Gooding, David: 3 - Life's Outcome

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. One of the ancient sages, so we are told, once sat himself down to contemplate the world around him. He observed the sun. He watched it get up one morning, climbing steadily higher and higher, and got the impression it was going somewhere. But presently, as afternoon came on, it began to decline and disappear from his sight. So that seemed that. But then that wasn't quite that, because next morning it got up again. And the disappointing thing was that it got up precisely, uh, where it got up the first day. So that, uh, the impression he had that the sun was going somewhere was completely shattered, and he found it had come back simply to where it started, and so it did the second day, and so it did all the days. It was merely a never-ending circle. He looked at the rivers. He watched how busily and how energetically they were pursuing their way down the riverbeds. He thought, surely they're going somewhere. And so they were, in a sense, for they toppled themselves down into the sea. But then presently the sun came out and evaporated the water and took it up into the clouds. The winds took the clouds back over the mountains, and precisely where the water started, there it went back again. They weren't getting anywhere after all. It was only a circle. Then he felt the wind. My, it was blowing some gusto today, right from the north, going at a tremendous pace, getting somewhere, surely. But tomorrow it changed, and it was east. And presently it was west, and then southwest. But before you could say Jack Robinson, so to speak, there it was back again, blowing from the north. It hadn't gone anywhere at all. It was, um, only a circle. And the more he looked and the more he thought, he came to the impression that human life is just that. For all its bustle and bother and its energy and its seeming to get somewhere, it is but a circle, never ending, getting nowhere. He dismissed it all as labor and vanity. We may not share his pessimism, of course, but I suppose it's imbred in all of us at some time or other to fall to asking ourselves, where is life getting us to? Has it a purpose? Does it go anywhere? The question whether there is a purpose, I say, seems ingrained in us. We cannot easily think of something that doesn't have a purpose. Your neighbor buys himself a Mini. And you come home on Monday night, and there he is. He's got the Mini out of the garage, and he's got it all soaked up, and he's lathering the thing and washing it and cleaning it, and you say, yes, poor old chap, but there you have to do that with the car. And you come home Monday night, and there he is underneath it. He's greasing all the joints, and you say, filthy job, but still you can't have a car without doing that. You've got to do it. And Wednesday night you come home, and there he is at the plugs. Difficult and temperamental things, plugs are. Uh, but still they are. They have got to be adjusted if a car is going to move and get you anywhere. Thursday you come, and he's at the windscreen washers. You see, you can't see unless the windscreen washers are right, so they've got to be right, and he's at the windscreen washers Thursday night. Friday night he's at the gearbox. Troublesome things, gears, if you don't do them properly, and now and again they need a- adjusting, and so do the brakes, of course, and Saturday night he's at the brakes. And Sunday? Why, there's something gone wrong with the clutch. And you watch it and you say, poor old chap, yes, but you can't have a car unless you, um, uh, maintain the thing. Monday you come by, and lo and behold, where a- as you thought he would be now at last going somewhere in this car, he started to polish it all again. And Tuesday, i- i- i- it's the greasing. And you watch this go on a week or two until you can't resist it any longer, and you go up to him, you say, oh boy, you know, you fascinate me. I've been watching you these many weeks, and it seems to me that, uh, uh, all you do is to go the round of filling the thing up and polishing it and adjusting it and keeping it well stocked up with oil. Don't you ever go anywhere in this car? And he says, go anywhere? What do you mean? He says, you know, I'm far too busy, uh, to go anywhere in it. Oh, I see. Uh, he says, you know, I, I just haven't got the time. It takes so long to grease it and so long to polish it and so long to fill it up with oil that I, I, I just haven't got the time to, to attend to going anywhere, old boy. You would think, of course, the man had taken leave of his senses. It's not a dissimilar feeling that comes over Christian preachers sometimes when they invite people to consider what is the purpose of life. And the reply comes back, but you know, we haven't got any time to think about those things. Life is so full, business is so pressing, and then there's the children's education, and there's a thousand and one things. Yes. Life is one round of stocking our old bodies up with the petrol they want and keeping the roof thatched and maintaining ourselves in repair, but... when are we going to have the time to go somewhere? And anyway, where are we going? Somebody says, but that's not a fair question to ask. The idea that life has got to have a purpose out and beyond itself, you say, is quite illusory. We have no justification for thinking it is so. We ought, uh, to cut the knot of our problem by saying that life hasn't got any purpose. We're just here, and all there is to it is to enjoy, uh, whatever comes, to enjoy doing the accounts if we can, enjoy doing the washing up, enjoy our re- relaxation and recreation, enjoy the business, uh, and then that's all. Perhaps there is some sort of truth in that, uh, idea in some limited sense that