The Blessing of a Second Life – Pt. 2

Ron Weinland

May 14, 2011

Last Sabbath we began a sermon series entitled The Blessing of a Second Life with this now being Part 2.  It’s amazing to me when I go into this subject and read certain scriptures like the one we’ve been going through that we started last week in Revelation 20 that talks about a second life; that no one in the world has any understanding of what that means at all, as far as Traditional Christianity.  They don’t know what it’s talking about when it talks about a second death which requires a second life.  They don’t know what that means.  And yet it’s exciting to us and it’s exciting as a part of God’s plan when you understand what it’s all about.  And that’s what this sermon series is about, obviously.

In last week’s sermon we followed up on a statement that I had made in a previous sermon about the destruction of an entire nation, of things that are going to take place in the end-time as well, but in this case the example was one of Afghanistan and making some comments there.  As human beings, so often when we think of the death of people and the death of large numbers of people, and even some things in the Old Testament, we think that that’s highly cruel if God allows that, if God in some cases as we get into it in time here, if we’re able to do it in this series, talking about some of the things that God did in the Old Testament; and it’s because human beings, so often, think of death in a different way and understand things about life and death in a different way than what God says it is.

Now, we have understanding in God’s Church, but even we sometimes have struggles with some of this, especially considering some of the things that we’re going to be going through.  And so we looked at the poverty, the massive numbers of maimed people in that particular country alone, just that one country due to the many years of war that they’ve had, the incredibly large number and large percentage of orphans, the shockingly low life expectancy and the high rate of death of children up to the age of 5 even – how incredible that is, some of the statistics we looked at.  The hideous reality of how the nation produces over 92% (and that’s an old statistic), but 92% of all the opiates of the world, and the largest producer of hashish in the world.  Incredible when you start going through things like this!  And so we looked at some of those things last Sabbath and thinking of the things that people live through, women live through, the children live through, in just one nation alone that is indeed a very impoverished nation.

But the point of all this is that so many nations of the world have horribly high levels of malnutrition, poverty, sickness, disease, orphaned children, people who are homeless and are refugees right now traveling between nations, trying to escape nations by the hundreds of thousands in some cases, trying to flee, trying to get out.  They have a horrible problem in Europe right now that they’re trying to deal with, that they don’t want too many coming into their nations anymore in the way that they’ve been coming in because it’s been causing problems, from some of the Arab nations.  And so some of the friction, some of the turmoil, and the things that are taking place in this world – its times of horrible decisions that some people have to make in some of these situations.

Again, people who are starving and suffering from opposition of all kinds.  I don’t even like to talk about some of it it’s so bad in some cases.  Incredibly high numbers, far higher than what they ever expected in some countries that are oppressed, of rape – hundreds, thousands of people a day.  That’s insane!  This world we live in – sick, sick, filthy world!  But we’re not touched by it a lot in this western world in the same way.  Now, sometimes obviously people are, they have things happen to them; we live in some cities with very high crime rates and so forth.  But as far as some of these kinds of conditions that so many countries of the world live through, we don’t rub shoulders with it as a whole, we’re immune to it in one respect, hardened to it oftentimes, don’t want to talk about it.  They don’t talk about it in the news; they don’t continually go through these things in the news.  And so again, in the western world we are largely sheltered from such conditions.

So the question is asked: If all such people under oppression to the extent, and toward this extent, were to go to sleep – die – the moment they’re awakened (meaning resurrected to life again, a second time), the world would be beyond a comparison of the difference between night and day.  The way it is today in those countries with the suffering of those people and what it’s going to be like during the Great White Throne would truly be a greater difference, in so many respects, than the difference between night and day and what it would mean to people.

It’s incredible when you think about it!  And we’re going through this particular sermon so we can more deeply appreciate and be thankful for God’s plan and for what He’s doing and why He’s doing it.  All such people who are today starving, who are today maimed, who are today suffering, who are today trying to flee one nation into another, those who are being raped, those who are going through all kinds of things, young girls in some of these countries, the horrible conditions they live under... they would wake up in a world so drastically different it would be akin to an ‘earthly paradise’ beyond imagination.  Truly!  If they had a choice, which one do you think they would pick?  If they were able to see both side by side, what world do you think they would pick to live in, to dwell in?  The one they’re living in now?  ...or the one with peace?  ...the one with abundance?  ...the one with plenty?  ...the one where there’s total safety, absolute safety, protection, favour; blessings beyond your wildest imagination.

In God’s Church we talk a lot about the Great White Throne, but we don’t really grasp it because we’re not there yet, we haven’t seen it yet, we haven’t seen what one thousand years of God’s government is going to produce on this earth!  But that is what God is going to do, prepare a great world for billions of people to have life again, the blessing of a second life.  Something the world is absolutely ignorant of!  People who read their Bibles, professors, people who train and teach in theology, colleges of theology and so forth who don’t understand what these verses are about because they don’t understand God’s plan; and so they see life and death in a different way.  Why?  Why don’t they understand those verses?  Because it would do away with their pet beliefs of going to heaven when you die and going to hell – whichever one people are going to, or somewhere in between.  And so they can’t accept God’s clear and plain word in so many cases.

So again, they would awaken to a world akin to an ‘earthly paradise’, to a world that most would think was like a ‘utopia’ in comparison.  We understand that it won’t be a complete utopia, but so much closer to one, in a right way, because of God’s laws, because of God’s way of life – not something where people are going around as in a kind of a make believe world, but one that’s real.  A world similar to the likeness as some would think of as being a ‘Shangri-La’ if you’ve ever heard of such a place, the writings of such a place, of how it’s described.  And ‘Shangri-La’, as an example, has taken on the meaning of a ‘permanently happy land’ because it’s filled with peace.  No war, no fighting, no crime, NO CRIME, no drugs, no people taking advantage of each other, no people stealing from each other.  That’s why it’s such a place of mystery for some as they read such stories, one of wonderment, one of desire... if only the world could be a little bit more like that where all are almost immortal it seems.

I thought that it would be interesting looking up the definition of the word ‘Shangri-La’ as I was going through this.  ‘Almost immortal’ – now we understand some things that we’ve come to deeper understanding of in a recent Feast here of what that hundred year period is going to be like and why a child can reach down into the hole of the most poisonous snake and not have to worry about being hurt by it; why lions and tigers and different animals are going to have a different nature and not be the type of animal they are today.  Incredible what God’s going to do, because they’re blessed with a guarantee of physical life, a guarantee of life.

So this definition, ‘a place where all are almost immortal, living years beyond the normal lifespan and only very slowly aging in appearance.’  The average age of those in Afghanistan we looked at, low 40’s, they will be guaranteed a lot more than that.  The baby who is resurrected at that time in the Great White Throne promised a hundred years of life – incredible.  To live to be a hundred years old, be younger in appearance than people would normally appear at a hundred years old, creaking and barely able to get out of bed if they can at all by the time they get that age.  Yet what this second physical life that God will bring to most of all mankind is far better than this, when you understand it in truth and in spirit that God has given understanding of what it’s all about.

So let’s pick up from where we left off this past Sabbath in Revelation 20.  The past 6,000 years haven’t been easy for mankind; war after war after war, oppression, the way people hurt each other, you read stories of some of the things that happened back in the 1400’s, 1500’s in England alone, horrifying things in what would have been considered some of the western world at that time.  Crazy the differences that have taken place through time.  One doesn’t have to go back that many years in how man had to live compared to how different it is today.

We’re going to pick up where we left off last Sabbath and I want to go back and get all this in context again.  It’s an incredible story here in Revelation 20.  Sometimes at funerals some of these things are quoted and you think, “Well, what does it mean?”  People talk about a resurrection.  Well, why talk about a resurrection in one breath and then turn around and talk about how great it is that so and so is up in heaven... but we’re looking for the resurrection...?!  The contradiction in some of these things sometimes is absolutely incredible.  They don’t think, they just speak and they read scriptures and what does it mean?  Well, let’s read it.

Revelation 20:1 - And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit, talking about a ‘place of restraint’, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, ‘the Slanderer’ as the word means, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years; so for 1,000 years.  So to the world, to Traditional Christianity, what does that mean that he’s bound for a thousand years?  Well, he’s been on earth for 6,000 years now, tormenting mankind, twisting and distorting every kind of belief and idea of mankind.  That’s why Paul, in 2 Corinthians, called him ‘the god of this world’ [2 Corinthians 4:4]. Satan is the god of this world.  Incredible!

Not God Almighty, it’s not God’s world yet.  God left it to mankind to rule himself for 6,000 years, to show that we’re totally incapable of it; even in the age of technology that we have today man can’t govern himself.  That’s the whole history of mankind!  Only God’s way can govern mankind successfully, properly.  We can try to take what we call ‘democracy’ into Afghanistan and Iraq – doesn’t work!  Vietnam – it didn’t work!  Over and over again, of things that people try to do, to ‘be like them’.

