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STEPS TO ETERNITY

PART THREE

God has been seeking man since creation:

  • INDIVIDUALLY (Gen. 1-10) Creation, Flood and Fall 0 to 2166 BC
  • NATIONALLY (Gen. 11 – Mal. 4) Abraham and Israel 2166 BC to AD 1
  • BODY Church Age (AD 30 to present)

Rapture

Tribulation: the purpose is to reconcile Israel to Christ

  • Israel in national unbelief Ezk 37-38
  • Northern Army strikes Ezk 38
  • Anti Christ appears as hero mid point temple worship Mat 24:15; 2 Th 2:3-4; Rev 13 wrath of God Armageddon Rev 16:14-16.
  • Second Coming: Mt. 24/25; Rev. 19.11-21
  • One third of Israel repents Zech. 12.12; 13.8-9; Rom. 11.25-27

Millennium: Dt 30:1-6; Isaiah 11.1-10; Zech. 8.22-23

New Heaven and Earth 2P3.10; Rev. 21-22

 

Jesus Christ is the Lord of Time and Eternity (Reed)

Lord of the Church 1-3

  • Revealed in Glory 1
  • Judging the Church 2-3

Lord of History 4-20

  • Crowned as King of History 4-5
  • Judging the Earth 6-18
  1. Seven Seals 6-18 (six seals ch. 6; Jews ch. 7
  2. Seven Trumpets 8-11 (six trumpets 8-9; book and witnesses 10-11; 7th trumpet 11:15; seven signs 12-14)
  3. Seven Bowls 15-18 (worship & wrath 15; seven bowls 16; Babylon falls 17-18)
  • Returning to the Earth 19
  • Reigning on Earth 1,000 years 20

Lord of the New Heaven and the New Earth 21-22.5

  • Provides new life 21-22.5

Invites all to come to Him 22.6-21

PERIODS OF PROPHECY[1]

Bible prophecy forecasts key events in God’s involvement with man.  Here is a timetable of prophetic events, from the angelic hosts heralding the coming Messiah to the saints singing praises before the King of Kings.  Daniel describes 70 prophetic “weeks” (490 years) as God’s timetable for the Jewish people and the city of Jerusalem (9:24-27). Highlights of this period are Christ’s death as a sacrifice for sin, bringing in righteousness as He establishes His kingdom, and the rebuilt millennial temple.  With the exception of Christ’s death, all these events will take place during Israel’s national repentance at Christ’s second coming. The first 69 weeks (483 years) include the command to rebuild Jerusalem, the first coming of Messiah.  Christ’s being “cut off” (crucified) and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A. D.  This 69 week period ended at Christ’s triumphal entry. But Israel rejects the Messiah, interrupting the 70-week timetable.  A gape, or unexplained period of time, follows the 69th week (Dan. 9:26).  Daniel 9:27 references the end-time Antichrist; thus the gap is about 2,000 which anticipates the church age.

