In this sermon, the preacher discusses the concept of the Trinity, explaining that God has chosen to reveal himself through Jesus. The preacher uses a story about an old man saving dying birds in a snowstorm to illustrate God's love and compassion. The sermon emphasizes the idea that when Jesus returns, believers will rise up to meet him as an honor guard. The preacher also encourages the congregation to have faith and reach out to God for help, comparing it to needing an extra kick to start a car battery.

In Revelation chapter 11, we're reading verses 18 and 19. In Revelation, Revelation 11 verses 18 and 19. And the nations were angry, and thy wrath has come, and the time of the dead that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great, and shouldst destroy them which destroy the earth. And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament, and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail. Now, it will be helpful if you've heard the prior tapes, because we're talking about the time, the coming of the Lord. And the coming of the Lord involves two comings. It involves two comings. One at the beginning of the thousand year period here. And then, whether this is a literal or figurative thousand years, I do not know. But anyway, one at the beginning, and one at the end. And this is called the day of the Lord. Now, how many know the day of the Lord is as a thousand years? Right? Day of the Lord. Now, as far as the coming of the Lord is concerned, all of us are familiar with that. We say, you know, what's new? Why don't you talk about something new? We all know about the coming of the Lord. But it was not until the last century. Now, you want to realize that the church went into just about total darkness for several hundred years. From around 400 A.D. until just before the Protestant Reformation, when there became an interest in translating the Bible into the language of the people. Prior to that, it had been in Latin, and was the possession of scholars, monks and priests. And so those are called the Dark Ages, because they were dark in terms of religion, and they were dark in terms of learning in general. And then came the Renaissance, which was a resurgence of interest in education, and also the Protestant Reformation. And there were precursors, but the one we know best is Martin Luther and the work that he did. Though there were others, translators. Tyndall was one. Huss was another one that labored in the gospel. There were outstanding scholars, martyrs, and Christians. And so the darkness that had prevailed for many hundreds of years began to lift, and little by little, information was added to the church. Well, the coming of the Lord, that aspect of the revival of truth, happened in the last century. It doesn't go back beyond the 18th century. That's when people began to talk about the coming of the Lord. And as usually happens, when God moves, Satan moves. In the middle of the last century, Mormonism was born. And there was a great revival in the British Isles. And out of that revival came the teaching of the rapture in the middle of the last century. But there was also a prophecy, and the outpouring of God's Spirit, and wonderful things took place. So, immediately, there was put into people's consciousness the idea that the Lord was coming. And then was loaded onto that, this idea of the rapture, which started off, not as we know it today, but it started off that there would be 144,000 people who would be lifted from the earth to avoid the tribulation period. That's how it started, with 144,000. That came out of, I think, the Apostolic Church, if I'm not mistaken. And then, Darby wrote his concept of dispensations, that God moved in dispensations, which has been one of the greatest hindrances to straight thinking that has ever appeared in the planet earth. And then came the Sculpio Bible, which is still going strong. Oh, Albert, I tell you, I saw something today coming out of a group of Messianic Jews sending out their stuff for a Christmas present. You can buy the Sculpio Bible. If they only noticed the worst enemy they have. It is this whole thing that's so anti-Semitic that it's pathetic. May God hear me and save Israel from Western Christianity. Oh, dear God, you know, the kingdom is for the Jew first. And it's my hope and prayer to God, Earl, that we will be able to bypass Western theology altogether, Western Christian theology and traditions altogether, and go straight to the Jews with the gospel of the kingdom. Because all this junk is just anti-Semitic as it can be. That there's a Gentile church, which God loves. They're going up to heaven. They have no problems. They are going to dwell in mansions. They are going to be with the lame. They are in the Garden of Eden. They have everything you could ever imagine, think, hope for, for the lazy, carnal flesh. Like a horse going to a horse heaven which he feeds on clover. That's all it is. But the Jews, you know, no. They're down here with an earthly kingdom. The Holy Spirit's gone back to heaven. The Jews are going to preach. 144,000 Jewish evangelists are going to preach the kingdom on earth and the teeth of Antichrist without the Holy Spirit. Now, don't ever get in that group. That's bad news. So, my question to those guys is, on which side is the Apostle Paul? That's the $64 billion question. Is he in the Gentile church up in heaven? Where is he going to be in this thing? Or Peter? Or James? Or John? They'll all be down here without the Holy Spirit. Sands the Ruach HaKodesh trying to preach the gospel which can't be preached without the Spirit. So, they're going to have to kind of gum it. That's Scofield. And here's this Jewish group sending out one of the things you can get for Christmas to buy is a Scofield Bible if they have a nice edition of the Scofield Bible. They're cutting their throat out. Well, I expect to see them next in replacement theology. And then I don't know where they'll be. I sometimes think the Jews are their own worst enemy. I don't know why it is. But they argue among themselves. They've got