7 Things You Have To Know To Understand End Times Prophecy: Part 7 – The Millennium & Eternity

All right, in this session, we’re going to be talking about item number six on the Seven Things You Must Know to Understand the End Times Prophecies and that’s the Kingdom Age because the Kingdom Age is primarily given to Israel, we’re going to have to split the meeting into two parts: one in the Old Testament and one in the New. Because the most things you see about the Millennium (or what the Jews would call the Kingdom Age) is in the Old Testament because it was given to them.

You know the promise of Jewish eschatology is that the Lord would return one day and dwell among His people. We’re going to see that happening tonight and we’re going to see the impact of that. But He does so on Earth.

The promise to Christians in Christian eschatology is that one day we go to Heaven and live with Jesus and so that part we’re going to look at in the New Testament. So we’ll split the meeting tonight into two components. We’ll spend a lot of time in the Book of Isaiah and then we’ll spend the rest of our time in the Book of Revelation and we’ll have both ends of it covered. Because it’s very interesting to see how the Lord is going to change things for Israel’s benefit. And of course, we actually know quite a bit more about how that’s all going to work out than we do about how the Millennium’s going to work out for us, because although John saw the Holy City coming down out of Heaven, there’s no record that he actually went inside and took a look at it. So, all we know is some external features. We’re going to have to wait to see what it looks like on the inside. Hopefully, we don’t have to wait long now, so we could probably contain our enthusiasm for just a few more weeks, or months or whatever it happens to be.

All right. Let’s begin our study. We’re going to just take a quick survey through the Book of Isaiah, and we’ll go verse by verse and we’ll carefully look at every prophecy in the book, so we’ll be here for quite a while tonight. [laughs] No, we’re going to skip over a lot of it—but we’re going to start at the beginning in Isaiah 2:1-5, I’m just going to read you the major portions of Isaiah that have to do with what we’d call the Millennium, what they would call the Kingdom Age.

So, the first one we’re going to Isaiah 2:1-5 and this is what it says:

This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:

In the last days

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established

    as the highest of the mountains;

it will be exalted above the hills,

    and all nations will stream to it.

Many peoples will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

    to the temple of the God of Jacob.

He will teach us his ways,

    so that we may walk in his paths.”

The law will go out from Zion,

The word there is “Torah”.

   the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He will judge between the nations

    and will settle disputes for many peoples.

They will beat their swords into plowshares

    and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation will not take up sword against nation,

    nor will they train for war anymore.

That’s Isaiah 2, the first few verses, and this is one of the first glimpses we get of the Millennium. There’s a very similar passage in Micah 4:1-8 and it’s almost word for word. We won’t bother to go through there. Isaiah and Micah were contemporaries. They both wrote about the same time. Some theologians speculate that the two might have gotten together a little bit on this passage because, as you would—you can look at it on your own, but as you look at it you’d find out that it’s almost word for word the same.

Now, I want you to understand as we go through these things that—especially in this passage where it says:

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established

    as the highest of the mountains;

A mountain is a word that has a symbolic meaning when we’re talking about prophecy. The symbolism, is government. When it says the mountain of the Lord it means the government of the Lord. And so you can read: “In the last days the government of the LORD’s temple will be established as highest among the governments.”

And so, what that says is that one of the things we know is that on Earth in the time of the Millennium, the religion will also be the government just like it was in Israel in those days. Israel was called a theocracy form of government. That’s a government whose head is God. And so they will revert again to a theocratic government and the head will be the Lord Himself just as we’ll see the passages tell us.

And so you see that, and you see that it’s chief among the mountains. Which means that it’s the government over all the governments. Like the U.N. tries to be sometimes in these days. The government over the governments. Hasn’t worked out so far but when the Lord takes it over it will work, and His government will be the chief among all the governments. And so we’ll have that to look forward to.

And again, we’ve got to remember here that when we’re in this Book of Isaiah, we’re looking at what’s going to happen for the Jews. This is Israel’s promise. And you see, this was written 750 years B.C. and it’s given to Israel.

Okay. He says that His law is going to be the Law on Earth. The Torah will be the law on Earth, and He will be the Judge between the nations and settle disputes between people. And I think we talked about the fact before in verse 4 that “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation”. That’s written over the main entrance to the U.N. building in New York. That’s a quote. (I wonder why the ACLU hasn’t gotten a hold of that one because it seems like they would want to put a stop to that. Of course, maybe they don’t have any authority internationally.)

And then, in Joel 3:10 (by the way, Joel: the model of the Great Tribulation) you find the opposite passage, the contrast to it; the mirror image, the backwards of it. It says they’ll beat their plowshares into swords and their pruning hooks into spears at the beginning of the Millennium, but at the end, nation will not take up war against nation anymore.

I think my latest statistics say that about fifty nations are at war today. The thing is that even the ones that aren’t at war, even the ones that are supposed to be friendly, are mad at each other. So you just don’t know from one day to the next who’s going to be the problem.

Okay, now let’s go over to another one, it’s only a couple of chapters over, it’s in chapter 4.

This is one I really like because of the symbolism here that takes place. If you know much about Jewish weddings or if you’ve ever been to a Jewish wedding, you’ll see the symbolism here. We’re going to read in chapter 4; the chapter is only six or seven verses long and the whole thing has to do with this. So let’s just start and read the whole chapter. 

It says:

Isaiah 4:1

In that day

Now remember I’ve told you before, Isaiah uses that kind of a code phrase, “in that day”. Quite often it means he’s writing about the end of the age. And if it’s something that says, “in that day” and it’s already happened in history, it means that it’s going to happen again.

Because many scholars believe that Isaiah was writing three stories simultaneously. He was writing history, he was writing short-term prophecy as it concerned the Southern Kingdom, and he was writing end times prophecy. Sometimes all three at once.

And so, you have to go through it and see really what the context is. But the key phrase is usually when something starts off, “in that day”.

But it says at the beginning of the chapter:

 In that day seven women

    will take hold of one man

and say, “We will eat our own food

    and provide our own clothes;

only let us be called by your name.

    Take away our disgrace!”

Now, this doesn’t mean much here in the general context, but if you know that as we go through that that one man is really the Messiah. What they mean is they will all be united to Him, as a bride is united to a husband. 

Because it goes on to say in verse 2:

In that day the Branch of the Lord

Now there’s one of those key phrases again: The Branch. And so it’s talking about the Messiah.

In that day the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel. 

Now, you remember it started off saying “in that day” in verse 2. So the survivors of Israel would be the ones who are left alive at the end of the Great Tribulation and are coming into the Kingdom to inhabit it.

