Let us turn to John 5 where we will begin in verse 22. We read in John 5:22-32:
For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that beareth witness of me; and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true.
We probably will not get into verses 31 and 32 about Jesus saying, “I bear witness of myself” and “There is another that beareth witness of me.”
Remember that the Bible says that “the testimony of two men is true.” The Bible also teaches us that “God is one.” He is “one God…one Lord,” but He reveals Himself as three Persons.
Some people think that God is one God and one Person. If this were true, then He could not have a second witness to Himself who is also God. So God gave the Law that the testimony of two witnesses is true, and He is under this Law. Therefore, there must be at least a second Person of the Godhead, and we know that there are actually three.
If God was only one Person, then how could He bear witness to Himself that the things that He says are true? We do not understand this and we cannot really explain how this is, but He is one God who reveals Himself as three Persons. We cannot divide God in trying to understand this, but we know that the Bible teaches this.
I wanted to look at John 5 because it discusses the resurrection of the dead. The resurrection of the dead is not just a topic for Easter Sunday, especially when the resurrection of the dead is going to happen next year. This kind of makes it very pertinent to each one of us that we consider and think about what the Bible says regarding the resurrection of the dead.
The hope and the great encouragement to the people of God for centuries has been that they and maybe some of their family members might be raised from the dead, that they might rise again and enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, into the glorious Kingdom of God and experience eternal life.
Let us also quickly look at verse 25, John 5:25:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.
This has some application to when people hear the Gospel and God brings them to life. They are “born again.” The Bible speaks of this as “the first resurrection.”
Therefore, in that day when people heard the Gospel and God saved them as a result of His Word, the dead heard the voice of the Son of God. They were spiritually dead in their sins when God said to their souls, “Arise.” They became new creatures because God made sure that they heard His voice and they did become saved. But there is also an hour coming when the dead will hear His voice. This has to do with the graves, with those who are in graves all over the world.
Going down to verse 28, we read in John 5:28:
Marvel not at this…
This is in the context of the resurrection of the dead or of the dead hearing God’s voice:
Marvel not…
I looked up this word “marvel” and I was surprised at how often this is used in the Bible. For instance, go to Matthew 8:27. It says:
But the men marvelled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him!
If you look at the previous verse, you will see that this was when Jesus quieted the storm and “the men marvelled.” They marvelled because this was not something that you see everyday.
Have you ever seen a storm at sea and someone quiet the storm through their own power? We have never seen this. What if you did see this like the disciples saw this? How would you react? What would you be thinking? You would be thinking something like, “Did I just see this?”
This helps us to understand a little bit of why they marvelled. They marvelled at this because it was something extraordinary. This was something that they had never seen before. This was something that actually no man could possibly do, and yet here was Jesus the Messiah who quieted the storm. It became a peaceful sea, and so they marvelled.
Go also to Matthew 9 where we will begin in verse 6. We read in Matthew 9:6-8:
But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitude saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
The palsy man rose up after his affliction was healed. There were witnesses to this, and they marvelled. Do you see how God is beginning to define this word?
Turn next to Mark 5. We read in Mark 5:15-20:
And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid. And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with the devil, and also concerning the swine. And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts. And when he was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that he might be with him. Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel.
This man would have told them, “I used to be a crazy man. I was a lunatic. I had Legion. Devils possessed me and I would run around naked and cutting myself with stones. Then along came a man named Jesus who healed me and put me back in my right mind. All of a sudden, everything was fine.”
This is what he would have told his family in Decapolis. This is what he would have told his friends. He would have told this to anyone who would have listened, and they heard and they marvelled at his story. They were really amazed that this was so, and so God is explaining what He means by the word “marvel.”
We also read in Luke 2:28-33:
Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him.
This was the baby Jesus, the child Jesus. He was taken into the temple where Simeon saw Him. Then Simeon basically proclaimed, “This is the Saviour.” Joseph and Mary had already had some unusual occurrences happen with the child because she was a virgin when she gave birth. God had said, “For that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.” How incredible! How amazing!
So we get a little glimpse into Joseph and Mary’s pondering of that little baby who was entrusted to their care for a few years and wondering about this child. If you remember, it says, “Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” They were just standing in awe and amazement at the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We also read in Matthew 15:30-31:
And great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus’ feet; and he healed them: Insomuch that the multitude wondered…
This word “wondered” is the same Greek word that was translated as “marvelled.”