half of them over there supporting Perez trying to give away their land. Now, figure that out. There's the Gentiles so mad they can't digest their food. And the Jews are over there saying, well, peace, peace, peace. Well, if you can figure it out, I can't figure it out. And you want to get somebody else to really send you into orbit, it's Frank Rollins back there on this question. So, my prayer and my hope is that the Bridegroom of Israel will just bypass all this tradition and Gentile junk and go straight to the Jews. God can do it through his Holy Spirit. So he can do that. And that's my prayer. Praise the Lord. So, this was restored in the middle of the last century. And it was immediately laden with this concept, which is almost totally taught in evangelical circles that at the next coming of Jesus, that all the believers are going to go to heaven. And then at the end of the thousand-year period, everybody else, whether they've ever heard the gospel or who they are or what they are, go into the lake of fire for eternity. And brother, sister, if that isn't cockeyed, nothing I've ever heard is. But that is the uniform teaching of the evangelical churches. Everybody comes up here. Well, then the raster was loaded on top of that. So, whether or not you believe mid-trib, post-trib, pre-rast, post-rast, pre-trib, post-trib, whenever you believe, when it all boils down to, is here, everybody that's saved goes to heaven. There's a shred of Bible for that. The Bible speaks clearly against that. Much less sending all the rest of the world into a punishment that the human mind can't even comprehend, that they will burn in hell forever with no hope of reprieve. Ten billion years from now, they'll still be tormented in hell. Whether or not they ever heard the gospel, it doesn't matter because, you know, it's not true. So, in the gospel of the kingdom, you want to pay attention because this is where we are now in Revelation 11, 18, and with your scriptures, and you can judge for yourself whether everybody's going up when the Lord comes. Okay? All the faith. The nations were angry, and thy wrath has come, and the time of the dead that they should be judged. Now, if he said the time of the living should be judged, then we would have Matthew 25, wouldn't we? Where the nations are gathered before Jesus, the sheep and the goat nation. But he says the time of the dead that they should be judged. How many see that? You see that? You came on Tuesday night to sit back and get away from the kids and look what you're facing. All right. Now, according to the Bible, the time of the dead that they should be judged is here at the end of the thousand year period. Not at the beginning. That's not the time of the judgment of the dead. It's the time when the Lord comes and divides the nations, but it's not the time of the judgment of the dead. Yet here we have it presented as though it's happening immediately. But if you'll turn to Revelation 20, you'll see Revelation 20, verse 12, you see the time of the judgment of the dead. Okay? So everybody turn to that, and it says Revelation 20, and I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God. Now, is that or is that not the time of the judgment of the dead? All right. So what we're seeing then is that there's the raising of the witness, which we saw in Revelation. Some of you haven't been there, so, you know, it's like the fellow said one time, keep one eye on your Bible and one eye on the chart. You know, that's interesting. All right, now, Revelation 11 is the raising of the witness. Revelation 11, 12 is the raising of the witness, isn't it? How many see that? But Revelation 20, 12, way over there, is the time of the dead. Do you see that? So the whole thing is being treated as the day of the Lord. A thousand years is as a day. All right, now, we can't build anything on one scripture, so let's go over to 2 Peter, the third chapter, and start with verse 7. I wonder why I'm yelling. You know why I'm yelling? It's because you sit so far back. Disney, if you want me to quit yelling, sit up toward the front. I'm afraid there'll be somebody back there that I won't persuade beyond all reasonable doubt. All right, I can't even hardly see Rosemary. She's all sunk down in the corner. I don't know whether I'm persuading her or not. All right, now, 2 Peter, chapter 3, verse 7. But the heavens and the earth, which are now, it's talking about the space and the earth, are kept in store reserved unto fire. What do you think about that? Against the day of judgment. We're now talking about the judgment of the dead and perdition of ungodly men. You know, we divide the world into Christian and non-Christian, but the Bible divides the world into the godly and the ungodly in its dispensational teaching that has perverted our reasoning and has made the church and its doctrine of grace an alternative to godly living. The grace of God in Jesus Christ is supposed to promote godliness, but instead it's been warned by Western tradition to be that you don't have to live godly. It's a magic that God has given to save ungodly people, and that is as wrong as anything ever was. Now, Al, here's where it comes in for the Jews. All right, Dr. Vishni, you remember Dr. Vishni? All right, Dr. Vishni was a seeker. He was a seeker. Now, he was raised in a godly home because the Jewish people, I don't know about those that are way off in liberal movements, but the orthodox, the ultra-orthodox, the conservative, and so on, have a strong bent for godliness. Okay? Is that right, Al? And Miriam, you know that. They have a strong thing about godliness. I mean, it's little things, but it shows their reverence. They won't read the Bible in the bathroom, for example. I mean, their life is keyed to a desire, and that's why Paul was having the stress he was, because if you notice Paul, the apostle, was never seeking to go to heaven. He was seeking righteousness. See, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this dead? See? Oh, I thank God, you know, the redemption of the body. He was a Jew. See, we don't understand