Those who are left in Zion, who remain in Jerusalem, will be called holy, all who are recorded among the living in Jerusalem. The Lord will wash away the filth of the women of Zion; he will cleanse the bloodstains from Jerusalem by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of fire. 

(Or, the spirit of judgment and the spirit of fire—depending on how your translation reads that, because we believe that’s a reference to the Holy Spirit.)

Then the Lord will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night;

Now, where do you hear about that? That comes right out of Exodus, doesn’t it? And He says He’s going to repeat this, and it will happen again in the Kingdom Age. 

And then it says:

over everything the glory

That word is “Shekinah” and that’s an Old Testament name for the Holy Spirit, the Shekinah Glory.

over everything the glory will be a canopy.

Now this word “canopy” in Hebrew is chuppah. Does anyone know what a chuppah is? It’s the wedding canopy, yes. So it gives you the symbolism of the wedding. 

Then in verse 6 it says:

It will be a shelter

The word in Hebrew for “shelter” is sukkah. Does anybody know what that word means? Go ahead—tabernacle, yes! It is tabernacle. And so it’s the tabernacle. In Hebrew, the Feast of Tabernacles is called Sukkot, right? And sukkot is the plural of sukkah. And sukkah means tabernacle.

And so you have this beautiful symbolism in this one, that’s why I wanted to bring it to you, that shows the theme of the marriage as well as the theme of the tabernacle. And so, what’s going to happen in the Millennium? The Jews have been promised the Lord comes back and dwells with them, right? And He dwells with them as a husband. Okay, so that’s Isaiah 4.

Now this Kingdom Age (we call it the Millennium) you know it’s a thousand year kingdom, right? It’s not eternity, nor is it Heaven. It is a period of time, one thousand years long, that is tucked in between the six thousand year age of man, and eternity. And so it has a special meaning and it has a special purpose. It has a two-fold purpose.

One, it allows us to begin enjoying our rewards and, second, it demonstrates that even with Satan bound man can still get in enough trouble to hang himself. [laughs] We’re going to look at that in more detail a little later on. 

But the Kingdom Age has a very special—some people confuse it with eternity and it’s really not. We’re going to show you when we get to the Book of Revelation there’s still time; eternity, by definition implies the absence of time. So hang with me there on that one.

All right. Now let’s go over to Isaiah 35; we’ll go to chapter 35. And again, we’re going to read much of the chapter. 

In Isaiah 35 we read:

The desert and the parched land will be glad;

    the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.

Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;

    it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.

The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,

    the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;

they will see the glory of the Lord,

    the splendor of our God.

Strengthen the feeble hands,

    steady the knees that give way;

say to those with fearful hearts,

    “Be strong, do not fear;

your God will come,

    he will come with vengeance;

with divine retribution

    he will come to save you.”

Okay, now that’s what happened in the Second Coming. And then, what’s the result of that?

He says:

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened

    and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

Then will the lame leap like a deer,

    and the mute tongue shout for joy.

Water will gush forth in the wilderness

    and streams in the desert.

The burning sand will become a pool,

    the thirsty ground bubbling springs.

In the haunts where jackals once lay,

    grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.

And a highway will be there;

    it will be called the Way of Holiness;

Or literally, the Sacred Course.

  it will be for those who walk on that Way.

The unclean will not journey on it;

    wicked fools will not go about on it.

No lion will be there,

    nor any ravenous beast;

    they will not be found there.

But only the redeemed will walk there,

    and those the Lord has rescued will return.

They will enter Zion with singing;

    everlasting joy will crown their heads.

Gladness and joy will overtake them,

    and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Now some of this is written in the idiom of the day. You and I would not think of fearing as we walk along a path whether we’d be jumped by a lion. But in those days, it could happen.

And so, what he’s saying there is that no lion will be there—in other words, no harm can come to anyone on that path. But this is a chapter that talks about the rejuvenation, if you will, the restoration of Earth in the Millennial Kingdom.

All right. Now the next one we’re going to look at is a couple of chapters over. Isaiah 41:18-20. 

In Isaiah 41:18-20 we read:

I will make rivers flow on barren heights,

    and springs within the valleys.

I will turn the desert into pools of water,

    and the parched ground into springs.

I will put in the desert

    the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive.

I will set junipers in the wasteland,

    the fir and the cypress together,

so that people may see and know,

    may consider and understand,

that the hand of the Lord has done this,

    that the Holy One of Israel has created it.

Those words, “may see and know, consider, and understand” (The word see there really means to discern. In other words, not just be able to see something visually but also to understand it.) means they discern, they recognize, and they determine. Three levels of understanding: discernment, recognition, and determination that the Hand of the Lord—in other words, everybody will know without a doubt that the Hand of the Lord has created it.

Now this is another issue that has to do with the rejuvenation of the land. You know, in the Old Testament, the Kingdom Age was often called the Restoration of All Things. Jesus makes that phrase a couple of times in the New Testament. “At the restoration of all things.” 

What that means is, the world is going to be put back into the shape (condition) it was in when Adam arrived. Okay? So pre-curse, before the curse. So a lot of these natural and other kinds of disasters that are going to take place during the Great Tribulation actually are for the purpose of putting the Earth back in the condition it was in when Adam found it.

This tsunami sped up the Earth’s rotation by three one-millionths of a second. So that means our days are now three one-millionths of a second shorter than they were before. Now that doesn’t make any difference to us, obviously, but it shows by speeding up the rotation you shorten time.

The other thing that happened is that the axis—you know it’s tilted on its axis to what, 27 or 17 degrees or something like that. I can’t remember what the degrees are but that has been affected by two-and-a-half percent. And so the axis has changed a little bit. They have determined that. 

And the interesting thing is, the Earth is, according to geologists, it is still ringing like a bell would ring—you know, it’s vibrating. And so the enormity of the force of that earthquake is sufficient to make the Earth wobble, to make it speed up, to change the angle of inclination and to make it vibrate.

Now that’s just one event. And so, when the Lord says all the mountains are going to flee and all the islands disappear you know that’s all of them, not just one. And so you can see how all that will have this effect.

Now the impact of all that will be that the climate changes. It’ll be that the seasons become more uniform; that if you were to speed the Earth on its orbit around the Sun, the year comes back to 360 days like it was at the beginning. Every month has 30 days in it and there’s basically, a very comfortable sub-tropical climate throughout the Earth. These are some of the things that are going to happen. The disasters and the earthquakes and the nuclear bombs being shot off in the Great Tribulation are actually for the purpose of helping to restore that; putting it back into the condition it was in. Because the Earth is going to be back the way the Lord created it. He didn’t create it odd like this, you know. He didn’t create it with a 365-and-a-quarter day year, you know. He doesn’t do stuff like that. He didn’t make it crooked when He started; He made it all perfect, and He’s going to put it back that way when He gets done. All right. So that’s Isaiah 41:18-20.

