WHEN WILL THENUCLEAR DISASTER HAPPEN?

WILL YOU BE ABLE TO SEE IT?

HOW CAN YOU PREPARE FOR IT?

taken from

2 Peter 3:1-18

Buddy Dano, PastorDivine Viewpoint

www.divineviewpoint.com

Fear is one of Satan’s tactics to get membersof the human race not to function rationally.Fear is a motivation that causes members ofthe human race to make decisions that areirrational. Fear is used by religious organi-zations whereby they get individuals to per-form certain rituals and rites to give them afalse sense of security, and they are afraid tonot be affiliated with this or that religiousorganization. When you are frightened, youcannot make sound decisions. We have beenbombarded with this principle of fear, wherewe, as individuals and as a nation, are mak-ing decisions to our destruction.

It is one grand stick up, where someoneholds a gun to your head and forces you intosome form of action that you would ordinari-ly not make if you were not being held up.That is the whole principle involved in crime,where someone sticks you up and demandsthis or that from you.

Now the weapons are changed, and wehave a nuclear threat of disaster, and we areonce again forced into a fear tactic wherebywe are all running scared, and the news

media is of no help. The cry is disarm, anti-nuke fall out, what to do when there is a fallout. We are even given quizzes as to what todo when nuclear arms attack us.

We are told in Scripture to fear only onething, and that is to fear not trusting in theWord of God, the Divine Viewpoint of life,and not claiming God’s promises for us intime of any disaster.

Well, what about nuclear disaster? Doesthe Bible have the answer? What does theLord say about the destruction of this world,this universe? Does He mention it? Well, yesHe does. Our study is designed to focus yourattention on the Word of God, the mind ofChrist, so that you can realize that you, as abeliever in the Lord Jesus Christ, will survivethe nuclear disaster.

Satan’s strategy is to get you, as a believer,to fear death. The fear of death is a greatweapon of Satan’s to get you to neutralizeyourself, so you can’t function as the “salt ofthe Earth and the light of this world.”Because, as the believer in Christ functions,so functions our national entity.

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INTRODUCTION

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God’s Plan for the Ages(aka Dispensations)

Age of theGentiles

Age ofIsrael

ChurchAge

Tribu-lation Millennium

Gardenof Eden

2000 BC1st Advent

of Jesus Christ

Pentecost Rapture2nd Advent

of Jesus Christ

GreatWhite Throne

Judgment

Abraham32 AD ?? 7 Years

(Jacob’s Trouble)1000 Years Lake of Fire

NewHeavens

EternityPast

EternityFuture

In 2 Peter 3 verses 1-4 we have the scoffers,the false teachers described, concerning theSecond Advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. AndPeter is putting the believers in mind thatthey have been taught in the past, that in thelast days there will be “scoffers,” and theywill say and scoff at the fact of the SecondComing of Christ. Verse 4, “Where is thepromise of His coming? For since the fathers didsleep, all things continue as they were from thebeginning of creation.”

This is a passage dealing with scoffers, aspecial corps of apostate men who will existat the end of the Church Age. This tells uswhat the end of the Church Age will be like.In 2 Peter 2 we have false teachers and apos-tates, but in our section here, Satan has a spe-cial corps of scoffers that come under consid-eration at this time.

This passage is addressed to believers inthe Lord Jesus Christ. We know this from theword “beloved” used in verses 1, 8, 15, and 17.

So this passage, starting with verse 1, dealswith the defeat of the scoffers at the end ofthe Church Age. In verses 1 and 2 we havethe importance of learning the Word of Godso that you are not ignorant of these times. Itis important for believers to know the Wordof God in order to recall it and apply it intimes like ours, of a nuclear age.

Application of the Word means remem-bering the Word at the right time. Remem-bering at the right time means you know itso well you can’t forget it. Therefore, we seethe importance of repetition of the learningof the Word. And what you really know iswhat you really apply in any given crisis.

Verse 2, “That ye might be mindful of thewords which were spoken before.”

In verses 3 and 4 we see the attack of thescoffers. The word “scoffers” is really mock-ers; the Greek word is EMPAIKTES, a pluralword. “Deriders” of the Word of God. This isa satanic attack against the Word of God.Satan always attacks the Word of God. The

scoffers attack the Scriptures at the end ofthis, our Church Age. Their attack is, “Whereis the promise of His coming?” So, they attackthe Promises of God.

In verse 5 we begin our study about thedestruction of the universe. Verse 5, “For thisthey willingly are ignorant of, that by the Word ofGod the heavens were of old, and the Earth stand-ing out of the water and in the water.” “For this”refers back to the Divine judgments againstthe scoffers of Scripture. The scoffers rejectthe principle of Divine judgment. They notonly reject the principle of Divine judgment,but they de-emphasize it.

There are two categories of Divine judg-ment that they reject. They reject the baptismof fire and the Great White Throne Judgment.Both of these judgments are God’s judgments.They begin, one at the beginning of theMillennium, the thousand-year reign of JesusChrist on this Earth; and one after both ofthem end a civilization, the Millennial reignof Christ ends, and we have the Great WhiteThrone Judgment. The scoffers particularlyignore both of God’s judgments coming inthe future. This is the approach the scoffersare going to use.

The corrected translation is “For this theyhabitually desire to keep on ignoring.” “They will-ingly,” is a present, active, participle, THELO.This is a desire that comes from their emo-tions. They keep on desiring from their emo-tions. “To ignore, to escape, detection.” Theword here is LANTHANOMAI. It means tohide, ignore, and escape detection. In thiscase they try to reject any notice of it.

“By the Word of God” is in the instrumen-tal case of the word LOGOS. This refers to thestatus quo of the anti-diluvian civilization.

This brings civilizations into focus. Theyhave something to do with God’s judgmentof satanic systems. Notice the words leadingup to this again. “For this they habitually desireto ignore, that by the Word of God the heavens wereof old.” The word “heavens” is the universe.

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THE DESTRUCTION OF THE UNIVERSE

We know that the Lord Jesus Christ holds theuniverse together. This is found in Colossians1:17 (“And He is before all things, and by Him allthings consist.”)

See, Satan’s strategy is, verse 4, “Where isthe promise of His coming? Since the fathers fellasleep all things continue as they were from thebeginning of creation.” They ignore this. Thisescapes their notice. What? “By the Word ofGod the heavens, universe, were.” This is animperfect, active, indicative of the word EIMI,which is absolute status quo. In other words,this tells us that the universe has a status quogiven by the Lord. First of all by creation, andthen the universe is held together by certainDivine laws.

The next phrase says “of old.” This is anadverb referring to the anti-diluvian civiliza-tion. The Earth is mentioned here specifically.This is what we are concerned about, thedestruction of our Earth. The Earth is a verysmall part of our universe.

“The heavens were of old and the Earth.” Nowwe have the Earth mentioned specifically.“Standing out of water and standing in water.”That is our good old planet Earth. Let’s takethe word “standing.” It’s a perfect, active, par-ticiple of the word SUNHISTEMI. HISTEMImeans to cohere, to place together. And theprefix SUN means “with.” That means it is apart of the universe. In other words, it meansto be permanently framed, to be permanentlycohered, to be in orbit with the rest of theuniverse.

The Earth then is a part of the universe. Itoperates within its own area of the universe.It functions so that it will not collide with someother part of the universe. The Lord JesusChrist guarantees all this. Colossians 1:17.

So we have the Earth “standing out of waterand standing in water.” “Standing out of water”is a reference to the body of water stored be-neath the Earth during the anti-diluvian civi-lization. The Earth no longer has this body ofwater. But when the Earth was restored in sixdays, in Genesis we have the six days of therestoration of the Earth, the Earth contained

inside of it water. As a matter of fact, thiswater was the primary system of watering andin fact, it was the only system of watering theEarth had at that time. That was simplybecause there was no rain in the anti-diluviancivilization, absolutely no rain of any kind.

The first thing we notice here is the Earthwas “standing out of water.” This is the bodyof water that was stored beneath the Earth.The passage on that is found in Genesis 7:11.In the Hebrew it says that the water wasstored beneath the Earth.

By the way, the water stored beneath theEarth was also the major contributor to theflood. In order to flood the Earth by rain, it isimpossible without destroying everything,including the ark. The pressure would be toomuch for the ark. The ark could not havewithstood the pressure. The primary sourceof the flood was not rain. I don’t know if youever thought about it or not. Rain can flood afew inches, a few feet. But the type of rainnecessary to flood out the entire Earth wouldrequire much more, which means you actual-ly have to cover the Earth with about 30,000feet of water. But the pressure from that typeof rain would have destroyed the ark. Theroof would cave in, which it didn’t do.

All of this is very clear in the Hebrew, thatwhen God flooded the Earth, at the end of theanti-diluvian civilization, He actually openedthe petcocks on the surface of the Earth andlet all the water out that was in the Earth.That is why this is a very interesting passage,which more or less confirms the passage inGenesis 7:11, “In the six hundredth year ofNoah’s life, in the second month, the same daywere all the fountains of the great deep broken up,and the windows of Heaven were opened.” Theflood came primarily from inside of theEarth, not from rain.

So we have “the Earth standing, having per-manent consistence, out of the water.” “Out of thewater” means that the water was under thesurface of the Earth. Then it is also said to be“in the water.” This is DIA plus the genitivecase, which means literally, “through thewater.” This is a reference to the body of

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water stored above the Earth. Genesis 1:6, 7,“And God said, Let there be a firmament in themidst of the waters, and let it divide the watersfrom the waters. And God made the firmament,and divided the waters which were under the fir-mament from the waters which were above the fir-mament: and it was so.”

Let’s go back and review a couple ofthings just briefly so that we can understandwhat we have here. In Genesis 1:1 we havethe creation of the Earth. “In the beginningGod created the heaven and the Earth.” It isjust a statement and a principle, and that isall. Genesis 1:1 is simply a statement of prin-ciple. “The Earth was created.” BetweenGenesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 we have an elapseof thousands of years, hundreds of thousandsof years, billions of years. We don’t know howmany. But this is the period of the angelicconflict. That is when the angelic conflictreached its peak. All the angels had chosenone way or the other. There was free will inangels. The fallen angels, including Satan,were judged. It became necessary for Satan toappeal the case. So man was created to re-solve this unseen angelic conflict. Man wasput on one spot, the Earth.

The Earth was one place in the universe,which was completely packed in ice. Ice com-pletely covered the Earth. In other words, theLord put the Earth out of operation. The rea-son was that the Earth was one of the Devil’sfavorite haunts during this angelic conflict.Along with it, the angelic animals, the dino-saurs, etc., apparently were all put out ofcommission at the same time, so that noth-ing functioned on the Earth for an unknownperiod of time.

We don’t have the Lord creating the Earthin six days. He did it in a second!! The sixdays refer to the restoration of the Earth. Insix days the Lord took the ice pack off theEarth and started things going for man witha new type of animal life.

The anti-diluvian animal life, by theway, was different. We have an elephant,they had a mastodon. This is one of the pri-mary differences. The Siberian ice packs

revealed something of the animal life in theanti-diluvian civilization. They were alsograminivorous and this in itself explains sev-eral passages in the anti-diluvian section ofthe Scriptures.

So the ice pack was removed from theEarth, and God the Holy Spirit restored theEarth. But Jesus Christ created the universe inthe first place and that is Genesis 1:1. TheHoly Spirit accomplishes the restoration ofthe Earth, and it says, “The Spirit broodedover the face of the Earth.” Remember, now,the Earth was covered in an ice pack for anunknown period of time. And then in orderto make this Earth habitable for man, the icewas removed. Then man was put on theEarth and that is your anti-diluvian civili-zation at its beginning. That situation contin-ued unto God’s judgment, the flood, at whichtime the anti-diluvian civilization ceased toexist. Civilizations all end with judgmentsby God. Remember that, Earth.

Now you notice in our passage: “Earth isstanding out of the water.” The preposition isEZ and then the next preposition is DIA andthat is translated “through the water.” TheEarth, during the anti-diluvian civilization,had two bodies of water. The surface of theEarth and over it God holds a store of water.This is suspended over the Earth. Then Hehas another body of water, which is under theEarth. So you have a body of water under-neath the Earth, and you have a body ofwater suspended over the Earth. These arethe two bodies of water described for us here.One is the preposition EZ. And the other isthe preposition DIA. “Standing out of the waterand standing in the water.”

Now let’s look at civilizations. The Bibleteaches that there are civilizations and thatthere are dispensations. Here are the civiliza-tions:1. There are four civilizations connected

with man. A civilization is a period oftime of man’s history. There are four. Thefirst is the anti-diluvian. This is from thecreation of man to God’s judgment, theflood. The second is the post-diluvian

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civilization, which is from the flood to theSecond Advent of Christ, another of God’sjudgments. The third is the Millennium.That is from the Second Advent of Christto the end of the 1,000-year reign of Christ.At that point we have another destruction,judgment–the destruction of the universe.This will be described for us twice here in2 Peter. Who is going to destroy the uni-verse? The Russians? Who? How will ithappen? Nuclear blast? What will happento us? Where will we be? Will we need asurvival kit?Then finally, the fourth civilization, theeternal civilization. Notice, anti-diluvian,post-diluvian, millennial, eternal. Theseare four civilizations.Remember, again, that dispensationssometimes overlap. For example, theMillennium is also a dispensation. Wehave the age of the Gentiles, which is fromthe creation of man down to the time ofAbraham. Then we have the Jews. Thenwe have the age of the Church, and theChurch and the Jews are both in the post-diluvian civilization. And then we havethe end of the Jewish Age, the Tribulationand the Millennium. Here is one placewhere the termini are the same. The mil-lennial civilization and the Age of Christare the same. So, here are four civiliza-tions, and that is point one. There are fourcivilizations.

2. Each civilization begins with believersonly, with the exception, of course, theanti-diluvian, because it begins with manin innocence. The first civilization, insteadof beginning with believers, begins withmankind in innocence. That is the anti-diluvian civilization. It began with onlyeight believers—Noah plus seven. That isfound in 2 Peter.The next civilization is the millennial civi-lization. We begin with the Tribulationalsaints. Each civilization, and the eternalcivilization also, begins with saints. Eachcivilization begins with believers only.

3. Each civilization terminates with a judg-ment, with exception, of course, the lasteternal civilization. The anti-diluvian civi-lization ended with the judgment of God,which was the flood. At the end of thepost-diluvian civilization the judgment ofGod will be the baptism of fire. This judg-ment takes all the believers off the face ofthe Earth. That is not nuclear.At the end of the Millennial civilizationthere is the Great White Throne Judgmentof God. This judgment takes all unbeliev-ers out forever. It is also non-nuclear. Thefirst three civilizations ended with God’sjudgment. Flood, baptism of fire, andGreat White Throne.Now the scoffers ignore these. They say,“Where is the promise of His coming?”When the Lord returns He judges. We willget into that again. That is a part of thetactics of the scoffers. “Where is thepromise of His coming?”