we're meant, uh, to enjoy life as it comes. But even if you put it so, you cannot ultimately escape the question. But I fancies, fancy hovers in all our minds on time, that when life comes to its end, is there any hope of living again, of life beyond the grave? They who have enjoyed life and had it good will certainly want to answer the question if they've really enjoyed life. They will find themselves saying, but why must I die? Why must I leave it all? Is there no hope of enjoying something further, perhaps something fuller, or is our experience just given to mock us, to whet our appetites, and then to lead us to the disappointment of eternal oblivion? And they who have had life rough will ask it with an even greater insistence. They who have been maimed or suffered, willy-nilly will find themselves asking, is this all? I find myself here with a brain and an imagination to see what life could be if I had not suffered thus and been so limited. Am I thus to be mocked? Is there nothing beyond? And no hope of something better? Most of us, in fact, wouldn't want an exact repetition. The endless repetition at the end bores us. But we would be interested, surely, if there was another something, not just a repetition, but a something higher, for which this life, with all its joys and sorrows, was but the beginner's class. What comments Christianity? I fancy we shall all of us know the comment Christianity gives. I could all, I could wish that we all shared its wonderful heartthrob and the glory of its expectation. Christianity says that the grave isn't the end. Christianity affirms that when we die, we are not done for. Christianity affirms that the Christian, the man who has committed himself to Christ and received Christ, when he dies, he departs to be with Christ, and the Bible describes it as being very far better. That is not meant to be a criticism of this life, as though this life was something that we hurriedly wish to escape. This life is good, Christianity affirms, very good. But that better awaits us beyond, and for the man who dies a Christian, for him it is not oblivion. It is consciously to depart and be with Christ, which is very far better. But while we may think we know exactly what Christianity says in general, I would like us to pay special attention to two what we may call unique features of biblical Christianity that tend, maybe, to get overlooked in our generalized thinking. Christianity, after all, is not the only religion, if I may call it so for the moment, is not the only religion that maintains survival after death. But we haven't done Christianity justice if we merely think in terms of survival. For while that is true, Christian- Christianity affirms as its great hope that one day there will come a bodily resurrection of the dead. So says scripture, the dead in Christ shall rise. And we which are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. It says in this way, we shall not all sleep, that is, we Christians shall not all die and be buried, but we shall all be changed. Those that are still living and are mortal, that is, they are subject to death, they will be changed, and mortality will put on immortality. Those that have died and gone to corruption will be raised and changed into incorruption. This corruptible must put on incorruption. I would like to underline that point. It has in fact happened that some of our Christian theologians have come to the belief in the public statement that this isn't what Christianity says at all. They would tell us that all Paul was saying in his ancient idiom is what we would say in our modern idiom, by that a man survives after death. As a bishop's daughter put it to me once, on the authority both of her father and her husband, who was a clergyman. She said, I don't believe, you know, in a bodily resurrection. I think that, uh, all that happens is that a man lives on. Her husband had departed, and she said, I believe he, I believe Peter lives on in his work, but I wouldn't really like to think of him coming out of the grave and being bodily resurrected. She said, I don't think Paul meant that. But of course, Paul did mean that. I say that without apology, for we have evidence enough to make up our minds on the score. Paul stood just to take one instance, Paul stood once before that learned society, the court of the Areopagus in Athens. He knew that he had before them Epicurean philosophers and Stoics, not a few others. He was tolerably well educated himself and read and learned, maybe, in the Greek philosophers. And he knew right well that in front of him were men who perhaps had accepted Plato's theory of survival of the soul after death. He preached to them what Christianity says, that Jesus Christ bodily died, and on the third day, literally, bodily, physically, if you like, rose from the dead. They hooted him out of court, of course, with hoots of laughter. They didn't believe in a bodily resurrection. Their poet Aeschylus had said as much. Aeschylus had affirmed that once this, uh, body of ours collapses and goes to dust, there is no anastasis, there is no rising again. Now we can easily see that if Paul had only meant that a man lives on in his work, that a man somehow survives, Paul could have, um, parried that laughter and said, but gentlemen, you are too hasty in your mirth. I don't mean, of course, a literal resurrection, people coming out of their graves. I was using a high-flown metaphor to suggest that, um, people live on in their toil, but Paul said nothing of the sort. For what they laughed at, Paul positively affirmed, not only of Christ, but also of all that are Christ's, one of these days, a bodily resurrection. Somebody said, you don't mean literally flesh, do you? And bone? Why not? Says Paul in his argument on the subject, there