hate, and the seven, oh, that's the tipping point.

A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift to running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and the seventh is one who sows discord among brethren.

We sang one of two hymns yesterday about the mountain of God. The other one is, Who shall dwell on thy holy hill?

God says, Among the things that will not be on my holy hill are those who poison other people's minds. Those who poison other people's minds. When God ends this time period's day of salvation, He will not let live into tomorrow's message, those who could meet the new resurrected people with, that's not what you think.

It really is a burden.

If I had a choice, I wouldn't be going this way.

Every man needs a fair, level starting place.

God is not going to let those poisoned, those who are going to be discussed tomorrow.

You see, God loves all mankind, and He wants the very best for everyone, and He's going to see to it that everyone gets the absolute best possible chance for salvation that can be given.

How and what He will do with those in the last great day is the purview of those men who will be speaking tomorrow. So, brethren, I've given you an overview.

As we close, we will always enjoy the beautiful promises of peace, safety, happiness, and health that these seven days celebrate.

But as we enjoy these things year by year by year, never forget the three foundational pillars of the millennium.