Book of Romans, 8:23 - We Wait for the Redemption of Our Body, Pt. 3 (04/05/2020)

Thanks for serving that, Dave. It was great. All right, I'm going to share my screen here.

Let's see. Let me get rid of that. Hello, ladies and gentlemen.

There we go. All right, now I think we've got it working. Let me get this over here.

I got to always have a little housekeeping to do with this software. No doubt about that. But OK, I wanted to just mention this little school here.

Look at them. And I want to thank Dave and Katie and Colin and Jenny.

They were the real hearts behind this. And so because of their inspiration, we started looking for the right man to run this place.

And the Lord brought us Brother Paul Davis. And he is so wonderful.

But this is what he's built. And I think we started, I think, like Dave said, we were down to maybe six students, six or eight students when

Paul came. And this is what we had pretty much the next year or two after he was here.

So look at these little ones and think about it. If you hit that Give button on our website, this is where 90 % of that money is going to go.

The rest will keep the lights on because they use our building, our church building for the school. And we really need your support.

And I don't hesitate to ask you to give. And it's God's way. We're not going to go have a bake sale.

I'm not against you guys if you do it at your churches. We just don't. We might do one inside the church, but we don't go out on the street and do that.

We use God's people and their heart to give. And I think that's good Bible methodology, all right?

So all right, well, let's get started here. I've really enjoyed the service so far.

It's my privilege to be able to be with you today. And I've prayed about this, and I want to be the prepared man that you guys deserve.

And so hopefully, the Lord will bless. Let's have a short word of prayer, and we'll get started. Lord, we just ask you to bless the preaching time today now.

May your Holy Spirit be our teacher. May you guide me to stay strictly in the truth of the word of God.

And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, we've been teaching verse by verse through the book of Romans.

We made our way to Romans chapter 8 in this little passage. And what I discovered, actually, this year, for the first time, never crossed my mind that this little passage in the middle of Romans chapter 8 is about the rapture and the end times.

And I hadn't, I mean, just hadn't thought about it. And that's what's so wonderful about the Bible, is it's a living book.

So you can be in the ministry 40 years, like me, and be a pastor for over 35 years, and preach 4 ,000, 5 ,000, 6 ,000 sermons, and still go back into a very familiar passage, and even be teaching it.

And while you're teaching it, God teaches something new. And I'll get a pen out right here, write it down right on my sermon notes.

So the next time I preach it, I'll put that in it, because God just taught it to me. I mean, that's how the Word of God is.

It is God speaking to us. And that is far more important than us speaking to Him.

I love prayer. Prayer is important. But that's us talking to Him. It's way more important to see what

He has to say to us. And I think in the modern church, we don't put enough emphasis on the Word of God. I think the

Word of God should come before the praise service. If you look at the revival meetings that happened in the Bible, in the

Old Testament in particular, people would stand up and just read the Bible. I mean, they didn't have fancy theatrics.

They just read the Bible. Just read the Bible all day. And then revival would break out at the end of the day.

And people would bring instruments and start playing instruments and praising God and dancing with their hands in the air.

Now, the way the Jews do it, the men dance with the men, right? And the women dance with the women. Real interesting, if you've ever been to Israel and seen that, seen them do it.

It's amazing. They're very cheerful, happy people when they're praising God. So that's how it works.

It's God's Word. When He speaks to us, speaks to our heart, that's when revival happens. When His Word speaks to our heart and the

Holy Spirit speaks to our heart through His Word, that's when true revival happens.

And so we've been so privileged to be able to speak to so many of you guys that are visiting us from Tradeway.

We love it. Even when you come to our physical church, all of our people love having you guys there.

And we always look forward to having you there when you can come physically to our physical church.

But this is great, too, because so many of you are here with us and we recognize that. We love it.

We see Park Meadows as sort of the foundation for all the ministry that I'm able to do around the country, even with you guys.

So we welcome you today. I want to welcome our church family. We're a little country church. I mean, if we're lucky, we run 60 on Easter.

So we're a little country church in a town that doesn't grow much, unfortunately. But we have a great group of people, and everyone is in the

Word in our church. Everyone is not an exception to it. We don't fight over the color of the carpet, stuff like that.

We're just in the Word together. So we're happy to invite you to be with us today. Romans 8 23, and not only they, but we ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the

Spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to wit, the redemption of the body.

And the cool thing about that, when you really take a look at that verse, it's actually talking of the redemption of the body.

That hasn't happened yet. We have been adopted. We have been redeemed. We have been bought by a price, set free from the slave market of the world, the flesh, and the devil by the blood of Jesus.

We know that. That's past tense if we're born again, right? But there is a future tense of salvation, and this is talking about the redemption of our physical body, which we know, if we're honest, it pulls against us, and it pulls against what

God wants, and even what we want to do with God. It totally pulls the wrong way. The old man is not saved, couldn't be saved.

That's why God crucified your old man in Christ. When Jesus, when he died on the cross and was buried, we were placed in him by the

Father, because he's not bound by time. It's a mysterious thing, but we were placed in the body of Christ when he was on the tree.

Our old man was in him, and our sins were totally paid for by him as he died and gave his life and his blood.

And that old man was buried with him in the grave for three days. And then when he rose again, our new man rose again.

The old man is still in the grave. Now, that's how we should count the old man that we live in. This physical body, count it as if it's crucified because it is in God's mind, and live a resurrected life, right?

That's what it's all about. But that's a moment -by -moment thing, because you have to choose to be spirit -filled. And so you have to make that choice.

So you just, how do you do it? Reach up and grab Jesus' hand and say, where are we going to do today? Where are we going today? And just keep doing that all day.

Bible says in 1 John, as long as you're doing that, you cannot and will not sin, because your spirit and Christ's spirit become one spirit.

Your spirit and the Holy Spirit become one spirit, and you walk where your spirit controls your mind, which controls your body, and your body now is a living sacrifice.

And this is the order God built us to be in the Garden of Eden before the fall. Then the fall changed everything, which this talks about.

You see in the middle of that verse where it says we ourselves groan? And when you look at the rest of the passage here in this little section in Romans 8, it says the whole creation of God is groaning, because there was a curse placed on man and on the earth itself when

Adam and Eve fell. And we, we the humans, chose that we wanted good and evil.

We only had good, and Satan tempted Eve, I understand that. She said, oh, I want good and evil, and Satan made her believe it was

God's will for her to get it. Adam knew the whole time that was not right, and he sinned willfully. And when he took the fruit and ate, that's when the whole universe changed.

Everything in God's cosmos, which implies in the Greek orderly creation, was put a little bit out of order.

Now, none of this surprised God. He had planned it that way. And you say, what? Of course he did, because the

Bible says Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world. God only has one plan. He doesn't need 15 plans.

He's perfect. He has one plan, and we're in it. And the difference between us and him, many differences, of course, but he sees the whole plan and has all the information, and we don't.

So sometimes we complain about things. Say, how could a loving God do this to good people?

Well, you know what? We don't see the whole picture. I guarantee you one thing. It doesn't change one bit of fact that he is a loving

God. When we question, it doesn't change the fact that he is God, he is loving, he knows everything, and he's in complete control of everything, and he's pleased with his plan.

Now, I know we can do things that displease him. We can sin, displease the Lord, but he will never be displeased with his whole plan, because he's sovereign and this is his plan.

You got to learn that. I mean, that's not taught readily anymore. 150 years ago, when the great Charles Spurgeon preached and other great preachers,

D .L. Moody, Whitefield, you just go down the road, they knew these things, and it's in all their sermons if you'll go read them.

This is not new stuff. The new stuff is the bad stuff, stuff where man becomes more of a part of his own salvation, which is impossible, by the way, but that's the theology of today, that you have to do something.

Sure, you have to help a little bit, and we're not on that today, so I don't want to get on the rabbit trail there. All right, so let's keep looking here.