are many different sorts of flesh, you know, there's animal flesh, and there's bird flesh, and there's fish flesh, and there's human flesh, even around us that we can observe at this present moment. Why do you imagine it would be impossible for God to give humans a body of flesh, a different kind of a body, of course, working maybe on different principles, a different sort of flesh, a spiritual body as distinct from a soulish body. But we must leave Paul answering the difficulties of his contemporaries. For we want to come and s- consider the next special thing about Christianity. It teaches not only a bodily resurrection, but it affirms that this resurrection will take place when Jesus Christ comes back again. And if we're going to come to terms with Christianity and understand what Christianity is saying, I submit to you that we shall have to take seriously what Christianity says about the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. It will not do to say that when Christ spoke of coming again, as he did on multitudinous occasions, it will not do to say that when Paul and the other apostles spoke of Christ's coming again, that they were merely using colorful language to suggest that in the crises of history, God will somehow draw near to us and give us his help. The manifest fact is that they meant literally what they said. And they talked about the coming again of Christ, not as some bizarre addition to Orthodox Christianity, nor as some deluxe theological quibble for those who take Christianity rather seriously. They took it as one of the main planks of the Christian gospel and the Christian affirmation that Christ came, it came once, and that he is coming again. They held that this resurrection of the body was to take place on that occasion when Christ comes again. If then we are going to think of what answer Christianity gives to the question of our hope of life's outcome, we must now spend some moments thinking about this coming again of our Lord. The angels, you remember, are reported as saying to the apostles, as the apostles watched our Lord ascend, this same Jesus shall so come in like manner as you have seen him go. The words are crystal clear. There is only one way of escaping their plain sense, and that is to jettison Christianity and write a new sort of a Christianity out of your own head. The Bible speaks of his coming in the future as a second coming. You see, there has been a first. The first was literal, so will the second be. The first had to do with our salvation, so will the second. And the Bible puts it this way, that at his first coming, as we call it, at the consummation of the ages, when the time was ripe, Christ appeared. And when he first appeared on our planet, he came for the specific purpose of grappling with the basic problem of human sin. He died upon a cross. He died, as the Bible puts it, for our sins. He died to make it possible for God to forgive human sin and to receive all who will repent and come to him through Christ, coming as self-confessed spiritual bankrupts, being reconciled to God, not through their effort, but through what Christ has done. Calvary stands as a historic fact, the witness that God has visited our world, has broken in upon our relative system, that the absolute has come in and showed himself and done something about human. The Bible then goes on to talk like this, that through what Christ has already done, the way is open for man to come to God, to be reconciled to God. To have his sins pardoned and forgiven. And to receive from God the beginnings of that personal fellowship, that new life that spell out salvation, that spell out eternal life. That bit happens now, says the Bible. But there is a part of our salvation that awaits his second coming. And so the Bible says he shall appear the second time. It means it, of course, as literally as the first time. He shall appear the second time, apart from this question of sin. He's not going to die again. He's not going to offer another atonement. He's not coming then to try and convert people. But he will come then for those people who are already converted, people who have already made their peace with God, and he will come apart from this question of sin, the Bible says, to put into effect the final stage of their salvation, to appear the second time apart from sin unto salvation. That is the salvation of their bodies. God's program is that man is not going to disappear in thin air like some disembodied spirit. Man is going to be saved as a whole personality, spirit, soul, and body. And for that great final climax, Christ will literally come again. The early Christians, says the New Testament, were not only converted in the sense that they had turned to God from idols to worship the true and the living God, but it was an integral part of their faith that they were waiting for his, that is God's son, to come from heaven. It is said so many times. In another of Paul's letters, we read that our citizenship is now really in heaven. We look for the Savior to come, who shall change this body of our humiliation and fashion it like unto the body of his glory. And Christianity says more. It says that not only will individual Christians be raised, but that God has a program for this world, this world as we know it. He's not going to blow it up to smithereens immediately and start again, but he's going to deliver this creation, which, as he calls it, is a groaning creation. It groans and sighs all around us. He's going to deliver it from its bondage of corruption, bring it into the glorious freedom of the sons of God. This world is not always to know its blight and its blast and its cancer. The Bible uses a very expressive term, indeed. It says that the world groans, the creature- creatures around us