Sunday, June 8, 2024 Eschatology Workshop Session Q&A

Now, we did ask for a submission for questions along with the form that we sent out, but I want to work through those that have been sent in. Some of them are similar, so I've grouped those together, and after we finish with those submitted questions, then we'll have time for some additional ones, okay?

So one of the first questions that we're going to talk about is about the rapture, which we kind of had a negative statement about in the teaching, that Matthew 24 and Luke 17 weren't exactly talking about that.

But one question is this, I didn't grow up hearing much about the rapture, so I'm curious about the subject in general, and somebody else asked, will there be an all-inclusive rapture for Christians?

So in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, Paul is trying to help the Christians in Thessalonica, with whom he had a brief stay. He's writing from the church in Corinth, hearing what they're going through, wanting to encourage them, so he sends them these two letters, 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

One of the things that had disturbed them was some false teachings, some rumors and so on, that the day of the Lord had already come. They missed it, or they misunderstood it, or whatever. Just like in Corinth, some of them had begun to believe that there would not be any resurrection from the dead.

So these things matter, if you haven't noticed or felt it, what you believe about last things, the end times, and so on, is not something for academic speculation, it really does have an impact on the way that you live your life.

If you think that basically the story of history is one in which Christ loses, the church is ever being attacked and dwindled down to there's nothing left, and the rapture is the last chopper out of Saigon, that's going to have an impact on the way that you live your life, your plans that you make, the expectations that you have.

Likewise, if there's somebody who believes that there is never any end at all, it impacts them. But it's helped me ever since I really stared at 1 Corinthians 15, 20 -26, ever since I really stared at that passage and saw that Christ is going to reign, and so all of His enemies are made a footstool for His feet, and then He's going to come back.

That's been so encouraging to me, and it's simple, I can remember it, I can know what's going on today when I wake up. Jesus Christ is King, and He is defeating His enemies slowly but surely throughout history,.

And we win.

What a great hope to have. It does matter what we believe, so pan-millennialism is still a hopeful kind of thing, it all pans out in the end. There's still a hope that things are going to turn out correctly.

So about the rapture, in 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul is trying to encourage the people there against false teaching that would disturb them, unsettle them, discourage them. And in verse 13 of chapter 4, he says, I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep.

Again, favorite biblical metaphor for death, of dying in Christ. We have fallen asleep. Lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. Sorrow, yes, death is still an enemy, it is a separation. Mourning and sorrow are part of that.

But there's mourning, and then there's mourning without hope. We should always mourn and sorrow with hope. And Paul wants them to have hope. Verse 14, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and I hope we do, even so God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus.

Remember Paul's hope to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. So we're not cut off from our Lord and Savior, our good shepherd, we're always with him. Verse 15, for this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. So he's talking about two different groups of people here.

And it's not the dead in Christ and the dead without Christ, it's the dead in Christ and those who are still living when Christ returns. There's two groups, and they're both in Christ. But the concern was, what happens if you die, fall asleep in Christ, and then you don't get to experience and have a part in the blessings of seeing Christ return bodily from heaven?

I mean, you're going to miss out? No, you're not going to miss out, because the dead in Christ rise first, and then we all are together with the Lord. So, no one is going to miss out on the victory parade.

We all get to be a part of the victory parade. Verse 17, then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them, meaning those who are dead in Christ rise first, and we're caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And thus we shall always be with the Lord, therefore comfort one another with these words. Okay, so this being caught up together with them in the clouds, this being caught up is where we end up deriving through languages the word rapture.

It's the only place in the Bible that we really have a clear explanation of this. Now, what goes on here? So Paul's mainly trying to comfort them about those who have fallen asleep, those who have.

Died.

He's saying, hey, they're going to be raised from the dead before we're caught up together with the Lord, so we're all going to be up together with the Lord at the same time. Be comforted in this. Do not be discouraged.

In Thessalonica, Thessalonica was called an imperial city, an imperial city. Why was it an imperial city? Because the emperor had visited. The emperor didn't just go around and, you know, it wasn't like a president on a stump speech going to all these towns.

The emperor did not make it to every place. In order for an emperor to come to your city, it had to be planned well in advance. You had to redo all your roads. You had to get ready. Everybody knew when he was coming, just around about, but there would be watchers and people waiting and seeing, and when the emperor's royal entourage came down that newly corrected road and everything had been prepared in the city, these loyal citizens, right, the loyal citizens of the city, he wanted to show that they really approve of this emperor, would rush out of the city and join with all of those who came with him, and then they'd have a royal parade into the city.

