Deaths, Resurrections & Judgments Rev, 20:4-10

Believe it or not, you have to trust me on this until we get there. The left hand side here, this is in the past and it's moving this way into the future. So that's the direction. It isn't just a mass of colors and letters and arrows and things of that sort. And yes, I did get some sleep last night. Now, first thing we want to do is take a look at this this first upper left corner here. Let's explain what this is talking about.

First, you see up here, here's the third heaven. Where do we get that phrase? Paul talks about it in the 2 Corinthians 12 passage here, when he says, there was a man caught up into the third heaven. If you look at that passage, he also basically uses it synonymously with the word paradise. We'll talk about that in a minute.

But here's the third heaven. This is the throne room of God. As we have read through the book of Revelation, we've seen that there's this syncopation between the earth and heaven. And as we go through this syncopation of the earth and heaven, and we've gone to the heavenly scene, we've been looking at this third heaven. We've been looking at this place here, the very throne room of the Lord.

This is the place where, if we look at Ephesians 2.6, this is the place where believers are now seated with Christ, positionally. Both in our position and in our condition, we will be seated with Him.

And that's what the Revelation, starting in chapter 4, begins to describe. Next, you see the second heaven. And this is the place where the solar system, the space, and stars, and things of that sort are. Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God. That's what this is about. These are the majestic stars and galaxies, and we're day by day discovering how phenomenal those are. But that's the second heaven, and that would explain why Paul would call this the third heaven.

Then the first, or the mid-heaven, we've seen that At least a couple of times in Revelation, the one reference you have here is Revelation 8.13, where it talks about an eagle or a large raptor being in this first heaven or mid-heaven. It also at one point talks about an angel flying in mid-heaven. This angel, by the way, is the one that goes about spreading the gospel. and spreading the gospel through the tribulation period. That takes place from this first, or mid-heaven.

It's the earth's atmosphere. Then, we have the earth. This is the earth that was created perfect. We won't go into it this morning, but really if you look at it, the earth has been through various phases, hasn't it? It was initially created perfect, and then was cursed. That's what we see taking place in Genesis chapter 3. As we've read through the book of Revelation, one of the phrases we've heard repeatedly is, those who dwell upon the earth. The tribulation earth dwellers.

So now we have these things here. Does it start to make sense? I hope so. We don't want you to look like that guy I showed in the picture. Now, take a look at the next part here. Now down in the lower left-hand corner, We have these places that have been created by the Lord. I've not been to any of them.

But they're described in scripture and we have these insights. One of them from the book of Luke here. This is Abraham's bosom. We see those who have believed in the Lord of Old Testament times and up to the times through the Gospels. presiding here. Now, then we see in that same passage the great chasm. This is the great dividing area between those who believe in the Lord and those who have not.

And then below that, the torments of the unsaved. And we see that again revealed in the same passage in Luke 16. Now, you'll need to make an addition. Hopefully I have a pen with you. Because one of the things that didn't show up, and I noticed it afterwards, There should be an asterisk right up in here.

Because both Abraham's bosom and these torments of the unsaved are part of what the Old Testament uses as Sheol. In the New Testament you see it as Hades as we pronounce it in English. Actually Hades in the Greek. And both those places are the place of the dead. And you'll see that word for Sheol. used in the Old Testament, for example, to describe both those who are believers in the Lord and those who are not. So it is simply the place of the dead, general term.

So if you add a little asterisk there to update that. Now one of the things that we've noticed here, and we'll see shortly, is there appears to be a change at the point of the cross. And as you see in your larger chart here, what's beyond the screen, this is at the cross There appears to be a change because you remember the thief on the cross that our Lord speaks to and what does he say?

He says, today you will be with me in paradise. That word paradise shows up three times in the New Testament and this is the first time we hear of it where Christ talks to the thief on the cross, today you will be with me in paradise. And we'll look at that word a little bit more as we look at the next several screens. Paul uses it where he talks about being caught up into the third heaven and being in paradise.