Verse 3 - And cast him into the abyss/bottomless pit/place of restraint; in other words he’s going to be restrained.  He’s not going to have the same power he has now, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, having to do with God’s power over him, the power that he has now is going to be taken away. He’s not going to be able to do the kinds of things he’s been doing for the past 6,000 years or have the added power that he’s had at different times in history as we look back and understand that he was given power at different times during the different resurrections of what is called the Holy Roman Empire, and we know that there’s one more to take place at the end of this age; one more resurrection of what’s been called the Holy Roman Empire: 10 nations in Europe that are going to come together.

I’ll tell you what!  It is awesome!  Like Johnny said, “We have a front row seat.”  We know what’s taking place as it happens.  We see these things coming about, we see things happening in the world, not knowing exactly how they’re going to transpire in order to be fulfilled, but we see them occurring.  You see things taking place in Europe right now and understand why there’s a struggle going on.  You hear news about the euro, you hear news about Greece and a possible exclusion again, of being put out, or themselves going back to the currency they previously had or whatever it might be.  And banks!  I was listening to BBC two days ago on the radio and they were talking about how some of the things in Greece is going to have a horrible impact on banks and the banking system again, they were comparing it to what happened with Lehman Brothers.  And it’s about to happen.  And then you have Portugal and Spain – they call them the PIIGS – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain – all the nations involved in some of these things, of things that are taking place. You think, hmmm, how many are there now and how many will there end up being?  We know that there are going to be ten.

And so we see the scenario of things taking place and we can see how it’s more easily going to transpire at some point, when some get so fed up with bailing them out.  They’re not happy!  They’re not happy with some of their member states!  And we see it coming to pass.  The resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire has already started.  It doesn’t happen overnight and just something [snap’s fingers] takes place... there’s a process that leads to it, there’s a process from a point of it being nothing and being idle to the point of it rising, a resurrection.  It takes time, in this case, for them to be resurrected, to have and exercise the kind of power they’re going to exert later on.

And so Satan, the deceiver it says, is going to be put away from the presence of mankind in the sense of his power and his sway and his influence over mankind that he’s wielded for the past 6,000 years when Christ returns.  And it says he will not be able to do this for a thousand years, until the thousand years are fulfilled: What thousand years?  When Jesus Christ returns. When God’s government is established on this earth.  Something that in the time of Christ that the disciples could grasp, “When will Your Kingdom be here?  When are You going to take control?”  They knew He was the Messiah, the one prophesied in the Old Testament; they believed He was the Christ.  They believe He was going to be King of kings and rule as the prophecies said, but they thought it was going to be in their time.  They didn’t comprehend He was coming first to die as a Passover, the lamb, and then come back later.  That’s why He told Pilate, “It’s not of this world/not of this age.”  He asked Him if He was a King.  He said, “To this end I was born, but My Kingdom’s not yet, not of this age.”  Incredible!  Things that are right there in front of us that we know, that we understand, that we’re able to embrace.

So we’re almost to that point where the thousand years are going to begin.  Satan is going to be put away from mankind, no longer able to torment and hurt; all the demons as well.  We don’t know how many millions there could be, God didn’t give a specific number of those who were cast down with Satan who are on this earth tormenting mankind, twisting the mind of mankind, trying to influence mankind, trying to actually even be in mankind to control mankind.  That’s the kind of perverted minds that they have.

...and after that he should be loosed for a little season.  So he will be let loose one last time.  We understand the story of what happens at the very end of the Millennium and why he’s let loose for just a short while.

And then it says, And I saw thrones, and they who sat upon them, and judgment was given to them: it speaks of the 144,000 in other places here in Revelation, of the time of the first resurrection, the time we’re getting close to, that which is pictured in Pentecost that we’re getting close to observing here in June, the Feast of Pentecost.  It’s also called the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Firstfruits.  God has given us understanding that it is about the first part of His harvest – Jesus Christ who is the first of the firstfruits resurrected 2,000 years ago and now at the end of that 2,000 years there is another part of that meaning, the larger number of 144,000 who are resurrected, the firstfruits of God in God’s plan to enter into His Family, to be given immortality.  Incredible!

And so he says...I saw thrones, and they who sat upon them, and judgment was given to them, I saw the souls/lives of them who were, the word in the Old King James says, ‘beheaded’, but it means ‘cut off’ as we talked about last week.  It just means people who are cut off because of living this way of life, of what begins to happen when you live God’s way of life in this world, in the first 6,000 years. The community, the world, the religions of this world don’t accept you any longer.  You’re cut off from the ways of this world.  Truly are!  The world continues in its own course, in its own path, living its own ways and we experience those things in God’s Church, of what it means to be cut off from the rest of the world.  We live in the world but we don’t live the way the world does, we live different according to God’s ways and God’s laws.  And the world doesn’t accept those; they hate it!  People hate the Sabbath!  They hate that anyone would say that God commands and requires that if you’re to serve Him in spirit and in truth you are to obey Him and keep the Sabbath day.

“Oh, you’re a legalist!  You’re a legalist!  You say that the 10 Commandments should be kept!  That’s bad!”  Traditional Christianity says that’s bad to be a legalist!  “You shouldn’t be a legalist!  Jesus Christ came to free us from all that.  He nailed it to the ‘cross’!”  Wasn’t a ‘cross’ anyway, but, “He nailed it to the ‘cross’, all that law.”

“Oh, you mean that I can go out there and have your car then?  I can get you out of your house and have your house and take it from you... I can steal... take it...  Well, you couldn’t call it steal because that’s been done away with!  I can have everything you have?!”

“Oh no, that’s a good law!”

“Oh, then I can murder you?  That’s okay?  Have your wife? Commit adultery?”

They agree that those laws are good laws. You go through all other nine laws – they’re okay.  But when you say the Sabbath... oh, oh, oh, that was ‘nailed to the cross’.  That’s the one they don’t like.  They hate it!  Why?  Because of the world we live in and because who’s behind it and who really hates it – and so he has people observing all kinds of other days; Monday, Friday.  Friday in the Arab world, in the world of Islam. Sunday in Traditional Christianity.  But not the Sabbath – very few.  Incredible!  So we’re cut off, the world doesn’t accept us as a part of them anymore – thankfully.  And we don’t accept the world the way it is.

...for the witness of Jesus; for the witness of Jesus – What does that mean?  It’s just like the two witnesses, they are a witness of something.  It’s like we all are doing; we’re witnesses of something.  All who have ever lived God’s way of life are witness of something and for the past 2,000 years in the Church of God, people have been witnesses of the life of Jesus Christ, of the life of God that dwells in them, of God’s way of life.  That’s what they’ve witnessed and how the world receives it.  And the world cuts them off, doesn’t want anything to do with them.  “You’re a sect.  You’re strange.  You’re weird.”  No, just striving to live by God’s way of life and God’s laws.

...and for the word of God; Incredible!  ...and for the word of God – because we strive to live it don’t we?  That’s why we’re here today on the Sabbath obeying God.  This is the day that God said He would feed us.  Traditional Christianity is fed on Sunday.  Not much longer than 15 minutes – that’s all that most of them can take.  So different ones at different times are fed in different ways.  Incredible that God states, “This is when you’re fed.”  This is when God’s people are fed.

...and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark in their foreheads, or in their hands; and so people that are void of God’s spirit have to have something physical to see this when they think of this.  And some say, “Oh you’re going to have the 666 put in your hand and then a bunch of numbers behind it.”  Well, why bother putting the 666 in there if it’s all going to be the same for everybody and all the rest of the numbers are going to be different?  It’s so stupid what people do!  And it’s like you’re going to have this in your hand and you’re going to have it on your forehead like the Jews had in the concentration camps of World War II or whatever.  That’s not what it means at all.  As we talked about last Sabbath...

Hands – prophetically have to do with the work you do.

The forehead – has to do with intellect and what you see and what you believe and how you think.

Mark - All that it’s talking about is that mark that God says is a ‘sign’, the same word’s that are used over and over again throughout the Bible.  The sign, or the mark, of God’s people is the Sabbath.  But it’s not just the weekly Sabbath; it’s also the annual Sabbaths that’s a part of the commandment to keep the Sabbath.  It is weekly and it is annual just like Leviticus 23 makes very clear.  So every seventh day is the weekly Sabbath and we have seven annual Sabbaths as well.  Awesome!  That’s in our mind, that’s why we do the things we do, that’s why we work on certain times and don’t work at other times – because of that mark.  It’s very simple!

...and they, these who have been outcasts, these who have been cut off from the world, these that the world won’t accept, these lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.  Incredible! They’re resurrected when He returns.  They come back to this earth when He comes here to reign, when He takes and establishes (if you will) God’s Kingdom on the earth over all the nations, as it says over and over again, and reigns for a thousand years.