it. We Gentiles have absolutely gone nuts in this realm. But if you'll study the Baal poems, if you'll study the Jewish reformers and the real dedicated Jews, I mean, their whole thing is righteousness. Now, true, they have it in terms of the law, and some of it gets extreme. Nonetheless, that's where the pressure is, is to live a godly life, to live a righteous life. Alright, now, Dr. Zichne had that thought in his mind, and he was seeking, and he was reaching out to different Christian groups, but they weren't making any sense to him, because he couldn't equate it with his upbringing. Nobody was talking about righteousness. And then when he heard the tapes that were coming from here, it hit his Jewish soul. And he said, well, that's what my training is. It's righteousness, righteous behavior. That's what my training is. That's what my upbringing is. So, they used to commute down to church from Mission Viejo. And Dr. Barry told me this. He said, because he could relate to it, because we were teaching righteousness, and he couldn't relate to the church when he was talking about the rapture. It didn't make any sense, because of his whole upbringing. Now, that's why I scream and cry and weep and everything else at the thought of Western theology going into Israel. Because if the Jew ever hears the Gospel as it's supposed to be preached, he'll recognize that what it is is the Torah moved from the book to the heart. See? What we've said is the law's done away. But that's incorrect. The law has been moved from the page to the heart. The Torah, so it says in Jeremiah, I was not pleased with the people. He doesn't say anything about not being pleased with the law. He's not pleased with the people. I was not pleased with them. So a new covenant will I make with the house of Israel and the house of Judah after those days. You cannot make the New Testament with a Gentile. You have to become a Jew through marriage to Christ, because it doesn't apply to a Gentile. There's no such thing as a Gentile church. There's no such thing as a Gentile covenant. It doesn't exist. Does yelling help? Does it help? I get excited. I mean, I get excited about these things. I mean, the blindness is colossal. The things that are taught are abominable, and they produce abominable fruit. There's no such thing as a Gentile church. It's not scriptural. There's no such thing as a Gentile covenant. It's not scriptural. It shall come to pass at these days, Jeremiah 33, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel. Say of the Lord, I will write my Torah. The Hebrew is Torah. I will write the Torah in their hearts and their minds where I put them. That's repeated in Hebrews, the eighth and ninth chapters. There's nothing about Gentiles. It says it shall come to pass at these days, I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Look it up, Al. Maybe you didn't realize that. It never says to the Gentiles. It's always to the house of Israel. It's always to the house of Judah. Well, then how do we get in? Through marriage to Jesus. There's one seed. Who's the seed? Jesus. There's no other seed. It's just Jesus. And in Jesus, there's neither Jew nor Greek. There's only the one olive tree. There are not two. So, God comes to a people who have been trained for thousands of years. The Lord thy God is holy. Be holy for I am holy. I am a righteous God. Keep my righteous ways. Keep my righteous laws, which they tried to do without faith. And that was the problem. They tried to do it without faith. But, you know, dispensational teaching teaches that there's never been a righteous man. That's a lie if there ever was. You can go through your Bible and find instance after instance where God declared people righteous. So, they talk it through their hat. The mother and father, the mother and father of John the Baptist, it says they were walking in all the ordinances of the law mindless. So, it says in Luke. And this crazy teaching comes. You know, which is a silly little syllogism. Everybody's a wretched sinner. Nobody's got anything. All our righteousness is filthy rags. It's taken out of context. It's from the first chapter of Isaiah. And it's taken out of context. God was speaking to the Jews and reproving them at that time. He says all tables are full of bourbon. You're not serving me. All your righteousness is filthy rags. And the evangelicals have taken that out. You know, say every word is as true as every other word. And they take it out and make an equation out of it. And every person in the world has never been a righteous person. The Lord would talk about Noah, Daniel, and Joseph. Noah, Daniel, and Joseph stood before me. Well, what he was saying was they were righteous. He said to Noah, you're the only righteous man I've found. Then we say there's nobody's righteous. It's crazy. It's a warp. It's a lie. Well, the evil that it's done is that you can't relate to it. Because here you bring them to something that is against everything that he's been taught. That man has to live righteously. Now we say you don't have to live righteously. It doesn't matter whether you live righteously or not. The truth of the matter is Paul must have turned over in his grave 500,000 times at the way his teaching has been perverted to mean that now we don't have the Torah. We have the Torah 10 million times stricter than the Torah ever was on paper. On paper, you could serve God one day of the week. And under the Torah in the heart, you have to serve God at all times. And the rest of God, you never speak your own way or speak your own words. And not just on Sunday or Saturday, I should say, not just on Saturday, but total. God never said to any Jew, present your body a living sacrifice. He says to every Christian, present your body a living sacrifice. It's a Torah written in the heart. So we got a job on our hands. I mean, we got a job on our hands. And I think when by the help of the Holy Spirit, we're able to present the kingdom. Now the Jew, that's what the Jews asked Jesus. Are you going to restore the kingdom? Well, the church doesn't preach