As we go into this passage and a little bit of review here, look right in the middle. Jesus, I mean, the

Apostle Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says, "'I reckon that the sufferings of this present time "'are not worthy to be compared with the glory "'which shall be revealed in us.'"

Now, in the context of this, when is this going to be revealed? At the rapture. You see, so right here in the middle of Romans chapter eight is a section on the second coming and the rapture.

I have to admit, I just had not thought about that before, but there it is.

And then right here, see all these places where it says creature, and you say, well, why do you use the King James, Brother David, that old language?

Well, because it is the most accurate, as far as I'm concerned, the only accurate English version of the

Bible on the planet. I spent two years studying manuscript evidence. I can't in five minutes convince you of what

I found. You'd have to do your own study, but I'm telling you, the modern versions have so many multiple errors.

And I'm not talking about just word differences. I'm talking about where the Greek is wrong behind the

New Testament, so forth. I don't want to go into that. It's another rabbit trail. But the King James does have old

English, and we have to look to the Greek that was behind that manuscript. And I know there's more than one manuscript behind it, of course.

I don't want to go into all that. But if you look at this word, it's really quite simple sometimes. You don't have to have a

PhD to figure it out. But if you just go down and look at verse 22, where it says the word creation, notice this says creature, but this word is titsis.

It's the same exact word here, here, and here. So what I like to do is just do that.

I just, in my Bible, I just put them all creation, because that's what the word is. All right, same word in the

Greek, same word in the English would be better. So this, when you see that, this is talking about the entire creation of God is groaning because of the fall of man, and it wants to be put back in order.

For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now, till the time

Paul wrote this, and it's still true today. So the whole creation is just waiting for the

Lord to come back. And I believe the rapture happens at that time, not seven years prior to it.

I don't break fellowship with anybody that believes anything they wanna believe about the end times, but I have been challenged to study this on my own, rather than just taking mentors' word for it and books like the

Pentecost book on things to come, Dwight Pentecost, that's the Bible. But that thing was written so many years ago, he didn't have enough insight.

I'll say, I'll put it nicely. He didn't have enough insight yet. You and I can easily see more things about the end times now than we could even 50 years ago.

I'll show you why in a minute. But it's exciting. You gotta have an open mind about this because I'm gonna launch into it.

And why? The reason is because Romans 8 launches into it here and that's what we're studying. I didn't plan this just to be a topical study on the end times because of the coronavirus or anything like that.

This happened to be right where our church was when this happened. We were right here. I was already preaching about this for a

Sunday or two, and then we just continue. So it's a wonderful thing how the

Lord brought this topic at this time though. All right, now, in John 3, verse 16 is the most popular verse in the

Bible, but it's also the most misunderstood verse in the whole Bible. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

What a beautiful, beautiful verse. And it speaks so much of the gospel right there in one verse.

But you have to remember, God didn't write that verse first. He wrote the whole book of Genesis first.

And that includes the fall of man and the depravity of man. And until you understand that man is totally depraved, and I know theologians today say, oh, no, it doesn't mean totally.

Yeah, it means totally. The Bible's clear on it. There's none that seeketh God, not one, the

Bible says. We've all gone after our own way, the Bible says. And we shake our little fists at God.

Now, this is before we're saved, right? This is the natural man. None seeks God, the Bible says.

The Bible says our eyes were blind to God. Our ears were deaf to God. Our soul and spirit were dead.

And the Holy Spirit had to come and quicken us while we were yet in our sins. Hath he quickened us?

That's regeneration. By the way, you hadn't done a thing at that point. It's all of God. Check it out.

You know what the great Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon said one time? He said, you know what?

An effect can never be the cause of the cause. And the cause of your regeneration was the

Holy Spirit breathing life into you just like he did Adam. Same way, only spiritually.

And that's what caused your salvation and everything else after it was an effect. And none of those effects can cause it.

That'll give you something to study for the next two weeks. Take a look at that. Study it. Because all the churches have four or five, one or two

Baptists have, I grew up Baptist. We took that off the sign and I'm not against Baptists. I just, I don't know.

Modern is not the same as when Spurgeon lived. I'm more like a Spurgeon Baptist. But if we put that on the sign, no one would come to church.

Spurgeon Baptist Church, nah, it doesn't work. So we just took it off so we don't confuse anybody. But even the

Baptists have at least two things that man is required to do to save himself. Believe and repent, right?

Well, that's not how it works. Those are effects. The only reason that you believe and repent is because the

Holy Spirit turned your lights on. Now go, you don't have to agree with me. I'm not here to teach you.

I'm here to get you to study. So please do. And we can, you know, we've been throughout the idea not too long ago, maybe we have a question and answer session sometime.

We don't do that at church. When the man of God's preaching, he preaches, he sits down and then we pray and then we go eat, okay?

And, but we can have a different time during the week when we can have question and answer. So do your study first though.

I don't want to talk to you about it until you've done your study. That wouldn't be a fair argument. All right, so here we go.

Look at this. In this verse, God so loved the word world. The word world is the word cosmos, which means orderly arrangement.

When God put the order into the whole universe and the earth in Genesis chapter one.

And so this is not just saying Jesus died to save us. He did, and that's a big, big benefit to us.

He died to save the whole universe and put it back in order. You've got to know that to understand it. What's interesting, if you go ahead and you read the context of John 3, 16, which means verse 17, verse 18, verse 19, verse 20, verse 21, you will see the depravity of man right there.

Because it says, you know, when Jesus came, no one wanted him. No one wanted him.

The world loved its darkness and it rejected the light. Check it out. You'll see I'm right. Depravity of man has to be understood first before you can ever understand what the death of Jesus and his blood and his resurrection and his

Holy Spirit coming to call you and tap you on the shoulder and wake you up where, oh, there's my shepherd.

I'm a sheep, I'm hungry, and he's got all the food. Oh, my eyes are open. I see him for the first time. My ears are open.

I hear him. I hear his invitation. He's irresistible and I get saved. You see, it was all him doing it, not us.

All we did was receive a wonderful free gift. That's the old fashioned gospel right there. Check it out.

Go read books. I don't like to read modern books. Read on theology. Read the old ones, 150 years old. That's the best.

All right, so here's what happened. You had the world without form and void. The Holy Spirit hovered over it and he brought order, right?

And then you had man in the garden and it was perfect. It was beautiful. Man, Adam and Eve had everything they needed.

All they had was good. And Satan came and offered them bad. And they said, well, we want that too.

So now we have that with it. This is what our cities look like now. All right, now, except the streets would be empty now, wouldn't they?

God knows how to empty the streets too. And you say, oh, the devil did it. Listen, God is sovereign, right?

Satan just serves him. And he's one of the ministers of God. And I know that sounds weird to you, but Satan, all the creation of God serves

God. So the problem is some of them serve him unwillingly, like Satan and his imps.

And then like the goats and the tares on the earth, they don't realize that everything they're doing is to put stuff on the shelf for God's people.

So they're serving God too. I learned that from Brother Otis. But here's the state we're in now, see?

And because now, now when you think about this, when people start saying, well, how can a good God do this to good, you know, to good bad things to good people?

Here's the thing, it's because we ask for it. So we got what we asked for. We said, we don't want just good.

You know, let's back up a little bit. We don't want just that. We want to know evil too.

So now with all of the beautiful waterfalls and the streams and the green grass and the trees and our spouses and our babies that are born and our grandbabies that are born and all the beautiful things like the ocean on the

Caribbean, that blue water, blue sky, all of that beautiful, good stuff we get to enjoy, but we also get the bad with it, like the coronavirus.

It just comes right with it. So you got to get used to that. And when the bad hits, the Lord calls that the evil day, you need to already have the whole armor of God on.

And then you may not be real happy during the evil day, but you can be joyful. And there's a difference. God wants us to be happy too, but that's seasonal.

There are seasons of happiness and peace. And then there are seasons of spiritual warfare that we all go through. I don't know about you, but our family has gone through some of that just during the stress of this time.

And we're all in different households. And I was fortunate enough to have two sons that lived in Austin and they want to get out of there fast.