4. Each civilization has different weather –different atmospheric conditions, differentanimals. If you are interested in animals,or flowers, there is a difference. Let’s takeweather, for example. We know somethingabout the post-diluvian civilization, butthe weather of the anti-diluvian was per-fect all over the Earth. Perfect weather. Itnever varied. Perfect weather all over theEarth in the anti-diluvian civilization. Post-diluvian civilization, well, we are init. You know what kind of weather wehave. It varies. In the millennial civiliza-tion there will be perfect weather again.But for a different reason.Take animals in the anti-diluvian civiliza-tion. The best example: the mastodon. Thepost-diluvian civilization; the elephant.The cobra is a good illustration. He wasvery definitely a part of herpetology in thepost-diluvian civilization. Most of themhave a neuro-toxin that, in fact, is the mostdeadly snake in the world. It is the kingcobra, Hamadryad; a small one is about 15feet long. The king cobra is very danger-

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ous. He can with three ccs of venom killthousands of people. That is why we areusing him as an illustration.In the Millennium we will have him. He iscalled by the translators “cockatrice.” Thatis your King James Version. I often won-dered about that word. You see, some-times in your King James Version youhave things like dragons and cockatrices,and it is really funny because where youhave “dragon” in the Bible, the Hebrewsays “jackal.” Now, there is a slight differ-ence between a dragon and a jackal. But acockatrice is a cobra.We have a millennial passage over inIsaiah that says that you will be able tostick your hand, a child can stick his hand,in a cockatrice den. That is a millennialpassage. So we know that in order for thatto be so, animal life will be different in theMillennium from animal life in the post-diluvian civilization.Weather will be different also. Flowerswill be different. There will be no desertsduring the millennial civilization. We defi-nitely have deserts now. But there were nodeserts in the anti-diluvian civilization. Asyou know, weather has a tremendouseffect on many things. So you see, there isa change.Here it is: Sometimes we have the samespecie, but we have changes within thespecie. Mutation but no transmutation.Before man came on Earth we had a typeof animal life, in connection with theangels, which was different. That type ofanimal today is called extinct. All we haveever found are some bones. It was calledthe La Brea Pits in Los Angeles, and otherareas of that sort.We have in our particular civilizationhorses small and large. This is dependentupon environment and other things. Sowe do have changes within species. This,of course, is the big thing that someone isalways trying to prove. The concept oftransmutation of species. We do have

changes within species. In the Millenniumthe lion and the lamb will lie down side byside. Today they do not lie down side byside. The lamb will be inside the lion, butnot side by side.We have a great deal of description aboutanimal life in the Millennium. Animalswill remain in their specie, but they willlose their harmful approach, etc. The pur-pose of animals will be the balance innature, etc. Animals will increase in theTribulation. Whenever you have massivedestruction of the human population,this always seems to bring out the ani-mal life.This can be illustrated by India. In Indiathey had a civilization throughout its his-tory, and when a civilization in India diesor declines, and usually the cities in Indiadisappear, then you have the increase ofanimal life. You also have animals for sac-rifice, too. We find this in Ezekiel 40-48.Animal life has a purpose in each civiliza-tion. You can see this fantastic differencein animals. The animals in the angelic con-flict are the dinosaur types, the super-ani-mals, and yet in some ways they weresuperior from the standpoint of size, butthey were all graminivorous.We can trace the elephants. They werefound in the Siberian ice packs. You havethe mastodons. They are bigger than theelephants of today. He is bigger and haslarger tusks, and he is quite a monstercompared with what we have today. Sowe have the mastodons of the anti-dilu-vian civilization.In the post-diluvian civilization we haveelephants. So, the elephant has declined.The elephant of today is not nearly theelephant of a few hundred years ago. Wehave ways of determining things. We cantell by the way that elephants were usedin warfare. The example is Hannibal. Heused elephants in warfare. Alexander’sgenerals used elephants in warfare. Indiaalways used elephants in warfare. We

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have enough descriptions of elephants sothat we know that the elephants are get-ting smaller and smaller, within its specie,but it goes up or down. Mutation.Let’s take man for another example. Manin the anti-diluvian civilization. Man wasa fantastic specimen. HOMO SAPIEN wasa fantastic specimen in the anti-diluviancivilization. Everything was right for him.The weather was right. The nutrition wasright and that is a big factor. In the post-diluvian civilization man has been declin-ing. Man started out being perfect, as faras his physical body was concerned, andhis bone structure was concerned. Man, inthe anti-diluvian civilization, lived for 800or 900 years. When a person died at 300years of age he died early. He didn’t livevery long. Now, there is a decline in thepost-diluvian civilization. So, man startedout being rather fantastic.There were also clear racial definitionsfrom the three sons of Noah. All the racialdefinitions have declined also. It actuallyreached its peak in the Middle Ages. Andagain we can determine something aboutman in those days. We can measure hisarmor. When we do, we find out that theaverage man at that time, “when knightswere bold,” under the so-called RomanticPeriod. There isn’t a woman today whowould go for the so-called “knight in shin-ing armor.” The tallest knight was aboutfive feet, six inches tall. Another reasonwhy women wouldn’t go for them isbecause you couldn’t get close to them.There was no Brut, or Arrid, or RightGuard. They rarely took a bath. Theirhygienic habits were horrible.The nutrition reached an all time low. Thepractice of medicine was poor. Everythingwas poor. We get the size of knights bymeasuring their armor. But, if they livedto be 30, they were considered to be oldmen. And a woman of 30, in those days,looked like a woman of 80 today. Theyhad no knives, no forks, no napkins. Veryfew of them ever kept their teeth. This is

western Europe. If you looked at the hors-es in those days, they always seemed toappear as being big. But they weren’t big.The knights were small. Horses are ontheir way up again due to scientific feed-ing, etc. But everywhere you look withinthe framework of our civilization, every-thing stays in its own specie. We do havedecline and then recovery.The cave man concept is very interestingand it is based upon some specimens,called the Heidelberg Man, Pithecanthro-pus Erectus. They are figments of scien-tists who have imaginations. The Pithe-canthropus Erectus, or the Java man, wassimply a discovery of the part of a boneand a part of a skull, teeth, and lower jaw.They created the ape-like creature from it.Now they claimed that they did this scien-tifically by measuring the bones, etc. Butthey have never been able to do anythingreally effective.This is mostly something people want tobelieve and so they believe it. You know,whether it is true or not, that is not impor-tant, you just want to believe it. Someonedraws a character and it is half humanand half ape and people look at it and say,now that is it, and especially if they put itin a text book.People have lived in caves. However,some of the people who lived in caves aresome of the most fantastic people you willever see. They lived in caves due to thenature of their civilization. They were dri-ven out by other civilizations. Driven outof cities. We have some art in some cavesthat is absolutely fantastic. It indicates ahigh degree of culture. So we have somevery high civilizations.There are some caves in southern Francethat fall into this category. For example:The Etruscans are one of the highest of allcivilizations. They were driven into caves.We have uncovered some of their potteryin caves, and some of their art, and it isvery high. We also know what the Etrus-cans look like. They put their language in

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the cave also. When they did we are thor-oughly cognizant of the Etruscans andthey were a very beautiful people. Theydidn’t look anything like the apes, andbaboons.So actually, historically, and througharcheology we can take some of these peo-ple who lived in caves and reproducethem geologically and they come out verywell. It is only recently that we have bro-ken down the Etruscan language. Eventhough they were related to the Greeks,who were the people before the Romans,the Romans had to conquer them beforethey could develop. But the Etruscans, forexample, had a different system of calen-dar. What happened to be a long life wasnot a long life. However, the Etruscanswere not in medieval times. In the timewhen the Etruscans lived, people lived 60to 70 to 80 years. We know this fromElcybydes, who lived contemporary withthe Etruscans.We are able to scientifically reconstructwith a great deal of accuracy a great dealof things. The cave man, some of the peo-ple who lived in caves, were some of themost beautiful people who have everlived in the post-diluvian civilization.They were found in caves, and more bar-baric types drove out their civilization. Sowe have civilizations.

5. There is no transmutation of species.There is a variation within species, andtherefore, each civilization has differentweather, atmospheric conditions, animals,and flowers. The history of the Mediter-ranean is one of the most fantastic histo-ries. Someone ought to offer a course inthe university some day, a course onMediterranean history from ancient civi-lizations to modern times. You know thatbasically we have Spain, Italy, and Greeceand off from that some is Turkey. Then weswing over to Palestine and northernAfrica, and the Gates of Hercules. Theweather conditions in this area had a greatdeal to do with its history.

This can be proved. We can prove thisfrom the book of Acts. The apostle Paulhad a sudden storm come up when hewas going from Palestine to Rome by wayof Malta. We have in that area high moun-tains, the Atlas Mountains. When you getover to northern Africa you have beautifulbeaches, and then desert, and then moun-tains again. Mountains in Palestine,mountains in Syria, and mountains inTurkey.Some of the most beautiful sights in theworld are in the area of the Mediterraneanand the Aegean Seas. Greece has moun-tains and Italy has mountains, the Alps.And they move into France, the Alps ofFrance. Spain has mountains, the Perrines.All these high mountains go around theMediterranean and set up a system whereby winds and pressures go round andround.Paul got caught in one of those things. Itchanged up the whole history for theCenturion who was accompanying him.And it is demonstrable from history, cer-tain things have happened in the historyof western civilization. The history of thehuman race is directly connected with thevery topography that surrounds theMediterranean, which causes a certaintype of weather conditions in the post-diluvian civilization.This causes certain things to happen. Forexample: The Mycenaean civilization waswiped out by another civilization ofGreeks that came along. Then you have200 years where you have a completeblack out of history. What drove the peo-ple down? These Greeks had barbaricGreeks and they had cultured Greeks.What happened was that the Spartan-typeGreeks lived way up in the north country.They were driven down by the weather, togood weather. When they came down,they moved across Greece just at the timewhen the weather was good, for examplein Crete. And they broke up the Mycena-ean civilization. So there is a great deal to

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be done in the field of weather conditions.But we do know that the weather condi-tions in the anti-diluvian civilization wereperfect. In the meantime we have Texas.Here you can have any kind of weatheryou want.We started this with the verse, “Standing

in the water and out of the water,” the Earth.Now verse 6, “Whereby the world that then was,being overflowed with water, perished.” Literally,“through which.” “Which” is DIA plus theaccusative pronoun. “Through which the worldexisted at that time.” (“The world that wasthen” is not correct.) “That then” is one wordin the Greek, TOTOE. It means “at that time.”The word “was” is a present tense of EIMI,therefore, literally, existing. The word“world” is COSMOS, referring to the Earth.

This is what we are studying in context:The Earth as it was during the angelic con-flict. The Earth as it was in the anti-diluviancivilization. The Earth as it is in the post-dilu-vian civilization, etc. “The Earth existing at thattime.” This is reference to the anti-diluviancivilization on Earth, not the post-diluviancivilization on Earth. Be sure you make thatdistinction.

We are not talking about the Earth as it istoday. The Earth as it is today is tilted on itsaxis. The Earth as it was then stood upright.The universal flood is the cause of the tilt.This, in itself, changes the whole weatherpicture.

In the study of the laws of fluids in physics,or the laws of fluids in engineering, you knowthat there is a mass of water covering the sur-face of the Earth, moving around, while theEarth is spinning. When it tilts then you havea complete change of the relationship of theEarth to the universe around it. That is whenyou get a north pole and a south pole. That iswhen you began some of your geological iceages, to be distinguished from the geologicalice age that followed one phase of the angelicconflict.

So we have some interesting things here.Verse 6, “Through which the world existing at

that time, being overflowed.” KATAKLUZO.KLUZO means to wash, and KATA meansdown, to wash down. Did you ever see watergo down the drain? It swirls. It makes a kindof gurgling noise. Fill the tub and then pullthe plug and listen to it gurgle and tell me ifit goes down clockwise or counterclockwise.KATA originally was used for down.

In the development of the Greek lan-guage, and the Koine Greek, they developedcompound verbs. The verbs with which itwas used were primarily any verb of think-ing, any verb of motion, any verb of opera-tion put with KATA, which indicates a normor standard. But any verb such as this,KLUZO, to wash, goes back to its basic mean-ing of down.

The reason for this emphasis is this: Thereis quite a point here because this helps us tounderstand something. The Earth is round,well, not a round sphere. When the Earth iscompletely covered with water, it is just as ifthe Earth was washed down in the water.And the whole point is that the water is mov-ing. I don’t know if it is clockwise or counter-clockwise, but it could be established if we goto a certain area of the Earth where the move-ment of the water can be determined, possi-bly Glacier National Park. There we may getsome hint. The area between the Caspian Seaand the Black Sea would be another veryexcellent area; Mount Ararat, the mountainsof Armenia. There are certain areas of theworld, where, if you are looking for the flowof water, the law of fluids in engineering, thetremendous pressures that are built up, cantell a great deal about this flood as itoccurred.

But this verb KATAKLUZO helps us agreat deal, because it indicates something. Wethink of a flood as getting higher and higherand higher, but you must remember thatwater has currents, and it moves. It wasn’tsimply a flood where the water was standingstill. That is the way we think of water. Water,for example, in a puddle. But it was waterspinning. KATAKLUZO indicates the waterwas spinning. This also tells us a great deal

about that ark. It must have been the mostseaworthy thing that has ever existed. Navalengineers say that this is so. They say it has aperfect relationship between starboard andport and aft, as it were, and beam. The rela-tionship between the length and the beam isfantastic and perfect.

Because this water was moving aroundand around, this explains a lot of things. Thisexplains how the mastodons in one part ofthe Earth were thrown out of one part of theEarth in Siberia and dropped there. Then thearea froze and the tilt happened. Themastodons had the food still in their stom-achs. The grass of that area and that era wereall still there. Apparently one of the thingsthat stopped the moving of the water andmade it possible for Noah to open up a portand send out a dove was the fact that itfroze in the ice and this formed some formof stability. As the water receded it hadalready frozen. As a result, it stabilized andthe water was able to go down. The Earthbecame habitable again. That is our wordKATAKLUZO.

So there is a great deal to be learned fromthis verb. It is an aorist, passive, participle. Ofcourse, it means to flood, and to overflow,and indicates a water flow when it goesdown. It is an aorist tense, which means ithappened in a point of time. The passivevoice means that the Earth received it, theanti-diluvian Earth. It is a participle, whichindicates that this was God’s plan. The instru-ment He used of judgment was water.

In our study we have water underneaththe Earth. In the anti-diluvian civilizationwater was also suspended above the Earth.The water that was suspended over the Earthprecipitated and the petcocks were openedup and the water came up out of the Earthand they joined and formed the flooding ofthe Earth, which had to be a mass of water,roughly 30,000 feet high. That you see whenyou take the law of fluids in engineering andapply it to this situation. You have a fantasticpressure, which explains a lot of things. Forexample: fossils of fish in the field of ichthy-

ology now. Fossils of fish have been found inthe tops of mountains in Arizona. The geolo-gists had a field day with that and came upwith the weirdest things you ever heard. Theuniversal flood here explains the whole thing.

Water was the instrument of God’s judg-ment on the Earth. Water is in the instrumen-tal case. I want you to remember this becauseGod said never again, after the anti-diluviancivilization, never again will He destroy theEarth by flood. He didn’t say that He would-n’t destroy the Earth, but that He would notuse water again to destroy it.

In token of that Promise we have a rain-bow to seal God’s Word. And what is actuallyfound in a rainbow? Several things. Do youknow what they are? First of all, what makesa rainbow? The spectrum of light. It is therefraction of light. But, what do you have torefract the light? You must have water in theatmosphere, just a thin vapor of it. So, theLord uses water. But He said, “Never againwill I destroy the Earth with water.”