the kingdom anymore. They don't know what they're talking about, pie in the sky. Well, the gospel of the kingdom of God on the earth, where the lion lays down the lamb and all that stuff. And Jerusalem is filled with children and old people and all the wonderful things that is dear to the Jewish heart that God said would come to pass. The new heaven, the new earth prophesied in Isaiah 65 is the message of the kingdom. And it's the thing that Paul preached. And if you look at the last chapter of Acts, Paul was sitting in a room, had a bunch of Jews and he's reasoning with them about the kingdom. And about the kingdom, not about grace, about the kingdom, the last chapter of Acts. And he finally shook his apron and he says, you have judged yourselves unworthy of the kingdom. And then the book of Acts stops, but it's never been finished. If you look at the end of Acts, it doesn't come to any conclusion. It doesn't say, amen, God bless you or anything else. It just stops. You know, I'm going to tell you why. It's going to be open again. And you know what? It's going to be people reasoning with the Jews concerning the kingdom. Because the gospel is to the king first. It's to the Jew first. And I hope this time they will not judge themselves unworthy of the kingdom. I believe their time has come. It says in Luke, when the time, Israel shall be led away captive into all nations until the time of the Gentile has been fulfilled. Until. No replacement. Until. And then God's going to come to Israel, not with Scofield, not with dispensational, not with this junk, but with the righteous kingdom of God. A righteousness that is both imputed and wrought out in us through the imbibing of the life of Jesus into our personality until we become a new creature, until we become the law manifest in the flesh. Nothing that we do. It's of Jesus. It is his life in us, changing day by day, writing line upon line, commandment upon commandment, in our heart. The Torah. In the heart. That's the new covenant. There is no other new covenant. That's the only covenant there is. And it's to the Jew first. But we, by the grace of God, who are a while out of a while stock, were brought into the house of Israel by the calling of God, by the promise of God. In Hosea, I will call them my people which are not my people. And so the promise has passed upon a remnant of Gentiles. You can see in Acts, it's a remnant. Several places, you know, it says such things, I have many people in this city and as many as were ordained to eternal life and so on. It's a remnant. I mean, we hear right now, at this moment, represent a remnant. It's a remnant taken out of a wild tree and grafted on the stock of the Messiah. The Messiah is the olive tree. The word Messiah means anointed with olive oil. And the olive tree is Messiah. And by the promise of God in the first century, it passed from the whole house of Israel to a remnant of Jews and a remnant of Gentiles, which it's been to this day. But when this remnant of Gentiles has all come in, the full number of Gentiles, the full number of Gentiles that God has ordained and the foundation of the world has come in, God shall turn again to Israel and all Israel shall be saved. So we're in wonderful days. We're at the winding up, winding down, I should say, to use a legal term in corporation, we're at the winding down of this Gentile remnant that God has called to be part of the priesthood. I'm not talking about salvation. I'm talking about the priesthood. I'm talking about the priesthood. Israel is the priesthood of God. The peculiar people, the Jews are a peculiar people to this day. See, you could tell they're separate, they're different. There's something different about the Jews. The blessing of God is on them. You put him in any country and he'll rise to the top. It happens out of history. That's why Hitler tried to murder them all because he recognized that no matter what he did, they're going to rise to the top. They're peculiar. God's hand is on them and on no other race in that way. Only the Jews. But when we come in and are married to Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, we become part of Jesus by marriage, exactly as happened with Asenath, the wife of Joseph, who was an Egyptian. She became part of Joseph and the first two children born to them, Ephraim and Manasseh, Jacob blessed them and made them part of Israel, so they were no longer half Egyptian and half Jewish, but totally Jewish. Jacob said to Joseph, you have the rest of your kids, but Ephraim and Manasseh are mine. They're mine. As Simeon and Levi are mine, Ephraim and Manasseh are mine. And from that, that was by prophecy. And by that point, then the old man died. Jacob died then, but by that word from God, Ephraim and Manasseh became 100% Jewish. And we who have been grafted into the Messiah are not half Gentile and half Jewish. We are the seed of Abraham. And the promise to the seed of Abraham is the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit. And that's why we have the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is attractive to the Jewish people as the celebrants of the Feast of Tabernacles have reported on many occasions. When the Jews hear the life and the Spirit of God, they're attracted. Because that is their bread. That's the children's bread. And then we come on with all this crazy, rotten, anti-Semitic dispensationalism and grace without works and all this other stuff. It has nothing to do with the Torah in the heart or anything else. It's just a bunch of freeloading Gentiles who are not righteous at all and care nothing about the way of righteousness or anything to do with it, just talking about they can't ever be lost because now they're saved in all this junk. It has no strength. And God knows what He's doing. And it's time now. God is bringing all the people back. And He'll feed those Jews. And He'll give them water. He'll send rain. The sea of Galilee is very low. God's going to send rain. We're just seeing the beginning. Hallelujah. And before God is finished, the nation of Israel will be