Now suppose we go to Isaiah 60. 

In Isaiah 60, starting in verse 10:

Foreigners will rebuild your walls,

    and their kings will serve you.

Though in anger I struck you,

    in favor I will show you compassion.

Your gates will always stand open,

    they will never be shut, day or night,

so that people may bring you the wealth of the nations—

    their kings led in triumphal procession.

For the nation or kingdom that will not serve you will perish;

    it will be utterly ruined.

Now, here He is saying again that Israel will finally receive this preeminent nation status. They held it for a while during the reign of King Solomon—never have again. But Israel is destined to be the preeminent nation on Earth.

Verse 13:

“The glory of Lebanon will come to you,

    the juniper, the fir and the cypress together,

to adorn my sanctuary;

    and I will glorify the place for my feet.

So, they’re talking about the Millennial temple which, by the way, instead of being covered in gold in the interior (the way the temple in Herod’s time was) it will all be wood on the inside.

And so, it’s saying that this wood is going to come from Lebanon. It did before but when they brought it, they covered it all in gold. But in the new temple, the Millennial temple, it doesn’t get covered in gold. It just stays wood.

and I will glorify the place for my feet.

The children of your oppressors will come bowing before you;

    all who despise you will bow down at your feet

and will call you the City of the Lord,

    Zion of the Holy One of Israel.

“Although you have been forsaken and hated,

    with no one traveling through,

I will make you the everlasting pride

    and the joy of all generations.

You will drink the milk of nations

    and be nursed at royal breasts.

Then you will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior,

    your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.

Instead of bronze I will bring you gold,

    and silver in place of iron.

Instead of wood I will bring you bronze,

    and iron in place of stones.

I will make peace your governor

    and well-being your ruler.

No longer will violence be heard in your land,

    nor ruin or destruction within your borders,

but you will call your walls Salvation

Interestingly, that word is Yeshua which is the Hebrew word which means God Brings Salvation. So there’s the name of Jesus there.

and your gates Praise.

The sun will no more be your light by day,

    nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you,

for the Lord will be your everlasting light,

    and your God will be your glory.

Your sun will never set again,

    and your moon will wane no more;

the Lord will be your everlasting light,

    and your days of sorrow will end.

Then all your people will be righteous

    and they will possess the land forever.

And on it goes. Okay, that’s Isaiah 60. Now that shows you again, here the people are being restored, the nations being restored, and it gives you the same hint that we will see in Revelation 21 that there is no more need of the sun or the moon because God and the Lamb will be the source of light for us.

All right, so that’s chapter 60. Now let’s go to chapter 65. This one’s more familiar to you, I’m sure. 

At Isaiah 65 we’re going to start at verse 17:

“See, I will create

    new heavens and a new earth.

Now there’s a passage right out of Revelation 21.

The former things will not be remembered,

    nor will they come to mind.

This tells us that, although we will have an eternal life with the Lord, that the things that we did or didn’t do in this life won’t be part of that. 

Some people ask me sometimes, you know, “How could I possibly be happy in Heaven when half my family is not going to be there? They’re all going the other way.”

And I always turn them to this verse. For our happiness we have to have our memories erased. Some of this has to disappear, or else we’d be regretting it for all that time. And so, it says here:

The former things will not be remembered,

    nor will they come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever

    in what I will create,

for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight

    and its people a joy.

I will rejoice over Jerusalem

    and take delight in my people;

the sound of weeping and of crying

    will be heard in it no more.

“Never again will there be in it

    an infant who lives but a few days,

    or an old man who does not live out his years;

the one who dies at a hundred

    will be thought a mere child;

This is one of those verses that we use to speculate that the Earth is being returned to its pre-Adamic state because the thing that makes us age is the absence of that water vapor canopy that the Lord created around the Earth at the beginning that allows destructive ultraviolet rays to contaminate the cell regeneration process. You know, if you remember from your biology class in high school, on average your cells regenerate about every seven years. Some go faster, some go slower but the average for your body is about every seven years. So if that’s the case, why do we age?

Before the Flood we had these incredibly long life spans and then after the Flood. If you’ll notice the ages of people as they died, they get progressively younger and younger and they’re dying. And so it got down to Abraham who lived about 175 years, Moses 120 years and so on it went. Until finally, in the Psalms, David wrote that lifespans would be standardized at about seventy years.

All right, but—why the big lifespans before the Flood, and shorter afterwards? It’s because of the removal of that water vapor canopy that kept out those harmful ultraviolet rays. And that’s apparently going to be restored again because now it says:

the one who fails to reach a hundred

    will be considered accursed.

And:

the one who dies at a hundred

    will be thought a mere child;

And so that gives us an idea that these long lifespans will return.

Verse 21 says:

They will build houses and dwell in them;

    they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

This is what is going to be happening on Earth now, you remember. And so that tells us two things. One, there is still private property on Earth. They’ll build houses and dwell in them so they’re building their own house, and there will be some farming going on there because they’ll plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

No longer will they build houses and others live in them,

    or plant and others eat.

For as the days of a tree,

    so will be the days of my people;

my chosen ones will long enjoy

    the work of their hands.

They will not labor in vain,

    nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;

for they will be a people blessed by the Lord,

    they and their descendants with them.

Before they call I will answer;

    while they are still speaking I will hear.

The wolf and the lamb will feed together,

    and the lion will eat straw like the ox,

Here again we go back to the pre-curse time. You remember when after the Flood, the Lord said, “Okay. You’re not going to be vegetarians anymore. You can now hunt and kill animals for food. And to protect them I’m going to create a barrier between you and them, so they’ll be afraid of you.”

Because, apparently before the Flood this was not the case. There was harmony in the creation. Nobody was there to oppress or make anyone else or anything else fearful. There was harmony between mankind and between the animals. That went away after the Flood when man became carnivorous. And here He says, “I’m going to reverse that again. And we’ll all be at peace with one another. There will be peace and harmony throughout.” We’re going to read in another passage that you’ll remember the one that says, “And a little child will lead them.” So there you have a little child being able to play with these animals. 

But—there is one exception:

 and dust will be the serpent’s food.