  1. THE CHURCH AGE (Worshipping – Waiting – Winning) – Before His death and departure, Jesus promised to “build my church” (Matt. 16:18). The church, born on the Day of Pentecost, consists of the twin remnants of Jews and Gentiles who come to trust Christ as their Savior (Eph. 2,3). God’s purpose through the church is to preach, teach, and call out a people for His name.  In addition to world evangelization, the church is commissioned to “wait for the Son from heaven” (I Thess. 1:10; Acts 1:8).  The church age closes amid rampant apostasy in an environment that is marked by self-obsessed humanists, immortality, violence, and internal unrest (2 Tim. 3:1-6; 2 Thess. 2:3).
  2. THE RAPTURE (Going) – God concludes His program for the church before the seven-year Tribulation (the 70th week) begins (1 Thess. 1:10; 5:9). The rapture “catches away” the church; then the Antichrist appears on earth (2 Thess. 2:3-9) and the Tribulation begins.  Jesus will meet the church in the air to “take you to be with me” (John 14:1-6; 1 Thess. 4:13-18).  This event may take place at any moment, and is the church’s “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13). During the Tribulation, the church is in heaven with Christ.  Members receive rewards, and the church becomes Christ’s “bride” and enjoys the “marriage feast of the Lamb.”  The church also prepares to return with Him in glory (1 Cor. 3:11-15; Rev. 19:7-9).
  3. THE TRIBULATION (Watching) – Daniel’s 70th week (9:27) begins as God officially resumes His program for the Jewish nation. The key purpose of the Tribulation period is to reconcile the nation Israel to the Messiah.  After persecution by the Antichrist, and isolation among the Gentile nations pledged to its destruction, the Jewish nation confronts Christ at Armageddon and cries in repentance (Zech. 12:10). Events during the Tribulation include:
  • Israel exists as a national entity in unbelief (Ezek. 37, 38).
  • Northern armies invade Israel (Ezek. 38). These forces strike at the regathered remnant of Jews who are in the land, as Satan seeks to destroy the Jewish people before they can be reconciled to the Messiah.
  • The Antichrist appears, first as a political super-hero of the West (Dan. 9:27). At the midpoint of the Tribulation, he enters the temple in Jerusalem and declares himself to be God (the abomination of Desolation), demands worship, and refuses his “mark” to all who will not bow down to him. (Matt. 24:15; 2 Thess. 2:3,4; Rev. 13).  This act initiates the Great Tribulation, as God pours out His wrath upon a belligerent Gentile world system in a series of disasters that culminates in Armageddon (Rev. 16:14-16).
  • Jesus Christ returns with His saints to take His throne and judge the nations (Matt. 24:25; Rev. 19:11-21).
  • Israel’s national remnant, about one-third of the people, accept their Messiah and experience national reconciliation (Zech. 12:12; 13:8,9; Rom. 11:25-27).
  1. THE MILLENNIUM (Ruling) – For 1,000 years, believers “reign with him” in a theocratic kingdom where all of God’s promises to Abraham and his descendants are fulfilled (Deut. 30:1-6; Rev. 20:4-6). During this kingdom, universal peace and justice prevail (Isaiah 11:1-10), and believers from all nations worship at the millennial temple in Jerusalem (Zech. 8:22, 23). Satan’s influence on earth ends, though only temporarily (Rev. 20:1-3).
  2. THE FINAL UPRISING – At the end of Christ’s 1,000 year reign, Satan gathers a multitude of unregenerate people to rebel against the King (Rev. 20:7-9). The uprising exposes conclusively the depravity of the human heart.  With Christ personally-present, and every opportunity to embrace righteousness, many still rebel against God.
  3. GREAT WHITE THRONE JUDGMENT – The lost of all ages are judged, not to determine salvation, but the degree of punishment to be borne in the “lake of fire” (Rev. 20:11-15). This will be consistent with the “light” received, and rejected, during their lifetime.  Before the Great White Throne, the lost of all ages finally acknowledge the lordship of Jesus Christ, but too late for deliverance (Phil. 2:10, 11). All human distinctions about power or position are meaningless – the small and the great face their “works” before a holy God and are condemned.  Their sentence is eternal, conscious internment in the lake of fire.  Satan is also cast into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:10).
  4. NEW HEAVEN, NEW EARTH (Wondering) – Next, the consummation of all prophecy appears: the new heaven and earth.  A firestorm destroys the present planet (2 Peter 3:10), and God creates a new world (Rev. 21:1-5).  The saints live in a New Jerusalem (Rev. 21, 22) with many “rooms” prepared by Christ for them (John 14:2,3).   Here there is no pain, no death, no curse, no adversary.  Above all else, we will be with the Lord, and He will share His glory with us for all the ages to come.

[1] Elwood McQuaid, Moody, 4/90, p. 14-17.