the greatest Christian nation on the face of the earth. Before God is finished, Israel will be the Christian nation. And the law will come forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Hallelujah. Oh, hallelujah. Oh, thank you, Jesus. How Jesus, you know, He was cast off by His brethren. And says in Zechariah, they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced. You know, what a thing it must be to the heart of Jesus. He wept, He wept, He wept. And you talk about patience. He's had to wait for 2,000 years to be recognized by His own people. Can you imagine the tension that's in the life of the Lord as He draws close to the day when Israel mourns for Him as for an only Son? Oh, it's coming, people. The Bible promises it clearly. Hallelujah. Well, glory. So we see that in the coming of the Lord, that there's this 1,000 years. And as we were looking in 2 Peter, if you look at it, 2 Peter 3, verse 7, the heavens and the earth are kept, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. See, what God is after is ungodliness. The division is not between Christian and non-Christian. It's between godly and ungodly. That's how God divides the world. God is a respecter of righteousness. In fact, the Bible says, He that works righteousness is accepted of Him. Speaking of all men everywhere, He that works righteousness is accepted of Him. See, our minds have been warped. Oh, but they don't know Jesus. Well, Jesus has come to make us godly. And if we reject Him, then we're under judgment. If we reject Him, then we're under judgment. But that has nothing to do with the fact that God respects honesty, truthfulness, uprightness, loyalty, kindness. The Spirit of God creates that in us if we're living right. Love, joy, peace, longsuffering. That is what God is looking for. That's the fruit of the earth. All right, now, 2 Peter 3, verse 8, But be loved, be not ignorant of this one thing. How many want to be ignorant? Well, who is the person that said, he hated education. He wanted to be ignorant. He was glad he was ignorant. And someone said, Lord, bless and answer his prayer. Well, we don't want to be ignorant. Be loved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day, see, as soon as Peter, now, I don't think, this is my thinking, but I don't think Paul or Peter were into this thousand year period. It doesn't sound like it from their writings. I think both Paul and Peter and John and the rest of them saw the coming. They were, you can tell from their writings, that they believed the Lord was coming in their lifetime. I'll give you an instance. How many would like an instance? You'd rather have that than half a pizza. All right, it's in 2 Thessalonians. I'm going to give you an instance. It's in 2 Thessalonians. I'm going to show you that Paul, brother Paul, thought the Lord was coming in his lifetime. They don't know anything about a thousand years. All right, now look here. 2 Thessalonians 1, verse 7. To you who are troubled, rest with us when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven. Doesn't that sound like he expected the Lord in his lifetime? Or are you reading the verse I just read? You see what I'm saying? He's talking to people that were being persecuted and he's saying, just take it easy, the Lord's going to come put an end to this. He didn't talk to them about dying and going to heaven, dying martyr's death. Do you see that? He didn't say, don't worry, you'll have a crown in heaven. He said, the Lord's going to come put an end to this. So take it easy. Is that what he said? Well, some of you are not very convinced, but that's all right. I'm not going to prove anything here. All right, now 1 Thessalonians 4, this so-called rapture business, which is no more rapture than a frog has whiskers. It's just not rapture country. 1 Thessalonians 4. You see what he's saying in verse 13? But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep. What's he talking about? Christians that are dying. Well, what do you think his concern was? Look, if the object was to go to heaven, why would they be worried about those that died? Certainly they're better off because these people were under persecution. He said, I don't want you to be sorry about those that died. Why? Come on, use your brain. Why? Because he was, because the whole teaching had to do with people on the earth. And he thought, well, they're dead and the people that were alive would be thinking, well, the Lord's going to come and they're dead, they won't get in on it. This is the opposite from the way we think. It's hard to get into it because it's been slanted for so long. What did he say? For if you believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so that them also asleep in Jesus, will God bring? Bring! Imagine, this is preached as an evacuation. Can you believe that? Will God bring? That's the message of 1 Thessalonians 4. God's going to bring somebody. Who's he going to bring? The dead relatives, the dead Christians. They're afraid they're going to miss out on the kingdom. They had no confidence about where they went after they died. All they knew was the Jewish scriptures. The Jewish scriptures said, when you die, that's the worst thing that can happen to you. It says, a living dog's better than a dead lion. That's how much, that's from the Bible. Believe it or not, that's the Old Testament. The worst thing that could happen to them was to go down into shallow, into the grave. So, obviously these people, they died. Well, that's all over for them. They won't be here for the kingdom. See that? So, Paul said, don't worry about that. God's going to bring them back. They're going to be here. They're going to get in on it. And for this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent or go before them which are asleep. Notice that it's talking about the coming of the Lord. See? So, the Lord is coming and he's going to bring these Christians with him and that's our hope because our hope is the kingdom that's going to be on this world. Well, we say we're going to rise up into heaven. The Bible doesn't say