And we're going to see it again. It shows up in the book of Revelation. We saw it when we were studying the messages to the seven churches. And we'll look at it some more as we go into the next couple of chapters of Revelation. It shows up more than once.

Then, the other thing to take notice is the Lake of Fire was prepared And where this is mentioned in Matthew 25, it's mentioned in the perfect tense. That's a past tense where it's a completed action. So even as of the writing of the Gospels, as of that time, is this lake of fire. Hell had already been prepared. It was a past tense event at that point in time. Okay. Now, let's take a look here. back up into the upper left corner, but we're going to advance a little bit here and take a look at this first step.

We have the third heaven, second heaven, first heaven, and earth, and then Abraham's bosom that was mentioned. But now, the event that in this time of year we're coming into, we traditionally celebrate, and that's Christ's coming, his incarnation. So we show that with this arrow. Christ came because the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and Mary became with child, and birthed Jesus as a man, and then He died on the cross, and then He died, was buried, resurrected, ascended and seated, and so we show that with this arrow here.

He said, today you will be with me in paradise. And so where is he? Paradise. And from the descriptions that we have, here's something interesting. Abraham's bosom, which is described there in Luke 16, there appears to be, as is described in that passage, there appears to be at that point in time the ability to see into the place where the unsaved are being tormented, and to communicate with them. That seems to end at this point in time, and the description and discussion of scripture from that point on is people go to be with the Lord, people go to be in heaven, they go to be in paradise. That's the picture we get as we look at scripture, as confirmed by some of these passages that we see here. Acts 2, 27 and 33 talks about, I will not abandon I'll not abandon the Lord in Sheol, the place of the dead, or as it says in the New Testament, in Hades. Instead, what does he do? He is in paradise. He is in heaven. So that's Christ. He has been resurrected. Now, with that, we have the introduction of the Church Age, starting right after here at Pentecost and continuing on to the Rapture.

We'll take a look in a bit. Are you with me so far? Nobody looks like that guy whose picture I saw. Okay, just checking. Alright. Now we're going to expand this a little bit. Move on to the right here. Okay. We've seen this first coming of the Lord, and this being the resurrection, Christ continues in heaven. And you notice that we were talking in the elective earlier this morning, the first Martyr was a deacon named Stephen. And when Stephen died, one of the things he says, I see Christ the Lord standing in heaven. Interesting, he stood for him, but he saw him in heaven at that point in time.

That's right after this cross event. Through the church age, those who die in the Lord, They go to be in the Lord, but they are not given glorified bodies yet. They go to be with the Lord, but they are not given glorified bodies yet. What happens, and what we have described for us in scripture, at the end of the church age is the rapture.

The church is taken up to meet the Lord in the air. And those who are dead in Christ, that is those who have been believers, who have died and gone to be with the Lord, then they will meet with us in the air. And we shall then all be given glorified bodies and be with the Lord forever. As Paul says it, we shall forever be with the Lord.

This is the rapture. Notice something. The saved are taken out and the unsaved are the ones that pass into the tribulation. We're going to see a switch on that in another frame or two here. The saved are taken out. It is the unsaved that pass into the tribulation. Now it gets to the point where the lettering probably is going to require you to look down at your handout to start seeing things here. Unless you want to get the binoculars, but that's up to you.

Okay, now what we start seeing is there's this first resurrection here, and then this one here, but now we're going into the tribulation period where the saved have been taken out, the unsaved pass into it. Those who are then saved, as we've read through Revelation, what happens is when they die, at the soul level, they go to be with the Lord. but they do not have glorified bodies. And even as we've read the tribulation saints, and by the way the word saints does not just apply to the church, but the tribulation saints, those who have believed in the Lord, died during the tribulation period, it mentions that their souls are up in heaven.

And we read descriptions of that as we go through the book of Revelation. Not just once, but repeatedly. So, again, what I have not shown here is the souls of those who have died during these times going to be in the Lord. I just want to avoid too many errors.