Transcript

For many, many biblical reasons. God has promised that the Church will not go through the wrath of God on Earth. The Jews will, the Church won’t. The Jews are going to be as Noah in the Ark, they’re going to be preserved through the flood of God’s wrath on the Earth. The Church is going to be much like Enoch. They’re going to be taken right up, out of this world, without dying if they’re still alive and remain to that coming. Then begins the 5th event in God’s great plan.

What we have here is the final week of God’s prophetic calendar. For those of you that have never studied this, turn back to the book of Daniel. The Bible goes, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. Then the major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, here’s Daniel. Daniel stands at the head of the minor prophets. He is actually the last of the great prophets and the first of the minor prophets as the order goes in our English Bible. He’s the 13th of the 12 following, minor prophets. He truly pulls together what all those prophets wrote about. If you understand Daniel as it correlates to the book of Revelation you can really fit your prophetic framework together. If you only read Daniel, then you’re in a little bit of trouble. If you only read Revelation, you can’t figure out where John’s coming from. As we put Daniel and Revelation together, we understand much.

In the 9th chapter, the 27th verse there’s a whole series of much biblical study we could study. Let me just read that 27th verse. This is talking about the 70 weeks, the Messiah coming, and Gabriel who came. There’s just a whole lot going on here. The 27th verse says, “And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed is poured out on the one who makes desolate” (NASB1995). That’s about as hard to understand as any verse in the Bible. If you back up to verse 24, it says that “70 weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression” (NASB1995).

All biblical prophecy, all biblical revelation about end times is focused on one group of people and it’s not the Church, it’s Israel. If you miss what God has planned for Israel, you cannot understand the future. If you miss what God has ordained in His prophetic calendar for that national group of people who live in total unbelief these days, who lived with a veil over their eyes to this day, grossly blinded eyes to this day, then you miss what God is doing. God has decreed 70 weeks. You say, what is 70 weeks? 70 weeks as biblically described here are 490 years. 70×7=490. God says that there are 70 weeks that He has ordained. If you look at the inception of the return of the Jews to the land, in the time of Cyrus. If you chart out from the time they went back and started the sacrifice in Jerusalem until Jesus Christ came and offered Himself as a sacrifice. If you want to get out your calendar and people have spent their lifetime studying this. Miraculously enough, as the Bible is miraculous, from the time that they returned after the 70 year captivity, until the time that Jesus Christ was sacrifice for the sin of the world is exactly 483 years. That’s 69 weeks of years.

What’s amazing is that the 27th verse says that there’s one week that’s left. It says, he’ll make a covenant with many, for one week. There are still seven years of biblical prophecy that are out there, hanging. It’s like when you check off your checks at the end of the month and you do your accounting. All of a sudden, you think wow, I have a great balance until you look and there’s still a check outstanding. In God’s prophetic checkbook, 483 years of His plan, from the time of the sacrifice restored in Jerusalem until Christ was offered, is over.

Then something happened. There’s a long space. That is that Israel rejected Christ. They wouldn’t have Him as their King and their Messiah. They crucified Him instead. God said, because He knew this was going to happen, He says that I’m going to bring in a new people of God, I’m going to bring in the Church and they’re going to be the light to the world. But, when I’m done with them, I’m going to come back and there’s going to be seven more years left.

That’s what that little pyramid is there. That’s what the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 is. Right in the center of God’s prophetic plan for the world, for the universe and for bringing back the control of the universe to the Lord Jesus Christ, to bring that title deed back, and unleash God’s wrath on fallen mankind is a seven-year period known as the Great Tribulation.

It says here someone, this someone is the Anti-Christ, is going to “make a firm covenant with the many […] but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice.” What we know from the book of 2 Thessalonians is that this person, and you can turn there if you want, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, the first 12 verses are all about this mysterious person. He’s the man of lawlessness. He is the Beast or the Anti-Christ. This one is going to come and he’s going to be a political superhero of our world. If things were close, they’re close now. Our world is coming to a point where we’re talking about the cessation of atomic bomb production. We’re talking about the reduction of atomic stockpiles. We’re talking about that this armament of hostile nations in powder keg areas of the world. We’re talking about a new world order. That new world order is going to be headed by this man in chapter 2. He is going to come, and he is going to be revealed, verse 3 says.