But the rest of the dead... What do you mean ‘the rest of the dead’? These who were dead, except for a handful, because it’s an awesome thing when it speaks of what happens to a small number of people who are a part of God’s Church, who when Jesus Christ returns are just changed.  They don’t have to die a physical death, they just change from mortal to immortal, rise to meet Christ in the air and then they come down with Him when He comes back on that day to set His feet upon the Mount of Olives and begin reigning on this earth.  So there’s just a handful. But everybody else has to be dead and be resurrected.  Everyone else who’s ever lived, all the way back before the time of Christ; Moses, Noah, David, different ones you can think of in the Old Testament that are mentioned there that God worked with, moulded and fashioned. And then all the apostles and all those who were a part of the Church and the Church since that time that we don’t even have record of because others wiped all those things out, and God allowed it to be so because He didn’t want that preserved in the first place, through Ephesus, through Smyrna, through Thyatira, Pergamus, all the different eras of God’s Church, history that’s gone.  But all those people who lived and died faithfully before God are going to be resurrected.

But it says, But all the rest of the dead, up and to that point.  What is that point of time?  The end of 6,000 years.  Everyone else who has ever lived and died, it says But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.  What an awesome thing!  In other words, they’re going to remain dead another one thousand years!  Everyone to this point in time at the great resurrection, when Jesus Christ returns, that chapter 19 talks about, the coming of Christ and so forth.  It says He’s going to be King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  And chapter 20 goes continues telling the story.  And so it says, until the thousand years were finished.

And then referring back to the beginning here it says, ‘that they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years’; This is the first resurrection.  We understand that, the first great resurrection.

Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection: We’re blessed – those who are going to be a part of it; those who have died and those who are yet alive who will die, and those who will be changed at the end.  Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection, on such the second death has no power... What an awesome verse!  ...the second death has no power... so it puzzles people.  How can there be a second death?  How can man die twice? Like I mentioned last Sabbath, just as much as when Jesus Christ was talking to Nicodemus in John 3, he just couldn’t comprehend what Jesus Christ was saying about the need to be born again.  You have to be born of the spirit.  He didn’t grasp those things as He was talking about some of that.  To be born again... he asked, “How do you climb back in to your mother’s womb when you’re full grown and be born again?”  Because he looked at it physically.  Well how can a person die twice except that they live twice?  But people don’t seem to ask those questions.

...on such the second death has no power.  Because God makes it plain that there are certain things that take place in human life, that in this particular case here if there’s a second death there’s no resurrection again. Because you see, at the end of that period of time, all who are going to be a part of God’s Kingdom are going to be made a part of God’s Kingdom – just like the first resurrection.  Incredible!

And so it goes on to say, on such the second death has no power; because that’s a final judgment, that’s a permanent death, never to have physical life again.  There’s no physical life again, there’s no other life again after that second death, if a person dies twice.

...but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, referring again to those who are resurrected with Him; and shall reign with Him a thousand years. So again, it’s going back and forth here talking about the peoples at different stage and referring to those who are going to be with Christ a thousand years, those who are going to be resurrected with Him.

And then it says, And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison/ confinement, as it said earlier, he’s going to be let loose for just a little while, a little season, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. Something that’s difficult to understand and yet not so difficult to understand that happens at the end of a thousand years: those who don’t choose, who don’t desire and want God’s way of life.  And there’s more to be learned from this yet that God hasn’t revealed too, a lot more that’s not to be given until later on.

There are things that God kept from the Church that had to do with an apostasy.  We were given a bit of an overview, but when it came down to how and the specifics of the things that were going to take place concerning an apostasy at the end-time, a great falling away that it talks about in 2 Thessalonians 2, they were not given in advance.  There are things that were covered in a sweeping manner and in terms and in words that God didn’t give understanding of what it was all about until afterwards, looking back.  Then He gave us understanding of what we experienced.  Because in God’s Church, in the time of Mr. Armstrong and when Worldwide was here, and even after Mr. Armstrong died, we understood that there was going to be a great falling away in time, the word having to do with apostasy, a great falling away from the truth of God, and we knew it would come. We called it ‘a great falling away’.  We knew it was going to be great (big, large, significant), but we had no concept of how it was going to come to pass and how it was going to take place specifically.

And the same thing with what happens when Satan is let loose for a little season.  There may be a period of time that God doesn’t give any of this understanding any more than what’s said here until after it’s happened, for a purpose and for a reason, that there’d just be an overview in that it’s going to take place, that it’s going to happen.  So we have to wait and see because there are a lot of things that God only gives when it comes time for those things to be given.  And just because Jesus Christ and the God Family is here doesn’t mean everything is given to us.  We will be learning throughout the Millennium and we’ll be learning beyond that into eternity, as we talked about in times past.

So just saying very clearly here that there is much more than what this verse brings out here – much, much more, and it won’t happen anything like you might think.

Verse 9 - And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. So they want to make war, they want to destroy and God doesn’t allow it, He doesn’t allow there to be a war.  He doesn’t allow any destruction and He destroys them for what they’re trying to do.

Verse 10 – speaks of Satan again; And the devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet, it’s not the word ‘are’ but ‘were earlier’ cast, is the correct translation of that, and tormented day and night forever and ever. We’ve covered this at the Feast and I’m not going to go back through this again right now.  But again, talking about all the scriptures that we put together in the sermons at the Feast there and discussed some of the things that are going to happen to Satan, to understand that he has his end, that he has an end, for the things he’s going through.

The thousand years is his torment – tormented day and night indeed by what he sees God doing.  He gets to see it and have no influence over it, no impact whatsoever, totally powerless.  Same way with the demonic world as well – no power whatsoever to hurt, to deceive, to communicate toward man for that period of time.  And it’s a torment to them, indeed, for what they see God doing, for what they see the God Family doing, for what they see Jesus Christ and the God Family doing on the earth for a thousand years, rebuilding, moulding and fashioning this earth in such a powerful way when the entire world has the opportunity to be in the Church of God, but it’s still a choice to be in the Church.  But everyone has opportunity.  There will be no other churches.  There won’t be confusion like there is today with all the different denominations.  It’s easy to understand why people are so confused and people become so doubtful and everybody disagreeing with each other.

Even the world of Islam, I was reading today how the Shiite and the Sunni’s are stirred up over each other just between Iran and Bahrain and throwing threatening words back and forth, that if they bring a flotilla across from Iran to Bahrain – they liken the flotilla used to take aid and help the people there in Palestine.  The Israelis didn’t allow that to happen, they didn’t allow that to take place.  And so they’re saying in Bahrain that this would be an act of war if they try to bring a flotilla.  But yet the world will criticize and condemn Israel for doing what they do, but then when it’s in their back yard, it’s an act of war!  It’s a strange thing! The hypocrisy of mankind sometimes is a marvel!

People don’t get along, religions don’t get along, massive confusion even in the world of Islam, massive disbelief or disregard for one toward the other to the point of a willingness to kill and destroy in order that one prevail over the other.  And at one time there was a religion like that on the earth – anyone who disagreed with that  great religion, the Catholic church, were killed because they disagreed, because they taught something differently.  They were tortured and it was put aside as this is a righteous thing to do, torture them, get them to recant, get them to do whatever you’ve got to do to the body to torture it!  There are some incredible things in history that have happened to people in the name of religion and that great church!  And all the other churches that came out of it, they teach the same things; the mass of Christ, Christmas.  People don’t know where the name came from.  Think about it!  Christ-mass, the mass of Christ... What church has masses?  So sick of this world and the deception that’s in this world that has twisted and tormented the minds of so many!

Can you grasp what it’s going to be like when there’s only the one belief on the earth, the truth?  When God doesn’t allow there to be a false belief anymore?  No false church, no false teachers; we’re not going to be allowed to have false teachers. Anybody that tries to come up with a different idea, a different way, a different concept of something the Bible says, is going to be dealt with judiciously by God.  People won’t do it or they’ll come to a point where they won’t do it.

One government that’s truly just.  There won’t be any guessing if somebody’s guilty or not, it’ll be made known whether they were and exactly what they did and it’ll be done speedily.  It won’t get caught up with a bunch of lawyers in a broken legal system and finally get it on the dockets and all the other things that hurts society in the way that it does because judgment isn’t carried out speedily when there are crimes and things that take place.  No, in God’s world, in a new age things are going to change dramatically.  What an awesome thing!  One government; righteous, holy government on earth, governed by God because man can’t govern himself.  The United Nations can’t govern anyone. They try.

Verse 11 - And I saw a great white throne, and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; Incredible here; it’s talking about a resurrection, of something that takes place that we understand, the Great White Throne.  At the end of the thousand years, finally, there’s a great resurrection of anyone who ever lived and died; that’s why it talks about earlier in those verses about ‘the rest of the dead didn’t live again until the thousand years were finished’, and now, in these verses it’s talking about their resurrection at the end of a thousand years, at the end of the Millennium.

And I saw the dead, small and great; Who are the ‘small and great’?  Well, the ‘great’ in the world’s eyes, those who are known and written about in history that people know about, leaders, presidents, generals, different peoples in different times, whether it be the Babylonian Empire, whether it be the Pharaohs in the time of Egypt, different names that are known out there, of people that are known; all the rest who were forgotten long ago.  It doesn’t take very long out here in a cemetery to forget people where the head stone is the only thing that gives anything about a background whatsoever, maybe the person’s name on there and soon they are totally forgotten.  Nobody visits it anymore!  They’ve been forgotten by family!  Two or three generations come along and they don’t know who’s buried there.  I have no concept where different ones in my lineage are buried.  They’re forgotten!  I don’t know them!  I didn’t know them!  I knew my great-great grandmother for a short time when I was little; I don’t know where she’s buried, I don’t know anything about her.  That’s what happens in life – people are forgotten through time, life goes on.  A new generation comes along and an old generation passes away. Time goes on and on and often people are forgotten; and this is what it’s taking about, those who are known and written about and those who never were – long forgotten in time.