That happened at Thessalonica. It happened recently in the memory of the Thessalonicans, and Paul is using that metaphor to explain the return of Christ and how we are all victorious together in him, right?

So that's why he's using that metaphor. This kind of royal picture was something that wasn't unique to Rome. It was just how royalty was welcomed. Do you remember Palm Sunday?

How'd that go?

People came with Jesus from Galilee, and they were approaching Jerusalem, and those who were excited to welcome Jesus, wasn't everybody, by the way. Everybody wanted him there. The ones who loved Jesus came out of Jerusalem and joined with him, and then they paraded their whole way into the city.

Now given this, what is the rapture? The rapture is our victorious parade together with Christ on that last day of victory, when all of his enemies have been made a footstool for his feet, and we're all caught together in his victory and in his joy.

What a comfort!

Oh man, that's really comforting.

Okay?

And we have from Matthew 25 and John chapter 5 and many other examples, Jesus clearly states that when he comes and raises the dead, he's raising everybody at the same time. The wicked and the righteous, the lost and the saved, the goats and the sheep, everybody gets raised at the same time, everybody gets dealt with at the same time.

Certain passages in the scripture will deal with how Christ deals with the lost, certain passages will deal with how Christ deals with the saved at that time, but those passages are focusing in on Christ's right to judge and reward the lost or the saved, but those aren't meant to be exclusive and say there's two different judgment seats.

That's often been taught, but Jesus says most plainly in many, many places, not just here, but many places, everybody gets raised at the same time. Now 1 Corinthians chapter 15 would focus in on how Jesus deals with the saved.

Revelation 20 puts most of the focus on how Christ judges those who are lost and wicked, but that's not a statement or a passage that is therefore saying something opposite. It has no statement in there, it's like, at this time the lost are not raised.

It doesn't say in the passage, at this time the saved aren't raised. That's inserted by systems of theology. The scriptures themselves don't have that split. So the rapture is all-inclusive in the sense that all of the Christians, all of the saints are brought up together with Christ in the clouds, and then we all, the idea of the whole metaphor of the rapture is he's coming, we're coming out loyal citizens rejoicing with him, and he keeps on coming to the place where he's going to arrive, reign, and have a big judgment day.

So the second question is Matthew 24 in Revelation, the connection, where does Matthew in Revelation speak of 8070, where does it speak of the last day, and how do we distinguish between those two? One of the concerns is called hyper-preterism, or full-preterism, that's where people believe that there's no promise at all in the Bible anywhere that's left to be fulfilled.

There's no sense in which Jesus is coming back bodily, there's not going to be resurrection of the dead. That is outside the bounds of orthodoxy, that's heresy, just straight up, cardinal heresy. We've already looked at various passages that show there's going to be a last day, the resurrection of the dead, and the differences you see from Matthew 24 in Revelation, in Matthew there are many passages that talk about the kingdom of heaven.

Now the kingdom of heaven is like, what is Jesus doing? So there's going to be a destruction of Jerusalem, the old covenant is going to pass away, now what? If we're not going to be doing dietary laws and religious calendars, then what's the point?

Imagine trying to be a Jew, and like, well, what am I supposed to do? 40 years of being a Jew, and now what am I going to do? The kingdom of heaven is like, all of those parables describe what it's like to live in Christ's kingdom, how to serve him, how to love him, how to see things, and often, like in Matthew 13, at the very end there's a sorting, right?

The chaff is taken away and burned first, and the wheat are brought into the barn, or the bad fish are sorted out first, then the good fish are sorted out, and there's a sifting at the end of the age of the kingdom of heaven.

That's the resurrection, that's the day of judgment, the very, very last day. So there's lots of things in the Bible that talk about that last day, the very end, usually having to do with the great sorting of everybody into two groups, sheep and goats, and the resurrection of the dead, which is attendant to that.

And in Revelation, where in Revelation is it talking about something future that hasn't been fulfilled yet? Well, there's a variety of places, but we have the idea that everything in Revelation is future.