For one thing, it's a liberal city. And so they're going to shut it down real heavy, we thought.

And so they came, so Paul and Matthew came to stay here and Paul's fiance came and Matthew's girlfriend came and they're here with us.

Took us about four days to get used to that many people in the house. And then after that, it's been awesome because we have each other to play games with.

We can eat together. We can talk about everything going on, but listen, it brings stress. And we've had different ones of us in our family, myself included, it got really uptight.

It got a little bit biting at each other, nipping at each other. We've all gone through that. You have too. And yet, you know what?

We've had a closeness to the Lord and to each other like we've never had before. And you'll have that too. So you get the good and the evil, right?

That's what we asked for. That's what we got. But guess what? According to John 3 16, when

God comes, when Jesus comes back, it's the second coming, he sets up his kingdom. He's going to put it back almost like it was in the garden of Eden.

Look at that. You got the lion laying down with the lamb and children will be able to play with them.

Isn't that amazing? So this is coming in our future. Jesus talked about this.

They asked him, tell us, when will these things happen? What is the sign of your second coming and of the end of the age?

The Greek word there for world is age. When's the end of the church age? When are you coming is what they're asking him.

And he told them, and I had a friend once that challenged me and said, David, would you consider letting

Jesus Christ's chronology, the end times, be more important to you than the books you've read? And from that point,

I studied for a solid year on the end times. I never had an interest in it before. And I learned my teaching, the things

I had been taught were wrong. And the things I had been teaching were wrong. So I had to apologize for them and take them back and teach it according to scripture after that.

But anyway, we'll talk about that a little bit more. But notice here that he talks about pestilences there in verse seven.

Well, that's what the coronavirus is. It's one of those. And earthquakes and all these things in diverse places, wars, rumors of wars, we've always had those.

But here's the key. Jesus gave the key right there. All these things are the beginning of sorrows. That's an idiomatic expression in the

Eastern world. It means birth pangs. So it's like a woman about to have a baby. The birth pangs get closer together, harder, closer together, harder, closer together, harder, and then the baby's born.

And that's the key to understanding these things. And Jesus gave us that key. So he also said in this beautiful passage, you know, he said, see that you be not troubled.

Now there's a message for us today, don't you think? Because this is troubling times. But be not troubled as a

Christian for all these things must come to pass. Listen, God is right on his timeline.

He is sovereign. He is exactly right on his plan. Jesus may have his feet on the threshold of the door of coming back again right this minute.

We don't know the day and the hour, but you know what? We can sure see when the trees are budding that summer is near.

I grew up on a ranch. I mean, I know how to do that stuff, right? I know how to know when summer's close.

Well, we can do that by reading these passages. All right, so it goes on through, you know, it tells us, here's the key now.

Verse 15, when you see a temple built, on the temple mount, which hasn't happened yet, that's when you start getting, thinking about, okay,

I might need to have a safe place to be for a while. That hasn't happened. But when you see them start to build that temple,

I don't know if President Trump will have something to do with getting rid of the mosques that are in the way or not. I don't know who will do it.

Someone will do it. And there'll be a Jewish temple built on the mountain where the old temple was.

And when you see a man come and offer a pig on that and blaspheme

God, you have three and a half years before Jesus is coming back at that point. And you got three and a half years of the worst tribulation you'll ever see on this earth.

So you need to have a safe place to be. And it ain't in the city. So please listen to me, all my friends out there in all the great cities we've been to,

Boston, New York, you know, Seattle, you can just name, you go through Dallas, Houston, name them all over the country where Tradeway's been.

Our friends all around there, DC, all of these places, you need to get out of the city when that happens.

Now, you haven't seen the temple built. So like Jesus said, let's go back to this. Be not troubled.

These things must come to pass. The end is not yet. So you have time, is my point. We have time to continue working right now.

And this could be a wake -up call. And maybe it is. Maybe we need to start thinking about preparing, but we still have work to do.

My friend that challenged me about, you know, would you let Jesus' chronology be more important? He also asked me one other interesting question.

He said, how many last trumps can there be? Because he said, David, that's when the rapture happens. And I didn't want to debate him.

I walked away and said, I'll think about it, friend. And for a year, I studied it. And my view did change.

I used to believe the rapture happened at the front end of the seven years. And then the second coming happened seven years after that.

I no longer believe that. So this is what we're looking for is the building of the new temple.

And that's when we need to start getting really, there's not much time left at that point. But we're not there yet.

We're at a time now where the Lord is still preparing us and helping us to know to get ready. All right, so now in my study on the chronology of the end times,

I did that study that year and have continued to do that study from time to time as the

Lord leads me to do it. And I want you to notice, we talked about last time about the manner, in other words, how

Jesus comes and the chronology, because both are clues that will destroy a theory that's not the truth.

Because theories, what is a theory? A theory is put there to be shot down, the same in science as it is in theology.

It's okay to ask questions and put a thought out there and say, could it be this way? Could it be that Jesus comes in a secret way where no one sees him and the church goes up, seven years go by, and then he and the church come back.

Could it be that way? It was okay to explore that. There's an interesting book out there written by a journalist whose dad and granddad were pastors, and he went and found the history of this theory and the house it started in.

You might want to check that out. But anyway, I've read a couple of books by this gentleman there, fascinating, but it's just a theory.

So listen, if there's several points of scripture that shoot it down, then shoot it down.

Truth is more important than getting emotional about a belief we've had. You got to get over that.

And the minute you get over that, God sets you free. You got to realize some of the stuff your denomination taught you is wrong, and you got to let it go and quit being denominational in that sense, and take the good stuff that fits the

Bible and keep it. It's like eating fish, I've heard. You know, like you eat the meat, you spit out the bones. You just can't keep the false stuff when you see it's false.

That's cheating. We don't want to cheat. And I know we made it available to you. We have something you can get hold of called the 10

Commandments of Proper Bible Interpretation, and Dave Huber will make that available. Ben Russell will make that available if you ask for it.

All right, so let's look at the manner. Jesus said how he's not coming, and this is interesting. He said there's gonna be many false teachers.

They're gonna say, hey, he's already come, and he's in a secret place. So there was a secret coming where you didn't see him come.

No one saw him come, and he's already come, and he's out in the desert, or he's in a room somewhere, and he came early.

Well, what happened was when they taught this, Paul said, I have to correct this because there are many people who are believing it, and it is hurting their faith, all right?

So Jesus said, when they teach this, don't believe it. All right, do not believe it.

He said, I'm not going to come in a secret way. Now, that doesn't fit the theory that says seven years before he comes, he comes in a secret way.

It just doesn't fit it, if you think that through and be honest about it. All right, so there's not a secret coming.

There's only one coming mentioned in the Bible of Jesus, the second coming. I know he came first, but there's only one type of second coming ever mentioned anywhere in the scripture, and it's like this.

Jesus himself described it right here in this passage. It's gonna be like the lightning from the east to the west when

I come, all right? That's what it's gonna be like. That is not secret. And then he gives this interesting bit of information that always bothered me when

I used to teach the old theory because I knew there was scripture it didn't fit, and I would just usually skip verses like verse 28 because if you look at this, it's an allegorical teaching.

I don't know why the Lord uses this to teach about this, but he says, it's like when I come, it's like I'm a carcass, and you, the church, are like buzzards, that's what we call them in Texas, that flock to that carcass.

He said, so when I come in the air, the church is just gonna flock to me like buzzards do a carcass.

Why he used that, I don't know, but he did. And I want you to notice it happens after the second coming, not before it.

You see it right there? This is Jesus's chronology. I'm gonna come like lightning from the east to the west first, then it'll be like the eagles gathering to the carcass, that's the rapture.

It happens after the second coming. It's actually with it, but it's a few nanoseconds after it, not seven years before it.

Revelation chapter one, verse seven says the same thing. When he does come, every eye will see him.