...and the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, incredible! And so again, everyone who ever had life has an opportunity to be resurrected to life again, which as a whole, is the vast majority of all mankind from the past 6,000 years.  And it talks about the books being opened.  Well, what books? What are all these books that are being opened?  It’s a marvellous thing when you’re called into God’s Church; to you the books are opened up.  God has to do that.  See, God has made it so that no human being has the capacity, the ability, no matter how great their intellect, no matter how great their IQ, no matter how much education they have, or how study of this book that they do, people can’t just go in there and see what is true.  It’s impossible for mankind to do that!  They can’t do it!  I couldn’t do it before I was called.  You couldn’t do it before you were called.  But when God calls someone and gives them to Jesus Christ, which is how it works... people don’t just decide, “Well, I’m going to give my heart to the Lord.”  You can’t do that!  Human beings can’t do that!  The world can’t do that!  They don’t know what to give their heart to because they don’t know the truth!

It starts with the Sabbath.  God gives that revelation to you very quickly.  If He’s calling you and working with you He gives you first of all knowledge of how to have a relationship with Him.  And He says the way to have a relationship with Him is to obey Him, to obey Him and to obey the law.  And the first four commandments have to do with how to obey God – because if you don’t want to live that way toward God...just like the last six, we can kind of understand that as human beings, don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery...all the way through.  We can understand that physically because if you’re going to have a relationship, a right relationship, a good relationship with people then you obey those laws!  Well, if you want to have a right relationship with God Almighty you obey the first four laws AND the last six, because that’s what God requires, or He says you have no love toward Him whatsoever.  Jesus Christ said, “If you love Me, keep My Commandments.”  ...keep the Father’s Commandments!  ...keep the law, obey it, do what is right!  “If you love Me!”  And so that reveals whether somebody really loves God in truth.

And so God Almighty has to open the mind, and when He does He opens up this book to you.  All of a sudden you can read it and begin to understand, there are things you begin to see.  He has you hear something, something that someone said, perhaps a sermon, perhaps a bible study, whatever in times past, perhaps to read a ‘Plain Truth’ magazine, times past to perhaps read some other magazines, some other article that’s come out, perhaps to see something on TV or hear it on the radio or whatever it might be – or to read a book; and all of a sudden [snap’s fingers... snap, snap, snap] God’s word is opened up to you, the books are opened up to you.  You can begin actually reading this book and it begins to make sense.  You can begin putting things together.  You can begin to see clearly what the world doesn’t grasp, like Traditional Christianity.  It’s a marvel.

We were over in Australia recently and it was kind of unique that their big day over there is what’s called ‘Good Friday’, that’s their holiday.  Easter’s not as big a holiday.  To me, they made a much larger deal out of ‘Good Friday’ than they did Easter.  Of course over here it’s Easter more than ‘Good Friday’. And what is amazing is when you come into God’s Church and all of a sudden you learn about Holy Days and you learn that Jesus Christ didn’t die on a Friday, and He said the only proof, the only evidence, the only sign that I’m going to leave that I am who I say I am, that I am the Christ, in essence, is that I’ll be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights just as Jonah was in the ‘heart’ of the great fish three days and three nights.  72 hours; not a minute more, not a minute later.  It means exactly what it says in Hebrew - three days and three nights – exactly 72 hours.  Awesome!  And you can’t get that from Friday at sunset, right at sunset, up to Sunday morning.  And yet there are people with doctorates in theology who will try to reason with you to explain how it’s possible to stretch that time into three days and three nights.  Blows my mind!  You can talk to a first grader to get that clear to them but not to someone with a doctorate in theology. Amazing!

But when you’re called into God’s Church....  I remember the first time I started seeing that.  I thought, “How awesome is this?”  When it talked about the Sabbaths, when you read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and all of a sudden you realize it’s not just talking about the seventh day of the week, it’s not talking about.... there’s a Holy Day in here!  There’s an annual Sabbath in the midst of all this!  And that’s where the world goes astray because they think that the preparation being spoken of there is Friday and they don’t get it, they don’t understand that in this case it was something totally different – preparation day for a High Day, the First Day of Unleavened Bread.

They don’t understand Leviticus 23 that so meticulously describes the day of Passover and then the day that follows it, because the Passover is a preparation day for the annual Sabbath.  Amazing!  Doesn’t have to be on a Friday.  In this particular case it was a Wednesday.  Amazing!  Jesus Christ died on a Wednesday.  He was in the grave Thursday, Friday, and the Sabbath; and it was still the Sabbath, before sunset on the seventh day of the week, that He was resurrected.  What an awesome thing!  But I remember the first time I read through that; it was so clear.  This book was opened up to me, I could read through those accounts and it was inspiring, it was exciting because before it was hidden, and all of a sudden it was so, so clear.  And then all of a sudden you could read about things like Pentecost and you read scriptures and the things that happened in the book of Acts and you understand certain things about when the law was given, when the holy spirit was given, and all of a sudden you read these stories then that some of the disciples wrote and you see it.  You’d read the Old Testament and all of a sudden you see it.

And so that’s what it’s talking about here in Revelation 20, ‘the books are opened’; because you see, those people had never had that opportunity, as a whole. There are going to be a few in there that already know, we know about that, the scattering and so forth.  But as a whole, for the vast overwhelming majority of mankind, all who ever lived and died and they’re resurrected, all of a sudden the books are opened up to them. They can see, God’s spirit is poured out and they have the ability to begin to see and to understand.  God has to do that!  People don’t have the ability to learn the truth on their own!

I used to get so frustrated in times past when people would come along and talk about how they learned about this, they learned about that... and realize if you’ve been brought to God’s Church, then GOD gave these things to you!  Maybe over a long span of time, maybe you took longer, I don’t know, to get your attention, but God Almighty had to do it.  If you came to understand the Sabbath and you were brought then to God’s Church, God did it, God gave it to you.  He worked things in your life to help you to become convicted of something so that when you heard the rest of the story that all of a sudden the rest of the books were opened up to you, when it was God’s time.  Awesome things!

And so here it’s talking about those who are resurrected, the small, those who are forgotten through time, and the great, stand before God.  What an awesome thing!  Whenever I read this I just am dumbfounded by it, that people are going to know they were dead, that all of a sudden when they’re resurrected, they’re resurrected back into a body where they appeared before, but a healthy body if it wasn’t healthy – and I can guarantee it’s going to be healthier than whatever it was, because God is going to grant them an ability to live a longer lifespan, a longer lifespan to live and learn this way of life and to live life a second time, but this time in the truth, in the Church of God.  Awesome! Beautiful!

The whole world has opportunity then, at that point in time, to live in a kind of world that we can’t even begin to imagine. To imagine where God’s going to take technology alone, what He’s going to give to this world alone.  Look at what’s happened in the last hundred years; look at what’s happened in the last twenty years in technology alone.  Your mind can’t even begin to conceive of some of the awesome things that are going to come to pass, the means of travel, the means of having fuel without digging it out of the ground and having all the pollution that goes along with it like we have today.  Don’t have to worry about those things.  The kind of technology that’s going to burst forth on the earth in the first hundred years alone is going to be dumbfounding.  Those of you who have the opportunity to live into that period of time and see these things come to pass are going to be in awe, when people work together and cooperate together, not try to hold knowledge or understanding back but try to share knowledge and understanding in order to accomplish more and to do more.  Awesome!  We can’t even begin to comprehend!  And then by the time a thousand years is over?  That world that makes ‘Shangri-La’ look kind of pitiful, that’s so much greater, that’s so much better.

Some people are move by stories like ‘Shangri-La’ and they think if only the world could be something like that.  It’s going to be so beyond that!  And so to think, to understand, to grasp God’s plan that when people have a horrible life and they fall asleep (death), and they’re resurrected in that kind of a world....  Because you see, that’s what God sees.  That’s what He wants us to see, how much better it is for them in that period of time than what they ever had it before; anyone who’s ever lived in the previous 6,000 years, unless they were a part of the truth, and even then it wasn’t a picnic in this world. What it’s going to be like – the contrast beyond night and day.

...the books were opened and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, notice... according to their works. Oh, that’s one that Traditional Christianity just can’t take - works; “You can’t be saved by works.”  Because they don’t understand what Paul was saying when he talked about works and faith.  Incredible!  And what James said about works and faith; I’ve given sermons on that and they’re both talking about different things. And so it almost sounds like, to the Protestant world, like ones contradicting the other.  Not at all!  And the world just doesn’t get it.  So it’s a beautiful thing when you understand the truth, that our works, what is reflected in our life... you see, those who hate works...you know what works that they hate of yours?  The Feast of Tabernacles, Passover, the rest of the Holy Days, the Sabbath – “...because those were ‘nailed to the cross’.”  But they’re not being saved by any kind of ‘works’ that they do, like Sunday, like Christmas, like Easter. Bit hypocritical don’t you think?