For some people, just kind of that's how we were taught. Revelation is everything about what's in the future. Well, when God describes the judgments that he brings, the seals and the bowls and the trumpets, he very clearly identifies covenant breakers as the targets of the judgment.

Well, who were the covenant breakers? That was the Jews, it was the old covenant, and the things that he pours out on them are the things from Deuteronomy 28. So there's a pretty specific audience in that regard.

What good is it to us? What good is Revelation to us if it's been fulfilled? Well, what good is 1 Corinthians to us? We're not 1 Corinthians, we're not Corinth. Well, it's the word of God, it's God-breathed.

It's profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction, and righteousness. The man of God would be adequately equipped for every good work. So, yeah, it's the word of God, so it's great. We have a couple of questions very particularly about Revelation.

One of those, I want to connect to a later question. One is, in Revelation 13, the second beast gives breath to the image, and what does that mean? So, well, that's like three cans of worms all mixed together, but we'll do our best.

I think it took me four years to teach the Revelation, so there's a lot of context to this. But in Revelation 13, we're in a series of interludes. And the one before that, chapter 12, Revelation 12 is a mural, is a mosaic of all of history.

And in chapter 13, we get more specific. Then I stood on the sand of the sea, and I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns. So, first of all, beast. When you read in Daniel, the empires of man are often called beasts.

The seven heads is a quip about Rome, having seven hills, seven heads, seven different ruling districts in Rome. Everybody knew Rome was a seven-hilled city. We call Chicago the Windy City. It's just a nickname everybody knew.

And ten horns. Why the ten horns? Well, again, the fourth empire of Rome had the ten toes. It was the ten emperors, the ten emperors that matter. So, Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian.

Why these ten? Well, Julius Caesar was seen as the first emperor by all of the ancient historians. Modern historians say, well, but we don't care about them, because back in this time period, they saw Julius Caesar as the first emperor.

Why do they matter? Because this is during the imperial time of Rome, the very place where the kingdom that God of Heaven set up, smashed into the days of these kings, Daniel 2 .44. And Luke makes a very specific point of saying it was during the reign of Tiberius that Jesus began his ministry, Luke chapter 3.

And you count down the 483 years of Daniel chapter 9 between the edict of Artaxerxes to rebuild the temple, 483 years on the dot, to the day Jesus started his ministry. So, those 77s, 69, and then the week of Messiah.

So, this has been used many times to evangelize Jews. So, hey, look, let's look in Daniel. You like Daniel, don't you? Look here. This is what Daniel said would happen. Look, it happened. Jesus is your Messiah.

Won't you believe? Many Jews have come to faith in Jesus Christ by that testimony from that prophetic passage in Daniel. So, there's a focus on the ten emperors of Rome, because this is the time that the kingdom of Heaven shows up.

So, ten horns. And on his horns, ten crowns. And on his head, a blasphemous name. Now, the beast, blasphemous name, of course, emperor worship came early, claiming to be God, demanding worship. Now, the beast, which I saw, was like a leopard.

His feet were like the feet of a bear, his mouth like the mouth of a lion. And so, there's this amalgamation. Rome was an amalgamation of former empires. So, they had the glories of Babylon and Persia and Greece all kind of mixed in together.

They were an amalgamator. And so, this chimera or dragon, the dragon, the dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority. So, why was this empire in place? Because of the devil, Satan. Satan, who has the power to deceive the nations.

Satan, who is controlling the nations. Satan, who fills all the rulers with his demons. Remember, Paul says, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, rulers of the forces of the dark age.

Remember that the binding of Satan was specifically for this one particular purpose, that he was no longer able to, what? Deceive the nations. Not that he couldn't prowl around like a lion, seeking who may devour, that's still the case.

The point is, he can't deceive the nations anymore. That's how he was bound. He's in control of these great empires here. I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed.

When Julius Caesar was assassinated, all the historians said, that's it, that's over, no more imperial experiments in Rome. We're going to stick with the republic thing. They thought that the imperial time of Rome was not going to work after Julius got assassinated.

But the next Octavian, whose name was changed later on, became emperor, and he brought it all back. Augustus. And all the world marveled and followed the beast. Now, look at this amazing empire. Everybody's after this.

So they worshiped the dragon, who gave authority to the beast. Caesar is lord. And they worshiped the beast, saying, who is like the beast? And who was able to make war with him? Nobody wanted to cross Rome.