So it's not a secret coming, and there's not one. That'll make you study. I'm not here to teach you. I just want,

I want to challenge you. Look, if you disagree with me, that's okay, because the man that challenged me with those two questions, how many last trumps can there be, and would you consider letting

Jesus's chronology be more important than your books, he caused me to study for a year or two.

He didn't even know it, unless he's listening to this. All right, but praise God for him. God used him in my life, and I hope he used me in yours.

This is important stuff, because listen, the greatest lie Satan ever told, if you were him, and you wanted to massacre millions of Christians and Jewish people, what would be the smartest lie you could tell?

Well, tell him, hey, you're not even going to be here, so don't prepare. You don't need to worry about it. Well, I think that's what he did, and he used some good people to propagate that lie, unfortunately.

So the chronology, according to Jesus, he says immediately after the tribulation of those days, and then he comes in and says in verse 30 that his angels will go around and gather all of the people, all of his people, and that's the rapture.

So you have the tribulation first, then you see the second coming, and then you see whatever this is talking about.

There's a great sound of a trumpet. How many last trumps can there be? And the angels will gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other, and from the earth, the four winds are on the earth.

So you got all the saints from heaven to earth are gathered together. What does that sound like? Sounds to me like the rapture, and you'll notice it happens after the tribulation, and it happens after the second coming.

This is Jesus's chronology, all right? So interesting food for thought, isn't it?

I love this portion where Jesus says the generation that sees the first of these signs will be there for all of it.

I think that's our generation. Not that I think I can give you the day or the hour, we don't know, but I think

I can see when buds are budding on the tree and summer is near. Okay, so that's very encouraging for us to think about while we go through the tribulation things, the things that happen around us, where the earth is, the world system is imploding.

It's nice to know that we're the generation that doesn't have to die physically. As long as we're still here, when the

Lord comes, we'll be raptured, changed in the air. We don't die physically. What greater return could you have in order to go through a little bit of risk that we'll have in the tribulation period, right?

It's a lot of risk, but I mean, the return is huge. You don't have to die physically. I love it. Do you think

I'm getting that right, by the way, on verse 34? I'm not dogmatic about 34, as far as whether that really is saying that the generation that sees the first sign is here.

I think that's what it's saying, it seems clear. I know if I were a young person reading that, that's what I would think it would say.

Or if I were a farmer reading it who has no theological education whatsoever, that's what he would think it would say, and I happen to believe

God wrote the Bible for kids and farmers. That's good theology, isn't it,

Brother David? All right. Okay, now what about Paul? He gives his own chronology.

And you notice, again, that what he does is he says right here, when it speaks of the rapture, it says, for this we say unto you by the word of the

Lord that we which are alive and remain at the coming, that's the second coming of the Lord, will not proceed.

In the Greek, that word means proceed. That's an old English word that used to mean proceed. Satan changes languages, so it's different now.

Need to change that to the word proceed, that's what the Greek means. So those of us who are alive and remain will not precede them that are asleep, that have died.

They will rise first, then we will go up with them. It's what it says, for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, and the voice of the archangel and the trump, how many last trumps can there be, right?

And the dead in Christ shall rise when? Everybody say it. Hey, Dave, you and Ben know how to pop there.

Like when you guys respond, can you throw that out there where I can see it? I know Ben knows how to do that. Ben might,

I don't know, Ben Russell knows how to do it, but I wanna know what you guys think. So what do you think the word is here?

Dead in Christ shall rise what? Everybody say it. First, right? There they're popping in.

So I see you guys. Thank you for participating because I don't like just talking to a computer. Yeah, everybody's saying first, okay.

Now, what does this verse start with? Everybody tell me. Then, so the dead in Christ will rise first, then, what does it say?

After that, right? Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds.

Now I want you to type in what you think that event is talking about because the word rapture is not in the Bible. What do you think that is? And I'm a terrible teacher because I always give the answer before I give the test.

So what do you think it's talking about when it says we which are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the

Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord wherefore comfort yourselves with these words.

Yeah, that's the rapture. So again, we see the rapture cannot happen until after the first resurrection.

Now, now that I'm getting the introduction done here, where it's what we're gonna talk about today is the resurrection.

But the rapture can't happen until after the first resurrection. And we will not precede those who died before us, our loved ones who already died.

They will be raised first and then we will rise a nanosecond later and go up with them to be with the Lord. That's what the scripture says.

And the trump of God, how many trumps are there? How many last trumps are there? And the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive shall be caught up together with them.

That's what the Bible says. I like it. So Paul, now this is Paul, his chronology is the same as Jesus's.

Tribulation first, then the second coming and the resurrection and the rapture.

Rapture happens after the resurrection. It happens after the second coming. It happens after the seven years of tribulation, according to Paul.

Now, Jesus already said that's when it happened. Okay, so now here they are. If you go out and you look at Daniel, the prophet

Daniel in the Old Testament, same order, look at it down at the bottom of your screen. A time of trouble such as never was in the world, never will be again.

That's the tribulation. And at that time, thy people will be delivered. That's the rapture. And then this is the first resurrection that it's talking about at the end of the church age.

So let's get into this for a few minutes here. All right, how many resurrections are there other than Jesus's?

That's a great question. Now, you can go out there and here's what happens when you create a false theory.

You have to make up stuff and reinterpret stuff in the Bible and take things out of context, which

I won't do. I just won't do it anymore. I got to be about, I don't know, 49 years old.

Brother Otis and I made a pact. We said, look, we're gonna use these 10 laws of Bible interpretation. And we went out and got them from various denominations.

There's pretty much universal agreement on how to interpret scripture from theologians, from various different denominations.

We put this together. We signed it pretty much. I don't remember we literally signed it, but we shook hands on it.

We said, look, we will not cheat. We will keep these rules. We will not cheat just to win an argument with each other.

And we shook hands and we never did. And we were maybe had 20 things we disagreed on. And by the time he died 13 years later and went to heaven, we had only two things.

And those were silly. One of them was he thought that people in heaven could not see us.

And I think they can. So we never agreed on that one, but I was really biblical on that. And he refused to look at the scripture.

So anyway, but my point is, if you study and you keep the rules, your viewpoints will come closer and closer together over time as you fellowship and discuss the

Bible together. You don't have to have all these differences. Just keep the rules. All right, so one thing we've got to understand is that when people teach on the resurrections and they get it wrong, it hurts the body of Christ.

So it makes it important to have this discussion. That's the first point I want to make. And the scripture makes it very clearly.

And so when they want to change things and pull it out of context and try to create something that's not there, they cheat.

Okay, and then what happens is in order to make their theory work, they've had to now teach that there are many resurrections, many.

And they'll start naming things like, well, you know, when Jesus was on the cross, people came up out of the grave, walked around.

We don't know how many, a bunch of, but maybe a couple of hundred. Walked around, that had to be spooky and weird, but it happened, right?

Is that a resurrection by the Bible definition or not? I'm going to ask that question.

And what about Lazarus? Came out of the grave. They'll say there's a second resurrection. And there are many resurrections and therefore it allows us to have a partial resurrection seven years before Jesus comes back.

It's not really a resurrection, but the rapture happens. But they don't see that what they forgot about is it can't happen till after the resurrection.

And they forgot that in their theory. So they don't answer for that. But some of them are smart enough to know that doesn't fit.

So they'll say, well, that was actually another resurrection. It's not listed anywhere else in the Bible, but we're just going to say that's another resurrection.

And then there'll be another one at the end of the church age and blah, blah, blah. So there's many resurrections in their books that they write.

What I'm asking, I don't care about that. What I'm asking is how many does the Bible say there are? That's all that matters to me because that's

God talking to me. Men, I love all you guys. I love, you know, talk.

I try to see the good in people. I'll talk with everybody about the Bible, but I don't take anybody's word for it.

I just take God's word when it's in the Bible and try to use 10 proper rules Bible interpretation. So now look at this.

Shun profane and vain babblings for they will increase unto further ungodliness. So the

Bible makes it clear that we're supposed to not listen to things that are taught by people when it's not accurate.