He doesn’t get to enjoy any of this, he’s still apparently crawling on his belly. You can read the dust as being “he crawls in the dust” or you can read the dust literally as it is in Isaiah 14 where it talks about the fact that the human body—the Lord says, “From dust you came and to dust you shall return.” And so some view that with the passage in Isaiah 14 as saying that that’s what Satan is required to eat—decaying bodies of the people he has led astray. That doesn’t sound very good. 

But it says:

They will neither harm nor destroy

    on all my holy mountain,”

says the Lord.

Okay. There you’ve got a quick run-through of the different passages in Isaiah as to how things are going to be on Earth. I want you to just try and visualize that. A world at peace. You still have human government, but in charge of the human government is the ecclesiastical or the theocratic government of the Lord. He’ll be here ruling in person. 

You’ll have nations still and those nations will be required to conform to the laws of the Lord. I can show you places like in the Psalms where it says to the nations and to the kings, “Be careful how you deal with the Son. Better stay nice to Him because His anger can flare up in just a minute.”

Is that in Psalm 2, or is that 110? I can’t remember which. Let’s see if we can find that and take a look at it. It’s in one of those two places, either Psalm 2 or Psalm 110. It’s the one that starts off, Sit here until I make the nations a footstool under Your feet.

Psalm 2. Let’s take a look at that one. 

It says:

Why do the nations conspire

    and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth rise up

    and the rulers band together

    against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,

“Let us break their chains

    and throw off their shackles.”

The One enthroned in heaven laughs;

    the Lord scoffs at them.

He rebukes them in his anger

    and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,

“I have installed my king

    on Zion, my holy mountain.”

I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:

He said to me, “You are my son;

    today I have become your father.

Ask me,

    and I will make the nations your inheritance,

    the ends of the earth your possession.

You will break them with a rod of iron;

    you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

Therefore, you kings, be wise;

    be warned, you rulers of the earth.

Serve the Lord with fear

    and celebrate his rule with trembling.

Kiss his son, or he will be angry

    and your way will lead to your destruction,

for his wrath can flare up in a moment.

    Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

That sounds a little different from the gentle Jesus, meek and mild patting everybody on the head and telling them to turn the other cheek. This is a little different story this time. Psalm 2: a picture of the Messianic government in the Kingdom Age.

All right now, let’s flip over for just a minute. We’ve got time here to do this. Let’s flip over to Ezekiel. And I want to just give you a quick picture of what’s going to happen. We’re not going to try to get through all the 8 chapters. I’m just going to take you through a verse here and a verse there to show you the kind of stuff that’s going to be happening. So, if you turn to Ezekiel 40, we’ll look at just some of these highlights there.

Ezekiel 40-48 talks about life in Israel during the Millennium. They talk about a temple and if you have a study Bible, you might even have a diagram of this temple. It’s never been built yet; the directions Ezekiel gives are specific enough so that you could build it right from the directions in the Bible—and people have, I’ve seen scale models of this. There’s a great one over in the Temple Institute over in Jerusalem. And what we’re going to be looking at is just some of the similarities and some of the differences.

First of all we see in chapter 40, in verse 41, we see that there will still be sacrifices. The sacrificial system will be reinstituted. It explains how to do that starting in verse 38 of chapter 40 and it goes to verse 43. And so you can read in there that there will still be sacrifices. There will be sacrifices for sin because there will still be sin on Earth because there will be natural human beings who have gone live into the Kingdom. They’re the ones that repopulate the planet during the Millennial Kingdom. 

The ones who survived the Great Tribulation—they weren’t believers in time to go in the Rapture, but during the Great Tribulation they became —and then they survived. They’ve only got a 50/50 chance of surviving, but they do. And at the end of the Tribulation when the Lord comes back, He ushers them into the Kingdom. This is what the Sheep and Goat Judgement is all about. It’s also what the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids—those are all descriptions of what’s going to happen to the believers still left alive. Some will be believers; some will be unbelievers. Believers will be ushered into the Kingdom alive. Unbelievers cast off into the outer darkness. 

So at the beginning of the Millennium, only believers left on Earth. Some in their natural states and they’re the ones that populate the Millennium and bring the population of Earth back. But they’re still natural so they still have their sin nature, so there are still sacrifices. There are daily sacrifices for sin offered in this new temple during the Millennium.

But there is no High Priest in this temple. Why is that? Yes—Jesus is the High Priest; He’s also the King. So they don’t need another guy for that. And there’s also no ark in this temple, the Ark of the Covenant is not there. 

And as you go over to chapter 41, there’s no incense altar, no menorah—the seven-branched candlestick, you know the big candlestick—no Ark, no washbasin. All those things have been fulfilled. You see, the incense altar symbolized the prayers of the saints going up to God, but God is right here now, so you just go up and talk to Him if you want to say something to Him. 

There’s no menorah, the seven-branched candlestick, because, who is the fulfillment of that? Who’s the Light of the World? The Lord is. And so you don’t need to symbolize Him now because He’s here. No Ark because it is New Covenant time, and no washbasin because we are cleansed in His blood. And so those things have gone now.

And then when you go down into (I told you about the wood) chapter 41 into verse 15 or 16, the outer sanctuary and the inner sanctuary, the portico faces the court as well as thresholds and narrow windows and galleries all around the room—everything beyond including the threshold was covered with wood. 

The floor, the wall up to the windows, (the windows were covered in the space above the outside) the inner sanctuary the walls were at regular intervals all around. There were carved cherubim and palm trees, palm trees alternated with cherubim, each cherubim had two faces—the face of a man toward the palm tree and the face of a lion toward the palm tree on the other side. So the cherubim now only have two faces. How many did they have—they had four faces. Remember the four faces of the cherubim? There was the Man and the Lion. Those were the two that were still left. And what were the other two? The Eagle and the Ox. Right. And the four faces of the cherubim symbolize the four faces of Jesus. He was Man, as symbolized by the face of the man. He was God, as symbolized by the eagle. He was the Suffering Servant, as symbolized by the ox. And He was the Lion of the tribe of Judah. And so, the Suffering Servant is gone; no more, right? And no more do you have to symbolize God because God is now with us. So what we’ve got left is the Man and the Lion. So, Jesus is the Man; He’s also the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

Okay. So you go down through there. In verse 22 it says:

Ezekiel 41:22

There was a wooden altar three cubits high and two cubits square

And you go down to verse 23:

Both the main hall and the Most Holy Place had double doors. 24 Each door had two leaves—two hinged leaves for each door.

In other words they were like shutters. Now, what does that replace? Yeah—it replaced the veil, right outside the most Holy Place. And why no more veil? Because at the cross the way to the Lord was made open. So now, it’s a door with shutters and it stands open.