The peace of Rome was not brought about by winning hearts and minds. It was, we have a big army, and we're going to crush you if you ever cross us. And so nobody wanted to fight the beast. Why is he the sea beast?

In the Old Testament, it's well established that the sea was a metaphor for the nations. The nations were loud and far away like the sea. And so more than one place in the Old Testament, the nations are referred to as the sea, which is why in the New Covenant, the new heavens and the earth, there is no more sea.

Ephesians 2 says there's no more split with the Gentiles. There's more to it than that, but moving on. Verse 5. He was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies. He was given authority to continue for 42 months.

Why these 42 months? Well, it's because, we'll see later, he made war against the saints for that time. And he opened his mouth and blasphemy against God to blaspheme his name, his tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven.

It was granted to him to make war with the saints and overcome them. And authority was given to him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. I thought that was Jesus' role. Well, yeah, his kingdom is established that way.

But what we have here is a beast for 42 months, three and a half years, Nero waged war on the saints and won. Christians getting killed all over the place. It was a bloodbath. Verse 8. All who dwell on the earth will worship him whose names have not been written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

If anyone has an ear, let him hear. He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity. He who kills with a sword must be killed with a sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. So the saints need to know those who are killing and enslaving, they will be killed, they will be enslaved.

So just hang on. God's wrath, God's justice is coming. You can hang on. Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth. Or in other words, land, as often the word is used either way. So there's the beast of the sea, that's the nations.

And what about the beast of the land, the land? Well, he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. So he had the features of a sacrificial animal, but he had the voice of the devil, a serpent.

So he was deceptive. So he was deceiving, even while he had the features of a sacrificial animal. And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast whose deadly wound was healed.

So the proposal here is that this land beast, the beast of the land, is the people of the land, is the Templeite Jews, who have the shape of the sacrificial system, but they speak deceptively, whose father is Satan.

And they're just a front man, just a front man for Rome. The garments of the vestments of the high priest were under lock and key by the Roman proconsul in Jerusalem, did not allow the high priest to have them except on certain days.

They also selected which high priest could serve. Rome was a financier of the temple, and the Sadducees liked it that way. When it came time for them to do anything, they always got the Romans to help them do their dirty work, how to kill Jesus, but by using the swords of Rome.

What did the Jews say in their opportunity to receive Messiah as their own? They said, we have no king but Caesar, the front man, the land beast, the front man for the sea beast. He performs great signs, so even he makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.

This diabolical sign that they keep on. Where did the fire come down on the altar from in Exodus when they just started up the temple, tabernacle? It came down from heaven. The claim in Jerusalem is that they're still offering up sacrifices in the same way that they always have.

This is where the light of God is. This is the truth. And the idea is, oh, he performed great signs, even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who is wounded by the sword and lived.

The temple was called an image made by human hands, the word very, very provocatively used of an idol. Stephen preached that in Acts 6 and 7. He said this is an image made by human hands. He called the temple an idol, an idol.

It was covered over in the gold and silver of the Roman economy. They were, they were, Jerusalem was a great trade city, had very, very special trade agreements with the Roman Empire. No Jew had to offer the pinch of incense to their emperor and say Caesar is Lord.

They were exempt from that. But what they were required to do was offer up a sacrifice for the emperor in the temple on a regular basis to show their loyalty to Rome. And Rome gave a lot of money to Jerusalem, and they beautified the temple because it was a claim of privilege.

And Jerusalem, the leaders in Jerusalem reciprocated. And the relationship was great for a long time, until it went really bad, really fast. But this, so he was telling everyone to worship the image. Look at the image.

Look at the temple. It causes many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. What happened to the Christians who spoke out against the temple? They got killed. He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, and free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name.

So basically, this is coming from Deuteronomy 6. Remember the Shema. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord him only shall you serve. The Lord is one. And the instructions was to put the word of God on the hand and on the head.

Write the word of God upon your hand and upon your head, so that no matter what you do, you do all in the name of the Lord, no matter where you look or whatever you think, it's always in the context of the word of God.

And the Pharisees took that literally and bound little boxes called phylacteries upon their hands and their heads, showing their loyalty. They were well approved. But if you were not of the system, then you could not participate.

I know this is hard to believe, but there's such a thing called cancel culture. I know it's hard to believe. But you were not allowed to partake in so much of the life there in Jerusalem if you weren't going to play along.