It's just like babbling. They're just making up stuff and we're not supposed to go by that.

All right, we're supposed to go by the word of God. Can't get my watch to sit there. If I don't watch this clock, you could all be in trouble.

Okay. So their word eats as a canker in any names to people that were teaching things incorrectly about the rapture and the second coming right there in scripture.

This is the apostle Paul when he's writing to the young preacher, Timothy. And he's teaching

Timothy how not to be, like don't teach stuff that God didn't say. Okay, because here's two men that did it.

And he said, who concerning the truth, and they're talking about the truth of the church and the rapture and so forth, they have erred saying that the resurrection has already passed.

See, there are theologians today written books about it. I read them. And they say, oh, there are many resurrections and they've already come.

And one of them is gonna happen, seven years prior to the coming of Jesus. The Bible doesn't teach that, but they say it in their books.

And look what Paul said under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He said, when they taught this error that the resurrection has already passed, it overthrew the faith of some of the people in the church.

Now what that means is interesting, because if you have Jesus's faith, which is what the Holy Spirit gives you when you truly get called and born again and regenerated, he gives you the faith of Jesus.

You'll only see that in the King James, by the way, and in the Greek, you won't see it in other modern scriptures, Bibles, I won't call them scriptures, other modern so -called

Bibles, you won't see it. But in the King James and in the Greek, it says he gives you the faith of Jesus.

That faith cannot be overthrown. But there's a lot of people that just have human belief, kind of like a pep rally,

I believe, I believe, I believe, kind of like I believe in the Dallas Cowboys, and they think that saves them. And unfortunately,

I don't see that in the Bible. Those people can be overthrown. And you can always hurt the body of Christ because it always includes wheat and tares, too.

I mean, in a small church, we hope not, but sometimes in bigger churches, you have that. But you can certainly have people overthrown when people talk about false doctrine, and this is what's happening.

Nevertheless, the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, that God knows them that are His. He knows the wheat from the tares in our churches.

He knows that He's known the wheat before the foundation of the world, as His own children. Before He made anything,

He already knew them. He knew us, you and me, as His own children. And so the foundation is there.

It doesn't matter, false teachers aren't gonna change that. The Lord knows them that are His and let everyone that names the name of Christ depart from sin.

Stop teaching false stuff. So if you're out there teaching this theory to people, you better go back and check it out for a couple of years and quit teaching it until you do, and then come back and teach whatever you're gonna teach.

I would suggest that strongly. Listen, we get flippant about teaching stuff because we read it in a book. That won't cut it.

Now, let's start to ask the question, let Jesus talk about it, different personages in the

Scripture, all under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, tell us. Look what Jesus said in Luke 14, 13.

But when thou makest a feast, call in the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind. Don't invite all the rich people and famous people.

Go out on the street and bring in some people that have needs and bring them to your big party, okay?

And then you'll be blessed in heaven, see? For those people cannot recompense you. They can't, you don't get anything from them.

Like when you invite political people to your party and wealthy people, it's because you want them to help you someday, maybe give you a loan, right?

Maybe give you a vote for something out there in Congress that you need, they recompense you. But when you go out and you get these people that are needy and you bring them to your party, they can't pay you back.

And Jesus said, hey, when you invite them, then you will be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.

Now, we're not talking about all this stuff about throwing parties and who we invite. What we're talking about is, Jesus just taught us something there indirectly in this verse, because when he calls it the resurrection of the just, of the just is a modifier.

It is an adjective phrase that modifies the word resurrection.

It tells which resurrection. It's the one of the just.

So there is another resurrection of the unjust, at least is what that implies. And Jesus is telling them which one he's talking about here.

He said, look, if you do truly good deeds that I count as good works, then at the resurrection of the just, the one you save people will be at, then you're gonna get some rewards at that one.

So there is a resurrection of the just. So now we know there's at least one resurrection and it implies there are at least two.

Because why have the modifier if there's only one? He wouldn't have to call it the resurrection of the just, he could just call it the resurrection.

So there's a little bit of logic we can use here. Now in John chapter five, verse 25,

Jesus said this, barely, barely I say unto you, the hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the son of God and they that hear shall live.

Now, it's interesting, he goes on and he says this, for as the father hath life in himself, so hath he given the son of man life in himself, and hath given him authority to execute judgment also because he is the son of God.

Now later we're gonna see a verse that talks about when he executes this judgment and it's at the resurrection and you'll see that in a minute.

Marvel not at this for the hour is coming in which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice and shall come forth, they that have done good unto resurrection of life, so there's one resurrection, it's the one he spoke of in Luke, and they that have done evil unto resurrection of damnation.

All right, now what's interesting about that, this is not teaching that you're saved by doing good works.

And so you got to come to that resurrection or if you do bad works, you go to the other, that's not what Jesus is teaching because you have to, it looks like I got a typo in that.

Hold on, let me check that out here. What does that say? Oh, wow, that's a typo, isn't it? It's supposed to say 28 through 29.

So we'll fix that later. So that's John 6, 28 through 29. And very clearly there, they asked

Jesus, what works must we do that we can do the works of God? And he said, this is the work of God that you believe on him whom he had sent.

So you get saved by belief, not by doing works. But with regard to Jesus, when he talks about people doing good, he doesn't consider natural man doing stuff that natural man thinks is good,

God doesn't consider that as good. So it makes sense when you understand that. It's not talking about salvation by works at all.

Jesus never contradicts himself, and God just won't do that. And he says,

I can find my own self of my own self doing nothing. I cannot have my own self do nothing.

And Jesus said, look, as I hear I judge. So say this, this is the first family business. The father and the son are in a family business.

Now he's called us to be part of his family business. He said, as he sent me, now send I you, right?

So now he says, look, I don't do anything or say anything that I haven't heard or seen the father do. So as I hear from the father, that's how

I judge. And my judgment is just because I don't seek my own will, but the will of the father which sent me, isn't that beautiful?

So there's gonna be a judgment, and it's gonna happen at the resurrection, and it may happen at the second resurrection, if there are two,

I don't wanna get ahead of myself, but I think we've already seen there at least two, correct? All right, so Jesus refers to at least two resurrections, a resurrection of life and a resurrection unto damnation.

All right, now what about Lazarus' sister, Martha? She wanted Jesus to come heal her brother

Lazarus, and he was late on purpose. Sometimes we think God's late, don't we? But he's right on time, but we think he's late, because of our schedules different than his, right?

He was right on time, and her brother had been in the grave for three days, and as she said, he stinketh.

So he was already rot, his corpse was rotting when Jesus shows up, right? And Jesus raises him from the dead, but he asked her before he did it, he asked

Martha, do you believe that he can live again? And she said, oh yeah, I believe in the resurrection,

Lord. Martha said there would be a resurrection at the last time. Martha said unto him, I know that he shall rise again, talking about Lazarus, her brother, and I know he'll rise again in the resurrection day at the last day.

Now, she tells when it happens. It happens at the end of the age, what we call the church age.

And she said, yeah, he'll be raised in the resurrection. Well, Jesus was about to raise him right now, and she didn't know that yet, but at least she got the theology right.

Jesus agreed with it, implied that he did, because he didn't correct her. Now, what he does say, he says, well, let me add a little bit to your understanding.

I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

And he says that, and then he brings, then he cries out, Lazarus, come forth. And this man who is wrapped up like a mummy, scoots out with his feet tied up and barely makes it out, and then he has the people come and untie him.

That's a picture of us, the church, helping each other and helping new Christians when they're saved. It's a picture of salvation, coming out of the grave, right, resurrected life.

We're there to help them have a good walk, take the windings off so they can learn to walk.

That's our job, but Jesus did the raising. So you see, it's our job to disciple people.

The church cannot figure out a step -by -step plan to save people. Oh, just come down the aisle, pray this prayer, you're saved.

It doesn't work that way. That's the calling of God. Jesus, Lazarus, come forth.