All right, that takes care of the inner parts of the temple now.

Go over to chapter 43 and I’ll just read this to you quickly. In chapter 43:

Ezekiel 43:1

Then the man brought me to the gate facing east, and I saw the glory of the God of Israel coming from the east.

The glory of God, this is the Shekinah Glory.

His voice was like the roar of rushing waters, and the land was radiant with his glory.

This is a description of the return of the Shekinah Glory to the temple, for the first time since Ezekiel saw Him leave before the Babylonian captivity in 600 B.C.

And then down to Ezekiel 43:7—this is the Lord speaking:

He said: “Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my feet. This is where I will live among the Israelites forever. The people of Israel will never again defile my holy name—neither they nor their kings—by their prostitution and the funeral offerings for their kings at their death.

And so, this is the return of the Shekinah Glory after having left during the days of Ezekiel back just before the Babylonian captivity. You notice the first thing He says, “This is where I will live among the Israelites forever. The house of Israel will never again defile my holy name.” First thing He says to them, they will never again do this.

Go over to the next chapter, 44, and this is what He’s mad about. In Ezekiel 44:7 He says:

In addition to all your other detestable practices, you brought foreigners uncircumcised in heart and flesh into my sanctuary, desecrating my temple while you offered me food, fat and blood, and you broke my covenant. Instead of carrying out your duty in regard to my holy things, you put others in charge of my sanctuary. 

Now who do you suppose He’s talking about there? Who is in charge of the sanctuary during the Great Tribulation? Antichrist, yeah. And it says “he’s uncircumcised in heart”. Who do we know that’s circumcised in heart? Christians. “And in flesh”. Who do we know who is circumcised in flesh? Jews. So he’s saying, this guy wasn’t a believer. He wasn’t a member of either covenant. “He’s not part of the New Covenant, he’s not part of the Old Covenant, and somehow he got to be in charge of My temple! And of My services”. And of course, that’s the thing that the Lord is most upset about. And He says, “You are never going to do that again. Never.”

And then it goes on there and then we go through, starting at chapter 45, you have the division of the land and there is a new division. There are offerings on holy days and you find out that some of the holy days are retained and some are not.

We’ve talked about the fact that the inside is wood and not gold. There’s no incense altar, there’s no menorah, there’s no Ark, there’s no wash basin. The altar is made of dressed stone, not rough stone. The cherubim have two faces, not four. There’s no high priest.

They have a Passover celebration every year but guess what? No lamb—now it’s a cow, beef. Why no lamb at the Passover? Lamb’s already been sacrificed, yes.

They have Pentecost. (I’m sorry. No Pentecost. Because the days of the Church are over.) No First fruits. No Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement. That’s all over with. And no Rosh Hashanah. Only Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the Feast of Tabernacles. 

Now, Passover was the Passover Lamb who takes away the sins of the people. Unleavened Bread symbolized the seven days of no yeast, symbolized the removal of sin from the Earth. Tabernacles symbolizes God dwelling with the people. And there He is, He’s dwelling with them again.

All right. Now one more thing in Ezekiel 47, we’ll read this and then we’ll be off into the New Testament.

In chapter 47 it says:

The man brought me back to the entrance to the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was coming down from under the south side of the temple, south of the altar. He then brought me out through the north gate and led me around the outside to the outer gate facing east, and the water was trickling from the south side.

Then he goes on to talk about how this water became a big river and pretty soon it was a river he couldn’t cross because the water had risen so deep it was deep enough to swim in. Now I want you to remember this river.

And then he goes down to and says this water (this is in verse 7) he says:

When I arrived there, I saw a great number of trees on each side of the river

Remember the trees.

He said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, where it enters the Dead Sea.

The Arabah is the fault line where the Dead Sea is down there, and that’s what he’s talking about—the Dead Sea. 

When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh.

So the Dead Sea gets freshened during the Millennium.

Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. Fishermen will stand along the shore; from En Gedi to En Eglaim there will be places for spreading nets. The fish will be of many kinds—like the fish of the Mediterranean Sea. 

I believe it’s in the Book of Revelation where we’ll learn the water, half of it flows Eastand half flows West. So actually the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean get connected by this river and fish from the Mediterranean swim into the Dead Sea and inhabit it—no longer dead. 

Now verse 12:

Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.”

All right. So you’ve got a river flowing down to the Dead Sea; fruit trees on either side. (You want to remember that.) When it says, ‘fishermen will stand along the way from En Gedi to En Eglaim’, it means ‘from shore to shore’. En Gedi is on the western shore in Israel and En Eglaim is on the eastern shore in Jordan. And so ‘from shore to shore’. All along the lake except for one little part. 

It says in verse 11:

But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt.

That’s in the southern end in the Dead Sea in an area where a lot of people think the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah once stood. In fact, I’ve never seen this myself, but Hal Lindsey has told me that, standing on a fortress up there (Masada) on a clear day, he says you can look down to the southern end of the Dead Sea and you can see remnants of foundations and things under the water because it’s clear enough, at the southern end of the Dead Sea. I’ve never seen it myself, but he says he’s seen it there and that is where Sodom and Gomorrah once stood. They stood on the south eastern shore of the Dead Sea. And in those days when they were down there it was all green and fertile. Now it’s just a barren wasteland down there, of course.

All right. So that shows you then what the temple is going to be like on Earth and it shows you some of the differences between the temple we have today (or we had two thousand years ago, I should say) and the temple we’re going to have in the Millennial Kingdom.

Okay now, for the Church view, the view the Church has in the Millennial Kingdom, we’ll call it—and you understand the word “Millennium” is Christian word. It comes from the Latin mille annum which means one thousand years. And the thousand years comes from the Revelation 20, that’s where the word first appears. You don’t see it in the Scriptures anywhere. Just like the word rapture, it comes out of the Latin translation. So “Millennium” is Latin translation, and it comes out of verse 5:

(The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) 

It is also up there in verse 3 as well:

to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. 

And in Latin, a thousand years is mille annum. One thousand years. And so we put the thing together and get “millennium” from that.

Okay. Chapter 20 talks about that thousand years. It doesn’t describe it there very much but then you get to chapter 21, and you see a verse that looks like it’s right out of the one we’ve just read in Isaiah. It says:

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

Now, I draw a circle in my Bible around the word “as” because some have taught in the past that the New Jerusalem is the bride. But that’s not what it says. It says she’s prepared as a bride, and beautifully dressed for her husband. Well, a bride is at her very most beautiful on her wedding day, right? That’s her goal, to be at her very most beautiful on her wedding day. And so, this is what they are saying. They are saying, “This has been made as beautiful as it can possibly be made for this event.”