So we have Operation Rainbow. God letsus see His light in the rainbow. And God islight. So whenever you see the rainbow gen-erally you see all colors, a spectroscope on thehorizon. God used the rainbow to promisethe Earth that never again would water beused for that purpose. But He uses the waterto make the Promise. Water is now in therainbow. This is interesting because it showsus something of the facets of God’s character.He says, in essence, “I am going to show youwater to show you that I will never use thiswater that I am showing you, to destroy theEarth again, and to bring a civilization to itstermination point.”

At the same time He says, “I will use thenext time fire.” The “next time” is the post-diluvian civilization. That is why we have the“baptism of fire” mentioned in Scripture atthe Second Advent of the Lord Jesus Christ,in which all the unbelievers will be identifiedwith fire. Then fire is used. Instead of fire wewill use our modern term, which we will seelater on in this passage, as thermo-nuclear.We will study that when we get to verse 10.

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We will see how that the universe will bedestroyed. There will be thermo-nuclear acti-vity. We will take up a little chemistry whenwe get there. The point here is very simple:God says never again will the Earth bedestroyed the way it was.

But in our passage we have it described as“being overflowed with water, perished.” So withthe instrumentality of water “perished.” It isan aorist, middle, indicative of APOLLUMI.APO is the preposition of ultimate source.LLUMI means to destroy. So it means to de-stroy from the ultimate source of God. God isthe ultimate Source of destruction. God thenis the Source of the destruction of each civi-lization. God totally destroyed that civiliza-tion Himself. And only the believers survived.

This is the principle of the ultimate sourceof destruction:1. This verb means to destroy from the ulti-

mate source of self. God is the ultimateSource of destruction.

2. The purpose of the judgment was todestroy the unbelievers of the anti-dilu-vian civilization before they destroyedthe human race, and therefore, foul upthe whole angelic conflict.You have to have civilizations in order tokeep the angelic conflict burning. If theanti-diluvian civilization had gone theway it was going, there would be noangelic conflict. Satan would be declaredthe winner.So, you have to have, in order to preserveGod’s Plan for the human race, the fourDivine Institutions. But there comes atime in history when Divine Institutionsare not enough. Therefore, God mustdestroy an entire civilization, the entireEarth, and rid it of all the unbelievers inorder to perpetuate the angelic conflictand to preserve man. That is why we starteach civilization with believers only. Allthe unbelievers are moved out like a can-cer that will eventually destroy every-thing. The perfect illustration is foundhere.

3. This is a judgment of the unbelievers, toprotect the human race.

4. Not only were unbelievers judged, andremoved from the Earth, but also theNEPHALIM were removed, which werespoken of in Genesis 6. The NEPHALIMwere the super-race, the half-man andhalf-angel. These were people likeAchilles, Caster, Orpheus, and Apollos,people of this sort who are actually a partof mythology. They are all based on thisprinciple.This, of course, was the corruption of thehuman race. It was an attempt by Satan todestroy true humanity. So the anti-dilu-vian civilization ended in a flood judg-ment which destroyed not only truehumanity, unbeliever types, but it alsodestroyed the NEPHALIM, the super-race.

5. A new civilization is begun with believersonly, Noah plus seven.

6. This explains the parallel between thejudgment of the flood and the judgmentof the Second Advent, the baptism of fire.There is a parallel found in Matthew24:37-41. The two judgments of God aretied together here for us. Since Godjudged the world by the flood, then sincethat is true, that supports the truth of theother, which is in the future.This passage is very misunderstood forthat same reason. Matthew 24:37 is one ofthe most fascinating passages in the Wordof God for a number of reasons, if for noother reason than no one seems to be ableto interpret it correctly. Someone alwaysputs the Rapture of the Church in here,where it doesn’t belong. We have somewonderful passages on the rapture, butone of them is not Matthew 24. In otherwords, this passage is not talking aboutthe Church and the Rapture.Matthew 24:37, “But as the days of Noewere, so shall also the coming of the Son ofman be.” Immediately we pick up a paral-lel. “The days of Noah” speak of the anti-diluvian civilization. “The day of the Son of

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man” is the Second Advent of Christ andnot the Rapture. The Second Advent ofChrist ends another civilization, much likein Noah’s day. That is the end of the post-diluvian civilization. So immediately par-allelism is established. Something is goingto happen similar in each case. What is it?Well, a civilization is going to be ended.“But as the days of Noe.” The word “as”sets up an analogy. “Noe” is Noah, whichis still Noah. This is a Greek word forNoah. “As... so shall also the coming of theSon of man be.” “For as in the days before theflood, they were eating and drinking, and mar-rying and giving in marriage, until the daythat Noah entered into the ark.”This is again where people get all mixedup and try to add a lot of sins here. Butthere aren’t any here. They were marryingand giving in marriage. That is not sinful.But the point is that they were so occu-pied with living, they were not interest-ed in the Word, and reached the point ofmaximum negative volition to the Word.Whenever this happens it has to be head-ed off by a judgment, which ends a civi-lization. Verse 39, “And they knew not tillthe flood came and took them all away.”“So shall the coming of the Son of man be.”This is the Second Advent of Christ, andanother judgment, another civilizationcoming to an end. “Two shall be in the field,and one shall be taken.” That is, the unbe-liever will be taken off the Earth. “And theother left.” That is the believer, after theSecond Advent of Christ.The millennial civilization begins withbelievers only. So, the “one taken” is theunbeliever. He is removed from the Earthby the baptism of fire. “Two shall be in thefield and one taken and the other left.” “Taken”is the unbeliever. “Left” on the Earth is thebeliever going into the Millennium. We arenot studying Matthew, but in this passagewe have the whole principle in one point.

7. The parallel between the judgment of theflood and the judgment at the Second

Advent of Christ, the baptism of fire, iswhere the scoffers are attacking. “Where isthe promise of His coming? Since people havedied, the prophets of old, there is still noSecond Advent of Christ.” Well, what iswrong with the scoffers? They haveignored the Plan of God.So, God’s final veto is to protect thehuman race, the termination of a civiliza-tion, and therefore, God the Son cannotreturn to the Earth until the human civi-lization is in danger of going out underthe principle of the angelic conflict.Therefore, the Second Advent cannotoccur until the Rapture, and the SecondAdvent of Christ cannot occur until thebody of Christ is completed, until theTribulation demonstrates that the humanrace is about to destroy itself, and thenthe Second Advent of Christ comes topreserve and to perpetuate the angelicconflict. At the Second Advent of Christthe angelic conflict shifts gears, and thenwe go into “Operation Footstool.”This is the thrust of this section, althoughit doesn’t look like much when you readit. If you read it, it almost seems like youare in for a dull evening, but when youbring in the cave man, and the dinosaurs,and the flood, and the spitting cobra, andthe super-race, and the mastodons, itpicks up a little.

8. When Jesus Christ returns the unbelieverwill be removed from the Earth with thebaptism of fire, just as in the days of Noahwith the flood.

9. This passage emphasizes another parallel.Just as God judged the world in Noah’sday, so at the Second Advent of Christ, Hewill judge the world. In other words, inthis passage it is saying “you people, youscoffers, you are asking for it.”See, these are scoffers at the end of theChurch Age, and they will say where isthe Second Advent? “Where is the pro-mise of His coming?” Many generationshave died and still the promise hasn’t

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materialized. God isn’t God. There is noGod. He doesn’t keep His Word. Thereforewho wants a God who doesn’t keep HisWord? This is an attack upon the Wordof God and God.This is what the scoffer is saying. But thescoffers are ignoring the principle of civi-lizations. God will not terminate a civi-lization until every person who can besaved is saved and until God answersevery positive volition for salvation,until what is left is so hopeless, is so can-cerous, that it is going to knock out theangelic conflict.So in order to perpetuate the angelic con-flict, and to perpetuate the human race,God moves right into a new civilization,which always means the destruction ofthe former one. That means that all unbe-lievers are wiped out. The flood in thedays of Noah; and the baptism of fire atthe Second Advent of Christ; and theGreat White Throne Judgment, which is atthe end of the Millennium.

In verse 7 we now have, as a result of this,the judgment of the scoffers. In this verse wehave a second parallelism. The Earth will bedestroyed and all of the unbelievers will beassigned to the Lake of Fire ultimately at theend of the millennial civilization. When thatLake of Fire occurs, these scoffers are going toget theirs. Those who malign the Lord andHis Word will be judged.

Verse 7, “But the heavens and the Earthwhich are now.” This is in contrast to the previ-ous two verses where we had the anti-dilu-vian Earth. In this verse we have the post-diluvian Earth/civilization. “The heavens...”This is in the plural because there are threedifferent heavens, all in this section.

Verse 5, the anti-diluvian heavens.Verse 7, the post-diluvian heavens.Verse 13, finally we have the new heavens.So this word “heavens” is used for the

universe. As you know, there are three spheresof the universe: The strata, in which we find

ourselves. Then the universe beyond, whichwould be the billions of light years and all thegalaxies found in them. And then beyondthat the “Third Heaven,” which is the throneroom of God, which must be quadrillions oflight years away. I don’t believe anyone willmake it in a space ship, or rocket or whatever.

The only way you can make that trip isby believing in Christ. And that costs thetaxpayers absolutely nothing for that trip, orit shouldn’t. You will never make that tripwith a scientist and a countdown, or a spaceprogram. God has His own space program:“Absent from the body and face to face with theLord.” Or, “The Lord shall descend and we shallbe caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and soshall we ever be with the Lord.”

Verse 7 literally says “the now heavens andthe Earth.” This is a reference to the post-dilu-vian Earth, in contrast to the anti-diluvianEarth of verse 5. In the anti-diluvian Earthgreat bodies of water were stored under theEarth. But now...something else is in store.Remember the Earth in the anti-diluviantime. What did it have underneath? Water.And what was suspended above? Water.What is in the core of the Earth now? Well,we will say just gas. Did you say fire? Well,fire is gas.

Verse 7 says “But the now heavens and theEarth by the same Word.” “By the same Word”of the Lord Jesus Christ referring again toColossians 1:17. “Are kept in store.” This is aperfect, passive, participle of THESAURIZO.As you know, this word means to treasure, orto store, to treasure up, to store up. Or it canbe to accumulate. It is a perfect tense, whichmeans it is stored up in the past with a resultthat it remains there.

So, all these gases are stored in the Earth.The Earth is roughly 25,000 miles in circum-ference, and that means about 8,000 miles indiameter. That is a pretty big storage tank forgas. It is stored with all of these gases.Occasionally we get a crust somewhere, andwe have a breakthrough of these gases. Wecall that a volcano.

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There are a couple of interesting ones, likeMt. St. Helen’s. But let’s take one calledKrakatoa, which was an island out in whatwe used to call the Dutch East Indies. It wasan island about 15–20 miles long, and about20–30 miles wide. The whole thing blew up.A lot of pressure was built up there and thething just went sky high. Two days later 6,000miles away they had ashes falling in Londonfrom this one place. I forgot how many hun-dreds of thousands of people were killed.There were tidal waves that traveled 2,000miles. The explosion was heard in Bangkok,which, by the way, is at least 1,100 milesaway. So this was a great blower. Now thishappened before the ecologists and the envi-ronmentalists came into existence. Theywould have probably blamed it on industry.But they collected a lot of phenomena at thattime. This is just one of those cases where thegases were stored there.

Every once in awhile the gases breakthrough the crest of the Earth somewhere.The same thing happened in 70 A.D. whenVesuvius blew, and Pompeii, which was theplayground for the Roman Empire, was cov-ered in lava. You can see the results of one inHawaii, Mauna Loa. It erupted back in 1930.It really was a mess and the lava is still hot.

Every now and then, on some part of theEarth, she blows. All that gas is stored there,treasured there. Even though we have anoccasional volcano erupting, this just gives usa small idea of what is going to happen whenit all blows. When the whole thing blows, don’tsweat it! It is not the Russians, or the Chinese.

You, at that time, will have a resurrectionbody exactly like the Lord Jesus Christ. Andthere will be no problem to you or to Him. Ican see some of you getting nervous now. Butwe will cover the passage soon. Don’t get outyour tranquilizers. If you have personallyaccepted Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour,you will see it. There is a very interesting pas-sage in Hebrews 12 that saps when the wholeuniverse goes up, we will be in a stabilizedform. So, our resurrection bodies apparentlyare detonation resistant, or anti-nuke.

Please notice Who keeps this all in store.Every now and then the Lord just scratchesaway a little surface of the Earth and lets itblow. You know that a lot of mountains arehollow. There are pipes that run up. There isa sort of a pipe that goes right up to the topand “there she blows.” So, the Lord scratchesthe Earth a little and gives you a preview ofcoming attractions.

“But keeps it in store.” This is a perfecttense which means “with a result that it isgoing to stay in store.” We know that from thenext verb, “reserved by fire.” This is literallyby means of fire. “Reserved by means of fire.”Fire is PUR and it means gaseous substance.

It is important to notice “fire” here. This,by the way, is describing Revelation 21:1,“against the day of judgment.” This judgment isgoing to terminate the universe.

Here is the answer to the scoffers. You aregoing to get it. But:

• First: the universe is going to blow.• Second: people are going to be

involved.When the universe blows up, it creates a

Lake of Fire, and unbeliever types will beinvolved in it.

Now here, in the middle of the verse,“reserved by fire against the day of judgment.”That is the judgment of the Earth. “And theperdition of ungodly men.” This is the judgmentof people. “People” are the unbeliever types.“Reserved” is a present, active, participle ofTEREO. This word means to guard some-thing, something that belongs to self. In thisparticular instance it is the fire. The word“fire” is referring to gases in the heart of theEarth. God actually guards these so that thereis no complete cataclysm of any type.

Again we have had historically some cata-clysms resulting from the gases stored inside.But even though there is gas stored inside, inapparently a volatile form, the air bandaround the Earth, which is also a gas, is in astabilized form. Hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen,and other gases exist in the air that webreathe, but they are stabilized. All you have

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to do is to unstabilize them and you will havequite a mess.

The whole universe is going to becomeunstable. That is mentioned later on and wewill take it up in detail in verse 10. But in themeantime we have the principle here of judg-ment. Beginning with the word “reserved,kept by fire, guarded by fire.” This is thejudgment of the planet Earth. It is reservedfor a fire judgment. This judgment is going tofall into two categories. This judgment willcome at the end of the Millennium. This is theend of the millennial civilization when theEarth and the universe are going to be des-troyed. Actually the judgment is two-fold,which will include the Earth and the entirephysical universe then existent. And it willinclude people.

You have topography and homo sapiensincluded in this judgment. When it says“against the day of judgment,” this, of course,refers to topography. It is a reference to thelast judgment at the end of the Millennium.Inside of the Earth there is a seething mass ofelements, and they are volatile. Outside of theEarth’s crust there are now non-volatile typesof gases, which will become volatile. Themechanics will be given in verse 10.

In verse 7 the big thing is the last phrase,“the day of judgment.” This refers to the Earthand the universe. And perdition of ungodlymen. The word for “perdition” refers to thejudgment of people, APOLEIA. This is aword that is a genitive singular. It is a nounthat means destruction. It is a technical wordfor the last judgment which is amplified inRevelation 20:12-15. Here it is said to refer to“ungodly men.” “Ungodly men” refers to theunbelievers. Only unbelievers appear at thelast judgment, which is the Lake of Fire.