What you live, the works that are there are because of what you believe.  Works are going to follow.  You can’t have one without the other.  Faith is a matter of what you believe and living by what you believe.  If you believe in Sunday then you’ll go to church on Sunday.  If you believe in Easter than you’ll observe Easter.  If you believe in Christmas then you’ll observe Christmas.  But if you believe in the Feast of Tabernacles you will observe the Feast of Tabernacles.  If you believe in Passover and you believe in baptism, and why you must be baptized, then you will do those things; you will be baptized like God said to do and you’ll go under the water and you’ll come back up a new person, living a new life, striving to be a new person and seeking God’s spirit to dwell within you.  Because you become convicted, you know you have to have God’s spirit to live this way of life because you can’t do it on your own.  The Israelites proved that!  You can’t live the law, you can’t live the 10 Commandments on your own ability!  You have to have the holy spirit, you have to have God’s help!  It’s a beautiful picture.

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell – it’s just the word that means ‘grave’, a hole in a ground where most people end up.  That’s where people are put as a whole.  I love the word in the Old Testament; in the New Testament, in the Greek, they’re basically the same thing – sheol and hades.  They’re just a hole in the ground.  That’s what it was, where a body is put.  Back in the 1800’s and before here in the United States they used to use the word ‘hades’.  They’re going to go plant their potatoes in hades. “You’re going to go plan them in hell?!”   Just means you’re going to dig a hole and put them in a hole in the ground.  But that was a common expression, planting your potatoes in hades.  There was no concept of this place that’s hot and little things running around with pitchforks.  It just means ‘a hole in the ground’.  That’s what happens when people die.  God says, ‘dust you are and into dust you return.’ It’s just as simple as that, you just die.  And the only thing that you have hope for is that He’ll resurrect you in His time.  You don’t have an immortal soul.

I repeat these things sometimes because sometimes we don’t grasp the treasure of what we have, that every one of these things should excite you - every truth you have should excite you - but also people who are new who are listening for the first time, or just in the last few weeks, because it’s happening on a continual basis where these kinds of things happen and people who are just waiting around to see if it does happen, ‘just in case’.

Verse 13 - And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell/grave delivered up the dead which were in them: where they are.  They’re not up in heaven and they’re not down in some place, or wherever it is today that the mind might conceive of, where this place could be that’s hot with flames... and they were judged... they were judged just like we are.    That’s why Peter said ‘that judgment now is upon the house of God.’  When you’re called into God’s Church you are being judged.   The world isn’t, in the sense of God’s way of life yet.  Now they’re being judged as far as what mankind has done and God’s allowing things to happen in this earth, but in the sense of salvation, in the sense of receiving the truth, in the sense of living this way of life, we are the ones being judged, truly, when you have God’s spirit dwelling in you.

And so it says here ...and they were judged; now it’s time for their judgment because the books are opened up and they have to live a certain way of life according to the beliefs that they’re able to see now.  And it says, they are judged, everyone according to their works. Because that’s the way it works, as to whether you live by faith, whether you live and believe by what God has given you to believe or not.  And so that’s what happens in the Great White Throne, in the hundred years.  And what an astounding thing, again, that people are able to be resurrected and know that they had lived in a different time, that they were dead and that God Almighty resurrected them.  It’s going to be a very humbling experience, and for so many, for the overwhelming majority, the first experience of humility that they’ve ever truly had in their life; the first real experience at humility – true humility – where they experience something that they are so overwhelmed by, that is so much greater than them that they finally acknowledge it and see it right in front of them.  Incredible!  Because all that’s going to happen to this earth, the vast majority still will not humble themselves.  That’s why it’s so horrible, how far man will go because of pride and resistance, resisting the truth, resisting God.

Verse 14 - And death and the grave were cast into the lake of fire. That’s the end of the hundred years.  Finally it’s all over with – finally judgment.  This is the second death. Those who had to live twice and those who did not receive the truth, would not accept the truth, they die, never to be resurrected again.  It’s not eternal torture and torment!  What a sick, perverted thing Satan has foisted upon mankind!  To think that God Almighty, the God of love... The God of Love...  John said in 1 John, ‘God is love.’  That describes everything about Him – agape- that which we’re to become, that which we’re to live toward others.  It’s how you live toward others, how you think about others and it’s totally giving to the point of sacrifice.  Incredible!

And yet, this concept that human beings have, that that God could somehow watch, have some kind of sense of justice in seeing human beings who were deceived and human beings who made wrong choices in their lives and who never knew the truth and human beings who lived ‘bad’ lives, all of a sudden once they die they’re in this place of torment, but for all eternity?  That somehow a judgment should be that God would see pleasure in those humans who lived and died and now to live eternally, now to somehow have an eternal body but still be able to be bothered by flames and heat and sharp pitchforks and torment for eternity.  That would be such a fiendish, sick, perverted mind!  And yet the world is willing to believe that their God is like that.  That just makes me sick!  That is such a hideous, sick, perverted thing that Satan has foisted upon religions in this world, it really is.  You don’t have to think too much about that one to realize that’s pretty sick, that’s pretty perverted!  You choose to believe in a God like that – anybody out there – you are sick.  You believe in a religion like that that teaches such a thing?  They are sick!  The mind is sick!  It paints God in a hideous way, it truly does, because God is love, God is merciful and God’s plan is beautiful.

But human beings fight it and resist it – fight it and resist it to the core of their being!  Why?  What’s wrong with everybody being of the same mind?  What’s wrong with people doing what the One who created them and gave them life and sustains life for them...what’s wrong?  And when you learn that it’s perfect, it’s beautiful, it’s a right life that produces right fruit – why fight that and resist that?  Well, tells a whole other story doesn’t it, about human nature and what it’s like.  Selfish.  Doesn’t really want authority, genuine authority, God’s authority in their life.  It’s the mind of Satan.  It’s what he chose.  He didn’t want to have that.  Because that’s where selfishness leads; it leads to not wanting to have authority.  We want to have say - that’s why we have our own religions; because we have the religion of our choice.  We come up with our own ideas about God, of what He’s like.  That’s why people don’t agree out here.  They don’t like something about one religion....  Just like in the scattered church, if they don’t like one thing they’ll go out and start another one.  That’s why we resisted it for so long, didn’t want to be like them, didn’t want to be like that in any fashion or form, didn’t want to be thought of, didn’t want to be looked upon, didn’t want to be presumptuous in any manner like that – because that’s what takes place.

That’s what happens as a whole, people get different ideas.  Like we had one individual that didn’t like some ideas about the 144,000 and realizing that they were probably too young to be a part of that, so he went out to find someone in the scattered group who said he could be one of the 144,000 because somewhere out there you’re going to find somebody that agrees with you or something you want.  Crazy world!

Verse 15 - And whosoever was not found written in the book of life...because this is the end of all human life.  At the end of 7,100 years there is no human life ever again because everyone who has ever lived – is now either immortal, given immortality, given immortal life, given a spirit life, or they go back to the dust of the earth never to be remembered again, never to be resurrected again, never to have any kind of life ever again.  That’s God’s way of mercy.  If someone chooses when it’s all said and done not to love Him, not to love others, not to live by God’s law toward one another and toward God then God gives them that choice.  And it’s hard to imagine why people would be like that but there are going to be a lot who make that choice – not a few – a lot who make the choice they don’t want God, they don’t want His way of life.  And so God says the merciful thing is death; that they never have to live in that torment for eternity.  Because not living by God’s law brings torment, it brings unhappiness, it brings sorrow, it brings hurt and suffering; everything that man has experienced for the past 6,000 years.

So again, all who die, all who have ever died, young and old, whether it be an entire nation of people...and there are going to be entire nations of people.  There are going to be large numbers of people when this is all said and done – as there has been through time.  The time of the flood, young and old alike, they all died – all died.  But again, our concept of death is so different than God’s.  God wants us to look upon it and see, it as a matter of something we can deal with in our mind, as something like sleep.  That’s what it’s called over and over again – a sleep.  Because God has the power to wake you up, God has the power to give you another body - an immortal body or another physical body – whichever, whatever.  God has the power to do that and to Him it’s nothing.

How God views time is so much different than ours. We think of going asleep and waking up, hopefully, seven hours later, not one hour or two hours later and being up all night; but being able to have a good night’s sleep and waking up automatically in the morning because it’s something that God’s created in the ability of the human body to do.  But God, far beyond that, looks at all life like that.  Adam and Eve, it doesn’t matter how long ago they lived.  To Him, He’s looking forward because of the plan that has to be fulfilled and the beauty of it all, and when they’re resurrected again it’s like waking them up, being awakened out of sleep, no longer dead as we see it and how we think about death.  It’s a healthy thing that human beings understand things about death; that’s why it’s going to continue on in the Millennium.  We haven’t always understood that.  It’s like, no one’s ever going to die again and people are going to be protected from that experience...but you can learn so much from seeing death as a human being, to have a hope in something far greater, to grasp more deeply the plan and the mercy and the love of God, that He offers something so great and so incredible.  And what it means then, that hope that everyone would have, as people have had, King David so long ago, hundreds and hundreds of years ago – the apostles nearly two thousand years ago – that hope that they had till the day they died of a resurrection, of what they looked forward to and being in God’s Family.