Even James, the brother of Jesus, found this out. I think it was AD 65, 66, right before the siege of Cestius, that James, the brother of Jesus, who wrote the book of James, was killed for his faith because they just kept on hunting down all the Christians and killing them and trying to get rid of them out of the city.

Now, remember that the Jews were doing this in the name of Rome, right? The Sanhedrin was authorized by Rome to have ruling authority over all of Judaism, wherever it was. And since the followers of the way, Christians, were seen as an immoral cult sect of Judaism, then the Sanhedrin said, we have the right to exterminate them.

We have the right to take them out. Rome has given us this authority, right? And Rome had ever since Pompeii. All right, the Sanhedrin had the right to rule over all Jews. Verse 18, here is wisdom. Here is wisdom.

Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666. Which beast? Remember, the land beast is the front man for the sea beast. Okay, so it's the mark of the sea beast that they're looking for on the head of everybody.

So, let him who understands calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666. Total value. We don't understand this because we use the Arabic numbering system. But, you've seen Roman numerals, right?

On clocks, outlines, III, IV, so on. The numbering system for most cultures for a long time were just letters. Same thing happens in Hebrew. So, the numbers are just letters put into a particular context.

And so, there was a custom of having fun riddles. Very well-known fun riddles combined with letters as numbers and numbers as letters. And they put riddles everywhere. So, there's graffiti still in Rome to this day where some young man says, the number of he who loves so and so is, and he's got a number up there.

So, hopefully she sees that and then she's thinking, okay, who are the boys that I know? And what's the value of all their letters summed up? They had a meme running around Rome. This is the number of the one who murdered his mother.

It was about Nero. Because Nero had murdered his mother, Agrippina. And so, it was just a political meme running around. It's graffiti in Rome. It's very common that they had this. So, this is not out of ordinary.

It's not some sort of secret society code or something like that. John writes the entirety of Revelation as if he's an Old Testament prophet. He writes the Greek as if it's taken out of old-style Hebrew.

It's kind of like somebody who wanted to pretend to be Elijah, so they speak in very old-fashioned language. Or they speak in the King James because they feel it makes them more of a prophet. So, he's doing that because, as I said before, 404 verses and 700-something allusions to the Old Testament.

So, he's doing that on purpose to showcase the Old Testament better. The number 666 is if you take the Hebrew spelling for Nero Caesar and write it out. And, again, Hebrew didn't have vowels back then.

It was just consonants. And you write out the spelling for Nero Caesar in the Hebrew and total it up at 666.

Okay.

If you find a variant of this same verse in a different manuscript being translated into Latin, they say his number is 616. The number of the beast is 616.

Why?

Because the same rendering in the Latin, that numerical value is 616, Nero Caesar. So, this has been pretty well known throughout church history, the number of the beast. The one who was persecuting the saints for three-and-a-half years was Nero.

Putting it all in order, why was the second beast giving breath to the image? Remember that idols, they don't talk. They have mouths, but don't talk. They have eyes, but they can't see, ears. They can't hear.

They're just dead. So, how did the ancient idolaters make their idols really special? They found this one time, a Roman Catholic idol, Mary, was crying. They later found the plumbing that made it work.

They would give breath to their idols. In fact, they had special ceremonies idolaters had where they would give life to their idols through special ceremonies. So, this is John saying the land beasts, these temple zealots, are giving life to their idol.

They're making it work. They're making it alive and saying, hey, everybody be impressed by this temple, by this golden idol. So, that's basically the background of that. And we've got to talk about the beasts.

A question about Revelation 20. Someone writes, in the Pentecostal tradition I was raised in, hell and the lake of fire are the same. But in this verse, one is cast into the other. What are the differences in the place of the dead, Abraham's bosom, heaven, paradise, hell, lake of fire?

How many instances in the Bible that hell is mentioned means a place of the dead rather than a place of eternal conscious torment full of fire and brimstone? A follow-up question on that is, if hell or lake of fire was created for Satan and the fallen angels, why are they allowed to continue on?

Why not just take care of them right away? All right. So, first of all, the second question is a classic question called a theodicy or the justification of God, the problem of evil. If God is God and he is good and he is powerful, why is there problems and evil?