that. Look what it says. It says we should come up to meet the Lord in the air. People, the air doesn't go up very high. You know, you go up on a real high mountain, you begin to pinch. You know why? The air's thinning out. I mean, you don't have to go very high to run out of oxygen. You fly in a jet, you have a pressurized cabin. And anything happens to it, an oxygen mass comes down. It doesn't go up very high. How many see the word it says, and the dead in Christ shall go straight up to heaven? How many see that? It says to meet the Lord. How many see where it says to go with the Lord to heaven? See that? How many see that? That term, meet, is a great term. Use, they tell me, I wasn't there at the time, but they say that that term was used, it was a tradition in a village that when a Roman dignitary came with soldiers and so on, that the elders would go outside the village to meet him. And that's the word that's used. Not to go backward into Rome, but to welcome him to the village. To show him honor. So as they come in, it's just like you go out on the front step and down the walk and out into the driveway to meet your relatives, which you probably do. You don't sit up in your house, wait till they knock on the door. If you know they're out there, you go out to meet them, don't you? Blake goes out to meet them. The dog and everybody else runs out to meet the people. So that's the term that's used there. It doesn't mean anything about going anywhere with the Lord. That's all imaginary. This is the coming of the Lord, people, not the going of the church. We rise up to meet him. Why do we rise up to meet him? Because it is his witnesses going up to be an honor guard for the Lord of hosts. When his glory appears in the heavens, we shall rise up where the carcass is. There shall the eagles be gathered together. We who feed on the body and blood of the Lamb shall rise up to the carcass to be one with him. That's why it says, so shall we be ever with the Lord. Because it is, by the way, the thing that raises you in that day is not doctrine, not your acceptance of the Lord, but his body and blood. It's the body and blood that raises you. That's what raises you. It's a love story, people. It's a love story. The Son of God loves his bride so much that the way he could express it best, and how could you express it more, was to give her to eat his flesh and to drink his blood, thus making himself incomplete. And that tension is there, because he's not a whole person, because part of him is here. And when he comes, see that's the Lamb, the slain Lamb, then the Holy Spirit will make the Messiah whole by bringing up everyone in whom his body and blood are dwelling. That's why you'll see over and many times in John 6, he that eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up in the last day. It's the body and blood, it's the love, that's what God showed me in Iceland, that that is where, that is how God works. It hasn't to do with what you believe, it has to do with life. It's a love affair. It has to do with Jesus' heart is in you. he has given you to eat of his flesh and to drink of his blood, because that is, that is, well, if you put yourself in the Lord's place, you might think for a thousand years and think, how can I show my love to my bride? You'll never find a more passionate, a more intense manner of showing love than to give her his flesh to eat and his blood to drink. Now think about that. And that makes us married. That makes us married, see, because Eve was made from Adam, and we are being made from Jesus. Eve was formed on the substance of Adam. We are being formed on the substance of Jesus. So when he comes, see, that life, what, it won't be doctrine calling to doctrine. It will be life calling to life. He won't come down and say, now let's see, who said the four steps of salvation? See, the life, his life will reach out of the bridegroom, that love will reach out. That's why two should be sleeping in one bed and two should be working in the field. One should be taking the other left, on what basis? On the basis of the body and blood of Jesus. It's the abiding, it's the abiding of his life, it's the life that will call you up. See, the lamb is being made whole again. Once Adam was awakened from his sleep, he was no longer a whole man. He was no longer a whole man. Prior to that time, he could walk all over the whole creation. He was a singleton. He was an entity. He was Lord of all that he saw and like an angel. He had need of nothing except God. He was complete in himself. But after he awoke from the sleep, something was missing and it was in another person and he was no longer complete. He was an incomplete being and he was wholly dependent upon Eve for his being and she was wholly dependent upon him and apart from one another, they were helpless to fulfill the covenant of God. To be fruitful and have dominion and to be in the image of God was not possible anymore because God had removed something. Now Jesus voluntarily, here he is the Lord, he's the thunder. Did you ever in your mind contrast the God of Sinai with the Babe of Bethlehem? Did you ever in your mind contrast that? Now you talk about a stumbling block for the Jews. Here's a stumbling block. The foundation of Jewish Orthodoxy is here is Israel the Lord, thy God the Lord is one and we come up with three. That's a stumbling block. That's a real one. Now I was thinking the other night, how do you explain this? How do you tell a devout Jew that Jesus is the God of the Jews? The covenant God of the Hebrews? How do you tell them that he is the awesome God of Sinai? The God of Moses? How do you tell them that God, that Jesus is God? It's really simple and I think God through his Holy Spirit will reveal it to the Jewish psyche that Jesus is the way in which God has chosen to reveal himself because otherwise he's unapproachable. Now that does not mean that there's only one person. There are three persons. There's a mystery to the Godhead. There's a mystery that is not entirely comprehensible to the human mind. But there's a story, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it's a film strip in which there was an old fellow living in the mountains who would not accept God. He would not accept God. And there was a terrible snowstorm one night and the birds were swept down and they were dying in the snow outside of his hut. The birds were dying from this terrible storm. They couldn't get any food, they couldn't get anything. They were just being beaten to death by the storm. And this is a kind-hearted old man and he went out and his hut was warm and cozy and he went out and he opened the door and he said, come birds, come birds. And trying to get them into the warmth because they were freezing to death in the storm. It was in Switzerland and they were freezing to death. And the birds, when they saw him, just fled. They just fled. They wouldn't come near him. And he said, oh if I could only become a bird, they would hear me. And then the son of the pastor of the village church came and invited him to church. They went down to church and the pastor was preaching and saying, God became a man so that he could reach us. And he put two and two together and it went through his mind that he had been saying, if I could only have become a bird, I could have saved those birds. But I couldn't get to them. And so God had to become a man. And that's why there was no way, how do you go near the God of Sinai? He says, don't let them look at me. Don't. If they break through and look at me, if the Levites so much as look at the Ark of the Covenant, they're dead. Sons of Aaron shall go in and cover them and then the Levites may go in and put the staves on their shoulders. But if they come in before they're covered, they're dead. They're dead. How do you relate to a God like this? So God became a man. And we can understand. Great is the mystery of the God. God was revealed in the flesh, seen of angels. And I think that's a message that Jews can understand that God, in order to relate to us the heavenly bridegroom, has become a man. And then there is the Father and the Son and God will have to bring those parts in as he does. But Godhead is a mystery. So there's a lot that's going to be going down in the days to come. Now, the body and blood, as I was saying, is what lifts us up. Now we're in Peter. All right, now notice. He's nothing about our going up to heaven. Nothing. We're going out to meet him in the day of the Lord. But who goes out to meet him? Now notice. Verse 10. The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. Oh, in verse 8. Notice how Peter, I don't think he understood about this millennium. But the Spirit of God in him had him bring the idea that there's a thousand years as a day. He may have known about it. I don't think he or Paul did. But I may be wrong. But that's in there. Verse 8. Now, in verse 10. The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night in which the heavens shall pass away. How many see that? The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night in which the heavens shall pass away. How many see that? The heavens and the earth do not pass away here. They pass away here. If you'll hold that and look at Revelation, and I'm almost through here, so don't let rigor mortis set in. We're in Revelation chapter 20. Okay. You see, verse 11. And I saw a great white throne and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. When does that take place? At the end of the millennium, at the time of the judging of the dead. Okay, but Peter says he is not even telling the people that there's going to be a special resurrection here. He's telling them what you've got to watch out for is the passing away of the heavens and the earth, the day of judgment. The day of judgment. Now, he says where the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up, seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation. That conversation there doesn't mean speech. It means the way in which you live. A holy life. What grace. A holy life. Now, why should we be living a holy life? Because of what's happening here. You're never in your life till tonight, October 22nd, 1991 ever, ever heard a preacher tell you to shape up and live it because the heavens and the earth are going to pass away. Now, did you? Do you see the junk we've heard? Everybody jumped all around. Doesn't matter how you live, could you go out in the rapture? That isn't what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches be holy because this earth is going to pass away. How many see that? Be holy because this is coming. The day, the time of the dead, as we read in Revelation 11. The time of the dead that they should be judged. Now, that's what the apostles look forward to. The time of the dead that they should be judged. That preaching needs to be restored to the church. That's what was preached in the book of Acts. God has appointed a day in the which he shall judge the world by that man whom he has chosen, whom he raised from the dead. This is what the apostles preach. Not over here at when the Lord first comes to call up his witnesses. The calling up of the witnesses is characterized in the Old Testament by the second anointing of David, when he was ruler over Judah, but not over all Israel. It is characterized also by the fact that the ark was separated from the tabernacle of the congregation and until the temple of Solomon. So what it shows us is that, are you there? The coming of the Lord is divided into two great parts, like the anointing of David. The first anointing of David, he was anointed by Samuel and he ended up out in the woods with a handful of men while Saul ruled. That's like Christ is in this world, he's anointed, he has a handful of men, but the flesh is still ruling. In the second anointing of David, Saul was dead and David was anointed king over Yehudah, over Judah. But the son of Saul remained over all the other tribes of Israel and Abner was the commander in chief. David just ruled Judah. Okay, that's all prophetic, which means that Jesus is coming into a partial rule over Israel, over his people. He won't have