All right then, in verse 7 we have an out-line of several things we will be covering indetail. The final judgment, as far as thehuman race is concerned, and therefore alsothe termination of the angelic conflict.

In the termination of the angelic conflict,the entire universe, which was originally the

habitation of angels, is going to be destroyed,and that means the Earth, and everythingconnected with the Earth. That means billionsof light years of space are going to blow.There will be something comparable to fis-sion or fusion. We will take up both of thesein verse 10. There is going to be a fantasticexplosion, and as far as we know, there isonly one type of air raid shelter to have inthat day. And that is a resurrection body. Aresurrection body will withstand the entirething. It is always nice to be in somethingthat you know can withstand the pressure.

You know that submarines go down, down,down. It is always nice to know that it is builtto take 1,200 fathoms, etc. The old World WarII submarines could take about 400 fathomsand that was it. It is nice to know that youhave something that can stand the pressure.

Here is the most encouraging point today:When the universe blows, when the Earthgoes up, and it will happen at the end of theMillennium, the resurrection body will with-stand all pressure. Which means that the res-urrection body is absolutely fantastic, becauseany little detonation can blow the humanbody right out of the picture. It doesn’t takemuch to blow it up. But there is no way thatthe resurrection body can be blown up!

So we have a principle here. In this finaljudgment there are two categories. There is ajudgment of people and there is the judgmentof topography. The universe and unbelieverswill be blown up, both of them.

Now, verses 8 and 9 deal with anotherprinciple before we get to the destruction ofthe universe. The principle is that the Wordof God defeats the scoffers. You will recallthat we have been studying the “scoffers.”They said, “Where is the promise of His coming?”Where is the judgment to come? In verses 8and 9 we have a principle. The scoffers are aspecial corps of satanic force. And the princi-ple is that all satanic forces are ultimatelydefeated.

Our relationship to that defeat is throughthe Word of God. The Word of God is for the

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whole human race. The Bible is for the humanrace. The Bible is for mankind. The Bible con-tains categories of Doctrines. Doctrine is theultimate victory over everything in theangelic conflict. The Word of God is thethinking of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is calledthe mind of Christ in 1 Corinthians 2:16, ”Forwho hath known the mind of the Lord, that hemay instruct him? But we have the mind ofChrist.” Since He is a genius in His humani-ty, then anything He thinks is perfect. Wehave the mind of Christ.

So there is a principle here in verse 8. Thefirst is the principle about the scoffers. Theelapse of time does not hinder the Plan ofGod or any Promise that God makes. Timeelapse never hinders a Divine Promise or thePlan of God.

The elapse of time may shake you. Buttime goes on, and you haven’t caught a hus-band or a wife. And time goes by and youhaven’t made your first million. You are now22 and you are not a millionaire and you areall shook up. You are now 22 and you arenow concerned because no one has recog-nized you as being a success. So people havea way of getting upset over the lapse of time.

Now here is the concept. Time may elapseand the elapse of time may shake you up. Butit doesn’t shake God up at all. Time belongsto Him. Time is a Divine device to measureout the last area of the angelic conflict, i.e.,the history of the human race.

Abraham got shook because God didn’tapparently, he thought, keep a Promise. ButHe did. Abraham was to have a son from hisown loins, and the reason why the promisewasn’t materializing was because Abrahamwas trying everything on his own. This wasto be strictly a Grace child. A child of Gracemeant that there was no way that Abrahamcould produce this child. And he didn’t. Hecouldn’t. So when the situation was actuallyhopeless, then God provided.

Every now and then something happensto people, and they start to think about time,like a birthday. And everyone gets upset. It is

amazing how time bugs people after a certainage. Once you get past 30, from then on youwant to be 30 all the time. Now people havedreams, and when the dreams do not materi-alize and there is no possibility of the dreammaterializing, and time goes on people getshook. Time waits for no one. That is a song,and if you know that songs it will outdateyou and you too will be shook by time. Theprinciple is: that even though time elapses,time goes on and on. It keeps right on mov-ing. It doesn’t stop for you. “Time is alwaysin God’s favor.” So don’t worry about time.

We have all heard that wonderful phrase,“I wish this moment would last forever.”They want time to stop right there. “May thismoment never pass.” If you want time tostop, then you want God’s operation ofGrace to stop. But Operation Grace isn’tgoing to stop for you. When you look at yourwatch, and another second goes by, do youknow what that means? That means thatGod’s Plan is going on.

If someone could find a way to destroytime, if the devil could find some way todestroy time, there would be no angelic con-flict and the devil would win. Did you everstop to think that one of the things that Satanwould like to stop is time? Satan gets thatsame help from many so-called romantic peo-ple. Some look at time in another way. Theywant time to hurry up. You want thismoment to pass quickly. So some look at timein a different way. People want time to stopor to hurry up, to accommodate them.

Do you know that God doesn’t pay anyattention to any of that? He doesn’t pay a bitof attention to us. Sixty seconds still make aminute and 60 minutes still make an hour,and 24 hours still make a day. No matter howyou slice it, no matter what.

Now, if you study calendars you can get alot of information from calendars. You wouldnot believe how religions have tried to changethe calendar. And one of the biggest calendarchanges of all times came in the FrenchRevolution. Every time you find an atheisticorganization, the people who started the

French Revolution, for example, they alwaystry to tamper with the calendar. They arealways trying to change time.

Now since the devil can’t stop time, hesays to himself, “God is going to keep thisgoing, so we are going to have to find a doc-trine, a system of apostasy, to attack it.” Toattack time, the devil is always putting outinformation. So he says, “Look God, Whereare all these nice promises? Look, You are get-ting older and none of these promises arematerializing. Look at this and look at that.God is not keeping His Word.”

Satan likes this one, especially when youare in a jam, when do you want to get out ofit? Well, a while ago. All right, so you wantout. And you say, “Get me out.” “Get me outof the jam,” this pain. Take this and that away.And so once again the devil has this littleconcept. If God is really a Gracious God andHe sees you in a suffering situation, He is notany God at all. Don’t pay attention to him.Don’t have anything to do with Him. Godpromises you blessings and look at you.Tomorrow it will be worse. And the next dayworse. It is not going to get any better. Nowwhat kind of a God is that? Now, that think-ing and that expression are satanic.

In our passage we have seen that God hasa timetable. In that timetable the Millenniumis coming at a certain time, the Tribulation iscoming at a certain time. Every time someonehas a terrible disease they want the Rapturenow, for some very selfish reasons. They don’twant to die physically. It is just an enlarge-ment of “Get me out of this jam, Lord.” “Ihave a terrible disease, and I am going to die,now come and get me.” “Come Lord Jesus.”And then you begin to suddenly look up allthe references to the Rapture. Why? Becauseyou are trying to bully God. You are trying todictate to God. You try to tell God how torun His Plan. But I don’t know if you know itor not, but God is a lot smarter than we are.And His Plan is marvelous and orderly.

Do you know that He has categories forevery facet of His Plan and one of the sim-plest categories is time? But the scoffers say,

“Where is the promise of His coming?” “Since ourfathers have fallen asleep...” That is the issuehere. Do you remember this point? “Thereshall come in the last time scoffers.” This is thelast days, the end of the Church Age. Scoffers,special satanic scoffers, at the end of theChurch Age, “walking after their own lusts”and saying, “Where is the promise of His com-ing? For since the fathers fell asleep all thingscontinue as they were from the beginning of cre-ation.” There has been no change, so they saythere won’t be any change. Time has elapsed,and there is no coming, no Second Advent,no judgment.

All right, let’s start in now and see howthe Word defeats these scoffers. God has aPlan and His Plan is delineated in His Word.God will keep His Word.

Verse 8, “But beloved,” of verse 1. “Beloved”refers to a believer in union with Christ hereon this Earth. It is used in Ephesians 1:6,where we are said to be “accepted in theBeloved.” In Colossians 3:12 we see this also,“Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy andbeloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humblenessof mind, meekness, longsuffering.” Also in 1Timothy 6:2, “And they that have believing mas-ters, let them not despise them, because they arebrethren; but rather do them service, because theyare faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit.These things teach and exhort.” And in Hebrews2:9, “But we see Jesus, Who was made a littlelower than the angels for the suffering of death,crowned with glory and honour: that He by theGrace of God should taste death for every man.”

Notice the next phrase: “But beloved be notignorant.” The only thing wrong though isthat this is not quite what it says. The Greekword is LANTHANO. What does that mean?It means to go unnoticed, or it means to for-get. So what is the point? “Do not be igno-rant” is not a good translation. This wordmeans to go unnoticed. It is a word for appli-cation. Do not fail to apply. When somescoffer comes up with the idea that God isnot keeping His promises, apply the Wordthat you know. See, all these people have diedand nothing has happened. And this is a

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terrible world. God isn’t doing anything. IfGod really loved you, why does He let allthese horrible things happen? If God reallyloves people, why on Earth does He allow theCommunists to do this and that? All that kindof stuff. You hear it all the time. The threat ofnuclear disaster from the Russians. It isbaloney and stupid thinking.

LANTHANO says if you have some Graceguts, well apply it. This is not the word forignorance. The verb for ignorance is AGNOEO.That is where we get the word “agnostic.”NOEO means to think and when you put an“A” in front of it, it means not to think.

But, as you can see, this word LANTHANOis different. This word means failing to apply.This word assumes that you know, but youare not applying it. You understand, forexample, the Doctrine of Divine Essence, andyou don’t apply the essence of God to theexperience of the scoffers, here in context.This means you understand the principlesof Grace, but you do not apply them. Thisassumes that you know the various phases ofthe Christian way of life on this Earth, butyou do not apply them. You understand theDoctrine of civilizations, but you do notapply it. In other words, LANTHANO is talk-ing to a believer, “beloved,” who knows theWord and because he knows the Word, heshould have discernment, but he doesn’t havediscernment.

This poses an interesting question. I don’twant to get you sidetracked, but the applica-tion is important. How is it that people canlearn the Word and not apply it? Here arefive reasons why believers don’t apply theWord to their experience.1. The first principle will shock you. Many

times people are ignorant of Doctrine, andyou are ignorant of the fact that they areignorant of the Word. In other words, youare not cognizant of the situation.For example, you see someone who comesto Bible class regularly, and the reasonthey come to class is because they like thetemperature, or they like to be around

people because they are shy. It doesn’tcost anything to come to class. And theysit there and look around at people. Theyare really people watchers. And they justkind of enjoy themselves. It is sort of likea club to them. And they then get up andleave. You see them there time after time,and you bump into them in the same situ-ation, and they have no application of theWord in that situation. There are those who we call bird dogs andbird watchers. You say you can’t under-stand that. So-’n-so comes to class all thetime, and yet he doesn’t know this or that.What is the problem?Well, the problem is your failure to esti-mate the situation. You look at this per-son and you just can’t help but speculate.You think that they should know a lot.You cannot evaluate the knowledge ofsomeone else. Therefore, what is it really?Well, they are ignorant of the Word. Andyou are ignorant of the fact that they areignorant of the Word. So consequentlyapplication is not the issue. You make anissue out of application when it isn’t. Youcannot determine what a person knowsand what a person does not know.

2. The second problem is failure of applica-tion. This is where a person really hasknowledge. But, while they have storedthis knowledge, they have a false criteri-on, such as emotions. One of the greatesthindrances to the application of the Wordof God is using your emotions falsely.We all have emotions, and this is some-times hard to tell, but it is true. All of ushave emotions. If you live a full life, youhave a well-developed emotion. The emo-tion of the soul is the appreciator of thesoul. Everything that you appreciate, thearea of appreciation, is the emotion of thesoul. If you appreciate football then that isemotions. And that is emoting. If youappreciate some sort of music or art, thatis emotion. Some people emote overcamping. They like to sleep in a bag andlive with the bugs and skunks, and they

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really love that. And you lay back andlook up at the sky and stars and youremotions kick in. Everyone has their ownideas. Whatever melts your butter. Whatis it that melts your butter?We all have emotions, but they expressthemselves in different ways. The problemis that your emotions get out of whack.Everyone who is normal has a super-charger in the emotions. When it kicksinto super-charge, the first thing that hap-pens is some sort of a rosy glow. You get astimulated feeling. You get turned onabout something. As a result, you like thefeeling so much that you cultivate youremotions out of their natural boundariesof appreciation, and use them, for exam-ple, like the so-called “tongues move-ment,” as a system of ecstatics, a spiritual-ity by ecstatics.The Word is there, but your emotionsbecome your criteria. Eventually yourwhole evaluation of the Christian way oflife is how you feel. This results in philo-sophical hedonism. This also keeps peoplefrom applying the Word to their experi-ence, the misuse and distortion of theemotional pattern of the soul.There are many types of people who fallinto this category, such as: people who tryto solve their problems by throwing atantrum. You blow your cork and have atantrum, or some other childish behavior.You are operating strictly on your emotions.That turns off the valve called applicationof the Word of God to your experience,wisdom. The Word just sits there and can-not be applied because you are having atantrum. You are angry. You are fallingapart. You are raving, screaming, and as aresult, no application of the Word. Youcan’t apply the Word and at the sametime be ruled by your emotions.One of the nicest things in the world is tobe on top of your emotions, to rule themand not be ruled by them. There is whereyou can have fun. You drive, as it were,

and let your emotions sit in the back seat,but never let them drive. Because whenyour emotions rule you, when they chauf-feur you around, then you become a slaveto them and that destroys your apprecia-tion of the Christian life, which means theWord can be learned and never applied.

3. The third factor. This has to do with car-nality. This is a believer out of fellowship.He can have a lot of knowledge of theWord of God, but if he stays out of fel-lowship for a prolonged period of time,he destroys his application and function-ing, and ceases to work. Not only doeshis application cease to work, but eventu-ally the knowledge of the Word diminish-es. So he finally gets to a minus knowl-edge of the Word situation. That would bethe principle found in Hebrews 6. Thelonger you stay out of fellowship, themore of the Word you forget.So this word we have here, LANTHANO,is a very excellent illustration. There areplaces where the word LANTHANO inthe Greek language, actually refers to for-getting, to pass by unnoticed and so toforget.

4. The fourth factor. This fourth problemhas to do with disorganized thinking.What do we mean? Do we mean a personwho is liberal and confused? No. Thatmay be true, but disorganized thinking isfailure to categorize. I have heard goodBible teachers who can stimulate theiraudience for a short period of time, andgive accurate information, but becausethey fail to categorize within the frame-work of their teaching, they eliminate thepossibility of application. Sometimesapplication comes from finding a specificcategory, and working from that category.Like the Doctrine of Divine Essence,which is actually the structure for everyPromise found in the Word of God for theChristian way of life.You can take any Promise for time, andyou can find in God’s essence, God’sattributes, God’s character, the structure

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for that Promise, and the basis on whichGod gave it. If you have a problem, andthere is not a category, then you do nothave the ability to cope with the problem.You don’t have the ability to call upon thespecific category.You don’t store clothes, for example, in abig bundle. You hang your clothes up sothat you can pick out what you want towear. But you just don’t put everythinginto one big box and then dig for your tux.That is disorganized. You have to wadethrough a lot of clothes to get to the tux.So what happens without categories? Younot only fail to apply, which is also disor-ganized thinking, but you are alsoinvolved in distractibility. This leads us tothe final fact or problem.