groan, the plants groan if we could hear them. But it is, says the Bible, but a ch- the pangs of a childbirth. As we see it now, it is not much more than an embryo. It shall be delivered from that. And the point of its deliverance waits upon the perfection of God's work of redemption with mankind. For God has a purpose that redeemed humanity, and have learned their lessons. They're going to be given a new world, a new age, and come to their age of responsibility, so to speak, God will put into their hands, as a proud father into the hands of his son, now come of age, the administration of a cleansed and a healed world. Now you may say that that is fantastic soap bubble of imagination. So, so. But that's what the Bible says. And I submit to you that the promise is a worthy one. The prospect is exceedingly glorious. And nobody, except those who have a rather poor view of this life, down on the heel discontents, would want to hope that the Bible isn't true. The more we've enjoyed this life, the more attractive will it appear to us that God is going to do something marvelous. We shall have a world delivered from its aches and pains and pests and diseases. We shall have a race of men that have been redeemed, have learned their moral lessons. And into their hands, God will put under Christ the administration of earth. So long as earth endures, when that glad period is done, and earth has worn up and the sun has gone black, God then will carry on to the next stage of his never-ending program. Now, I have paused at some great length to emphasize that side of Christianity. I personally think it is very necessary. It will prevent us at least doing with our Christianity what the Sadducees of old did with their Judaism. You may remember that the Sadducees were some of the inveterate opponents of the Christian gospel, although they profess to believe the Old Testament on which the Christian gospel is. Sadducees were interesting people. They're very religious. Sadducees generally supplied the high priest, the primate of the Jewish religion. Sadducees tended to be the learned people. They had a considerable weight of, uh, of influence on the Sanhedrin. But the religion of the Saras- Sadducees had come to this. They believed in God of a sort. They believed in religion because it was a way of keeping people decent. Why, without religion, you run around like animals. It was nice when you got married to have a religious service and show some decency for life. Positively uncomfortable if people went around thinking it was all right to kill and to lie and to steal and to cheat. It kept people within the bounds of decency and made life pleasant. Besides, it was a good intellectual exercise to go along and hear the choir sing in the temple, and a very arty pageant to watch all the robes and vestments o- o- on a David Omen, for instance. It fostered the arts. It made people decent. But then, they didn't believe that there were any angels or spirits. Life was, said they, just what you see life is. It it it's just this. There's no spiritual life beyond with which we may come in contact, with which we must come in contact if we are to find our true destiny. No, they said, life is, is just as you see it, that's all it is. And they didn't believe in resurrection. They held the view that once you've seen the show and you, then you died, well, you were done for. That's all it was. They were, of course, extreme. They found the Christian message exceedingly disconcerting. There were these fishermen in their s- in their capital city, Jerusalem, preaching that resurrection did place- take place, had taken place. That Jesus Christ had literally risen. They found these Christians preaching that there is a spirit world and that God is a spirit too, and that we must get in contact with God. There is such a thing as coming into contact with God and being spiritually born again. And I heard these Christians preaching that, of course, uh, this Jesus Christ was not only risen, but was coming back again, that the outside, the world beyond, refused to abandon Earth, but was determined to come back again and intrude. It was a very big difference that Sadducees felt between them and Christianity. We're not Sadducees, of course we're not. Would you not agree with me that there is a danger that we treat our Christianity somewhat like the s- the the um Sadducees treated their Judaism? We go to church. We believe in religion, we don't really matter what kind. Um, it's good for people, keeps them decent. Registry offer- uh, weddings, well, well, well, they're all right if you like it, but isn't it much better to have it done decently? Being good, yes. But keeping at arm's length. A really firm and practical belief in the reality of the spiritual world beyond us. And living in the considered and deliberate belief that one day this same Jesus is coming again. Somebody will then say, but what evidence have we got? Obviously, if this is Christianity, is ex- it is exceedingly important. And obviously, if this Jesus Christ is coming again, and my future is bound up with his coming, then obviously I must give, uh, very considerable attention to this. But what evidence have we that it's not all a daydream? That it's not all pie in the sky. That it's not merely dope for the masses. I could best perhaps attempt to answer that by reviewing what I understand to be the Bible's message, the program that the Bible, um, outlines. That reading of history as the Bible sees it. And then its forecast of the future as it affirms the future will turn out. The Bible says that this world is God's world. That it didn't just happen. It would take a lot of faith, wouldn't it? To believe it just happened like Topsy, just grew from nowhere. The Bible affirms, too, that when God made man