…the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel.
People were seeing things that were supernatural, things that were not only unusual but impossible. These were impossible things, things that ordinarily would never happen.
As we live presently in our day, we have never seen a lame man walk who was suddenly healed, despite what some people try to show on TV where they really pull the wool over people’s eyes. We have never seen anyone who was truly lame walk or someone have a withered hand restored whole or someone who was blind since birth given sight or the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, or the dead raised to life. We have not seen any of this, and yet it was almost common place during the Lord’s ministry that He could be seen doing these things. People all over were witnesses, and so they began to marvel. They were in awe of this.
Another verse is Luke 24:12, which says:
Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.
This is the same word. They were marveling at the empty tomb and that Christ had risen, that He was not there, that He was not still there. All sorts of thoughts were going through Peter’s mind as he marvelled at this situation.
Then we read in verse 41 of the same chapter, Luke 24:41:
And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat?
This was when He showed Himself in proving His resurrection. Again, they were marveling.
The whole Gospel is a marvel. It really is. The Bible is something to marvel at. What we read in the Scriptures is a marvelous thing. It is incredible. All that God tells us of the power that He reveals and of the mysteries that He makes plain, all of these things are truly marvelous.
We also read in Acts 7:30-31:
And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sina an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush. When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight…
Again, this was a supernatural site. Man, finite and temporal man, as he looks at it and does not understand how it can be, he wonders, “What is this?” So Moses turned aside and then God began to speak to him from the burning bush.
These are Scriptures that show us how people wonder or stand amazed or marvel at what God has done. So in John 5, Christ is speaking about the resurrection of the dead and He says:
Marvel not at this…
He says, “Do not marvel at this,” and we wonder, “Why not?” We are not to marvel at this because God has proven Himself and has demonstrated His power repeatedly again and again and again.
So is it a difficult thing for Him to raise the dead? Is it impossible for God to raise the dead? Is it impossible for Him to bring forth the resurrection of the dead?
No. Do not marvel at this. He has shown and demonstrated the great power that He possesses, and so this is not something that we are to marvel at.
There is another verse that tells us not to marvel. We read in 1 John 3:13:
Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.
Do not marvel at this. This is not surprising because Jesus said, “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” He told us that we would experience affliction. He has told us in so many places what to expect when we live the Christian life, and so He says, “Marvel not at this.” This is not something to be surprised at or something that should shock us. This is the normative experience for the child of God in this world.
Likewise, do not marvel at the resurrection of the dead. “Marvel not,” because He intends to do this. He has shown that He is very capable of doing this: to speak and for the dead to rise. Did He not speak when He created the world? When this world came into being and the whole universe that stretched out into the heavens that no one has ever found the end of, did He not do this just simply by speaking? By God commanding it so to be, it happened.
Going back to John 5:28, we read again:
Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,
They are going to hear His voice.
Dead people are in the graves and Christ has shown that He can speak to the dead and that they will respond to Him, as we read in Luke 8:54-55:
And he put them all out, and took her by the hand, and called, saying, Maid, arise. And her spirit came again, and she arose straightway: and he commanded to give her meat.
Christ spoke to the young girl who was dead and she obeyed. She heard Him. She did rise up.
How? We do not know how; we just know that Christ has this power. He gave her life and ears to hear so that she could respond.
Also, go to Luke 7 where we read of a situation with a widow woman of a city called Nain. She only had one son and he had died. Then we read in Luke 7:12-15:
Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother.
This is about the dead hearing the voice of Christ and coming back to life.
Of course, we are all familiar with Lazarus in John 11. Lazarus had been dead for four days. There was no question that he had been dead. We read in John 11:41-44:
Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.
This was another demonstration of the mighty power of God to simply speak and have the dead rise. He did not have to say this in a loud voice. He did not even have to say this out loud; but for our benefit, He did. Christ said, “Lazarus, come forth.” The man had been dead for four days and, just like that, he rose up and came forth in obedience to the command of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was still bound in grave clothes and still dressed like a dead man. He looked like a dead man, as far as how he had been prepared for his burial; except now, he was walking. He was now showing signs of life, so the disciples would have removed the grave clothes and he would have gone about his business in the world once again.
If you remember, there was a dinner that we read about in John 12. The Passover was in Bethany, and we read in John 12:2:
There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.