them all, but he will have a holy remnant of firstfruits. Judah became a firstfruits of the kingdom of David. Then some years later, Abner came to turn over the rest of all of Israel and David at that time was anointed, the third anointing, David was anointed king over all Israel. That will take place here when there's a new heaven and a new earth. See, the Old Testament does not talk about this coming. It talks about in Isaiah 65, the new heaven and the new earth. So this coming here is described in Revelation 20, verse 4, and we'll close with this, but the point is, Paul was seeking to attain this resurrection. This isn't something that you fall into, like falling off a rock. It's easier to do than not to do. This takes some doing. And so in Revelation 20, verses 4 through 6, we find the first, what Paul called the exonostasis, or the first resurrection, not of the dead, but from the dead, from among the dead. There's going to be a resurrection out from among the dead. And it is for God's witnesses. And so he says, and I saw thrones, Revelation 24, and they sat upon them. And it has to do with rulership. And judgment was given unto them, and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads. See, it has nothing to do with accepting Jesus and becoming saved. It has to do with the witness, with dedicated people who are standing. See that? See, this is the group. It's the overcomers. It's those who have stood God's witnesses. And otherwise it would say, and I saw all of those who had accepted Jesus as their personal Savior. See? Do you see the difference, how different it is from that? Okay. And then verse 5, but the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. And it says, blessed and holy. Now what does that connote to you? What does that signify to you, the way the language is expressing itself? Yeah, it's a people who are standing out for some reason. They're distinguished by being blessed and by being holy. Not by accepting Jesus, but by being blessed and by being holy. And every overcomer is blessed and is holy. Every witness of God is blessed and is holy. All right? And such, the second death has no authority, because they have overcome sin. See, the second death has authority over you as long as there is sin in you. Because it has authority over all adultery, all timidity, all lying, all sorcery. And it never loses that authority. And the only way you can get rid of it is to overcome it. You don't get rid of it just by accepting Jesus. It has a claim on you. Satan has a claim on you until it's overcome. That's why you blow your top and do ungodly things. But Satan still has a claim on your personality. Isn't that true? Think about it. All right. Blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection. On such, the second death has no authority, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall rule with him a thousand years. You see how that's a select group? So the next coming of the Lord is not the gala picnic that we thought. It's a group of witnesses raised, as it says in Revelation 11, to rise up to meet the Lord when he comes and to be ever with him as a first fruit of his church. It's the second anointing of David. It's a people known for war. The Ark of the Covenant was known for war. It's associated with Zion. Zion is the place of war, of Jerusalem. First Zion, then all Jerusalem. David's city was Zion. Then comes the end, the third anointing, and all that are going to be saved will be brought forth. Shall we stand? Praise the Lord. How many know that it's worth laying aside everything to be in this next coming of the Lord, to be part of it? Bless and honor the Antichrist, or receive his mark in the hand of their head. Hallelujah. If you're a Christian like this, there may be some, you know, you get discouraged, you fear, you know, by the time I'm not making it, it's not making it, I can't get over the hump, I've got things in my life that are not right, I'm new, I don't know what in the world is going on. If you're like that, I don't want you to be discouraged. Jesus has all power, people. Amen. He's not asking you to deliver yourself. He's not asking you to perfect yourself, to overcome by your own strength. Now you have got to be diligent, you have got to be willing, you have got to do your part. Resist temptation when you can, read your Bible, attend church, what you're doing, praying, giving, serving, you've got to do these things. That's your part, that you can do. You don't need God to lift you up, you know, with 20 tons of power to do that, you can do that. But when it comes to this overcoming, to getting a victory over the world, over self-will, over sin, that takes God. You can't do that, God's not asking you to do that. He's just asking you to do what you can. Hallelujah. Not what you can't, but what you can. And if you will do, be faithful in doing what you can, God will do the rest. Hallelujah. Now I want to pray a special prayer tonight for any that just would like prayer, would like us to remember you in prayer right now, that God will give you just that extra kick. Now back in New York, sometimes in the real cold weather, we need a hot shot on the battery, we need an extra kick. And maybe you need an extra kick on your battery right now to get you started. Hallelujah. And if you're like that, just flip your hand up and put it down. I see those hands, I see them, alright. Now you believe when we pray, you believe. Just reach out and touch the Lord, if you want to touch the pew ahead of you, whatever you want to do, a little step of faith, and just believe right now that God hears our prayer and that he will give you that extra kick that will get you up over the hump so you can go on your way rejoicing, go out of here rejoicing and not guilty and not be dragged. Lord, we come to you now. In the name of Jesus. And Lord we know that Satan works, we know that many become burdened and it seems like it'll never lift. Now Father, for those who raised their hand and are reaching out to you right now, in the name of Jesus, Father, I ask for that extra...