And that’s what the Lord has been doing for the last two thousand years, by the way—preparing this, this place for us. Remember in John 14 He says, “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go, I’ll come back and get you so that where I am you might also be.” 

And so, for the last two thousand years, in addition to running the universe, He’s been building this place for us.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”

Now, that word “new” is probably more accurately translated “fresh” because you see this new heavens and new Earth does not mean the old heaven and old Earth are destroyed and He’s recreated something new and different. What it means is, it has been restored. So you could say, “It’s been restored” rather than being created. And this is if you want, it is recreated or made fresh again literally, is what it means. And it’s the time that’s called in 2 Peter “the restitution of all things”.

Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

All right, that’s a little hint about what happened in Matthew 25, the Sheep and Goat Judgement. He took the goats, and He threw them into outer darkness, the place prepared for the devil and his angels. And so, at the beginning of the Kingdom Age, the beginning of the Millennium, no unbeliever is left on Earth at all. Everyone on Earth at the beginning of the Millennium is a believer.

And see, this is one of those things we’ve complained about all these years. We’ve said three things to the Lord as excuses for our misbehaving.

The first thing we’ve said was, “The devil made me do it!” You know, Adam and Eve started that one and it’s been popular ever since. Every time we get in trouble, it’s the devil. “If it wasn’t for this devil down here, Lord, we could be all right!”

So what does He do? In chapter 20, He takes the devil, chains him up, throws him in the pit for a thousand years. So he’s chained and out of circulation for all that time.

So then He says, “Okay now can you behave?” And they said, “Well, we could if we didn’t have all these unbelievers around. They’re bad examples for us! They own a cable TV and they put these programs in front of us and we can’t help it!”

So He says, “Okay.” Zap! All the unbelievers are gone. He says, “Now can you behave?” And we say, “Well, Lord. You know—You went away and left us all alone. If you’d just be here with us, maybe we could come and talk to You when we’re in trouble or something like that.”

He says, “Okay.” He sets up an office in Jerusalem. Now He’s here, okay. He’s here in the world. And those three things that we’ve complained about He takes away from us during the Millennium. And He says, “Now can you behave?”

And guess what? The answer is still no! Because at the end of the Millennium when Satan is freed, there is still enough sin in the hearts of natural man to allow the devil to recruit this huge army right away and try to kick the Lord off the planet again.

And so, I believe that the major purpose for the Millennium is not just to let us start enjoying our rewards but to prove to us that there is no circumstance or condition under which natural man can behave well enough to dwell with God. It can’t be done. And even after He removes all of the problems, it can’t be done. And so this is what this whole thing comes to, and in verse 8 we see where all the unbelievers are taken off the face of the Earth. The offspring of natural men still inherit the sin nature. Now as we’re going to see, that’s a problem on Earth; that’s not a problem in the New Jerusalem.

All right, so let’s keep on reading.

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.

And this is one of those places where we think, well, the Holy City is the bride! Well, no. The bride is in the Holy City. Because John 14—He goes to prepare a place for us and then He comes back and takes us there. And then when He comes back, we come back with Him. And that’s “the Holy City coming down out of heaven”. We’ve been in it up there, and now it’s moved down here. And as I’ve said here before, I think, I don’t believe this New Jerusalem ever really touches down on Earth. I believe it stays in orbit above the Earth. I’ve done some additional research on that. We’re going to see it in a few minutes here, the size of it and I’ll tell you what new information I’ve found because of that. But let’s just read on here for now.

It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

Now, I don’t think Judas gets his name on this, but I think Paul replaces him. That’s just my opinion here.

The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long.

Twelve thousand stadia is approximately 1,400 miles. So, 1,400 miles this way, this way, this way, and this way—1,400 miles square and then 1,400 miles tall. Now, if this thing landed on Earth, in the first place not only would it not fit in Jerusalem, it wouldn’t fit in Israel. It’s too large for Israel.

Suppose they drove it over and landed it in Western Europe. If it landed in Western Europe it would take all the land mass from Italy to England. And from the Scandinavian nations—Norway, Sweden, and Denmark in the north, down to Spain in the south. So it would take all of Western Europe.

If it landed in the U.S. it would take everything from Maine to Florida and everything from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi. It just doesn’t fit any place, you see. And then, the next problem you’ve got is the tallest building in the world right now is about 1,700 feet tall. It’s over in Taiwan. It was built just last year, and it’s the tallest building now, it’s just shy of 1,700 feet. There’s a tower in Canada that’s I think 1,800 feet so that’s a little bit taller. But the tallest building is 1,700 feet tall.

This building would be 1,400 miles tall. Which is 4,500 times as tall as the tallest building on Earth. It would dwarf everything. I don’t think it fits on Earth. I don’t think it ever touches Earth. I’m going to show you a few verses here in a few minutes that lead me to this conclusion but I’m pretty much convinced that it’s a low orbit satellite. Close enough to Earth so people can travel back and forth but never it touches. And that solves the problem of the perfect people living with imperfect people. It doesn’t happen. They are separated in these two places.

The angel measured the wall using human measurement, and it was 144 cubits thick.

That’s about 216 feet by man’s measurement which is what the angel was using.

The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth ruby, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth turquoise, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.

Who knows what these really are because every book I read on this has a big disclaimer at the beginning saying that these words don’t translate easily from language to language. So I’m not really sure what they all are. But they could actually be the stones of the High Priest’s breastplate and that’s a reasonable supposition. Some people see it that way.

The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light,

Now we read the same thing in Isaiah, that on Earth they don’t need the sun or the moon anymore because the glory of God gives it light. So apparently, God replaces the sun here and becomes the source of light for the Earth.

and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.

You remember, in the old days they only close the gates at night.

The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. 

Now look at verse 27:

Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Okay, so that tells you that it is the home of the Church because those names written in the Lamb’s Book of Life are specifically names that are—you know, the Lord has His Book of Life but there’s a special book called the Lamb’s Book of Life and that belongs to the people of the Church.

Okay, now we’ll take a little bit of chapter 22. Remember I said to remember the river, remember the trees, remember those things? Now let’s look at them in the Book of Revelation here.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city.

So we’re back on Earth now.

On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.

Just like Ezekiel said it would.

And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 

 Same again.

No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 

These are the Tribulation Saints, by the way.

They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

All right, so you see now in both Ezekiel and in Revelation you’ve got this view of the city with its temple, water flowing out from under the south side. It flows for a little ways and then it splits, half goes to the east, half goes to the west and it freshens the Dead Sea and fish from the Mediterranean can swim back and forth, and so on.