An apostasy, a global apostasy is going to come. What apostasy is, the total taking out of doctrine, out of the Church, and just have everybody go on emotions, and feelings, and love, and signs and wonders. The world is going to come to a point where they’re going to say doctrine divides, we don’t want doctrine, we just want love. When you have love and no doctrine, you have apostasy. God says my love is based on the fact that all have fallen short of My glory, and they must be redeemed. They must be redeemed by God who became human flesh, that’s Jesus Christ. As soon as you take out doctrine, you lose Jesus Christ. You lose the redemption. You lose His sacrifice for sin. You lose His blood poured out. You lose any kind of distinction of what God’s doing. Pretty soon you get into universalism where everybody’s going to go to Heaven and that’s where we are.

I don’t know if you realize it, but you and I are very strange in this world, that you would be here on Sunday night looking at an old dusty book that nobody can agree on and is subject to everybody’s interpretation, you can cut and choose as you will. We are strange in this world. You’re getting stranger by the minute.

This man of lawlessness, he’s the “son of destruction,” verse 3 says. He “opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.” How the world is going to finally agree is they’re going to finally say, everybody disagrees on religion… let’s have one world religion, let’s worship you since you brought peace to the whole planet, let’s worship you. The Earth is going to go into a period of unprecedented peace for three and a half years.

Ezekiel tells us in Ezekiel 38 that Israel is actually going to lay down their arms. Now, that will be a day, won’t it? That is the finest trained air force and one of the most successful armies in history. They’re going to lay down their arms? Ezekiel says that they’re going to be an unwalled village. That means they’re not going to be protecting themselves. They’re actually going to buy into this global peace thing.

In that instant at the midpoint, Daniel says in Daniel 9:27, that this man, this satanic indwelt world leader is going to exalt himself and display himself as being God. He is going to unleash upon the world one of the greatest outflows of occultic, deceptive, power. As he does that, God’s going to let the world unravel. He’s going to say, he wants to show the occult, I’ll show the occult. What happens in the tribulation hour is, three and a half years, the bottom side or the slanted down right-hand side of that pyramid, the last three and a half years are going to be the total unraveling of the world.

I’ve described it many times. It’s going to be a time when God lets loose all the hordes of satanic, demonic creatures. They’re going to come and inhabit this Earth. They’re going to come and cause people to be so afraid they’re going to die from fear of all the horror that’s there. The world’s going to culminate in Revelation 16, which is the time of Armageddon.

What’s the purpose of the tribulation? It’s two-fold, we’re going to see this as we plod through the book of Revelation. The tribulation, number one and foremost, is to bring Israel back to God. After they’ve laid down their arms, after they have let the beast come into their temple, and after all that’s happened He starts making Himself out as God. They’re going to realize that they believed in the wrong one. They’re going to start running for their lives. The tribulation hour is going to culminate with the Jews encircled. They’re going to be hiding for their very existence. Finally, all the Jews are in one place. They’ve been all herded into one place. What Hitler planned to do; what Satan always wanted to do is going to be almost within their grasp.

At that instant, in Revelation 16, they all gather in a place called Har-Magedōn. The plains of Megiddo. It’s a beautiful battlefield, many battles have been fought there. Napoleon said it was the ideal battlefield of the world, God said that much earlier. All the nations of the Earth are going to converge. It says that the hordes of the east are going to come in countless millions. It said the confederacy of the north and the southern coalition, they’re all going to converge to do one thing to stamp out the only blight on the Earth, the Jews. In that instant when they come, I want you to turn there and see in Zechariah chapter 12.