Jesus does that to each individual of you out there by the Holy Spirit coming to you and in a quieter voice saying, look up, there's your shepherd.

You never saw that's who he was, but that's who he's got all the food and you're a sheep and you're hungry. What will you do with him? And he makes

Jesus irresistible. At that moment, you get saved. And if you don't believe it works that way, and you're, listen, you're believing and repenting and all that stuff happened later.

So the Holy Spirit saved you. And if you don't believe it's that way, ask yourself, why didn't you get saved 10 minutes sooner?

Why didn't you get saved last week? You see my point? Because you didn't want to. You didn't want to, you liked being

God. Okay, so the Holy Spirit had to convince you of a lot of things in a nanosecond of time.

Number one, there is a God. And number two, you ain't him. You've got to look at your

Lord and receive him as Lord and Savior. And then we do that because we want to because the Holy Spirit changed our want to.

That's how salvation works. Did we have to receive him? Absolutely, it's not that we have to, we want to.

It is an effect, not the cause. It happens in a nanosecond. So naturally we confused about it and we think we did it.

I know when I first got saved, I went around telling everybody what I did. Oh, I accepted Jesus. I was proud of it.

And only through years of study did I understand, hey, God did all the works to save me. Millions of things he had to do in my life and before 2 ,000 years ago with his son, giving his son and the death on the cross, the resurrection, the word of God being laid down line by line over time and given to me.

And then the Holy Spirit wakes me up and then I start studying. All that's God's work, it's amazing. All I do is receive it as a gift and joyfully, of course

I received him as my personal Lord and Savior. And everyone who's ever found in heaven on this side of the cross will have done that, right?

So anyway, here's the definition of resurrection. All right, therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Jesus was raised from the dead by the glory of the

Father, even so we shall walk in newness of life. For if when we were planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be raised in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this then, that our old man is crucified with Christ.

That's in God's mind because he's not bound by time. You were in Christ when he died. Your old man's already been crucified so that the body of sin is destroyed.

That happened 2 ,000 years ago. So when you get all down about the fact that you sin and you disappoint yourself, you disappoint

God, you disappoint your family and the church. Yeah, but that's part of God's will too. He put this treasure in earthen vessels, he said, so that God would get the glory.

So guess what? When you do get it right, God gets the glory instead of you. That's all on purpose. So just confess your sins, agree with God that they're not right, that they're sinful, and he is faithful and just, which means he'll do it every time and it's right for him to do it, to forgive you for your sins and to cleanse you from even the ones you forgot to ask about because he said cleanse you from all unrighteousness and you stand clean.

So get up and go again. That's the whole walk. You're not gonna be perfect till the rapture, but the rapture's coming and then that old body will fall off completely.

You'll never have anything pull against God again or against what you wanna do because your new man wants to live with God perfectly.

All right, so that was a nice rapture. I like that, Brother David. Good preaching, Brother David. Okay, so there's no, listen, no one else in this room with me.

I've got to say amen to myself. Okay, so notice here that it speaks of a glorified body and so when we talk about the definition of true resurrection, a resurrection includes the old man being eliminated or destroyed, right?

And the glorified body coming out of that grave. I'll promise you that's not what happened when he raised

Lazarus because Lazarus still, I mean, he didn't, he was alive again, but he was in his same body, was not glorified and he died again later of old age.

That is not a biblical definition of a resurrection. A true resurrection is you go into the grave, that body rots, you come out of the grave with a glorified body.

And I'm going to tell you that eliminates all this nonsense about many resurrections because you're only going to find two and I just got ahead of myself, but there aren't but two.

All these other things were different. They were not like Lazarus coming out of the grave was not a resurrection, it was a healing.

Okay, how many of you say amen to that? Jesus just, listen, death can't exist in his presence, so he just came out of the grave.

That is not part of the resurrection, all right? So when all these people came out of the grave, because Jesus was dying on the cross, that was part of the father's wrath and the earthquakes happened and God allowed these people to come back to life.

That was a healing. It was not a resurrection because they died again later. You see my point?

I mean, just take, listen, when you're studying the Bible, you need to know the 10 rules and keep them. But God said, come let us reason together.

All of you guys need to get an online course on logic in the philosophy school of any college that's got online stuff.

Go take a logic course, for heaven's sakes. We've got to think logically, all right?

So it disturbs me when people wanna debate with me and they don't understand logic.

It's just impossible. You need to understand how to think logically. You need to understand what a true logical thought is and what illogic is and where there are problems in logic and your argument totally falls.

Everybody should know that. Take the scripture as God wrote it. Use the logical mind

God gave you to put it together correctly according to proper rules and you'll never have contradictions. And when you do, you just keep studying those.

It doesn't mean we all see it all at the same time or that we all see it all before the rapture. I understand that. We're all growing.

But resurrection includes the old man being eliminated and destroyed and the new glorified body coming out of the grave.

So Jesus' resurrection is a model where it says we will be raised in the likeness of his resurrection.

That means the true resurrection is when we come out of the grave with glorified body or better than that, we're still alive and we get raptured and changed in the air into a glorified body.

That's the true resurrection, okay? And there hasn't been one of those yet. And these teachers that are teaching that there are, like Lazarus was one and this other thing was one and that the resurrection already happened,

Jesus cautioned of that to us and so did Paul. And Paul said, hey, when you teach that garbage, you hurt the faith of brothers and sisters in Christ.

So stop doing it. All right, so let's look at this one. Revelation 21, and I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.

And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and his name is

Satan and he bound him for a thousand years. So now we have a mention of the thousand year millennial kingdom. It's interesting that Satan will be bound in Hades and not able to bother us for a thousand years.

That's one reason you see the lion laying down with the lamb. And I saw thrones and they that sat on them and judgment was given unto them.

And I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for a witness of Jesus and for the word of God. Let me ask you something, this theory that the church is gone before the tribulation happens, how is it that we have brothers and sisters in heaven looking down and seeing their brothers and sisters killed during the tribulation period in verse four?

That's an ill, that's a logical fallacy. So it totally, you don't need but one. You don't need one shot to the bow to sink a ship.

So that theory is sunk on verse four, right there. There are still church members on the earth during the tribulation period and they're being beheaded.

Now those are the ones that stay in the cities, ladies and gentlemen. The Lord already told us, flee to the mountains.

So go find a cave somewhere during that last three and a half years or you won't be safe. And the worst place to be is in our country because we'll, our government will have the technology to find you and kill you.

So you need to be, who knows, the Lord hasn't shown me where yet, or maybe if you know, let me know. It's gonna be somewhere where they can't find us and the

Lord will protect us. And the people that don't obey that stuff, yes, they will be killed, but they'll still be saved.

They'll still go to heaven. How many people, read Fox's Book of Martyrs. How many Christians have already been slain by the same enemy, by Satan?

Millions, millions in every generation. So that's going to happen. That's just part of God's will.

He gains more glory, but you know what it says, if you are slain for him, you have a better resurrection than the rest. And that's amazing to think about.

But if you're like me, I'm gonna have a plan. I don't know if it's God's plan, but I'm gonna have a cave somewhere, right?

All right, so, but not gonna worry about that till they start building that temple on the

Temple Mount in Jerusalem. So here we see the thousand years as mentioned. And we see they're beheading during the tribulation period, they're killing

Christians, they're killing church, people in the church, which are, and these are the people who didn't worship the beast.

Why? Because they're the elect. They're God's chosen people and they refuse to worship him. Neither will they take his mark on their foreheads or their hands.

That's gonna be economic in nature where you can buy and sell stuff and you're gonna be willing to starve rather than take the mark because you had the scripture and Jesus said, don't do it.

So you won't do it. And then it says, they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

So these very Christians that are beheaded during the three and a half year great tribulation and even prior to that, they will be alive again.

They'll be in their new glorified bodies and they're gonna rule and reign with Christ during that thousand year millennial kingdom. So all of this happens before that thousand years and it puts the timestamp on it right there.