So now—here’s just a little speculation here, and you can get more detail on this and I’ll show you where you can get it—but if this water flows southward from out of the temple and then splits, then the temple has to, by definition, be north of the river, right? If the water is flowing south and then splits, the temple has to be somewhere north of the river.

Now, the Book of Zechariah says that when the Lord first comes back to Earth in Zechariah 14, it says when He lands on the Mount of Olives it triggers a giant earthquake and the Mount of Olives is split in half. And the earthquake makes a big rift going from east to west. It’s my view that the river is what fills up that big rift, and it opens it up from the Mediterranean all the way to the Dead Sea.

It says the topography around the area changes to where the city is raised up and everything else is lowered down. And then you’ve got this big rift from this earthquake. Water flows south out of the temple into this rift and fills it up and it becomes a mighty river, and the trees grow on both sides and so on. So that means the temple has to be like I said, has to be a little bit north.

Now, the other thing is if Jesus comes back to the same place where He left from like the Book of Acts says he will—remember when He left? It says, “This Jesus will come back in the same manner.” So, if He comes back to the same place, He came back right to the highest point on the Mount of Olives. There’s a tower over there now called The Church of the Ascension. But if you are standing in front of that tower and you looked straight west, you look straight across to the Temple Mount. Well, if the earthquake is right there it is going to go right through the current Temple Mount and it’s going to destroy that Temple Mount and it’s all going to wind up in the bottom of that rift and covered with water. This happens on the day the Lord comes back.

Some Jewish students of the end times say that the Lord is going to bring the temple with Him when He comes. Others say that He can’t come back until the temple is built. And so that’s another big argument. That’s why you’ve got the Jewish people so divided about this temple. 

And so it looks to us, from the Book of Revelation and other places, like the temple precedes the Lord’s return, right? Because there’s a temple there. And so some believers have said that, well, there’s a temple during the Tribulation called the Tribulation Temple—the so-called Temple of the antiChrist, the desecrated temple. But you know that passage in Ezekiel that we read said that when the Lord comes back He comes right to the temple. And the first thing He said was, “You guys desecrated this place by letting this foreigner run the services here!” Well, it seems to me like that’s the same temple.

Now, there’s the Millennial temple what we read about and call the Millennial Temple in the New Testament; what the Jewish people call Ezekiel’s Temple is in the Old Testament. Seems to me to be the same one. 

But, if it’s north of that rift and if that rift goes right through the current Temple Mount, then the temple has to be built somewhere other than on the current mount. And that’s where we get the idea that the temple probably gets built in a place called Shiloh which is a few miles up north of the current Temple Mount. 

And so if you want more detail on that, you can get the article we’ve got called The Coming Temple where I go into all that detail—tell you how the two temples are so different that they can’t be the same, and the New Jerusalem and the Holy City on Earth can’t be the same. In other words, we take the name Jerusalem for the satellite, let’s call it. The new Holy City on Earth is not called Jerusalem anymore, it’s called Jehovah Shammah according to the last verse in Ezekiel. 

And so you’ve got a lot of this thing, and the big thing that hit me about this, first started me thinking about it, was on one of our Israel trips. The Jews only talk about three temples and the Bible only seems to show three temples. We have, in the New Testament view, assumed that the Tribulation Temple is the fourth temple—but it doesn’t have to be, and there’s nowhere that it says it has to be. It could be the same—Ezekiel’s Temple, and the Millennial Temple, and the Tribulation Temple could all be the same place.

Now there’s another interesting thing that I heard from Marvin Rosenthal. And that was that the Lord comes back on Rosh Hashanah—we’re not talking about rapture here, we’re talking about the Second Coming. The Lord comes back on Rosh Hashanah. And that’s 1,260 days after the Abomination That Causes Desolation. And then in the Book of Daniel it talks about “Blessed is he who survives until the 1,290 days.” Remember, in Daniel 12? So he adds thirty days to that. Well, it turns out that Rosh Hashanah, ten days later, is Yom Kippur, so there the great judgment of the nations begins there. And then you’ve got the judgment of the Gentiles, the Sheep and Goat Judgment, where He brings everybody into the—so Marvin is speculating that it takes thirty days to get all that judgment done.

Then, he says, if it takes forty five more days to get the Millennial government set up and get everything ready to go, well then guess what? The first temple services would be on Hanukkah, which is the celebration of the cleansing of the temple, the first Abomination That Causes Desolation back in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes and that event repeats itself. 

Not only does the Abomination repeat itself but the cleansing festival repeats itself and so the temple gets put back into use, and the Lord actually sets down here, in this Ezekiel 43 passage, the Lord actually sits down on His throne in the Temple on Hanukkah. And again, there’s no sun or moon because the Lord is the light. And what is Hanukkah called? The Festival of Light. And so the whole thing sort of fits together. There’s some speculation in there but without doing too much damage to the Scripture [laughs] with only inserting a few little ‘maybe’s’ in that, you can make that all fit!

Well, if that’s the case, and whether it is or not it doesn’t matter to us because we’ll be in the New Jerusalem and that will be our dwelling place. I’ve done some reading about this and people who claim to know more than I do about it, they say, well, if the church has X-number of members, and 1,400 times 1,400 times 1,400 equals so much space, then we’ll each have 10,000 square feet to ourselves. And of course, even around here that’s a pretty big house and so that will give us lots of room.

But the beautiful things to me about the Millennial Kingdom are that we acquire, apparently—it says that when He comes back we will be like He is, remember? In Corinthians—and so if we are like He is then we’ll be able to walk through walls and appear and disappear at will and things like that. And so, scientifically, what that means is we will have use of more dimensionality.

You know, there are ten dimensions, they say. We’ve got three and a half, we can use three and a half of them now. If we get those other dimensions then we’ll be able to travel back and forth in time and at the speed of thought.

A guy sent me an interesting email today on one of my forums and he believes that the speed of thought is faster than the speed of light and so if you can imagine travelling without any vehicular assistance anywhere in the universe you want to go, at the speed of thought, what places would you visit?

And then on top of that, what if—I’m one of those guys who believe that the Earth is the only inhabited planet because only a few decimal points of divergence of any of half a dozen major factors would render life on Earth impossible. In other words, if there’s just a little more hydrogen than oxygen we couldn’t breathe. If there was just a little different composition of water it wouldn’t be any good for us. If this didn’t work, then that wouldn’t work. And so, many people have said for all these years that the reason there are nine planets is because that’s what it took to make this one habitable for us. Because we’ve borrowed, in the process of creation, borrowed elements and conditions and things from these other planets and they were focused on Earth which makes life on Earth possible.