upon this world, he made him with a definite program. He made him to have dominion. And that earliest chapter of Genesis, so far from being unscientific, sets man in true, dignified, scientific relation to the world in which he finds himself. Not some primitive pagan bowing down in fright at lightning and thunder, but made right from the word go to be superior to the creation in which he found himself, to rule it, to organize and administer it. And the Bible adds to subdue it. For whereas God Almighty planted a garden in Eden, that very statement shows that the rest of this world was no garden by any chance. God, um, made it so that man should have something to do, and man was to be God's viceroy. Man using his brains and developing his intellect and developing this earth for God. And in some part he has done it. Who doesn't feel a certain pulse of pride when man watches man's own achievements, conquering earth, conquering the elements, now on the verge of conquering space. And then the Bible points out that, of course, you cannot take one or two steps along this road of acting as God's viceroy in developing Earth before you'll come across the moral problem, who is to have how much of the garden? It's a problem that's with us still. Pure scientists as we would like to be, or applied for that matter, we find that developing Earth and, uh, exploring space somehow or other cannot cut itself loose from moral problems. The thing has become a rat race, and ever man's ugly temper looming behind the button that shall blow the whole caboose to pieces. Not only a moral problem, says the Bible, is between man and man, but more important, a moral problem between God and man. God gave man a free will, for God wanted no puppet. God wanted an intelligent son. You cannot have a man as an intelligent son with a free will unless you are going to allow him to have a real choice between good and evil, and in the end, between God on the one side... and no God but just tiny me on the other. The Bible's record is that man took his step of choice... and grasped at his independence of God... transgressed the very God that had given him his being. I believe that story. I find man doing the very same thing today. Doing it on the basis of intricate ideologies. Spinning his philosophies to prove to himself that God isn't there after all, and that man does own the earth, and it is man's and only man's. Or maybe not spinning his philosophy at all, but only wanting it so, and drowning his conscience in the endless whirligig of daily life. The Bible goes on to say that God then didn't leave himself without witness, that God didn't abandon the ship. Man chose to go into his independent way. But God established an outpost even in man's earth. And through a converted Abraham, God eventually established an outpost post on earth, a special and unique outpost on earth, in the form of the Jewish nation. That isn't to say that God didn't speak to the other nations, but, um, he did speak to this one. Called it aside for a special purpose, gave it special privileges, declared that it would remain a separate nation all down history. Even though for its disobedience, he said it would be scattered and peeled and shoved all around the earth. God prophesied it would remain a separate entity and at last come back to its land. This, I submit to you, is a very hard piece of evidence. In all Earth's history, there has not been such a phenomenon as the Jew. There still isn't. Though the United Nations and all said that they were not to go back to their land, the Bible said they would, and back they've gone. Still separate. Though the nations, the Christian nations included, have massacred and persecuted them, and our recent world has seen the gassing of six million of them. They're there. They are there as a still distinct entity. God gave that nation an experience of the law. And if you care to com- compare their Ten Commandments given way along back in the time of Moses, you will find once more that you have unique features that are not found anywhere else. Code of Hammurabi, or what you like, you will find that in Israel there is no idolatry, there is not a multitude of gods, that right from the word go they believe in one god, not even one god per tribe, but one god who made the whole thing. Monotheism is so striking that many scholars have said it couldn't have been written by Moses. For if it was in that early day, here is no evidence for evolution, but evidence that God has in fact made himself known to people that otherwise would be wallowing in the mire of mythology. God gave that people a unique book. I'm aware that there are other holy books in the world. This Old Testament is a unique book. Unique particularly for its insistence from the word go and in ever increasing, uh, tone, that one day, through this specific nation, God was going to send the savior of the world. There's no other book that's dared to say it. We've had plenty of books to tell us to be good. We've had plenty of books to, uh, philosophize and speculate metaphysically about the nature of God, if he's there. We've never had ex- one, oh, we've never had except this one book, a book to say. Just as God has interfered in history to bring out that nation of the Jews, so in course of time, down the centuries, he would, through that same nation, send the savior of the world. The evidence of those accumulating prophecies is open to our inspection. It is the fact that that Old Testament was written before Jesus Christ came. It is the fact that Jesus Christ has come. Anybody who cannot see the striking, uh, agreement between Christ and what was said of him aforetime must be dull indeed. The interesting thing is that when it comes to the very center of the purpose for which the Old Testament