So who rules and reigns? Who are these people? If the church is no longer on the earth, like that theory says, that they're raptured seven years before so they're not even here, then who are these

Christian people? And you can say, well, these people that got saved later. Well, okay, but you're sure having to struggle to make that theory work.

And besides that, you can't have a rapture before the resurrection anyway. So you can argue around in a circle it's not gonna help when you put all this together.

Verse five, but the rest of the dead live not again until a thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.

So now we know from God's word, they're at least two. Because the first resurrection is identified as happening right prior to the thousand year millennial kingdom.

And it says the rest of the dead, in other words, the unsaved, the unelect, non -elect people who didn't receive

Jesus, they will stay in their graves for a thousand years. And that implies there'll be a second resurrection for them at the end of the thousand years.

So now we have two and they're placed one right as we go into the kingdom period, thousand year millennial kingdom, which is right after the second coming.

And then the second one's gonna be at the end of that millennial kingdom. Blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection.

That's when it happens right at the end of the church age when Jesus comes back. And we go up after the resurrected one's family comes out, we go with them, right?

Blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection. So that's the one that happens right before the millennial kingdom.

On such, the second death has no power. So we see here the apostle

John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says that everyone who is resurrected at the first resurrection is a saved person.

So it is the resurrection that Jesus talked about, the resurrection unto life.

And then there's another resurrection at the end of the thousand years that Jesus called resurrection unto death or unto Hades and hell and wrath and so forth.

So this is beautiful. If you go up in the first resurrection, or you're still alive, you go up in the rapture, the second death will never have any power over you.

You can never die. You live forever. Didn't Jesus say that? He said, look, whosoever liveth, in other words, you get born into this world.

This world is God's way of creating new children for himself. So you must be born into this world.

By tribulation, you enter the kingdom of heaven. You live your life through this world. You get called by the

Holy Spirit. He wakes you up. He changes your want to. All of a sudden, you desire Jesus, and you receive him the day before you didn't want him.

You receive him as your personal Lord and Savior. Holy Spirit and the Bible help you walk that walk through this life.

And then all of a sudden, you're raptured. And what did Jesus say? He said, whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

Now, he means spiritually. But if you get raptured, you won't die physically either. So that's a double blessing.

So this defines the first resurrection. And the time of it is after the tribulation period.

The benefit of it is that everyone who is in that particular resurrection will never experience the second death, which is hell.

Cool stuff, huh? I can't see if you're tired or not. That's the only disadvantage if I'm home in the church and everybody starts kind of saying amen like this.

Amen. Then I stop, you know, and we just start, pick back up on the next one. Since I can't see you,

I can't tell. So shoot some stuff out there, and Ben or Dave will throw it out there and say, I'm tired, or say, hey, keep going just for a few more minutes.

So send something out. Let me know what you want to do. Because I can't tell where your threshold is today. All right,

I'll keep going until I see some of those and put them out there where I can see it.

Keep going, keep going, keep going. Wow, okay. Is that like saying sikkim to a preacher or what?

Okay, I'll go just a little bit longer here. So this is kind of cool stuff, you got to admit.

Revelation 27. And when the thousand years are expired, so now let's go to the other end of that thousand year millennial kingdom.

All right. Satan shall be loosed out of his prison and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth.

And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone at that point. Now this happens after Jesus destroys, you know, he destroys the enemies of God.

Don't you think it's a telling thing on human nature, the depravity of man, that everyone that went into the millennial kingdom was a saved person, was elect, but then they started having babies.

Some of those were non -elect, but they had to live by God's rules because Jesus was reigning from his throne, that's what reigning means, on the earth.

And he reigned with a rod of iron, so they had to keep the rules. But so you couldn't tell, some of them weren't saved, they looked saved.

And then when Satan is let loose for one second, he gathers all of them and they try to attack,

I guess, Jerusalem again, and Jesus just kills them with fire and they're gone. And at that point, so human nature is in a perfect environment, such as the

Garden of Eden, for example, or the millennial kingdom, where the lion's laying down with the lamb, man will still have some men that will rise up and say, no,

I want to be God and I'm following Satan because he'll let me be God for a while, but he won't either because he wants to be God.

And then they're sent into hell, but not only them, look at verse 10. The devil deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet, the

Antichrist are, the beast is the Antichrist, and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.

They'll never come out. Won't that be a hallelujah time when the devil's in that place? And I saw a great white throne.

Now here is the second resurrection's about to happen here. This is at the end of the thousand -year millennial kingdom.

And I saw a great white throne and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away.

Brother Otis and I had a theory, you can check and see what you think about it. We felt like God, the Father, does not come into time and space, that he comes into time and space through Jesus or the

Holy Spirit. And that where you see, now his voice came in to the garden, we know that, but I'm talking about his presence because since he's in the eternal now, if he comes into time and space, everything would be destroyed.

Time couldn't exist and so the stuff would go away. Well, notice what it says here. When he comes to do this judgment, the elements flee.

Is that amazing? And he that sat on the throne from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away.

So, you know, you have a problem here because the I am all of a sudden is there and he's going to judge.

And so I think it's a good theory, but if you can shoot it down, shoot it down. We don't talk about it at church, right?

I just did, but I just threw it out there for something for you to think about. But there we have a judgment and a resurrection that happens at the end time.

And I view us as being spectators in the grandstands watching. And the Bible says we actually judge with Christ.

We judge those people who persecuted us. We judge the people who killed us and cut our heads off.

We judge the people who wouldn't let us buy or sell because we wouldn't take the mark of the beast. We sit almost as a jury with Christ at this event.

I saw the dead, the small and the great stand before God and the books were opened and another book was opened. We can talk about those books sometime too, fascinating, which is the book of life.

And the dead were judged out of those things which are written in the books according to their works.

Now that tells me right there that this is a resurrection of the unjust because the saved people are not ever judged by their works.

It never says anywhere that you're saved by your works, but these people are because they didn't want Christ. They said, look, I don't want

Christ, I'm gonna be my own God. So every one of them will be judged by their works and it won't work because they've all fallen short of the mark, that's what sin means, miss the mark.

And these people are gonna end up in hell. You know, some of you guys, you say, well, I have a problem with hell. Well, I personally sometimes have a problem with how

God does certain things and you do too. Like if it were you, you would have just saved everybody or some of the rest of you just would have killed everybody and started over when man sinned, but nobody would do it like God did it, where he said, okay, what

I'll do is I'll save a remnant. I'll save the elect, I'll choose some from an entirely lost race on its way to hell.

I will choose some and save them because of my grace and just because I want to and it's free like they don't deserve it.

And I'm gonna send my son and let him die so that I can do that justly. And then we complain because God didn't save everybody.

You see, if we don't understand the sovereignty of God, it bothers us, but we have to look at the Bible and see who

God says he is inside, do we love him anyway? I ask people that straight to their face. I said, well, what if I could show you where this is how it works?

Would you love him still? Or have you invented a Jesus that doesn't even exist? You won't love the true Jesus who really does what he does.

You won't love him that way. So you had to invent one that just loves everybody and everything's gonna be all right.

I don't know if that's the same Jesus in the Bible. And if you believe in him, I don't know that that saves you. So think about that.

I mean, scripture talks about all these things, but here we have these people being judged and the sea gave up the dead that are in it and death and Hades in the

Greek delivered up the dead that were in them and they were all judged, every man according to their works. And now this is the second resurrection at the end of the thousand year millennial kingdom.

These people suffer the second death. They are cast into the lake of fire. Death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.

This is the second death. Now, listen, if there's and whosoever not found written in the book of life was cast in the lake of fire.

If you're not of the elect, you don't go to heaven. Now, when I think of things that God has done, one of the things

I look at it says, these non -elect people, these goats, these tares who are never, they're just flat, never gonna receive

Christ. Maybe if I were God, I would have just snuffed them out of existence instead of having them in a lake of fire where there's pain and torment and total absence of God for all eternity.