5. We can go on forever on these problems.But the final one is distractibility. Youcan’t apply because you are distracted. Inother words, lack of the ability to concen-trate. You see concentration requiresknowledge. It requires a system of disci-pline. You must have category, discipline,and organized thinking.Now, concentration today is a lost art. Andyet concentration should be a by-productof Christianity. So, failure to concentratewould be another reason.By the way, failure to concentrate comesfrom several sources. Maybe it is one thathas been ignored. Lack of self-disciplinewe know is a source. But you cannot con-centrate unless you have a relaxed men-tal attitude. When you are not relaxed,you cannot concentrate. That is why men-tal attitude sins are so bad. They inter-dict between you and the Word of God.Then they interdict between you and theapplication of the Word of God.So in our passage, “Beloved, be not LAN-

THANO,” which is application, “of this onething, that one day.” Don’t fail to apply this,“one day.” It is a 24-hour period, whichmeans that the believer should not be impa-tient and judge the Lord.

See, here is a big problem. The delay, orelapse of time, does not hinder the Plan ofGod, or the Word of God. God knows exactlywhat He is doing. He has organized His time.He has organized everything in time. So thebeliever should not become impatient withregard to God and His timing.

Now here is the principle: impatiencealways judges. Impatience never gets all thefacts. Impatience never waits for the facts. Sowhen you find a person who is impatient,you will find a person who hangs you firstand then holds a trial afterwards. Now that isimpatience.

I know there are things that are pre-pack-aged. We have pre-packaged this and that.But there is one thing that just never worksout for the human race, and that is to be pre-judged. So, impatience judges.

Verse 8, “But beloved be not ignorant to applyof this one thing.” “That one day with.” But theword “with” is not “with.” It is PARA, whichis a preposition of immediate source. So, itshould be translated “one day from the immedi-ate source of the Lord.”

This is the principle of a day, which wehave studied before. Time is a part of theDivine Plan. Every time the Earth gets a day,it is from God. That is the principle of livingone day at a time, Romans 14. Every daywhen you wake up God has given yousomething the moment you wake up. Andthat is another day in which to serve Him, tohonor Him, to represent Him, to grow inGrace, etc. “From the source of the Lord.” “Fromthe immediate source of the Lord.”

“Is as a thousand years.” In other words, ifthe Lord made a Promise a thousand yearsago, it is as good as if it were made today.Illustration: Isaiah 41:10 says, “Fear thou not;for I am with thee; be not dismayed; for I am thyGod: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee:yea, I will hold thee with the right hand of Myrighteousness.” Now that Promise was madenearly 3,000 years ago. And it is good rightnow today. Why? Here is the principle: Godmade that Promise nearly 3,000 years ago,

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and an elapse of time doesn’t do anything tothat Promise. Just because we have a fewthousand years of history, that doesn’t meanthat the Promise has changed.

“Stand still and watch the deliverance of theLord.” Now there is a promise that was madeover 3,000 years ago, going on to 4,000 years,and yet that promise that was made some4,000 years ago still stands today. The elapseof time hasn’t changed it. This then is whatthis verse is saying.

It is the same principle as “the Word of Godliveth and abideth forever.” “One day from theimmediate source of the Lord is a thousand years.”The elapse of time does not hinder the Lordfrom keeping His Promise to you. Time is nobarrier in the fulfillment of the Plan of God orin the Promises of God. Remember that timebelongs to God. If the Lord promised theSecond Advent of Christ and judgment manycenturies ago, as He did, He will keep HisWord.

Now, verse 9 develops the concept of thefact that time is not hindering the Plan ofGod but fulfilling the Plan of God. Verse 9“The Lord is not slack.”

Let’s take a look at that word “slack,”BRADUNO. The word means to be tardy.“The Lord is not tardy concerning His Promises.”We could take a poll and we could ask thequestion “How many people like to be keptwaiting?” I didn’t say do you like to keeppeople waiting. Apparently this is a part ofthe feminine treasure. But how do you like tobe kept waiting? Did you ever meet anyonewho loved to be kept waiting? Who said“Meet me at 5, but I will wait until 12.” If youmeet someone like that, let me know.

Now God has a record of billions of years,and He has not been tardy once. God hasnever been late. So that anything in His Plancomes exactly when He wants it to come.God is on time.

Let’s take an illustration. Single people.You are looking forward to finding the RightMan/Right Woman in marriage. Time elapsesand you start to get shook. All right, it may

take 1,000 years to get the Right Man, so stickaround and wait for him. What is the princi-ple? Here it is:

Promiscuity is so dangerous to the souland it puts so many calluses on the soul, andcauses a seared conscience. You decide thatthe Lord is not going to dump the Right Manin your lap. So the first thing you do is to tellyour Church where to go, and then you findyourself a boyfriend, and another boyfriend,and another boyfriend, etc. And you havehad it. You shoot yourself down under thosecircumstances. Yet, if you will wait, you willhave a wonderful time.

Do you know that living with a man is notall that it is cracked up to be? But, if you waitfor the Lord’s man, you will have somethingwonderful. You will be saying every day“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Evenwhen you fight, you will still say “Thankyou, Lord.” Now, when it is the Right Person,things may go right and things may gowrong, but it is still from the Lord, so it willbe wonderful.

By the way, never a dull moment. Some ofyou by now must know you have the wrongperson because you are bored to death. Youknow the Bible speaks of eight deaths. So,those of you who wait, and are in a positionto wait, the Lord has a Right Person for youand that is a point of Doctrine.

Since He has a Right Person for you, justbecause all of your friends are getting mar-ried, and just because you find things difficultat home, and just because your father says“Well, daughter, it is getting a little difficult tosupport you,” and this type of thing, don’tcome up with the first person who comesalong. Don’t say, “The next person who asksme to marry him, some nice-looking, clean-cut person, I will marry him.” A lot of peoplehave done that, much to their regret. In otherwords, wait for the Lord. The Lord is theProvider. You do not provide for yourself.The Lord provides for you and that is Grace.And what the Lord doesn’t provide for youisn’t worth having.

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You are well off in whatsoever state youfind yourself in. Now, this is all a part of thisprinciple. The elapse of time does not keepthe Lord from fulfilling His Word to you. Theelapse of time, in any situation, where youwant something, and it hasn’t materialized, itdoesn’t mean that the Lord is unfaithful, orunfair, or that He is torturing you. That isblasphemous. That is like trying to make apatsy out of the Lord. He has everything foryou. And everything is from Him. “He can doexceedingly abundantly above all we ever ask orthink.” He is therefore, actually waiting tobless you.

The key that unlocks the door to every-thing is knowledge of the Word of God,leading to loving the Lord. The principle isthat once you love the Lord, you will actual-ly put the Lord first. The details of life willbecome secondary. If you have ever fallen inlove with a member of the human race, youwill notice at that point when you are truly inlove with someone, details become meaning-less. Some people do not have a clue proba-bly to what I am saying. But this is illustrat-ing your relationship with the Lord. Whenyou truly fall in love with the Lord throughknowledge of the Word of God, the details oflife are not meaningful, but the Lord is.

Then what does the Lord do when a rela-tionship like that exists? Well, then the Lordgives you the details. And then you can en-joy the details, because the Lord is first andyou have the capacity for the details of life.

The very minute the Lord isn’t first, thenthe details will make you miserable.

Now, this is a principle found in the Word.It is a very important principle in the Word. Itis being developed starting in verse 9. “TheLord is not slack.” The word for “slack” isBRADUNO. “The Lord is not tardy.” He is notdelaying. It is a present, active, indicative. Henever is tardy, and this is a reality.

“Concerning His promises, as some mencount.” The word “count” here is HEGEO-MAI, which means to think, thinking in termsof concluding something. It means to make a

false or a true conclusion. Here it means tomake a false conclusion. The elapse of timecauses some people to say that the Lord isn’tkeeping His Word, i.e., the Second Advent ofChrist.

All right, so here is the conclusion: “TheLord is not slack, or tardy, concerning His Promisesas some conclude slackness; but is longsufferingtoward us.” The word “but” is a conjunctionof contrast. So here is what the Lord is reallylike. Not slack or tardy, but “longsuffering.”This is MAKROTHUMEO, which means to bepatient. Isn’t it wonderful that the Lorddoesn’t judge us as we judge others? Wejudge others in impatience. Judging meanswe don’t have the facts, but we have madeup our minds anyway. I don’t like you, sohere goes. Now that is judging.

Patience is an attitude of love. “The fruitof the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering...”Put that down in your notes. This may be thefirst time you have ever heard this – patienceis an attitude of love. Patience is not restrain-ing yourself. It is an attitude of love. Not likeyou would like to clobber someone, but youhold back. No. That is not patience. Patienceis an attitude of love.

Listen carefully. If you have that down,then get this. Love takes up the slack. Whenyou love God through knowledge of HisWord, you have taken up the slack. And it nolonger becomes a question of time. Like“You’re tardy, Lord. You haven’t provided memoney. You haven’t provided me success. Youhaven’t provided me any pleasures in life: thecar, home, TV, dog, cat, whatever it is thatyou want. But you haven’t provided Lord.What is going on Lord?”

When you love the Lord, you are thinkingabout Him. “Hey, Lord. What about that cator dog?” You are occupied with the Lord andnot a cat. Then when you are occupied withthe Lord, then the Lord gives you some-thing, at the right time. When He gives it toyou, you know that it is right.

Let me illustrate from the Bible. Adamwas created all by himself, alone. We know

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that no man is an island. Adam was. He didn’teven know what a woman was. One thingabout man is that it doesn’t take man long tofind out. So, the Lord put Adam to sleep andtook a rib from him and built a womanaround it. When Adam woke up, there shewas. God didn’t build five ribs and say,“Adam, take your pick,” like multiple choic-es. Is that the way God works? That is not theway it goes. God never changes His policy.There was a Right Woman for Adam. Howmany were there? Only one. No there weretwo. Because He said to Adam and Eve, “Youwill leave father and mother and cleave oneto another.” But they had no father and nomother. But down the line He knew thiswould be true.

It is very interesting when you find theRight One. The little daughter doesn’t careanymore about father and mother. See “love”is something we say and use all the time. It isunder the “Ls” in the dictionary. But it issomething we don’t understand at all. Whenyou are in love with someone, or something,one of the characteristics of love is patience.“Love is patient.”

Suppose you men fall in love with somewoman and she has a bad habit and it is avery bad habit. And she is just as obnoxiousas anything you have ever seen. But, for someunknown reason, you love her. You findyourself tolerating things that you have neverin all of your life tolerated. You find yourselfsuddenly being patient about things thatwould have sent you into a raving orbitaround the Earth. Why? Simply because youare in love.

Love is characterized by patience. Andyou say, “that is OK, honey, we will get a newcar.” Now you see what I mean? Whereasbefore if someone scratched your preciouscar, good-bye, whoom. But when you are inlove. Your car is now a pile of junk and youjust sit there and laugh. Why? Because you’rein love. It is that simple. Patience is love.Patience is a mental attitude of love.

Now, here is the point. If you are patientwith the Lord, it is because you love the

Lord. You say, “Lord, I want it now.” And Hesays “Ten years, if you’re lucky.” But becauseyou love the Lord, and because you are occu-pied with Him, you keep on doing the samething and you go right on. That horrible oldjob, that horrible this and that, that horriblething, whatever it is. Why? Because you arein love with the Lord. And that is why...

God is “longsuffering.” But this wordmeans “patient.” MAKROTHEUMEO. TheLord is patient. This is simply the perpetua-tion of love. The Lord perpetuates His loveand therefore His attitude toward the wholehuman race. “He is not willing.” “Willing” isBOULOMAI, which is a desire from thementality of the soul. This is a desire from thesoul. The word THELO is a desire from theemotions. This desire of the soul means thatthe Lord planned it this way. He planned it ineternity past. “That no one should perish.” Thisought to tell you something. If God plannedit that no one should perish, and people doperish, that means that they have free will,human volition. Why free will? The extensionof the angelic conflict. He willed it that noone should perish.

“But that all,” that is all members of thehuman race, “should come.” That isn’t reallywhat this says. CHOREO means to makeroom for something. It means to make roomfor something either by capacity or motion. Itmeans to admit, to receive, to give mentaladmittance. This is the way the Greeks usedit. The Greeks realized that in the relationshipbetween man and woman, for example, thatbefore there could be EROS, which is sexuallove, there must be AGAPE love, which ismental love. There must be a coalescence ofthe soul. Consequently that is why we havethe word AGAPAO. This is why we havewords that go with it.

Here is a word that meant to give mentaladmittance. It doesn’t mean, “should come.”It means to give mental admittance to. “Re-pentance.” “Repentance” looks like this noun:METANOIA. NOIA means thinking andMETA means change. So it means a changeof mind. It means to admit into the mentality

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of the soul. Repentance is always mental. Itis a change of mind about Christ, the Object.

Here is our subject: The Earth is going up.We have just a few minutes here to blow upthe Earth. Verse 10, “But the Day of the Lord.”This is a reference to a period of time, startingwith the Second Advent of Christ, which thescoffers, who are the subjects of this chapter,deny as per verses 3 and 4. It includes theSecond Advent, Millennium, and the end ofeverything. So, the “Day of the Lord” is fromthe Second Advent of Christ to the end of theuniverse. In this citing it is the end of theuniverse. When will the world be blown up?And who will do it? And how?

“The Day of the Lord will come.” Again wehave the word “come” mistranslated. It isHEKO and it means to arrive. It doesn’t meanit is going to come. It means it is going toarrive. In other words, this word HEKOmeans a timetable and right on time. God ison time. You see, the subject here is that thescoffers say, “Where is the Promise of Hiscoming? Our fathers have died generationafter generation. They come and go, and noSecond Advent of Christ. Where is thePromise of His coming?” Now He says theday will arrive. So it will arrive. And howwill it arrive?

“As a thief.” Remember the Bible must beinterpreted in the time in which it was writ-ten. In the time in which this was written, inthe ancient world, the thief came suddenly.He had to take his victim by surprise. Theelement of surprise is here. That is the con-cept. “As a thief” is an analogy to surprise.

“In which the heavens shall pass away.” Thisis PARAALUO, which means to loosen ordissolve. This means to disappear or to per-ish. “With a great noise.” ROIZEZON is theword. This is an onomatopoeic word that isused as the whistling of an arrow, the hissingof a snake, or a shepherd’s pipe, or the rushof wings. It could also mean a detonation orexplosion.

“The elements shall melt.” This is STO-ICHEIA. Let’s take a look at the word

“elements,” which is STOICHEIA. It means toset them in a row. It was used in the ancientworld for the A, B, Cs, because they set thealphabet in a row. It is used for basic things.It is used for basic elements. This refers to theelements, the chemical elements of the uni-verse. These elements are fire, air, earth, andwater.

“Shall melt.” This is LUO. In this case itmeans to be bombarded, or shall be dis-solved. “With a fervent heat.” This is translatedlike a noun, but it is a verb. It is KAUSEOMAIand this means to burn intensely. At thispoint we have the destruction of the physicaluniverse. But something else is going to bedestroyed simultaneously. We will get to thatin a moment.