Jesus told a story. Jesus told a story in which he said, once upon a time there was a field. There was a farmer and there was a field. And the farmer went out and he sowed good seed. And an enemy came along and sowed bad seed.

And think about these seeds where they looked the same when they were coming up in the ground. But when they got bigger, you could see that some were wheat and some were tares. Servants come to him and say, an enemy has done this.

Let's go rip out the tares immediately. Get rid of these things. Jesus says, oh, no. The farmer says, oh, no, if you do that, then you'll tear up some of the wheat along with them. So we're going to let them grow up all the way together until harvest time.

And then we're going to harvest them all at the same time. And what we're going to do is we're going to take all those tares and we're going to take them away and burn them like the chaff that they are.

And then we're going to take all that wheat and bring them into the barn. And then Jesus explained it and said, the field is the world. The field is the world. The enemy is Satan. My father has his people.

There are the people who are of the seed of the woman.

Right?

Genesis 3 .15. And there are those who are the seed of the serpent. And why not just take the tares away? Why not just finish it? Because if you do that, you're going to lessen the harvest. You hear what he said?

You're going to damage the wheat. Meaning, the farmer says, you're going to lessen the harvest if you try to end all the problems early.

So what is God up to?

God is up to maximizing his glory, his grace, and the good. We don't know. I mean, we're like the servants.

Come on.

Let's get this fixed. But God has more wisdom than we do. So Jesus' answer to the problem of evil? Trust God. He's going to bring about the best of all of this. Just trust him. Wait until the proper time.

So that's the answer to the problem of evil. Why is evil allowed to continue on? But about the terms, depending on your translation, you're going to read, in some places in the Old Testament, Sheol, or the place of the dead, or the grave.

And then sometimes translations can call it hell. Very unfortunate choice with the King James translators to make the place of the dead, or Sheol, just straight up hell. Sometimes when you read about Sheol, or the place of the dead, or the grave, depending on your translation, you will find it as a judgment against evildoers.

Well, death is a judgment against evildoers. You'll also find it as an enemy of the righteous. Well, it is an enemy of the righteous, but we have one who has conquered death in the grave. And you're going to find that throughout the Old Testament.

You're also going to find punishment of the wicked, even after death, in descriptions that end up being used as hell. We've got a six-series blog on our church website on the doctrine of hell. You can go look it up.

Lots of information there. But when you come to Revelation 20, when it says that hell is thrown into the lake of fire, that is actually Hades, or Sheol, the grave, the place of the dead. Remember, what enemy does Jesus defeat last?

Death.

Okay, there you go. No more death. There goes away death. So it's not about hell getting put into the lake of fire. When we read through scriptures, we have two last things. There's something called Abraham's bosom and paradise.

When Jesus tells the story about the leper who was begging at Lazarus' door, and when he died, he ended up at a feast, sitting somewhere, laying somewhere, and his head was in Abraham's bosom. That is not a special celestial category.

John had the place of honor at the Last Supper, didn't he? His head was in Christ's bosom. Place of honor. Jesus' whole point was that the lowliest ends up in the best. The last shall be first. That's the point of the story.

It's not some special place. When Jesus promises the thief, today you'll be with me in paradise, he wasn't saying there's something other than heaven called paradise. We're taking synonyms and we're creating entirely new categories.

But there's no need to problematize or complicate the Bible like that. We have assurances in the Old Testament that those who die in faith are going to be with God. Those who die in rebellion end up in judgment.

The Old Testament is not as clear as the New Testament about that, but those categories are still there. No reason to add a bunch of new categories simply because God is a creative writer and uses synonyms.

This is not a systematic theology textbook.

Right.

Okay.

So I hope that helps. We question how do we understand the new heavens and the new earth? How does Christ restore all things to himself upon his return? Gradually or a dramatic and sudden restoration at his return?

Along with this, Revelation 3 .12, Jesus promised to build into his temple the conquering believer and into the new Jerusalem. Given that, when should we see the events of Revelation as still being future rather than yet fulfilled?

Has the new Jerusalem come down in the church? So what we're asking about, what is the timing of the new heavens and the new earth? What is the timing of the new Jerusalem? Obviously, everybody wants to let the Bible be their guide.

And so for that, we're going to do two things. Let's start with Acts 2 and then we'll go over to Hebrews 12. The new Jerusalem. In Revelation chapter 21, John says, An angel took me up into a high mountain and said, Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the lamb.