Here we go, Zechariah 12 (that’s just back from Matthew), this is a climactic moment. Zechariah 12 and starting in verse 10. In that instant as the Army’s converge and as they encircled the Jews, Jerusalem is besieged, and it looks hopeless. They’re going to have the life crushed out of them. In that instant God says, “I will pour out,” verse 10 of Zechariah 12, “on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication.” A lot of people that are very earnest hearted Bible students, they say I don’t understand how come there’s so many verses that say, hold on through the tribulation. Why would God write those verses if the Church wasn’t going through the tribulation? All those verses also say, that when you see someone in Jerusalem flee to the Judean wilderness. I don’t live in Jerusalem, I don’t ever plan on living in Jerusalem, and this Church will never be in Jerusalem. That’s because all those verses in the New Testament that talk about enduring the tribulation were written for this group of people that, verse 10 says, God is going to pour out on the house of David, who were all back in the land in unbelief and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They’re going to be back in that land and they’re going to be multiplied, millions of them. A “Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced.” My sins pierced Christ but I didn’t, the Jewish people did. They said, on us and on our children be the blood of this man, they said killing. The Jews, as well as my sin were responsible. That doesn’t mean we should kill the Jews like Luther was in favor of. It doesn’t mean we should exterminate them. Calvin didn’t have much use for the Jews and neither did Savonarola, Zwingli, or any of those people in Church history. It doesn’t mean we should hate them and call them Christ’s killers, like Protestantism has done and Catholicism for 2000 years. It just means a simple fact that, the One that “they pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.”

Now quickly, go to chapter 19 of Revelation. This climactic event of Armageddon is going to trigger the second return of Jesus Christ. Christ came once secretly; He’s going to come the second time and every eye will see Him. Recently, the Jacksonville Sentinel or whatever their paper is called in Jacksonville announced something, which I thought was very interesting. Jacksonville is one of the larger cities in America. Not in population, Jacksonville, Florida that is, but in land size and their incorporated city limits. The city is 800 square miles. Pretty good size for the number of people. They recently calculated that if every single human being on Earth was standing in a generous two foot by two foot square, that would mean you each have four square feet, which means no one would be touching you, that you could fit every single one of the 5 billion people on Earth inside the city limits of Jacksonville, FL That’s interesting. People don’t take up that much room, as long as they don’t have houses, and cars, and stuff, just people. That’s why it is going to literally be possible for every single human being that’s ever lived to stand before the judgment seat, the great white throne.

Hundreds of millions are going to converge in the holy land. A lot of people have had trouble with that. They say, oh it’s just figurative. No, the armies of the world will all converge. In that instant, when they think that they are going to have the conquest, verse 11 of chapter 19 takes place. Armageddon has come. They’ve been circled, the holy city. They’ve encircled the Jewish people. “And I saw Heaven opened,” verse 11, “and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself. He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in Heaven, clothed in fine linen, white, and clean, we’re following Him on white horses. From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, ‘KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.’ “ That’s the second coming that no one will miss.

Jesus Christ comes down. He defeats those armies around the nation of Israel and His feet touch, Zechariah tells us, the Mount of Olives. When He touches the Mount of Olives, a dramatic earthquake splits the Mount of Olives, and a river of water flows down to the Dead Sea. Another river flows out to the Mediterranean. The whole topography of the Earth changes. We enter into that period describe in Matthew 25, judgment of the nations. Christ comes down, He incinerates His foes. He divides up all the people that are left on the Earth.

A lot of people always wonder who is living in the millennium? That’s what chapter 25, if you want to turn there, of Matthew is talking all about. It says in Matthew 25, starting in verse 31 it says, “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.” That’s always been the conflict through the years. How can Christ come in 1 Thessalonians 4 and only some people see Him? Yet it says right here, He’s going to come, and all the nations will be gathered before Him, and He’ll shepherd them. Verse 32 says, “from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” Verse 33 says, “He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.” “The King will say to those in His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’ “

What is all this? It’s two different comings. When Christ comes for His Church, for His Bride, when He does that, He doesn’t touch the Earth. Every eye does not see Him. Those that pierced Him, don’t look on Him. He comes in a moment, the twinkling of an eye. Snatch is the word. There’s no snatching going in here. There’s obliteration and there’s carnage, but there’s no snatching. This is Christ coming down and planting Himself on Earth. This is not Christ taking Saints out. This is Christ splitting up the good from the bad. That is after Armageddon, after He conquers those armies, after He destroys the foes of His people. He actually sets up shop on Earth and sits on a thrown on this Earth. The Jews get to build this immense temple that is talked about for eight chapters in the Bible.