Let’s, for a minute, take up the atom. In1910 Lord Rutherford, a British physicist, andthe father of nuclear physics, in one sense,came up with the most basic element in theuniverse. He called it, from the Greek, “A”“TOM.” “TOM” means divided, and “A” isthe alpha primitive, which means, “not divid-ed.” He said we could get down to somethingin the universe, an element that cannot bedivided. He called it an atom.

That was in 1910. But since then, a greatdeal of work has been done in this field andso we finally came up with the idea that anatom can be divided. We find that an atomhas a core or nucleus, and the core is madeup of two things. It is made of protons andneutrons. You say, “Well, what are protonsand neutrons?” Well, they are actually anelectrical charge. A proton is a positive elec-trical charge and a neutron is a neutral. Theatom also has rings, which are made up ofelectrons. Electrons are negative electricalcharges. The protons suck these electrons intoa unit, and that is an atom. We have two ringswith oxygen, with eight electrons, and that isan atom. So, an atom has a core, or nucleus,and it has outer rings.

So, with oxygen there is a core with eightprotons and eight neutrons. It has two ringsand eight electrons. Now that is an atom ofoxygen.

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Now, the size and the force of an atom:1. The size of the atom in the core is one tril-

lionth of an inch in diameter. This willgive you some idea of what we are deal-ing with here. These electrons, whichrevolve around it, are like a solar system.

2. They are held in by these protons in thecore. The protons hold this thing together.The electrons are sucked into the core, asit were, and they revolve around it.

3. One teaspoonful of radium (we use radi-um because it is fissionable) contains onemillion billion atoms. In other words,there is enough power in one teaspoonfulof radium to destroy all of Houston.

4. The force that holds one atom together iscalled energy or power.

5. The force that holds one atom together isone million times more powerful than theforce of the energy, which holds hydrogenand oxygen together in a molecule ofwater. So, here is H2O –two atoms of

hydrogen and one atom of oxygen–in astabilized form that is water. Hydrogentwo, oxygen one. Now the force that holdsone atom together is one million timesmore powerful than the force of energy,which holds hydrogen and oxygen togeth-er in a molecule of water.

6. The force that holds a molecule of watertogether is a thousand times more power-ful than the force that holds a bar of steeltogether.

7. The force that holds one atom together isequivalent to the power output of BoulderDam for one month.Now when you think of all this force

holding together, what happens when it goesthe other way? See, that is the point.

Let’s take up fission. This is a simple way tohandle it. What is atomic fission? Well, youhave to start with Uranium 238. We call it fis-sionable, which means that it can be bombard-ed with a neutron and it starts a chain reaction.When you hit Uranium 238 with a neutron,from something else, plutonium or something,

it breaks apart. In other words, all this forcewhich holds together one atom of uranium canbe released. It can explode as it were. All youhave to do to detonate it is to hit it with something like a hammer or a gun. If you take a pis-tol, for example, it has a firing pin, and the fir-ing pin hits the primer of the bullet, and every-thing goes. You can take a neutron and bom-bard the core or nucleus of Uranium 238 and itis just like a firing pin hitting the primer of thebullet. It blows it apart. We need a neutron.

Now they say that plutonium is one of thebest. So we hit it with plutonium. When youput one neutron of plutonium plus Uranium238 what happens? You get several things.You get krypton and barium, plus somethingelse. When you break it up into krypton andbarium, you also get two additional neutrons.There goes the chain reaction. So the result ofbombarding Uranium 238 with a neutron iskrypton, barium, plus two neutrons.

If a neutron of plutonium is fired like abullet into a nucleus of an atom such asUranium 238, it blows apart the nucleusreleasing the neutrons from the nucleus,which will in turn split more atoms. Onceyou have two new neutrons running loose,you split two more, each neutron splitsanother one and then you develop this thingand you have more neutrons splitting more,and the next thing you know, you have theend of World War III.

One pound of Uranium 238 is equal indestructive power to five million pounds ofTNT. I would like to say something about themost primitive bomb we have every used.For those of you who do not know, the deci-sion was an excellent one to use it. There area lot of Americans who are alive today andprobably here today in Church because it wasused.

The Hiroshima bomb. Let’s take a look atit. It was a uranium-type bomb. It was de-signed to detonate at between 1,000 and 1,500feet. In other words, this is not a bomb thatdrops on the ground. This is a bomb thatexplodes in the air, 1,000 feet from the ground.When it detonates, somewhere between 1,000

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and 1,500 feet, we don’t know for sure, foursquare miles of Hiroshima were destroyedcompletely. All structures were leveled up to 10miles away. In one second 60,000 people died.In the second second, the second afterwards,you have 150,000 casualties. One second:60,000 people happened to be right over thedetonation area. Four square miles blew up,and in the second second, 150,000 causalities.Now, that is the most primitive bomb of thattype we have ever had. It was very primitive.

The Hydrogen bomb is 1,000 times morepowerful than the Uranium bomb. Of course,we have given this bomb to everyone in theworld.

The heat of the Hydrogen bomb is hotterthan the surface of the sun, which means it isover 6,000 degrees centigrade. The Hydrogenbomb puts out 6,000 degrees centigrade. Nowwhat about the Hydrogen bomb? How does itwork? You take one hydrogen atom and thatis H2 plus another hydrogen atom, and you

get helium plus heat over 6,000 degrees centi-grade. What happens in this case is that theheat lights, blasts, and shocks and the des-truction is almost beyond human thinking.

We are talking about a S.A.C. weapon.This weapon is nothing, absolutely nothing,compared to what we have here in our pas-sage. KAUSEOMAI. Take a look at it. It is fer-vent heat. This may tell us that the Earth isgoing to be destroyed by fusion rather thanby fission. It could go either way. But “ferventheat” means burning intensely, and that isKAUSEOMAI. It is a present, passive, partici-ple. This is the first thing to be destroyed: theuniverse. We know that a new one will becreated, “a new Heaven and a new Earth.” Andalso a New Jerusalem.

You can begin to see we have a conceptabout the destruction of the universe, the det-onation of the entire universe, for this wholething is going up. That is quite a blast! Onlythe resurrection body will survive it.

I want to tell you something. Here is whatis amazing to me; the rest of this verse is im-portant and interesting: The blowing up of

the universe to me doesn’t mean a thing. Hy-drogen bombs, atom bombs. These are justheat, blast, shock, and destruction. The amaz-ing thing to me is this: The end of our verse.What else is destroyed? What has top priorityin destruction? Put this down in your notes:human good! The destruction of the uni-verse is what God thinks about humangood. “The elements shall melt with ferventheat.” “Shall melt” means to be dissolvedwith burning, intense burning. “The Earthalso.” Now that is the destruction of the uni-verse. After the word “also” we see “and theworks that are therein shall be burned up.” Theworks that be therein refers to human good.But that is not exactly what the Greek says.The verb is HEURISKO and it means to bediscovered, literally.

KAUSEOMAI means and is talking aboutthe destruction of the universe. The universeburns with an intense burning. Intense burn-ing is probably fusion.

But when you destroy the universe, whatis discovered? Hidden away in this wholemess, the greatest enemy of God, humangood. The great enemy of the Grace of God,human good. This should not be translated asit is erroneously translated. “The works that aretherein shall be burned up,” but actually, literal-ly, “the works that are therein shall be dis-covered.” EUREKA.

So, we have the nuclear destruction of theuniverse, KAUSEOMAI. And we also havethe destruction of human good, HEURISKO. Ithink it ought to be obvious which is the mostimportant. God’s number one enemy in lifeis human good. Not immorality! Morality isnecessary for the function of the entire humanrace so that the four Divine Institutions cancontinue.

Here are six Biblical reasons why Goddestroys the universe and human good.1. The Divine Viewpoint of human good is

Hebrews 6:1, “dead works.” “Thereforeleaving the principles of the Doctrine ofChrist, let us go on unto perfection: not layingagain the foundation of repentance from dead

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works, and of faith toward God.” To Godhuman good is already dead. It just hasn’tbeen judged yet.I want you to notice something: the angels,the fallen angels are spiritually dead. Theyhave not been judged yet. They will bejudged in the Lake of Fire at the end of theMillennium. Human good has not beenjudged yet, but it is dead right now. It willbe judged with the destruction of the uni-verse. The destruction of the universe willdiscover human good. Human good isdead works right now, but not destroyedyet. Human good has not been judged,and the judgment has not been executed,but it will be executed at the destructionof the universe.

2. The obvious conclusion from that is thathuman good is not acceptable to God.There is no place in the Plan of God forhuman good. Isaiah 64:6, “But we are all asan unclean thing, and all our righteousness-es are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as aleaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, havetaken us away.”

3. Human good will not save mankind.Titus 3:5, “Not by works of righteousnesswhich we have done, but according to Hismercy He saved us. by the washing of regener-ation and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” Youcan’t be saved by human good. Ephesians2:8, 9, “For by Grace are ye saved throughfaith; and that not of yourselves: it is the giftof God: Not of works, lest any man shouldboast.”

4. Human good is judged by God. Thejudgment of human good is describedunder two categories: The believer’s human good is judged atthe Rapture, the end of the Church Age.1 Corinthians 3:11-16, “For other foundationcan no man lay than that is laid, which isJesus Christ. Now if any man build upon thisfoundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood,hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be mademanifest: for the day shall declare it, because itshall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall tryevery man’s work of what sort it is. If any

man’s work abide which he hath built there-upon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’swork shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: buthe himself shall be saved: yet so as by fire.Know ye not that ye are the temple of God andthat the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”The unbelievers’ human good is judged atthe destruction of the universe, at theGreat White Throne Judgment. Revelation20:12-15, “And I saw the dead, small andgreat, stand before God; and the books wereopened: and another book was opened, which isthe Book of Life: and the dead were judged outof those things which were written in thebooks, according to their works. And deathand hell were cast into the Lake of Fire. This isthe second death. And whosoever was notfound written in the Book of Life was cast intothe Lake of Fire.” So inevitably humangood is judged by God.

5. Human good is not the same as morality.Morality is necessary for the function ofthe Divine Institutions. Strangelyenough, human good is not. That is whatis wrong with our nation today. We aretrying to make the Divine Institutionsrun by human good rather than morality.We have no morality, for example, in ourforeign policy. We have no morality in ourinternal policy. But we have lots of humangood. We are trying to give our money tothe poor, and if a revolutionist is poor, hegets money, too. We have no morality ingovernment. We have lots of human goodthough.

6. Human good has no place in the plan ofGod, and therefore, it is permanentlyremoved. That is verse 10.Now in verse 11. Since we have studied

the destruction of the universe by the Lordand the cataclysm involved, we go from thedestruction of the universe to a challenge tothe believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Thereare two passages that challenge the believerwith regard to the Doctrine of the futuredestruction of the universe. One of them isfound in Hebrews 12, where at the end of thechapter we discover that the resurrection body

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is shockproof, and survives the destruction ofthe universe. Here we have a challenge forthe believer in time on this Earth. Hebrews12 challenges from the standpoint of thefuture. When the universe blows up we willbe right in the middle of it with a resurrectionbody, which is not effected.

We have this chapter before us talkingabout our life here on this Earth in view ofthis destruction. The universe is going to blowup in the future. How do we apply that to ustoday? The answer is found in verses 11 and12. Here is the challenge for us as believers:“Seeing then that all these things shall be dis-solved, what manner of persons ought ye to be inall holy conversation and godliness.” “Looking forand hasting unto the coming of the day of God,wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dis-solved, and the elements shall melt with ferventheat?”

Verses 13-18, “Nevertheless we, according toHis Promise, look for new Heavens and a newEarth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore,beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, bediligent that ye may be found of Him in peace,without spot, and blameless. And account that thelongsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as ourbeloved brother Paul also according to the wisdomgiven unto him hath written unto you; As also inall his epistles, speaking in them of these things;in which are some things hard to be understood,which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest,as they do also the other Scriptures, unto theirown destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing yeknow these things before, beware lest ye also,being led away with the error of the wicked, fallfrom your own stedfastness. But grow in Grace,and in the knowledge of our Lord and SaviourJesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever. Amen.”

In verse 11 immediately we have a prob-lem with the translation. “Seeing then that allthese things shall be dissolved, what manner ofpersons ought ye to be in all holy conversationand godliness.” Actually you will notice thatyou have some italicized words. That is a tipoff that things are not as smooth as theyappear in the original language. Literally, “All

these in the manner being in the process of beingdissolved.” How dissolved? Well, that takes usright back to where we started with thedestruction of the universe. “All these” refersto the universe. “In this manner” is literally,“in this way.” It is an adverb, which refers tothe destruction of the universe described inverse 10. “Shall be dissolved.” This is a presenttense, the process is going on. The passivevoice says that the universe received theaction of the verb, destruction. However, thebeliever in the Lord Jesus Christ is notdestroyed with the universe.

Hebrews 12:26-29, “Whose voice then shookthe Earth: but now He hath promised, saying, Yetonce more I shake not the Earth only, but alsoHeaven. And this word, yet once more, signifieththe removing of those things that are shaken, as ofthings that are made, that those things that cannotbe shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving akingdom that cannot be moved, let us have Grace,whereby we may serve God acceptably with rever-ence and godly fear: For our God is a consum-ing fire.” So, “all these in this manner being inthe process of being dissolved.”

Here is our application: “What manner” isthe Greek word HOTA, which means it, istime for application. We have had in verses 1-10 a lot of Doctrine. In these 10 verses wehave terminated with a doctrinal dissertationwith the destruction of the universe by God.Then in Hebrews 12:26-29 we have had anapplication of the destruction of the universe,and that the resurrection body will survive it.But here we have an application to believerson the Earth now.

HOTA POS in the Greek refers to believerson this Earth in time. We are protected fromthe future destruction of the universe byGod–a future cataclysm. We are protected aswell from the Last Judgment. So what are weto do at this present time with that in view?

“Ought” means what is necessary, what isproper, and it should be trans-lasted: “Allthese in this manner being in the process ofbeing dissolved, what manner of persons itis proper for us to become?” This is “to beginto be.” “To be” is a Greek word HUPARCHO.

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This means to begin to become. What sort ofpeople are we to begin to become? Once youlearn the Word, you ought to begin to becomesomething. This is a present, active, infinitive.The present tense means we ought to be thisconsistently. The active voice means that welearn the Word and we ought to apply it. Theinfinitive says that this is God’s purpose forus, to learn the Word and to apply it.

“What manner of person ought we to becomein all holy conversation.” Now this brings up apoint. When is the last time you had a holyconversation? You might be one of those whothinks that some time in your life you had aholy conversation. What is a holy conversa-tion? What is a holy kiss? I know what a lotof people think it is. Holy conversation tosome means, “Ahmen,” “Hallelujah,” and apious look and a phony front, and a few“God willings,” and “if the Lord tarries.”

But the whole trouble is that this is notwhat this passage is talking about. Conversa-tion depends on vocabulary. Suppose youhad two words in your vocabulary. How canyou come up with a holy conversation?Suppose those two words were curse words. Iknow people who get up to give their testimo-ny and they don’t have a holy conversation.