[(Audience interjection) The Big Bang didn’t do that. No, it wasn’t one of those accidental things.]

And so, if that’s the case and if the solar system was designed to provide the conditions on Earth for Man to live (that’s three-dimensional Man, right?) could ten-dimensional Man live on some of these other places, or at least visit them? And could they be eternal playgrounds, if you will, for those of us who get this additional ability and, travelling at this distance and speed we could visit all the planets. We could see what they’re like and we could adapt ourselves to any environment and to any one of them.

You see, I’ve been over these past few years (you may think I don’t have enough to do because I’m able to think about these things) but over the past few years, I’ve been thinking. We’re talking eternity here. And we’re talking about absolute, total happiness. Well, some years ago I learned that the average child is a lot happier than the average adult, you may have noticed this. And the reason for it is, the average child spends most of his day doing new things and learning new things and that’s what brings enthusiasm. Because that’s exciting, to be able to get up every day and learn something new. And get up every day and learn something new.

You know, adults—we quit learning at about age 18 and we regress from that point on. But happiness is dependent upon learning and doing new things. And you know, when these people talk to you about this endless worship service on this cloud with a harp—you know, that doesn’t sound like fun to me. It could be fun for maybe a couple of hours, but we’re talking about eternity! And so, you’ve got to keep people enthused, you’ve got to keep them excited!

You’ve got to have new things for them to do every day. And so I actually see this eternity actually kind of unfolding before us as we go, and how each of us has this ability to interact with any component in the universe, with any part of the universe—go anywhere, do anything, at any time!

I mean, do you want to go back to the time it was created? Do you want to go out to the very edge of the universe and stand there with God? Think of all the things you could do if you had this ability, and think of all the things you would need to be able to do in order to be happy for eternity! You know, I could see a whole bunch of people sitting around saying, “I’m bored, God. What are we going to do today? I’m bored!”

That can’t happen because it’s supposed to be eternal bliss, right? So you’ve got to make this all work! And it’s got to be something that is self-directed. You know, the Lord can’t be like a tour guide, or a cruise director or anybody just going around saying, “We’re going to play hopscotch, now. Come on, everybody!” He’s not going to do that, it’s got to be kind of self- directed. 

And so these thoughts I’ve had that take our abilities and just magnify them to the point where we can go anywhere at any time just by thinking about it and being there. And you can first of all spend the first few hundred years just maybe reviewing world history, seeing the impact, being there when certain events took place. Things like that.

Then, pretty soon you’re going to want to start exploring. And see, I’ve determined—in fact in an article (it’s a couple of weeks away yet) I’ve determined that in order to be happy we have to be a scientist, explorer, adventurer, artist, and athlete. We have to be all that at once in order to be happy. Because then you could just about do anything. And so, it’s going to take a lot to keep us challenged for eternity like that.

Actually, this is just a fun speculation, but I start thinking about these things because I’m curious about them and I wonder, how’s God going to arrange all that? And of course, the more I start thinking about it the harder it gets to wait [laughs] because then you get really fired up to get there, you know? Pretty soon you want to go. And so it’s a good way to occupy your mind. But it’s also Biblical, because in 2 Corinthians 4:18 Paul says, we fix our eyes not on the things we can see but on the things we can’t see. Because the things we can see, those are temporary, they’re all going to disappear. It’s the things we can’t see that are eternal and that’s what we need to be prepared for.

All right. Well, that brings us to the final item on our list of Seven Things You Must Know to Understand End Times Prophecy. And it’s called, Eternity.

As I’ve said before, the Bible doesn’t say very much at all about eternity except to tell us that there is one. The Bible is the owner’s manual for the human race, if you will. It’s the handbook for the age of man and so it begins with the birth of Adam and it ends with the end of the Millennial Kingdom.

Now, we know that God existed before the birth of Adam, we see hints of that in Scripture. Of course He did because He is eternal. He always was and always will be. He’s not just somebody with a whole lot of time, He is somebody who is outside of time altogether. And so the Bible is written in the context of time. 

It starts with Adam’s birth somewhere around four thousand or so years before Christ and it ends with the end of the Millennium, something around three thousand years after the life of Christ. And of course, as God existed before Adam, He also exists after the end of the Millennium. He promises us in His Scripture that we will exist with Him. But what that looks like and how it works we don’t know, because He doesn’t say anything about it. All we know is that, everyone ever conceived lives forever. The question in your mind is not do I, or do I not have eternal life? The question in your mind is, where am I going to spend eternity?

And, as the Bible makes very, very clear there are only two choices in this matter. One is to spend it with Him and the other is to spend it separate from Him. So you’re either with God, or you’re separated from God. And of course, the idea of spending eternity with God requires that you accept His death on the cross as payment in full for your sins, and then ask Him to be your Savior at that point, He becomes your Savior and Redeemer, and you are adopted into His forever family and then you are promised as a reward for making that one choice, you will spend eternity with Him.

Those who don’t want God in their lives, who have rejected Him, who have rebuffed His offers of pardon and who have said, “No. I don’t want anything to do with God,” they’ll get their wish too. They’ll spend eternity separated from Him. And so, these two choices come to the believers and unbelievers alike—to all humanity, and each one of us, therefore, is an eternal being.

What we need to understand about eternity, in the context of our series here, is the fact that eternity comes after everything that the Bible talks about. So, whatever you see in the Bible is written for man and is written within the context of time. Confusion results when people mix up the notion of eternity with the Millennium or other things that the Bible talks about and so this is the point that we need to make clear as far as eternity is concerned.

So, there you have it. These are the Seven Things You Must Know To Understand End Times Prophecy. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series. I hope you get a lot out of it. I hope you review it over and over and over again and, to the extent that it’s possible for any man to do so, I hope you master these passages that we have included here as reference material. 

The things of this world, as we mentioned in the last track are temporary. The things that you can see, the things that you look around you that seem so permanent and tangible to you, these are just fleeting moments in relation to an eternal existence. It’s the temporary world that is physical; it’s the spiritual world that is permanent. And that’s the world we know so very little about. 

Most of our time, effort, energy is spent focused on the things of this world. And the Bible asks us to change that. To change our perception about the importance of that and be focused more on the things that are coming because those are the things that will last forever.

Hope you enjoyed this series.

God bless you all.

This is Jack Kelley saying, now you have a glimpse of the Seven Things You Must Know To Understand End Times Prophecy.