But, then what we see as we come to the end of the Tribulation, and we just got through studying it, chapter 19 of Revelation described the beast and the false prophet go directly into the lake of fire. That's what we saw at the end of chapter 19. They go directly into the Lake of Fire. There's no separate place or judgment or anything of that sort. They're headed directly there. We also know from Matthew 25 that those unbelievers at the end of the Tribulation period, they also go directly into the Lake of Fire as well.

Then as we get to the end of the tribulation period, then we have, as we saw in chapter 19, this is the second coming of the Lord. Christ comes. We will come with him as church saints. The tribulation saints and the Old Testament saints will then have bodies that they will live on the earth with. So this is, in a sense, if you recount it sequentially, the third resurrection, if you will.

Also, some angels come at that point in time. That whole event we see described in Revelation 19. Now, notice what happens at the end of the millennium. We've got some real transitions happening in a short period of time. Number one, we have those coming from heaven, some being given new bodies. We have those who were saved at the end of the tribulation passing into the millennium.

And here's the dashed arrow. We have the unsaved, the beast, and the false prophet going directly into the lake of fire. And remember, right after that, as we read just a couple weeks ago, Satan being cast into the abyss. Remember that the abyss or bottomless pit is not the same as hell. Different place. When someone goes into the lake of fire, that's irreversible. He's put into the pit as a temporary holding place because he is bound for a thousand years.

So we have this time here with lots of coming and going in terms of souls and bodies and things of that sort. A lot taking place in that time. But we have this sequence laid out in Scripture. The unsaved and the beast and the false prophet going into the lake of fire. Satan going into the abyss. Christ, Church Saints, Tribulation Saints, Old Testament Saints, and Angels coming down as described in Revelation 19.

The book of Daniel describes basically a 75-day preparation period in the early part of the millennium and setting up things during that period of time. And some of the judgments that we read about likely take place during that period of time. So we go into this final time called the Millennium that we've been looking at here, and then we'll want to take a look at some more steps here. We saw three different resurrections that took place, the first one being Christ's resurrection, the second being the rapture of the Church, and the third one being a resurrection of the Old Testament Saints and Tribulation Saints, that group coming with Christ and the Church and angels all coming to the earth at that point in time for the Millennial Kingdom. Those three resurrections parallel the Jewish Harvest. So we want to take a look at that. In the Jewish Harvest there were three phases.

There was the first fruits The very first thing they did before harvesting anything for food for themselves is take these first fruits, and they would have to present them according to Jewish law. They would have to present them, and that was something repeatedly emphasized in the Old Testament law. Then there was the main harvest, which was of course given and assumed. At the end of that, there was the gleanings. So let's take a look at those. Here was the Jewish harvest.

All these references require the Jews to take those firstfruits and to offer them up. Then, we see Paul makes reference to the firstfruits and he does it in this way. Christ has been raised from the dead the firstfruits of those who are asleep. Do you see that? So Christ is the firstfruits. Then we see the next, farther down there, he makes second reference to it. Then the next one, after that, those who are Christ at his coming. That's the main harvest, right? And then at the end, then he makes more second level reference to that. Then comes the end when he hands over the kingdom, and that would refer to the gleanings, as we'll see here in a bit.

After the main harvest, the Jews were required, again by law, to have these gleanings. What were the gleanings? The gleanings were the requirement that the Jews leave the corners and that they not go back and pick anything they'd missed. They were to leave that for the poor and for the strangers, for orphans and widows. So the Jews were required to have the first fruits, the harvest was of course a given because they needed to live, and then finally the gleanings.

So what does this mean to us? That first resurrection of Christ is the firstfruits. The rapture of the Church is the main harvest, and the Old Testament and Tribulation Saints are the gleanings. So it follows the Jewish harvest pattern. What we read of in Revelation here where it says the first resurrection, we might be saying, well wait a minute, there's been a few. Basically what he's saying is All those of each of these categories are the first resurrection. Because the second resurrection, which we'll see in a bit, is going to be of an entirely different category. It isn't just first by sequence, it's first by kind or type.