I don't know if I'd have done it that way, but it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter how I would do it because we see how

God is doing it. And he has his purposes and his reasons. And I have a theory about that is that once he creates something, he doesn't destroy it.

It just may change format, but it doesn't go away. And less like when here he says,

I see a new heaven and new earth for the first heaven, the first earth are passed away. And it says in other places, it says with a loud noise.

And then at that point, God will wipe away all the tears, no more death, no more sorrow, no more crying, neither shall there be any more pain for the former things are passed away.

That happens after the millennial kingdom. So there still can be tears. Even people in heaven can shed a tear over family members that aren't there or whatever.

There's a misconception there that the tears are not wiped away till after the millennial kingdom is over. But I look at that and I say, well, probably if I were

God, I would just snuff them out. But that is not what God's gonna do. Because if he doesn't destroy anything he creates, he's not going to take their life away, their existence away,

I should say. Now they don't have true life because they're without God, but they didn't have true life on this earth. You didn't either before you got saved.

You didn't know anything about abundant life. You weren't even what a man or woman was supposed to be till the Holy Spirit indwelt your body.

You were just a walking dead person. But he had your spiritual birthday appointed before the foundation of the world,

Ephesians 1, Romans 8, says we'll get to that good stuff in Romans 8 if you keep coming, you'll get to that good. It's right in this chapter.

And he had that day appointed. And what he did the day the Holy Spirit came and called you and lit on your shoulder and said, hey, look up there, open the eyes, open the ears.

Is he notified you that you'd always been him and you understood it for the first time? Brother Otis taught me that. I don't say it a lot because notified is not a biblical terminology, but the calling is, it talks about the effectual calling all through the

Bible. And that's what Otis was talking about. So yeah, would you and I invent a place called hell and put them there forever?

No, but God did. And we don't understand, we know God is loving, we know he's God, but we also know that he's all knowing.

And we also know that he does all things according to the pleasure of his goodwill. And he didn't want to just snuff them out.

So you and I don't know a lot about hell. We do know there's literal fire there because Jesus told a true story of a man that was there and said, he asked and said, dip the tip of your finger in water and touch my tongue and cool my tongue for I am tormented by these flames.

Jesus told that story. So either Jesus doesn't know what hell's like or that's what he thinks it's like. So then you gotta decide, is he a liar or is he

God? Now, if you figure that out, then you know there's a hell. You don't have to agree with it.

Don't have to like it, I don't like it. I won't say I don't agree with it, I do after many years of study, but I don't like it and I don't have to.

It wasn't created for me or for you. So this is the second resurrection at the end of the millennial kingdom.

And this is the one Jesus referred to in John chapter five, the resurrection unto damnation. Isn't that cool?

So now we know there's two resurrections. Now, this is kind of interesting. Daniel speaks about these things in the

Old Testament. I don't know, 2 ,600, 800 years ago, he wrote the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

And he says, there's gonna be this time of trouble. That's the tribulation. Such as never was since there was a nation even to the same time.

And at that time, thy people will be delivered. That's the elect. Those are the ones God knows as his own.

And everyone that shall be found written in the book of life shall be delivered. All right, so that's not every human.

So God doesn't save everybody. Jesus didn't die for everybody like is taught incorrectly in most churches today.

You go back to the 1600s, 1700s, most Baptists back then were called,

I just forgot the name of it. They were not general Baptists.

It's so funny, I just drew a blank on that. Anyway, there it is, particular.

Thank you, the choir just helped me out. They were known as particular Baptists. 90 % of every

Baptist in the 1700s was known as a particular Baptist. Do you know what that means? That means they believed

Jesus died only for a particular group of people known as the elect, not for every human. And just think about the logic there.

Use a little logic. If you come to the place where you understand that you're saved by the blood plus nothing, that you didn't contribute to your salvation, you just got the benefit of it, that all those benefits in your belief and everything is in effect, the cause was

God just saved you. And you come to understand you're saved by the blood plus nothing, then had he died for everyone, every human would be saved.

And Jesus himself told us they're not all gonna be saved. Says right here, they're not. So that's a theory too, that he died for everybody.

It's a theory and it's false. He died for the ones he knows. And that is you.

And you say, well, I'm sitting out here today, or maybe you have a friend in the house that might not be saved yet.

And you're thinking, well, then why should I mess with this? If I don't have any choice in it. Oh, you do have a choice in it.

And here's what I would say to you, dear friend. If you've ever worried about your soul, if you've ever even thought about heaven and it bothered you a little bit, or hell,

I should say, that bothered you a little bit, and you thought about heaven and you wanna go there, you just, not yet.

You're still your own God and all that stuff. But you're concerned about these things, that is a really good sign because goats don't care about that stuff.

But lost sheep do. So you're probably just a lost sheep. So all you need to do is just keep walking your walk.

And when you feel that little tap on your shoulder, you don't need to worry about some preacher having you come down the aisle and some little prayer formula.

None of that stuff saves anybody. Now, I gotta be quick to say, it doesn't unsave you either because a lot of you did that. Doesn't mean it unsaves you, but you got saved in the pew before you went down there is my point, or at the house before you went to church that day.

My point is, when you feel that little tap and you have that little quiet voice that says, you know what?

Jesus is gonna be a better boss for you than you are for your own self. Why don't you receive him?

And when that pops in your mind, just do it. That's how salvation works. Just share your heart with him and say,

I do. I receive you, I'm a terrible boss. Run my life and everything in your life will change.

All right, I'm running out of time here. I can feel it even myself and I got that messed up a little bit.

But this talks about the resurrection where Daniel talks about the resurrection and it says some will be raised to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt.

And that makes some people think that the lost people are raised together with the saved people, but logically that's not able to be proven in that verse.

That is not what Daniel's thinking. But one thing we have to understand about Daniel is that the angel himself told

Daniel that he was going to hide some of the knowledge that he received until the end times.

And then you would have more knowledge. See down there where it says in verse four, he'll shut up the words and seal the book even to the time of the end.

So a lot of what Daniel knew was, or his understanding was not open completely, but even the things he wrote, we will understand better, those of us in the end times.

So I think he kind of looked across, you know how the Jewish people miss the church age? It's like you have two mountain peaks in a valley and the valley is 2000 years of church age or whatever it ends up to be.

Here you have the first coming and the second coming. Well, the Jewish person looks at it this way. They don't see the church age and they don't see the second coming.

They just see the Messiah coming, right? Well, that's kind of how Daniel understood the resurrection. Doesn't mean that's how it is.

In fact, when you look at second Timothy four, right there, it shows very clearly that when

Jesus comes, he is going to judge at the appearing of his kingdom. Well, that's prior to the kingdom.

So what has happens there is you have the resurrection of the just and Jesus judges us for our, our, what we did as Christians, good or bad in our body and we're judged for that.

And then all of a sudden we get rewards for the good and we suffer loss when we didn't do good. That's that judgment and it's very clear.

So there are two resurrections and only two.

And that's just how that goes. Well, we're out of time at this point, but oops, there's this verse here

I was gonna show you. And I think we'll just stop and pick it up right there when we come back. But at least we had time today to discover the exact number that there are two and only two resurrections of the just.

And we understand very clearly. I'm gonna jump forward here. I got one more scripture I need to show you because it'll tie this up.

And here it is. First Thessalonians 4, 16. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout and the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God.

There's your last trump, your seventh trump. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the

Lord in the air. So shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort one another with these thoughts. That shows that the resurrection has to take place first.

We will not precede them, but we go up with them. And all of these wonderful things are things that we ought to be talking about and encouraging each other with when we're going through troublous times.

So the rapture happens as the first part of the first resurrection. I shouldn't say the first part, as part of the first resurrection.

And the raptured people cannot go up prior to the resurrected ones who had passed on before them.

So the two go up together. The dead rise first and we go right with them and we're raptured to be together with the

Lord forever. So we'll pick it up where we left off next time. Thank you so much for spending your time with me and you have great attention span by the way.