What is the word “holy conversation?”Here it is in the Greek: ANASTROPHE. It is acompound noun. ANA means again. AndSTROPHE means manner, literally it is man-ner of life. “Holy” means something that isdone unto God. So this is manner of life onthis Earth. And “holy” refers to the Christianway of life on this Earth. STROPHE is man-ner of life. So it is a holy manner of life, aseparated manner of life. It is a life separatedunto God. This comes to mean knowledge ofthe Word of God plus the filling of the HolySpirit. The point here is: if you are going tohave a resurrection body in stage three, eter-nity, which is shockproof when the universeis destroyed, we ought to be able to come upwith something while we are in this body, sincewe have been provided unlimited Divine oper-ating assets so that we can live the Christianway of life and have dynamics in our life.

The application is: We have a perfect res-urrection body, which is shockproof, butwhile we are here on this Earth, we ought tobe shockproof and have the dynamics ofChristianity, which is a relaxed mental atti-tude. Because if you can relax when the uni-verse will be blown up, you can relax now.That is what this passage is saying.

So this is the first application. If a believercan relax under conditions with which thewhole universe blows up, as we have beenstudying, then we can relax now. We don’thave a resurrection body now, but we haveall the equipment with which to be relaxed.When is the last time you relaxed under pres-sure? What happened when you got underthe last pressure? Did you fall apart? Did youloose your cool? Well, you don’t have to. Youcan be relaxed now.

There are a lot of things that shock peopleand shock different kinds of people. Thewhole point here is, and this is our contextnow. The Plan of God is divided into threestages, Salvation, then time, and then eternity.If you are shockproof in eternity, and youhave a resurrection body in eternity, can’tyou be shockproof with a human body intime? A part of having a relaxed mental atti-tude is being shockproof in time. What upsetsyou? Does finding the fallacies of others shockyou? Do people shock you by the things thatthey do? Well, that is not a relaxed mentalattitude. No one can be stable and at thesame time be constantly shocked. Just as Godhas provided for you a shockproof survivalsystem for eternity, the destruction of the uni-verse, so He has provided for you today.

A shockproof survival system, then, is arelaxed mental attitude. God has providedfor us a survival test. This survival test is theWord of God. And with the Word of God inour minds, that makes us shockproof. We willbe shockproof in the future, so we ought to beshockproof today. We cannot be shockproofand get our eyes on people. If you do, youwill never know what the Christian life is allabout. We have to become shockproof. Thesurvival kit given to every believer is found

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in the Word. This survival kit includes severalthings that are vitally important to you. Theycan all be summarized very simply by sayinga relaxed mental attitude. Believe it or not,that is found in our phrase here, “holyconversation.”

If people are left to their own interpreta-tion and application of passages like this, youcan sure mess up your life. So, “holy conver-sation” means a scriptural manner of life, liv-ing the Divine Viewpoint of life. This beginswith “the fruit of the Spirit is love,” AGAPE,which is a relaxed mental attitude. Here incontext it is a relaxed mental attitude aboutthe destruction of the universe. The word“holy” is HAGIOS, which means separatedunto God. This is talking about your life onthis Earth in fellowship, the Spirit-filled life,separation in time. “Godliness” refers to thedoctrine of spirituality. Godliness is theSpirit-filled life. Galatians 5:22, 23, “But thefruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering,gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance:against such there is no law.”

Then verse 12 continues the application.“Look for” is PROSDOKAO, which means toanticipate, to be expectant. It is a present,active, participle, meaning eagerly anticipat-ing, constantly.

So here should be our attitude: We have“the manner of life,” which is the Spirit-filledlife, and our attitude toward the futureshould be “eagerly anticipating.” This is inregard to eternity, the far look.

The next phrase is “and hasting unto.” Now,this is one of those passages that you ask peo-ple to explain. What do you think this means?Does it mean that you should dash forwardinto eternity? And does it mean to end it alland go out into eternity? No. “Hasting unto”is the word SPEUO and it doesn’t mean tohasten. It means to have an earnest intensedesire for someone or something. “Lookingfor and hasting unto” is literally “eagerly antici-pating and earnestly desiring the coming of theDay of the Lord.”

The word “coming” is literally “the arrival

of the Day of the Lord.” What is the Day of theLord? Well, we have been studying it in con-text, the destruction of the universe. It is theSecond Advent, and then the Millennium,and then the Great White Throne Judgment,and the destruction of the universe of verse10. So we should be eagerly anticipating andearnestly desiring this particular event.

This seems kind of interesting. It is like akid who likes to look forward to the Fourth ofJuly and the fireworks, and actually lookingforward to a big fireworks display. Because,believe me, when the universe blows up, it isgoing to be a fireworks. A fantastic amount ofit.

The detonation, the shock, will be abso-lutely fantastic. It is very possible that theLake of Fire is manufactured out of thenuclear destruction of the universe. We are tolook forward to that. What should our atti-tude be toward the destruction of the uni-verse? Well, here it says we can look forwardto it because we have already seen that wehave a shock proof body. Hebrews 12:26-29.

So we “eagerly anticipate,” we earnestlydesire, “the Day of God.” “God” is talkingabout Jesus Christ. He will destroy the uni-verse. Not the Russians! In fact, the Russianswon’t even be on the scene by this time. Theywill be destroyed as a nation at the SecondAdvent of Christ. That would be the king ofthe north, and this destruction of the universeoccurs after the millennial reign of the LordJesus Christ. We will have been in a resurrec-tion body for at least 1,007 years at that time.

So, we “eagerly anticipate” and “earnestlydesire” “the Day of God.” This starts off God’sPlan for eternity, which includes the destruc-tion of the universe.

“Wherein” is literally “because of which.”“The heavens being on fire,” is literally, “theheavens burning shall be dissolved.” “And the ele-ments shall be made liquid with a burning inten-sity.” Now, this is a repetition of verse 10, butwe want to review it once more because ofthe necessity of the repetition of the Wordhere.

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Verse 10, “The Day of the Lord will come as athief in the night.” “And the heavens shall passaway.” Now, the heavens passing away meansto disappear, to perish, to be removed. Themechanics are in verse 10. “With a great noise.”This word used here is a whizzing sound.“The elements shall melt with a fervent heat,”which is literally burning intensely. The Earthalso and “the works that are therein” is the factthat the universe blows up and human goodis destroyed. So then eagerly anticipate that,and earnestly desire that.

The next phrase in verse 10 is “shall beburned up,” and is literally “shall be discov-ered.” We saw that two things will happenhere. It says, “The works shall be discovered.”The word there is HUERISKO, and that is thediscovery of all human good, and that is thedestruction of human good.

Then there is another word in verse 10that actually describes for us the destructionof the universe, and that is the word, which isrepeated here in verse 12, KAUSEOMAI. Wetook up under this word the atoms. And wediscussed this to demonstrate something ofthe tremendous explosion involved when youput this together and realize that the wholeuniverse is constructed this way. The LordHimself has the key that can blow the wholething. And it is going to blow someday inGod’s Plan. It will take place exactly 1,007years after the Rapture. When you think ofbillions of light years of space detonating,well, that is quite an explosion.

That is what we have here repeated for usat the end of verse 12. So we are reminded ofit, once again, verses 10 and 12. Only thistime it is repeated to make a personal appli-cation. Repetition for application. We caneagerly anticipate and earnestly desire it.Why? Because we have previously discov-ered that we will have a resurrection bodyexactly like the Lord Jesus Christ’s. That isthe reason why. All of this is within the con-cept of fervent heat.

Verses 13-18 are as a result of that fact.God has planned for the believer every step,the creation of the universe and the destruc-

tion of the universe. Jesus Christ is theCreator of the universe, and He also will des-troy it. Billions of years ago the Lord JesusChrist created the universe. Then we had theperiod of the angelic conflict. Then eventuallyman came into the picture. And one spot ispicked out for man, a little old junky placecalled Earth.

It was a junk heap, but it was very famousfor one thing. It was a hang out for Satan andsome of his friends. It was a mess. TheHebrew says TOHU WA BOHU. What thatsays in Hebrew is “became a mess.” So God theHoly Spirit cleaned it up. And Jesus Christcreated new life. Then we have the beginningof human history. Human history will run itscourse, four civilizations, four dispensations,and at the end of time, the universe will bedestroyed. Jesus Christ created it and JesusChrist will destroy it. Why?

Simply because everything necessary forthe resolving of the angelic conflict, andeverything necessary for the creation of manhas been fulfilled at that time. All the unbe-lievers will go into the Lake of Fire preparedfor Satan and his angels. All the believers inthe Lord Jesus Christ will spend an eternitywith God, under conditions of indescribablelanguage.

The universe had a beginning by the handof the Lord Jesus Christ. The universe has anending, and Jesus Christ holds the key. All Hehas to do is just touch it off, one spot, and thewhole universe will go up. That is a fantasticthing. “By Him all things consist.” “By Him allthings hold together,” literally.

Verses 13-18 describe the victory of thebeliever in the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 13 isfirst the victory of the believer in stagethree, eternity. Verse 13, “Nevertheless we,”the believers, “according to His Promise.”KATA is according to the norm or standard ofHis Promise. The Greek word for promisehere does not mean promise. It is literallypromised blessing. EPAGGELMA. It meanspromise with blessing. Promise with perma-nent blessing. “We believers.” The destructionof the universe is in view here. At the end of

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the Millennium this destruction will not harmthe believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.“According to the norm or standard of HisPromise permanent blessing.”

“Look.” Again we have the word to literal-ly anticipate. We eagerly anticipate “the newheavens” – this will be the dwelling place ofthe Church. “The new Earth” – this is thedwelling place of the Old Testament andMillennial saints. “Wherein” literally is “inwhich,” “dwelleth righteousness.”

“Dwelleth” is KATOIKEO, which meansto be at home. It doesn’t mean to dwell. It isliterally “in which we are at home in righteous-ness,” or “in which righteousness is at home.”Righteousness, here, first of all, is a relaxedmental attitude. This is perfect love in a per-fect body and a perfect capacity to appreciateGod and eternity, a perfect capacity for eternity.

Now, out of all these things righteousnesscan be fulfilled in part now. If eternity isgoing to be dynamic, the whole point is thateternity is going to be a dynamic thing, fan-tastic, beyond human description, but thereare little shades and touches of eternity thatcan be manifest right now! Righteousness.What kind of righteousness? A relaxed men-tal attitude. This is a foretaste of eternity, andthat is AGAPE love in time. This gives acapacity to appreciate God, and what belongsto God, like His Word. Now, these things arepossible now.

So here is an application. The first applica-tion: the destruction of the universe says,“Look, we are going to be in a shockproofbody. We are going to be able to appreciateeverything in eternity. We are going to be in aplace where righteousness is at home.”

It is one thing to dwell somewhere, but itis another thing to be at home. Earth is notour home, but the Heaven of eternity is. Youcan only be in a very few places on this Earthwhere you are at home and relaxed. Whichall goes to prove a point. Home isn’t home. Ahouse is not a home. If you were perfectlyrelaxed at home, then you would stay homemore. There are lots of people who have a

home, but very few people seem to be relaxedthere. But wherever you go, you can be per-fectly relaxed. When you are around peoplethat you can be perfectly relaxed with, that isKATOIKEO.

Now all of you can think of at least oneperson or two, maybe three, people aroundwhom you can be completely relaxed. Whatdo you have in common with those people?Well, that is really where your home is. Whatdo you have with the three people you can berelaxed around? You are at home with them.Whatever you have in common with themmakes this home. There is no bitterness, nojealousy, no vindictiveness, no implacability,no hatred, no guilt complex, just the filling ofthe Spirit, love, AGAPE, which is a relaxedmental attitude. And having a capacity forrapport-type love, PHILOS.

You can have this in a larger scale amongbelievers. But this doesn’t happen too often.What then is really a friendly Church? Whenyou find a Church where you have a maxi-mum number of believers with a relaxedmental attitude. That is home. And that is afriendly Church. It isn’t what people aredoing that counts. All of us can think of atleast one person around whom you can relax.If you can’t, then you are a zombie, and peo-ple will then love you from afar, until theWord straightens you out. But as long as youhave mental attitude sins, people cannotrelax around you, and you have no dynam-ics of the Christian way of life. We are com-manded to love all believers. But fortunately,it is not PHILOS. It is AGAPE love. The beau-tiful thing about AGAPE love is that you canlove from afar, sometimes the further thebetter.

Let’s see these two types of love. We arecommanded to love all believers under onecondition. You have in the mentality of yoursoul AGAPE-type love. That is what you arecommanded, and this is the result of a relax-ed mental attitude. What is love, when it saysto love all believers? What does it mean? Itmeans a relaxed mental attitude. It meansyou should not hate anyone. You should not

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be bitter toward anyone. You should not bejealous toward anyone, or vindictive, orimplacable, or have a guilt complex towardanyone.

We also have another type of love, PHILOS.and that is a total soul rapport love. But allwe are commanded to have is a mental atti-tude love, AGAPE, toward all believers. Youare going to have a rapport-type love with afew believers. So, here is the word again, tobe at home, KATOIKEO.

Some believers have a guilt complex be-cause they read that it says to love everyone,and since they don’t, they can’t gush overeveryone, and you can’t find five nice thingsto say about everyone, therefore, some have anervous breakdown over it. But if you arefilled with the Spirit, you will love everyone.“The fruit of the Spirit is love,” AGAPE, arelaxed mental attitude. That means no men-tal attitude sins. But that still doesn’t meanyou have to run around and pat them on theback and say five nice things. So, we have tobe clear about this. Your relaxed mental atti-tude, your love, your mental attitude towardall believers can be relaxed.

If you are a smart believer, there are cer-tain kinds of believers who you will lovefrom a long, long distance. You will put a lotof distance between you and that believer asper Romans 16:17, 18, “Now I beseech you,brethren, mark them which cause divisions andoffences contrary to the Doctrine which ye havelearned: and avoid them. For they that are suchserve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their ownbelly: and by good words and fair speeches deceivethe hearts of the simple.” You are commandedto stay away from some believers. This isfound in 2 Thessalonians 3:6 also, “Now wecommand you, brethren, in the Name of our LordJesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves fromevery brother that walketh disorderly, and notafter the tradition which he received of us.” Youshould take this command seriously. Thereare some believers you should not hangaround for anything in this world! You can berelaxed around them, but never at home withthem. This is talking about believers. You

love them, you have a relaxed mental attitudeabout them, but you are not in striking dis-tance. Then there are people who you can betotally and wonderfully and marvelouslyrelaxed around.

What is the point? The dynamics ofChristianity are in the relaxed mental atti-tude. Here is our point: If you cannot beshaken by the destruction of the universe,then it follows that, as a believer on this Earthin time, God has something provided foryou whereby people can’t bother you. Whenyou get to the place where people can’tbother you, you have it made! Cheers!!!

When you get to the place where you getyour eyes off of people, and where you arerelaxed around people, you are going to havethe most dynamic life for the Lord. Whatcharacterizes it? Your life will be shockproof.The nasty Christians in this world won’tbother you because you are occupied withChrist. People don’t bother you. They don’tget you down. They don’t disturb you. TheRussians don’t cause you any fear of destruc-tion. Because if the greatest cataclysm in thehistory of the universe, the destruction of theuniverse occurs, and if God provides for youa resurrection body which is shockproof sothat everything blows up around you andyou are fine, does it not follow that He canprovide for you while you are here on thisEarth in time, in the devil’s world, so thatyou can be shockproof?

That is the whole point of the Word ofGod. Now you can ask yourself a question:How are your shock absorbers? Did you fallapart? Did certain nuclear accidents get youdown? Do you have your eyes on people?The Russians? Do people upset you? Doessomebody just automatically make you mad?Jealous? Bitter? You see, that is the troubleright there. You say, “They don’t know how Ifeel. I hide it. I keep a straight face,” and thatis true.