Things you learn; that life is temporary, that we don’t have an immortal soul.  You know, that’s the very opposite of what the world teaches as a whole in Traditional Christianity.  What a horrible thing that Satan has done, that came from the Catholic church, that man has an immortal soul.  No, we don’t!  Over and over again it says ‘the soul that sins, it will die.’  Just means the life that sins, but ‘the soul’ has taken on a meaning of something that is... well, people can’t exactly describe what it might be, but it’s something inside of us that’s not physical and it’s not really spiritual, but it’s something that lives within us and that when we die it automatically all of a sudden turns into something that either goes to heaven or hell at least, or in between.

So what is death like?  Today, if we had anything close to it as far as God’s concerned for us, for mankind, for people that might be able to understand something, it’s better than suspended animation.  There are people who want to have this cryogenic thing take place.  There are people who’ve spent money for these kinds of things because later on, they believe, that if you can freeze them so-so and all the way through – crispy cold – that at some point someone is going to figure out how to thaw you out just as quick without having all the problems that a frozen body might otherwise have, and somehow put something in here (head), some kind of electrical charge, and all of a sudden it’ll bring you all back again and whatever problems you had, whatever physical ailments you had – by this time, two hundred years, three hundred years later up the road here science and technology is going to be so great that you’re going to be able to receive that new brain if you need a new brain – if something was wrong, it wasn’t quite working right...  a new heart, new liver, new lungs, new stomach maybe?  Why not just a new body if they can do that?

But that’s what God gives – a new body.  And you don’t have to have all these little frozen chambers around waiting and waiting and waiting for science and technology to somehow come along to learn and to know how to do all this.  What an awesome thing to know what God offers.  He says, ‘dust you are...’ and you just return to that, but you’re asleep, there’s no memory, you don’t know it, it’s just like going asleep.  Do you know when you’re asleep?  Well, only when you’re starting to wake up out of that and maybe having a dream or whatever it might be, you’re not really awake, but there’s no thought, no memory when you’re dead, when you have that kind of a sleep, and time passes and you don’t know it.  Death is not a bad thing.  I mean, you don’t want to get there quickly – God has made it so we live a full life and we all desire that and that’s a right thing, it shouldn’t be cut short.  But if it is, through an accident, or something happens, those things take place.  But to take life, one’s own or others, is wrong; and yet it happens in the world all the time!  And so people are meant to live a full, healthy life, or to strive to live a full, healthy life as best they can, and yet we find out what healthy means if you get a little older and live off all the preservatives we have now days.  God’s way is so much better – so much better than suspended animation. And so generally human beings have a great fear of death.  Nothing to be afraid of.

I remember one time of a woman who lived in this particular area over towards Jamestown.  It was the first time I encountered this experience.  She asked that I pray that she die.  She’d lived her full life, she’d been in the Church, received this way of life and she was suffering mightily and she didn’t want to have the experience of... it was a problem with her lungs and stuff as well and she had trouble breathing and she didn’t want to die that way.  She just wanted to be able to go to sleep and die.  I prayed that prayer; and that was different from any kind of thinking I had ever had before because she didn’t want to have to suffer, she’d lived her life fully and she didn’t want to have to go through certain fears about some of the process of dying.

So wouldn’t everyone pretty much like to have a quick peaceful way to go – rather than gasping for that last breath and trying to sustain life.  Sometimes people will do anything to keep someone alive; and if you’ve ever witnessed it, if you’ve ever seen it, it’s not a pleasant thing.  To hold on, because so often people don’t have a hope in anything else.  When you know the truth, just like this woman did, she was ready.  She was ready to go to sleep!  That’s how she looked upon it and she knew that she was at the end of her life and she was ready and she asked that she might be able to just go to sleep now and die and wait for the resurrection.  There wasn’t any hurt and pain in that at all for her, it was peace for her.

So again, sometimes we get some strange ideas because we want to hold on, or we want someone else... we’re going to keep our loved one alive no matter whether their mind is there or not, no matter what kind of suffering that body has to go through.  That’s not my idea of a good way to die, if you understand what I’m saying.

I see a head up here shaking because of someone who works in that particular field in hospitals.  If you’ve worked around that kind of thing a lot you understand the suffering of human beings and sometimes what people will put other human beings through when death is really not to be feared in those cases.  When the time has come you just go to sleep and then God has the power to wake you back up – maybe a thousand years from now, whenever it is, wakes you back up again, gives you a better body in a world that’s so much better than this one, so much better, but it’s hard for us to see that way, to think that way.

So I thought of this crazy definition here.  I went to the encyclopaedia just to get this one here:

Suspended animation: is a slowing of life processes by external means without termination.

In other words, there’s something still there.  No thank you, I’ll pick dust of the earth.

...breathing, heartbeat, and other involuntary functions may still occur but they can only be detected by artificial means.  Extreme cold can be used to precipitate the slowing of the individuals functions.  Use of this process has led to the developing science of cryogenics.

Cryogenics is another method of life preservation but cryo preserves the organisms using liquid nitrogen that will preserve the organism until re-animation.

Quite a process, quite a complicated thing and I don’t know how at first what that would feel like when you all of a sudden....  sick world!  The article went on talking about how that placing astronauts in suspended animation has been proposed as one way for an individual to reach the far reaches of the universe... because we’re talking about something that God created millions of light years away.  Who wants that?  Can you imagine?  You want to go someplace that’s a million light years away.  What does that mean?  It means that if you can travel the speed of light in suspended animation you’ll get there in a million years... And what do you find at the other end?  Whoop tee doo!  People come up with the craziest ideas sometimes.

You have to laugh at some of the things of human beings and when you come to understand how much greater it is what God offers, what God places before us, there’s no comparison.  We’re going to review some of what was covered in a Feast of Tabernacles sermon in 2009[1] concerning that great time when people are blessed with the second life to live.  You don’t know what it’s like to be an orphan in certain cities of this world, without parents.  You don’t know what it’s like growing up where you have to beg for food and learn bad ways on street corners.  Millions of children like that on the earth; millions who live their lives like that without parents, without foster homes.  They have no home.  India, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Africa, South America – naming continents now – all over the world - throughout Asia.  You don’t know what it’s like to live that kind of life when you live in this western world.  Truly, a lot of suffering in the world.  How merciful is it?  How blessed is it to wake up, to be given a life in the kind world that will exist that we’re talking about?  To me it’s a beautiful thing! If it happens for those who don’t have the opportunity of living into a new age; because you see, every day there are children who are killed in war, in fighting, bombings – every day.  Every day malnutrition – children dying every day because they don’t have enough food to eat.  It’s incredible what takes place in this world.  Isn’t it a blessing to wake up in the kind of world they’re going to have?  Look forward to that time indeed!  Look forward to seeing what’s going to take place through the thousand years and what’s going to happen at that time.

And so things that come to pass in the remaining time that’s here before us – it’s a blessing that they have a better life to live.  You know what?  Those of you who live in the Millennium, you don’t get what they get.  You want that!  And that’s a right thing to desire and want, and indeed you should, those of you who are called at the end of this age, to live into a new age, what an awesome time to experience – just because you’ll be the pioneers of that age.  But the difference between the beginning of that age and you living your full life and dying, and what it’s going to be like in that last hundred years before the final hundred years of the Millennium – incredible things and changes that are going to take place!  And so by the time you get to that final hundred years, when that resurrection takes place, it’s a far better world than the one you’re getting ready to enter into as far as how awesome, how beautiful, how filled with peace – everything that will have been established that torments Satan for a thousand years when he sees it being built and made, created, brought to pass, that he loathes and hates with all of his being.  Incredible!

So, you have a lot of work to do and it’ll be exciting, but what you’re working for is just the beginning and its hard work at the beginning.  It’s hard work, it takes time, but what a blessing for having the blessing of one Church, the blessing of one government on the earth, the blessing of helping to rebuild this earth – and what the earth becomes in time is so awesomely beautiful that the world those people get to be resurrected into is going to be awesomely beautiful for them, and that’s what we need to be able to see and understand – God’s mercy and God’s blessings of a second life.  Truly is great and God wants us to understand that, to get rid of some of the ideas and concepts that sometimes we have as human beings, about grasping onto every straw to the last breath because of how bad and how horrible death is. No, not for them it isn’t, it isn’t really, it’s so much better for them in the long run and as a matter of a scheme of things.

I’m going to read some of those things that were brought up in this sermon from 2009 and go through some of these scriptures again because it has to do with this entire picture of what God wants us to see and grasp and hold onto with all of our being.  And so repeating some of this....