You could put all the verses in the Bible about the Virgin birth and the Trinity, it wouldn’t even fill one chapter. Did you know, there are eight chapters talking about the millennial temple. There are people that don’t even believe in a millennium. It’s amazing what is important to God. He says that there is going to be a temple built during this period of time. That thing is going to be so big, and it’s described in so much detail that it’s actually going to be large enough to make Mecca look like nothing. The Arabs have shown us that you can run millions of people through a shrine. St. Peter’s is proof of that. This is going to be a temple that is going to be a thousand-year testimony to the Lord Jesus Christ and to His sacrifice.

The peoples of the millennium, chapter 25 of the book of Matthew, are those who believed on Him. Verse 41 says, “Then he’ll say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.’ “ He’s going to separate the goats from the sheep, those who believe, those who in the tribulation hour were converted, those Jews that were converted at the last moment. Those people will enter into the millennial reign of Christ. For 1000 years God is going to hold back the curse. That’s what chapter 11 of Isaiah and a multitude of other passages are talking about when it talks about that. Venomous creatures will not have venom anymore. The carnivorous creatures will not be eating flesh anymore. All of the curse will be pulled back. That weeds will not conquer the Earth anymore. That thistles will not be reigning. That man will no longer have to, by the sweat of his brow, till the Earth. It will go back to being like Eden. The curse is not removed. It’s only held back. Biblical prophecy says, that for 1000 years God is going to show what the ecologists, what the Earth first people, and what all these people that are trying to preserve the dying species have always wanted. It’s going to happen. There’s going to be no pollution. There’s going to be no poison. There’s going to be no toxic anything. It’s going to be a perfectly beautiful place and God’s going to let man see what He let Adam and Eve see. A marvelous curse reduced and pulled back earth.

What happens? Those few people that start the millennium live for a thousand years. They have children and children and children, Isaiah tells us. We don’t have time to go into all of this, till we get there in Revelation 20, but Isaiah tells us that a young man will be 100. He will be cut off at 100 if he is rebellious. In other words the rod of iron is, God will not let anyone be overtly rebellious or He will kill them during the theocratic rule of Jesus Christ on Earth. During that time, it says that mankind will mushroom to being innumerable and countless like the sands of the seashore. Every generation that is born, there are more and more of them. What we see is that though there is a perfect environment, a perfect environment can’t make a perfect heart. Only regeneration can change people. There’ll be an increasing number of unbelieving people that are subjugated by Christ rule but are not believing in Him.

Then we come to Revelation 20. What we see at the end of this millennial reign of Christ this thousand year period, Satan is bound in verse 1 of Revelation 20. It says that the thrones are set up and all of the activities of the millennium take place but at the end of the thousand years, verse 7 takes place, of Revelation 20. “When the thousand years are completed.” I have great difficulty with someone that says there’s no millennium because it’s very rare that anything is mentioned so often, in this chapter it says seven times that there’ll be a 1000 year reign of Christ on the Earth. You know what that means to some people? It means that Satan is bound right now, and Christ is reigning. You and I say, if Satan’s bound right now, he has a long chain because he is running to and fro on this Earth. We do not see any type of holding back of his power.