said Messiah would come, namely that Messiah would come and give himself a sacrifice for human sin, that he would be rejected by men and crucified. The very curious thing is... that, uh, the whole matter is put beyond any doubt. It was impossible, it is impossible for us to argue. Well, of course, the Jew- Jews wrote the book, you know. They mapped out what was going to happen to Messiah, and then, of course, they went and performed it. Anybody can do that. You can first write out a program, then get your man to come along and, uh, match it up. But you see, we cannot now argue that. For that very nation that was the custodian of the book, through whom the prophecies have come, that very nation turned against Jesus Christ, said he wasn't God's son, and did all in their utmost power to prove he wasn't. It is a strange, strange thing, that in their effort to prove that he wasn't the Messiah, they went and did the very thing that proves he is. Instead of enthroning Jesus on a throne, they thought that that would, uh, prove that he was Messiah. They put him on a cross, only to wake up to find that that is what their Old Testament said would happen to Messiah. He should be rejected of men. He would die. The Lord would lay upon him the iniquity of us all. But he would be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, so that by his sacrifice we might have peace. And you say, how is it that the Jews went and crucified him then, and so made, uh, so fulfilled what the prophets had said, when all the while they were trying to prove that he wasn't their long prophesied Messiah? The answer to that is not far to seek. The answer is just this, that the Jews were very much like us in this respect. They saw that God was going to, um, bring in a savior. They saw that he was going to bring in a bright new world. The Old Testament pictures of it are vivid indeed. They had it in their heads, as most of us have, that the way it was going to be done was that the Messiah would come, amass himself chariots and horses, tanks and atom bombs, if you like, cut off the heads of his enemies, and make Israel the victorious nation. The world is still committed to that notion. Men think that somehow they're going to improve this world by developing it technologically. And then, if they've got time, a little of the arts. But you see, the trouble with us, the thing that keeps us back from our golden age, is not that our backyards are too small, or that our cars don't have enough cylinders, or that our wage packets are not full enough. The problem is what the Bible says it has been from the very start, that man is out of gear with the God who made him, that the trouble is moral and spiritual, and not until man is reconciled with his God, in personal fellowship with his God, not until man has got rid of that incubus of sin and guilt that lies upon his conscience, not until man has come back and bowed the knee to Christ as Lord, will this golden age come. Christ's first step in the program was to die on a cross, was to suffer for human sin at the hands of men, and more importantly, at the hands of God, to make it possible for man to come back to God in all his spiritual bankruptcy, and there be reconciled to God. Jesus Christ died, he rose again, says the program. Someone says, well, if he's risen again, why doesn't he start this brave new world now? For very good reasons. God's intention is to have men and women with free will, freely choosing God. Men and women whose sins have made them enemies of God, coming back freely, finding God again at the cross of Christ, finding personal forgiveness, and what is more, freely, but very deliberately, receiving Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. Says God, give them time. God could easily press the button that would send the whole thing up in smoke. But God wants men and women. God wants them to come and be reconciled, to confess with their mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in their heart that God has raised him from the dead, personally to receive him as savior. For it is written, you know, that God so loved the world that he gave his son so that those who believe should not perish. That's why God waits. But we come back where we started. But God shall not wait forever. And this same Jesus shall so come. And history shall reach its climax. This present stage of human experience end and the next begin. The Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout. And the Christian hope is bright. The dead in Christ shall rise. The living shall be changed. There shall begin that second stage, that glorious stage for which this first was made. But here I must say something that I would rather not say. That whenever the Bible talks about the coming again of Christ, it does point out that he will bring salvation only to those who in life were Christians. Christians in the sense that they had had this personal experience of regeneration. They had personally received the Savior, had been personally reconciled to God. I would like to say that when he comes, he'll wave a fairy wand, and everybody will be saved. But you would at once recognize that for, for a fairy story. They all lived happily ever after. The Bible, you see, isn't a fairy story. Man is too big for that. God gave him deliberately a free will. If man, through Christ, will be, will choose to be reconciled to God, then his future is bright. If man refuses, I'm sorry. I have no theories of my own. I can just but repeat what the Bible says. If man refuses, for such, there is not a blessed and holy resurrection. There is no sure and certain hope. As far as I understand Holy Scripture, the alternative to trusting Christ being saved, the alternative is unqualified unqualified and and permanent permanent. disaster.