...this brings us to another misunderstanding...

As I was going through this particular sermon here....

...because people have not fully understood God's purpose for the Millennium... and God's purpose for the Great White Throne....

We got some of that confused in times past.  We didn’t understand that there’s a big distinction between the Millennial Period and the Great White Throne.  We had this concept and even the seal of the Church – the lion and a lamb and a little child with them - that this is how the Millennium’s going to be.  No, it’s not.  No.... it’s not.  But we didn’t understand that.  That is reserved for another time, the Great White Throne, that’s when that becomes a reality.  And so some have had to go back and tell their children, “Well, I guess you won’t have a pet lion.”   “That’s going to have to be on hold here, that one’s not going to work out.”  But there are some of these kinds of concepts because we didn’t understand some of the scriptures and what God was picturing for us.  But as we’ve gone on He’s wanted us to be able to grasp the distinction, to understand the work that’s involved in the beginning of a thousand years and the work that takes place throughout a thousand years to make the world what it is in the final hundred years – that it is a beautiful, and awesome, incredible world to live in – beyond night and day in comparison.

And so we talked about....

...Mankind still has human nature in the Great White Throne, but God's purpose for mankind has greatly changed once we enter into that particular time period.  And the greatest change at that time is that the vast majority of mankind is being resurrected to live a second physical life...[but this time] vastly different after seven thousand years because this is the time for judgment where man will be ensured a quality of life that is unique to this period of time, and this period of time only.

The second life has guarantees in it, because see, in the next thousand years people will still die, things will still happen.  God will still allow certain things to happen in life for a purpose and for a reason.

Isaiah 65:17 - ...behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: That’s what God says He’s creating.  That’s why I love some of the scriptures in the New Testament because it talks about a creation; and Paul talks about it, and it talks about people in the Church and how man longs for, that man doesn’t understand, and we’re described as a part of that creation, that God’s creation is still going on.  People generally think about creation, they think about when life was put on the earth, and they don’t even understand that as far as the world, but God gives us understanding that things have existed, He brought things into existence as far as the universe, millions of years ago.  We don’t know how long.  The evidence is on the earth of life that was here.  We understand that the world was covered by sea and so forth and I’ve talked about even in a book I wrote of how that in Kansas we had some areas (that’s very dry out there now) that was a seaside area, because at one time you could see where the ocean was.  I would go out as a child and find sharks teeth in certain areas of Kansas because it was under water.  They found skeletons of all kinds of fish, sharks, different kinds of animals out there, sea creatures; and then areas up a little higher with dinosaurs and different things like that.

Things were created long ago!  And Traditional Christianity doesn’t get it.  When they try to tell scientists and others, “God only created the earth about 6,000 – 7,000 – 8,000 – 10,000 years ago when man was first put here.”  And science disagrees with that because they know better.  And so there’s a great conflict and they don’t understand what Satan did.  They don’t understand what took place, a great war and how Satan tried to destroy everything and to try to destroy God’s plan like he’s tried to do since the beginning.  Incredible, the mind!  And so he literally had the power and he destroyed things on this earth – that demonic world as well – and it wasn’t until God said in the beginning of Genesis that the earth was without form and void.  The earth was already here and God came along and began to put life here again, He began to separate the firmament – it was already here!  Began to set the earth in its proper orbit and allow the sun to come through again because of all that was covering the earth at that time and it describes that process in Genesis.  Beautiful picture!  Nearly 6,000 years ago – so most people think of creation as that period of time.

What God is creating is far greater than that and it takes longer to create, that’s the purpose of all that, the reason the earth is here. The reason life is on the earth is for mankind to be able to live on this earth, to have existence on the earth, and God gave us life, and God’s creating within us that mind, that which has to be transformed, a renewing of the mind that is only possible by living a human life, by experiencing good and evil, by experiencing evil in this world, by experiencing human nature, and by being able then when God calls you, to make a choice that you reject one and want the other. What an awesome thing!  And then by the power of the impregnation of God’s spirit He begins to create a mind that one day He can put in a body to live for eternity, one that is in absolute total unity and oneness with Him – by choice – because He can’t create that mind by fiat, He can’t create it by instant creation, otherwise we’d just be robots.  Hard thing for human beings to grasp and understand.

So He says, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.  There comes a time when the past is the past – it’s gone.  Sometimes it’s hard for us to forgive ourselves, and yet God says He forgives us as soon as we repent and we ask Him to forgive us. As far as God is concerned He says ‘it’s as far as east is from the west’ – you can’t measure it, it’s gone.  God doesn’t keep a tally – strike three, you’re out!  I’d been out a long time ago, the first day after being baptized.  We sin with our mind, we have selfishness, ‘lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, and the pride of life’ but we battle it; and God talks about that battle that we’re to conquer.  And He says we have great hope because Jesus Christ conquered and overcame so we can conquer and overcome.  The word means the same thing in the Greek – overcome/conquer.  It’s a battle! We wage a war!

And so in time, even we are able to forget... the past is the past, the poverty, the horrible conditions, the evil ways that people have been treated, the sick, perverted ways that people have been treated, the horrible things that they’ve experienced in life – finally comes a time when those are no longer remembered.  They’re way back there somewhere because of what God’s creating in His Family.

But be glad/happy and rejoice forever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem, that means more to me now than it did a year ago; Jerusalem, peace, Salem, the city of peace as we talked about here recently as well, what God was willing to sacrifice for us in order to bring us to this, to give us peace. Instead the world has Babylon. That’s what the world has.

For I create Jerusalem, a rejoicing, and her people a joy.  Because that’s what it’s like when there’s peace – no more war, no more fighting, no jealousy’s, no envying – that’s incredible!  Human beings, we’re chock full of it.  We have to fight those things – envious of things that someone else has or receives or something done to them that we think we were better or should have had or should have deserved more than they did.  And we think, “Oh, we don’t think like that.  I don’t think like that.”  Yes we do.  Greed, selfishness – it’s just a part of the human mind.

For I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in My people: and the voice of weeping shall not be heard in her anymore, nor the voice of crying. There’s a lot of crying in this world, has been for the past 6,000 years; a lot of tears, a lot of tears have been shed, people hurting people, people being hurt emotionally by others, the sorrow that goes along with being hurt by others because people live in sin, because people mistreat others and say things to others that hurt, that cut deep, that are like a knife stabbing you in the heart.  And that’s just talking about things that happen within the Church – see, because you still have tears once you come into God’s Church.  Life isn’t perfect just because you come into God’s Church.  You still have human nature and on occasion you still hurt people, sometimes the closest ones to you that you love the most – because we’re selfish by nature.  Obviously in the world people experience far, far worse, life is much harder because they don’t understand what brings happiness.  They don’t understand the laws that bring happiness and peace of mind in the world.

And so the oppression that’s out there, sometimes we forget what it’s like out there because of what God has given to us, the peace.  So we have an incredibly large measure of peace that God has given within the Church, but we find ourselves still struggling, we find ourselves on occasion needing sermons and being reminded of our human nature and the battles we have and the things we say sometimes to one another and how we treat each other and realize that it has to change, we can’t be that way!  And that’s how God judges us then, according to the truth that He gives us, and we learn living by love is not an easy thing when you have human nature.

Living by God’s love toward one another always is something that comes only by a close relationship with God – and that truly determines and reveals our spiritual strength and our spiritual growth in life; because no one is perfect!  Everyone  has fault, everyone has sins that they’re striving to come out of, everyone is striving to yield to this creation of God, of becoming a new person, new in creation in the way we think and the way we are.  And so from the time you’re called to the time you die, or the time you’ve attained to what God has brought you to, is night and day.  We start out as a baby.  We start out as a small sperm and an egg combined together in growth and it starts out very small and you can’t tell what it is and it takes time to grow, just like in the womb of a mother, and then in time it begins to take on shape, we become more like God, in agreement with God, in unity with God, through time.  We become more and more in agreement and understanding of God and the purpose of God and we’re able to live this way of life more and more, but we still see our human nature.  But we’re never perfect, we always have sin.  Not like the world has it, not like when we were first called – because if we do we have some big problems in the sense of the mind, in the sense of where we are, in the sense of what we’ve conquered and overcome.

Doesn’t mean you still don’t slip and have problems with some of the same things you’ve always battled, but you have been refined and you have grown and you have matured and you’re better able to fight those things, and you’re better able to see those things and spot those things and pray to God and cry out to God to remove them more quickly.  You’re able to respond more quickly to someone else and say, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”  Sometimes when people are first called that’s almost an impossible thing to even take place in their life.  The world, as a whole, doesn’t think that way, to be able to genuinely say, “It’s my fault, I’m sorry.  I’m wrong, I shouldn’t have responded like that.  I shouldn’t have said that.”  Incredible!  We become better and better at it through time – responding more quickly, repenting more quickly, asking God for forgiveness more quickly, crying out to God for help more quickly.