So this is essentially the reflection of the Jewish harvest. Now, let's look at the final part here. We've been through the first fruits, the main harvest, and the gleanings here. And now we come to the end of the millennium. And then we see another time when a lot of things take place in the sense of resurrections and judgments. Let's take a look at those. This is where you really need to look at your handout. If you can see this, you're doing pretty good. What you see here is this period of time, at the end of the millennium, when Satan is released, and we've read about that both previously and this morning. Satan is released for a short period of time. Why is Satan released? Why is Satan released?

What has happened, you remember this time of the millennium, we back up, the church now has three enemies. The world, the flesh, and the devil, right? During the millennium, The devil will be taken off the scene. Not eliminated yet, but taken off the scene. He's bound and kept in the abyss. The world will not be there because Christ will be in charge of the world. So you will not have the worldly system under Satan's domain.

What will remain is the flesh. And Satan will be released during this time to reveal the true character of man. Man, apart from the Lord's salvation, will be driven by his sin nature, and that will be the remaining feature during this millennium. The sin nature will remain, and now that Satan has been released, that will have full expression. But it says for a short period of time there will be a rebellion which will be ended. And so what we see there is Satan is released, he comes to the earth, there's a brief rebellion, at the end of that time he is cast into the lake of fire.

There is, as we'll be looking at next week in more detail, the great white throne judgment where those who have been among the torments of the unsaved, all those will come up and be judged and cast into the lake of fire. So that's what all these arrows are saying here at the end.

Then we'll have the new heaven and the new earth and on into an eternity future. And we'll take a look at that in the weeks to come. If all goes according to schedule, we'll actually finish Revelation the first Sunday in January. So we'll take a look at the new heaven and the new earth, and basically two chapters are committed in Revelation to describing this time to come.

So we'll have the privilege of looking at that. Now, as you're looking at this, you may be thinking, oh good, Vern's done with this chart. Okay. All right. Now, turn your chart over. You got the flip side here. Okay. We will not go, I have good news, we will not go through every single cell in this chart.

But what we have done here is the part that's highlighted in blue, those are the parts that explicitly apply to church-age believers. So that's why they've been highlighted in blue. I'll leave it to you to look over and pore over the details and add additional references if you want and things of that sort. But let's just take a look at a few things. As we mentioned, we've got this, and then these two items, and then here, that apply to the believer. But what we want to do is step through them in time. So let's do that. The first one has already taken place.

This is in Romans 8, 3-4, where it says, What the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. The Lord dealt with the sin issue, and for believers essentially the sin nature issue there on the cross. And by saying condemned, obviously sin has been judged. So that's in the past. Now we see this.

There are judgments that are ongoing. that are judgments that are continuing even now in the church age. What are those judgments? The first one on the top there is a believer's self-judgment. That is ongoing in the church age. This comes up in the context of Paul's writing to the Corinthian church where they're having trouble with their handling of the Lord's table. He tells them, If you judge yourselves, if you agree with God about where you stand, if you judge yourselves, then God will not have to step in and judge you. And that's the next part, God's judgment of believers. And what he makes reference to there is the Lord having to discipline believers. So we have the ongoing judgment of believers through the Church Age, We have the discipline that the Lord has to bring in believers' lives when they do not judge themselves, when they don't reckon what is true. And so there's both of those that are ongoing. The third one here, and notice it's not in blue. Why?

It's God's judgment of unbelievers. We see that showing up in Romans 1, starting with about verse 18, where it says, Man did this, and God gave them over. Man did this, and God gave them over. It's like a cascading waterfall, one down to the next, down to the next. It's God's ongoing judgment of believers during this very age that we live in now. It has happened in the past and will continue on, but it's ongoing even now, this ongoing judgment of the Lord over unbelievers.

The next part, these are all future judgments. Let's just step through them quickly. The first one is once we are raptured, we're going to be with the Lord. I'll use a phrase here. Once we walk through heaven's gates, then there will be the judgment for believers. It's called the Bema Judgment.