But the Lord sees the whole thing. Anysmart unbeliever can see it, too. He can smellit. So, you are kidding yourself. What youreally are is what you think!

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We have a command “love the brethren.”That is impossible to do because the word“love” means a relaxed mental attitude. Itdoesn’t mean that you have to gush. It is thefilling of the Holy Spirit. This means that youare shockproof, especially when it comes topeople. People do not bother you. One reasonthey do not bother you is because you mindyour own business. And you give everybeliever priest his own privacy before theLord. We are not commanded to run every-one else’s life, just our own.

Every believer is his own priest. Everybeliever is his own representative before theLord. That is a pure democracy. Since eachbeliever priest represents himself before theLord, this he must do: avoid sticking yournose in other people’s business. Some peopleare so self-righteous that they appoint them-selves a guardian over some local church orgroup. They are totally out of line. They can’tunderstand what happens. Nothing seems togo right, and they never have inner happi-ness. But it is the simplest thing in the world.They are so busy with people that they havenever gotten around to the Lord. The Wordwill change all of that.

“According to the permanent promiseblessing.” “Anticipate the new heavens and thenew Earth by which the righteousness is athome.” That is stage three, eternity. Now, letus look at stage two, the believer in time onthis Earth. Verse 14.

This is the challenge to the Christianhere on this Earth in the Church Age. Verse14, “Wherefore beloved.” Now in verse 8 wehad “beloved,” and here we see “beloved”again. “Beloved” is a reminder that everybeliever is loved by God with a maximumlove. “Beloved” means that at the point ofsalvation, we enter into union with the LordJesus Christ. Christ is called the Beloved. TheFather said about His Son, “This is My belovedSon in Whom I am well pleased.” What does“beloved” mean? It means we are the objectsof the Father’s love. The Father had maxi-mum love for the Lord Jesus Christ, and nowthat we are in Christ (saved) He has maxi-

mum love for every believer. The spiritualbeliever has this-love and the carnal believerhas this love. The believer may be a babybeliever or a mature believer, but regardlessof the category on this Earth in time, Godloves every believer with the same amountof love that He has for the Lord Jesus Christ.You are the object of love maximum. Thatwill never change because of your union withthe Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, this word“beloved” is used here. “Beloved” meansbelievers, recipients of maximum love fromGod.

There is another application. You just pickout some unlovely believer. Well, God theFather loves him with the same amount oflove that He has for you or for His Son. Whenyou stop to think that no matter how unlove-ly, humanly speaking, a person may be as abeliever, God the Father loves that person justas much as He loves His Son the Lord JesusChrist.

“Wherefore beloved seeing that ye look for.”“Ye look for,” means again, eagerly anticipate.We have had it before. It is PROSKOKAO,and it means to anticipate eagerly.

“Therefore, beloved, eagerly anticipating thesethings.” “These things,” in context, are thethings coming up in the future. We can antici-pate everything that comes in stage three,eternity. It begins with “absent from the bodyand face to face with the Lord.” It means, “Nomore tears, no more sorrow, no more pain, nomore death, all the old things are passed away.”We can eagerly anticipate these things: A res-urrection body, shockproof under the destruc-tion of the whole universe.

And then, “be diligent.” Here is the wordSPOUDAZO, and it means not simply to bediligent, but to make application. Makeapplication. “Make application eagerly that yemay be found.” Literally, “That ye may be discov-ered by Him.” Not “of Him,” but literally “byHim.” Make application of the Word of God,so that you might be discovered by Him.

How? Well, two ways. “Without spot andblameless.” Unblemished or a spot removed is

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what it literally means. “Without spot...“ Youcannot be without spot unless you use 1 John1:9. “Blameless” is a result, AMOMETOS,which is the filling of the Holy Spirit, whichresults in restoration back to fellowship.“Without spot” is confession of sin back in fel-lowship. “Blameless” means you can only beblameless as God the Holy Spirit controlsyou. So here is fellowship and the result is thefilling of the Holy Spirit.

In verse 15 he recommends Paul’s epistles.Peter is dying and this is the last thing he everwrote. He recommends the epistles of Paul.Verse 15, “And account.” This word means tothink to a conclusion. HEGEMAOI is a pre-sent, active, imperative. It should be translat-ed literally, “keep on thinking to a conclusion.”“Persist in your thinking.” The present tensemeans continually. The active voice meansthat you do it. And the imperative moodmeans this is a command, this is an order. Inother words, come to a proper conclusion.

“Conclude the longsuffering of our Saviour.”“The longsuffering of our Lord is salvation,” ordeliverance. The word “longsuffering” isagain “patience.” Patience here is the Wordthat means to refuse revenge tactics. How doyou refuse to use revenge tactics? The onlyway to prevent revenge tactics is to be filledwith the Spirit. AGAPE love. A relaxed men-tal attitude. To be in fellowship. That keepsyou from revenge. So once again we go backto the relaxed mental attitude.

Literally, “Keep on thinking to the conclusionthat the longsuffering, the relaxed mental attitudeof the Lord, is deliverance.” This is physicaldeliverance. This is not salvation. This is notspiritual salvation, but physical deliverancefor born again believers. The deliverance inthe Christian way of life depends on thefilling of the Holy Spirit resulting in arelaxed mental attitude. Deliverance fromwhat? From shock, being shocked by people,circumstances, or even yourself. So the fillingof the Holy Spirit is a part of your survival kitfor your life on this Earth.

Literally, “Conclude the longsuffering, therelaxed mental attitude, of the Lord, is deliver-

ance, even as our beloved brother Paul,” verse 15.We are going from Peter’s epistle to Paul’sepistles by way of recommendation. Here isthe principle of teamwork, and the true con-cept of Christianity on this Earth.

There are many things that Peter cannotcover, but he knows that they are in thePauline epistles. This is a very significantstatement by Peter and the Holy Spirit as faras the Canon of Scripture is concerned. Peterdied after Paul. The Pauline epistles had beencompleted. Paul is dead. But Peter recognizesthem as a part of the Canon of Scripture. Sothere is a principle of canonicity here.

“Our beloved brother Paul also according tothe wisdom given unto him.” “According to” isthe absolute norm or standard preposition,KATA. It is a norm or standard that indicatesthat the Word is divided into categories.

“The wisdom” refers to understanding theWord categorically. The word is SOPHIA. It isa classical Greek word that means insight,spiritual insight in the New Testament,insight into spiritual things through a knowl-edge of the Word of God.

“Given.” This is an aorist, passive,participle of DIDOMAI. The aorist tensemeans given in a period of time, the periodof time when Paul ministered. The passivevoice means that Paul received every bit ofinformation in the epistles, the principle ofGrace again. The word “given,” of course,indicates that God the Holy Spirit is thesource of the Word of God in the Paulineepistles. This constitutes the principle ofinspiration. The Holy Spirit directed thehuman authors of Scripture and in this caseit was Paul.

“Unto him.” This is dative of advantage. Itwas to his advantage to have them. It is toeveryone’s advantage to have the Word ofGod in writing. “Which He hath written.” Thisis an aorist tense, which is in a point of timeof the actual writing of the Pauline epistles.“Unto you” is a dative of advantage, for yourown personal advantage. This was given toPaul for your advantage. Unto him, unto you.

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This shows the process of the writing and theperpetuation of the Word of God.

Verse 16 is a description of the Paulineepistles. “As also in all his epistles speaking.”Now the word “speaking” is not the ordinaryword for speaking. It is LALEO, which meansto communicate, to communicate the Word.The Pauline epistles communicate Doctrine.“In them” means in the Pauline epistles.“These things” is the Doctrine of the mystery,etc., which is the Church Age and how to ori-ent to it.

“In which are some things hard to be under-stood.” This is a noun. Peter had a hard timeevidently understanding some of Paul’s epis-tles. If he had a hard time then he understoodthat others possibly would have a hard time.The word “hard” is DEUS, which means hard,difficult, and the word NOEO means think-ing. “Hard” is DEUS NOEO, hard thinking,literally, to understand Paul. Now, this oughtto be of some encouragement to you. Somepeople have a hard time studying the Word ofGod. Well, just stay with it. It will come. “Hardto be understood” means difficult thinking.

“Which they are unlearned.” This meansthat they are ignorant. Notice what a personis said to be here, a person who is dumb inregard to the Word. They can have a high I.Q.and still be ignorant of the Word. Whichmeans, if you are ignorant of the Word, thenthat results in instability. “And unstable.” Theword here means to be unhinged as far as theunderstanding of the Word is concerned.They simply do not get with it. There is nopositive volition, and there is no desire tolearn the Word.

We have a principle here. Ignorance ofthe Word of God produces instability in life.So, what do they do in such a case? “Theywrest.” This is an Old English word. This iswhere we get our modern word “wrestle.”

But that is not what it means here. Let usget the Greek and straighten it all out. Theword is STREBLOO. Well, it was used in theancient world for a rack, or an instrument oftorture, at torture rack for stretching limbs,

and causing the person to become distorted.In the ancient world they had racks, and theytied their hands and their feet down, andthey started to crank and crank and prettysoon you were distorted. Your bodystretched, and your bones broke, etc. So theywere stretched out real long, distorted, so theword actually means distortion, or to be dis-torted. “Wrest” is a present, active, indicativeand it means to distort.

So the unstable ones are actually distort-ing. “As they do other Scriptures to their owndestruction.” You cannot afford to distort theScriptures!! Now, that is the reason why Godhas given the spiritual gift of pastorship inthe Church Age, to keep you from distortingthe Scriptures. There are many people andorganizations that have systems of just read-ing the Word and discussing it and askingopinions and think that this is studying theBible. Now, that is one of the many ways youwind up in distortion. Distortion meanslegalism, and legalism leads to human good.Human good means that you are phased outas a Christian in the Christian way of life, andyou will be miserable along with it. So, becareful of the distortion of the Word.

“To their own destruction,” or their ownruin. Literally, the Greek word means ruin.APOLEIA means ruin. Distorting theScriptures ruins a believer in the Lord JesusChrist. Notice how this develops here.Ignorance of the Word results in instability,which causes distortion of the Word of Godand ends up in ruin.

Verses 17 and 18 are the victory for thebeliever while on this Earth in time. “Ye there-fore, beloved,” Verse 8, “beloved.” Verse 15,“Beloved, Paul.” Verse 17, “beloved.” This isagain addressed to believers under maximumlove of the Lord. The first victory in theChristian way of life comes from the recogni-tion that God loves you with a maximumamount of love whether you fail or succeed.What you do in time does not determineGod’s love for you. This is a problem that wehave here in time. Because we try to transferto God human love patterns. But God’s love

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for us is constant and maximum and neverchanges whether we fail or succeed.

“Ye therefore, beloved, seeing.” The word“seeing” is not found in the original text. “Yetherefore, beloved, know.” This doesn’t mean toknow, but to know before. “Ye therefore,beloved know before.” This means that theyhave been exposed to the Word, and theyshould have already learned these things.

“Beware.” Here is the command. “Beware,”literally, guard. “Guard ye also that ye be not ledastray with the error of the wicked.” How areyou going to guard from not falling astray?There is only one way and that is to learn theWord of God, having the norm and standardof the Word of God, the Divine Viewpoint.“Fall from your own stedfastness.” “Fall” is theword for fall down from your own stability.“Stedfastness” is stability. Stability, as we haveseen, is based on the Word of God.

Verse 16. If you are ignorant of the Word,you are unstable. If you are unstable, thenyou “wrest” the Scriptures, or distort theWord. That results in your own ruin. So, welearn the Word. We study the Word. Andgrow in the Word, so we don’t end up in ruin.

It starts with ignorance of the Word ofGod, leading to instability, leading to distor-tion, leading to ruin. See, if you don’t knowthe Word, every time you face a difficult situ-ation you start distorting. For example, theRussian nuclear attack. You are in a jam, andyou don’t know the Word of God. And soyou go into some emotional activity, i.e.,tongues, healing, laying on of hands. You getinvolved in some cult or some anti-Biblicalorganization like the United Nations, and youdo so because they offer you some system ofpanacea; world peace, no nukes, ban thebomb, reduce the build-up of nuclear arms.

This verse gives us the negative side. Whatis the positive approach to this problem? Verse18, “Grow.” This is a present, active, impera-tive. Therefore, it means to keep on growing.It is a process that never stops. You keep ongrowing as long as you live on this Earth intime. The present tense means continuously.

The active voice means that you have to dothis yourself. The imperative mood meansthis is a command, an order from God. This isHis will for your life.

“In Grace,” literally, “in the sphere of Grace.”Grace is the whole system of God’s Word.Grace is the title for God’s Plan for you hereon Earth and in eternity. “And in the know-ledge.” You cannot grow apart from know-ledge, knowledge in its simplest form. Theword here is GNOSIS. This is where youstart, with GNOSIS. This is not full knowl-edge. That would be EPIGNOSIS. So, youstart with simple knowledge. And you grow.And in this case it is a special kind ofknowledge.

“Knowledge pertaining to our Lord andSaviour Jesus Christ.” Knowledge is the great-est virtue in the Christian way of life. “Lord”is Deity. Jesus Christ is God. “Saviour.” Thereis only one Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.“There is salvation in no other. There is noneother Name under Heaven given unto men where-by we must be saved.” “Jesus.” This is Hishumanity.

Lord=Deity. Jesus=humanity,showing that Jesus Christ is unique. He is

the God-man, the unique Member of the uni-verse. He is equal with God and equal withman. Consequently the only Mediatorbetween God and man is the man ChristJesus. The word “Christ” means Messiah, theAnointed One. He is the One that the Fatherpointed out to go to the Cross and die for thesins of the world. This means knowledge per-taining to the Lord so that you can under-stand Him. And it also means to know Himso that you love Him. Your capacity for lov-ing the Lord is dependent upon your knowl-edge of the Word of God.

“To Him.” This is God the Father, theAuthor of the Plan. “Be glory now, and forever.Amen.” “Now” is in this life on this Earth as abeliever. “Forever” is not only now, but ineternity also. He is our Saviour. That is stageone where you enter into the Plan of God theFather. “Now” is stage two, here in time on

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this Earth. And “forever” means in eternity.This is the principle of eternal security.

It is possible to glorify God the Father ineternity because you will have a resurrectionbody. It is also possible to glorify God theFather in time, now, on this Earth, because ofwhat He has provided for us in Grace here onthis Earth. He has provided His Word fortime. He has provided His assets for time.He has provided His techniques of the Wordfor time. He has provided everything neces-sary to glorify Him now on this Earth intime. We shall also be shockproof in eternity.We can be shockproof now. We can have sta-bility in time. We will have stability in eter-

nity. We have love now and we have love ineternity.

What God has provided for the future,God has also provided for now. The differ-ence between now and then is the resurrec-tion body. Today we are in temporal bodieson this Earth with an old sin nature. But Hehas provided for us in this body on the Earthwith an old sin nature. And He has providedfor us in eternity without an old sin natureand a resurrection body. Grace is the secretthen and Grace is the secret now. So we endwith Peter and say, “I believe it.” “Amen.” DOYOU?

Buddy Dano, PastorDivine Viewpoint

www.divineviewpoint.com