Verse 7, “When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison.” He is in a prison for a thousand years. At the end of that time it says, he “will come out,” verse 8, “to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the Earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for the war; the number of them is like the sand of the seashore. They came up on the broad plain of the earth and surround the camp of the saints and the beloved city.” In that instant, they think that they can destroy the millennial temple and destroy the headquarters that God had placed on the Earth. In that instant it says, there’s not going to be any warfare. It says in verse 9, “and fire came down from Heaven and devoured them.” That’s it? That’s it.

A thousand years are up and He’s finally, once and for all, proven that a perfect environment will not make perfect people. Only a changed heart can. You can clean the environment all you want, and you can clean up society, but the only permanent change is a heart transplant by Jesus. “The devil,” verse 10, “who deceived them was thrown in the Lake of Fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

Then, are the sad words. The great white throne is set up. Verse 11. “I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it,” the throne, “from whose presence the earth and heaven fled away.” “And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne.” They are judged. “If anyone’s name,” verse 15 says, “was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the Lake of Fire.”

After that time period, there’s an indefinite time period that Daniel talks about, where God adjusts between time and eternity. In that instant, there’s a very mysterious thing that takes place. We go from a rollback curse to what Peter talks about in 2 Peter 3. What he says there is, that God is going to climatically destroy all the physical universe, not the spiritual universe, the physical universe. He’s going to change it all. There’s no longer going to be a place where righteousness does not dwell, except for that one eternal Lake of Fire… which is down on the bottom, on the right of the slide not pictured.

Then what? Revelation 21 and 22 happened, what that describes happens. That means that there is time no more sickness, pain, death. No more darkness. There’s no more temple. There’s no need of a temple because we will all have God with us for eternity. What God began at creation, what God offered man in the garden of Eden He gives to man, never to have any rebellion take place. Again, He gives us eternally His presence with Him. As a song writer said, “and He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own.”

The culmination of all biblical prophecy is, as God brings His redemptive people together, both of them… by the way, the Jews are not second-class, and the Old Testament Saints aren’t second class… we are merged together at the marriage of the Lamb. By the time we find the conclusion, we find everyone harmoniously dwelling together, with God forever.

That’s biblical prophecy. That’s what God has planned. I just hope that it causes each one of us to have a whole different outlook on life. Nothing happens to us that God is not aware of. Nothing happens to us that God is not orchestrating for His glory. He is concertedly working together all events in our lives for His glory. What does God want from us, the Church? He wants us to be a light to this world. He wants us to worship Him. He doesn’t want us to build up every single physical possession we can to pass on to the Anti-Christ when we get taken out of this world. He wants us to invest every possible resource of time, and biblical giftedness, and physical talents, and financial resources, and the very energies of our souls to see as many people as He has ordained, come to join in that chorus of the “KING Of KINGS And LORD Of LORDS.”

I hope someday, that when you and I are standing at chapter 5 of Revelation, where we began this evening. I hope that you will be able to truly say verse 12, that’s the Lamb of God, You are so worthy. You were slain for me, that I might have power, and riches, and wisdom, and might and I was given the honor, and glory, and blessing, of being Your servant, that I have given it all back to You.

Eternity is going to be a measure. It says that those, in Daniel chapter 12, that have turned many to righteousness are going to shine as the stars. I hope you don’t relegate that great honor to the few. I hope all of you will someday shine as stars forever and ever because your life has been spent turning people to righteousness, not in building up every earthly comfort that can be grasped.

Christ’s message for our Church of our day was, you’re rich, you’re prosperous, and you have need of nothing. That’s where we’ve gotten to. He says, I call you to repent, get spiritual eyes to start laboring for what is eternal.

I thank you, dear Lamb. You who are worthy to receive glory, honor, and dominion, and majesty, and power, that You have loved us and redeemed us for a purpose. I pray that in every one of our hearts, You would reveal that purpose. That You would humble us under Your mighty hand. That You would cleanse us of every filthiness of the flesh and spirit, that we might offer worship that is pleasing in Your sight. That we might glorify You. That’s our only desire. We yield ourselves to You to that and for Jesus’ sake. Amen.