It is not a judgment of condemnation. That issue has already been addressed. Remember sin? It won't be a judgment of condemnation. It will be a judgment of evaluation for reward. That will be this believer's judgment. Judgment of believer's works. That will depend upon our dependence upon Him. We will be rewarded for our dependence upon Him.

Not for the list of good things that we do on our own strength. The Lord is never pleased with the flesh. The flesh just can't do anything that the Lord is pleased with. Then, these other judgments, you notice that these all stand outside of believers.

We have the Antichrist and the False Prophet. We talked about them at the end of the Tribulation period being directly delivered into the Lake of Fire. We have Old Testament Saints and Tribulation Saints. And then we also have, at that point in time, the end of the Tribulation. living Jews and living Gentiles. Remember, the pattern going into the tribulation is the saved are taken out and the unsaved go in. It's kind of a reversal of that, going from the tribulation into the millennium.

The unsaved are delivered into the lake of fire, the living saved go into the millennium. And then those brought from heaven, including ourselves, will be on earth with glorified bodies. Then we see Satan and the fallen angels judged at the end there, at the end of the millennium. And then finally, the unsaved people at the Great White Throne, which we'll take a look at this next week.

Okay, now, now you've endured both of the charts. Okay, congratulations. But, we want to take a look. The truth is, as we go through these passages, By all means, feel free to look up more and cross-check me. By the way, never believe anything I tell you. Check everything. So, check all these charts, right?

Now, there are some things that we're going to find are not revealed. This is interesting. One is, there's no mention of specifics about the judgment and resurrection of those who died during the millennium. We know that some will die, but we don't seem to have a particular reference to what will happen there. However, let's ask this. Won't Jesus Christ be there to tell them how that's going to be handled? He'll be there to do exactly that, to tell them this is how it will take place.

There are questions we could ask about infants and end times that we don't always have a direct answer. Even now, some of the answers are a little tough to come by. There's also no mention of the timing of when we will judge angels. 1 Corinthians 6 says, don't you know that you're going to judge angels? And yet, we don't have a specific as to time. We know that angels will be judged if they are fallen angels, and we have an idea of that timing. For good angels, that's not certain.

However, I'm sure when the time comes, we'll be told when and how that's to take place, too. Now, the truth is, we have, however, in spite of these things, been given a lot of information, haven't we? In fact, the chart here may be a little mind-boggling. But the truth is we've been given lots and lots of information. Much has been revealed. And we can thank the Lord for what He has laid out. You know, really the world has no answers to these things. The world is guessing based on poor information and misinformation and no information.

I remember talking to one of my coaches when I was in college. It was one of these times, you know, everybody's sitting on the grandstands, you know, at the end of a PE class, and somehow the subject got on to it, and I asked the coach in front of several other guys, I said, Coach, are you ready to die? And boy, his face got really contorted, and he just looked immediately pained. He said, I don't want to die. He had no answer for it. He had no way of dealing with it.

But thanks to the Lord, you know, we've got plenty of information to work with here. And we certainly ourselves have the very assurance that we will see Him face to face, that we will walk with the Lord. And so as we're giving thanks this week, one of the things that we can thank the Lord for is that He has laid out so many marvelous truths.

We might have questions that we don't immediately have an answer for, but just think of all the questions we do have an answer for. and the things that this world pains and puzzles over that we know for sure. John wrote, these things are written so that you may know. These things are written so that we know and are not left guessing. These things are written so that we may know and not have to invent something like the world does. These things are written so that we may know that we shall forever be with the Lord.

Let's pray now and give thanks. Lord, we do give you thanks and praise, and you have revealed all these truths, things that of our own we would have no way of knowing. And yet, Lord, so much of what is going to happen to us and others we read about in Scripture, others that we care about and pray for, we know what is going to happen in so many cases because you've revealed it and let us know. And Lord, we give you thanks for that. And thank you that in that we have so many comforts. Thank you that in that, that if we believe in you, Lord, there are so many things that we needn't question. So many things that we can take as solid fact. And we just give you thanks for that. In Jesus' name, Amen.