...the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her anymore, nor the voice of crying. What an awesome thing!  No more sorrow because there’s no more pain, because people aren’t hurting each other anymore, because we’re not people anymore in the sense of human beings.  God is talking about when it’s fully complete; when it’s finished we’re all spirit.  No more human nature in us.  He has brought us to the point in time where He can change us, and once you’re out of this body and you’re out of a physical life and you’re in a spirit one and you have that life permanently within you because you have attained to that, because you’ve grown to that, because God has brought you to that point of His creation that He can give you that kind of a life to live into everlasting life, age lasting life in the God Family – what an awesome thing!  No such thing as sin anymore, no such thing as selfishness – we’re fully at one with God.

Revelation 21:1 – let’s read about part of this as well because it talks about it here as well as in the Old Testament, in Isaiah.  Remember now we just finished chapter 20 where it talks about that full 7,100 years, and so God is bringing us up to a continuation of the story now in chapter 21 as it continues on and it says - And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth passed away; and there was no more sea. Now, these are poetic in nature, descriptive prophetically in nature, and it doesn’t mean that the earth doesn’t exist, it doesn’t mean that things aren’t still here in the universe.  It’s like all of a sudden everything’s going to disappear; no, it’s beautiful what God has created.

When you look at some of the things on the Hubble telescope, just the awe of the beauty of some of the things that God has placed out there, so massive, stars, suns into the millions and billions.  It is awesome the power of God, and they’re beautiful...and God has put it there to enjoy, for a purpose, for a future purpose of things we can’t even conceive of.  And so its talking about what is new.  It’s like that new language – sometimes people wonder what it’s going to be.  This new language in the future, what’s it going to be?  Is it going to be Hebrew?  Is that going to be the ‘pure’ language?  The only thing that makes a language ‘pure’ is when people use it purely, in a pure manner.  In other words it doesn’t matter what language it is you can still curse.  What makes a language pure is the use of it, it’s the mind.  And that’s what it’s talking about, it’s talking about a future time.  It’s not talking about a specific thing like English or Chinese or Dutch or whatever it might be, it’s talking about human beings that finally become a part of the God Family and then that which is pure then in us.  Because what is pure – it always comes out of your mouth – what you think, what you are in life.  That’s where we sin so often.  It eventually comes out our mouth and therein is where we sin as a whole, in things we say...and other actions as well.  It’s kind of unique how the word is given in scripture there even when it talks about certain things about communication, it’s not just communication.

And so again here, it’s talking about this period of time, And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, What God created, the Family, the Kingdom of God.  That’s why it’s such a marvel and we’ve been blessed to be able to see things in a greater way of what God has planned and purposed from the beginning of time, from going back to any kind of a beginning.  And we’ve had sermons about that, of how that God predetermined that there would have to be a Messiah, predetermined His Family.  His great desire is for a family, things we can’t even begin to comprehend – the one Almighty Eternal Ever Living God... I can’t comprehend that...Alpha, the beginning but no beginning – Eternal.  I can’t comprehend that and neither can you.  Our minds can’t.  And so His great desire was to have a Family.  Everything that’s ever been created is about that purpose, is about that Family.  That’s why in Romans Paul talks about things that were predetermined before time, before anything was ever brought into existence. Before the angelic realm, it’s a marvel to understand that God had a plan.  He didn’t do things by... “Oh, what are we going to do today?  What am I going to do today?” ...because by that time there wasn’t any ‘we’.  “I think we’ll have a spirit creation.”  Creates some spirit things out here, make them different, some that have four faces, one of a man, one of a lion, one of a bull, and one of an eagle.  I can’t comprehend that!  An angelic being with wings, that you’d be able to see it, it’s made of spirit and it has four faces.  I can’t comprehend that, neither can you, but all for a purpose.  And then finally the universe, then finally the earth, then finally mankind – all for His Family.

...and so he saw a new Jerusalem, that’s His Family – that which describes His Family, Mount Zion, His Government, His city, that which He creates that is spirit, those who are a part of it, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Beautiful picture! And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with mankind, and He will dwell with them... I’m excited about what God has given us in the last couple of years alone, to understand in a deeper way that God says, “What is the house that you will build for Me?”  That it wasn’t ever about a physical tabernacle in Jerusalem.  That isn’t what God has looked forward to; it wasn’t about a temple and the Levitical system.  That isn’t what it was all about.  Those all foreshadowed something later on of far greater importance in His plan, but that wasn’t what it was all about.  But the Jews have never been able to get beyond that, they’d like to get back to that if they could, back to having the Levitical system, back to having offerings, but they know they can’t do that according to things of the law right now, so they’re restricted from what they were able to do up until 70 AD.

And so there are certain things that people go through and certain things that people experience and not understanding what God is doing, that His desire all along is to dwell in mankind.  That’s why to me it’s one of the most beautiful pictures in John 14.  We just went through Passover.  To understand one of the most awesome things that God ever revealed to human beings is that, just like it says in John 14, Jesus Christ said that everything He did and everything He spoke – He said it’s not from Me, it’s not from self, it’s from the Father.  Every word – He is the Logos made flesh, He is the Word of God made flesh.  He said, ‘Everything came from the Father.’  Awesome!  And then He told them how He was able to see, to say, to do, to know the things He knew, to say the things He said.  “Because the Father dwells in Me...  If you’ve seen Me you’ve seen the Father.”  And they still didn’t get it.  To me those scriptures are beautiful.  That’s why they said, ‘just show us the Father and that’ll satisfy us, we’ll understand then – just let us see Him.’  It wasn’t about something physical – it was spiritual.

And then the most beautiful thing after that; He said He had to send a comforter, the holy spirit, so that both the Father and the Son could dwell in human beings by the power of the holy spirit.  That’s an awesome thing!  And then to come to understanding that God’s purpose through time here.... See, because as human beings we can be cut off from them dwelling in us.  Every time we sin God says you are cut off from the holy spirit, just like an umbilical cord and the blood to the baby, squeezed every time there’s sin and it’s opened up every time you repent before God, the flow of the holy spirit, God will not dwell in sin.  That’s why Jesus Christ had to come and die, to pay the penalty of sin so that when sin is forgiven the greater purpose of having sin forgiven was so that God the Father and Jesus Christ could dwell in us.  How awesomely beautiful is that?  ...through the power of the holy spirit.

But we still find in this human life that we sin.  Not until you’re spirit, not until you’ve gone through this entire process and this creation that God is doing in you because you have been begotten by the power of God’s spirit that dwells in here – just like a baby growing until the time for birth - of this mind having grown to a point where God can make the change and give you a spirit body to be born again; to be born once as a physical human being and finally to be born again of spirit. It’s a beautiful thing!  Fully spirit to where God will dwell in you, Jesus Christ will dwell in you for all eternity. Just like we are now, separate, able to have conversations, and things we do separately, differently, different experiences on into the future but now in a different body and now permanently, never to be cut off from the flow, from the life of God dwelling in us ever again.  And that’s what this is talking about.

Verse 3 - a great voice from heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with mankind, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God.  It’s because He’s with us, He’s in us – words that can be used in the same way in the Greek language.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; Immediately?  It doesn’t happen immediately, we go through a process.  As time goes on we have less suffering, in the Church of God we grow and we mature and we have less suffering, less conflict, we grow in closeness to one another through time, we develop relationships through time and the things that we were before and the way we were before begins to change and we become (as God said to do) more like Christ.  “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ.”  And so we go through that process and we change. The mind is transformed, as Paul talked about in Romans 12.  It’s a beautiful picture.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; so it’s not immediate, it doesn’t happen immediately.  It’s a process that leads up to this new heaven and this new earth, when as it says, and there shall be no more death, finally over – no more death, no more dying, because we’re spirit into age lasting life.  Not like how most believe that when you die you right away go up to heaven or you go down to hell and you’re there forever – that’s not God’s plan.  Incredible!  That’s why I love the scriptures back there in Acts.  You think, “How Is it possible that people in the world read these things without cringing and twisting and turning?”  The very thing that Peter and the different ones had to tell the Jews at that time – that David was dead.  He didn’t go anywhere when he died.  There were different ideas the Jews had by that time!  He said, “David is still dead and buried.”  Just like God said, “Dust you are and dust you return.”  He’s not in heaven.  It makes it very clear there’s only one who has ever ascended into heaven – only one who has ever lived a human life who has ever ascended into heaven – the Messiah, the High Priest, Jesus Christ.  Yet mankind would have us believe that there are different ones are up there.

...and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. They’re behind, after 7,100 years is over, no more suffering.  Why?  No more sin and no more human life.  Everyone will be spirit beings by that time who are going to be spirit beings, are going to be a part of God’s Family.

Verse 5 - And He who sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And He said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. In other words, God will bring them to pass.

Because of where we are in time, because of what we’re seeing in the world and sometimes being in the western world, we divorce ourselves from understanding what the world is really suffering through and what the world is really going through and how difficult human life truly is.  Sometimes we don’t grasp that in the way we truly need to. We need to grasp more fully the mercy and the blessings of God of a plan that He has for what’s in the future – especially in the Great White Throne.

~~~end

1. God’s Purpose for the Millennium – Pt. 2

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