He was just getting ready for the meal, like anyone else. He had been dead, and now he was alive. The Jewish people not only wanted to come to see Christ, but they also wanted to see the dead man. They wanted to see this dead man who could sit at a table and eat like a living person, because now he was living; he was alive.
Of course, Lazarus would have died later. We do not know when or how. The chief priests had been thinking about putting him to death. They wanted to kill him, and so he would have died a second time; but people were believing on Jesus because of Lazarus. They realized that he had been a stinking dead corpse that had been in a tomb for four days, and that he was now walking amongst them just like anyone else.
Do you marvel at this? This is marvelous! This is a wonderful thing!
Certainly, the Lord Jesus Christ has shown repeatedly that He possesses the power and the might and the ability to raise the dead. It does not hurt Him. It is not like a heavy lift; He just has to say the Word. All He has to do is to speak. “The voice of the LORD is powerful,” it says in the Psalms. It also says, “The voice of the LORD is full of majesty.”
God said, “Let there be light: and there was light.” “Let there be” animals, and there were animals. “Let there be” man created “in our image,” and man was created in His image.
Now at the end of time, at the end of all things, it will be God speaking to melt the world and all of the unsaved thereon. The whole universe will melt with a fervent heat, and all He has to do is say the Word.
He has long-sufferingly and patiently refrained from speaking this Word in order to accomplish His purpose of saving His elect and precisely following His timeline to the appointed day of judgment. We now know when this appointed day will be. It will be May 21 of 2011.
Then He will speak, as He says in John 5. He is going to speak to the dead, to all of the dead. He will speak to His elect people who have died and were buried, and to the unsaved who also died and were buried, as it says in John 5:28-29:
Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
The resurrection is something that man tends to not believe. Mankind tends not to believe the resurrection.
In Acts 17 when the Apostle Paul was in Athens, he preached the resurrection. It says in Acts 17:18:
Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.
Also in verse 32, Acts 17:32:
And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.
This is something that man does not believe. Natural man just does not understand or think that this is possible. He thinks that anyone who says something along these lines is like a babbler. He believes that you are someone who does not understand the world and how the world works and how the world operates. “Look, this is it. You get to live your life. Live it to the best of your ability because then you are going to die. Period.” This is really the underlying message of the world itself, but this is all false. This is wrong. This is not how it is.
For more proof that this is the world’s understanding, we read in Acts 26:23-25:
That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should show light unto the people, and to the Gentiles. And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad. But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness.
Paul was discussing the resurrection of the dead. This is when Festus broke in, “You are crazy! You are a mad man!” Paul, of course, correctly responded, “No. No, I am not mad. This is very sober-mindedness. This is not insanity; this is understanding what God has said in His Word.”
He has shown this to be true. He has proved this. All through the Bible, He has proved that His words are true and faithful and trustworthy and that we can rely on them. Actually, we should trust only in them, “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” Do not try to think that your reasoning and that your understanding of the world is better than God’s understanding who created the world. We are just a creature and He is the Creator; therefore, we are to believe what God has said in His Word, in the Bible.
Going back to John 5, it says in John 5:29:
And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life…
Does this mean that God is going to raise all of the good people? God is going to raise up all of the good people. There is only one problem with this. What is the problem? The problem is, “There is none that doeth good, no, not one.” We read about this in several places in Romans 3. “There is none righteous…there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God…there is none that doeth good.”
Why is it the resurrection of those who “have done good”? This is because when God saves an individual, He gives them His Spirit and He prepares for them good works to walk in. He arranges this. He moves within them to will and do of His good pleasure. So they will do things that are pleasing to Him in their lives after their salvation. Salvation has nothing to do with their good works or their good deeds of any kind. It has to do with what God has worked in them.
This is what is being said here:
…they that have done good…
Anyone who is saved has “done good” because God has made sure that they did good. They were saved through the work and the faith of the Lord Jesus and not their own.
It continues:
…they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life…
We do not really have any problem with this. We are still correctly understanding that there will be a resurrection of life. God is going to speak and bring forth His people out of the graves, and they will live right then and forevermore. Their spirits have been in Heaven with Him and now He is giving them a new resurrected body. Their body and soul, which now have both been resurrected, will be brought together again. This will be the spiritual body that God has given them into eternity future and they are going to live.
1 Thessalonians 4 describes this beginning in verse 15. We read in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17:
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [precede] them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds…
This is the great day, next May 21, 2011, the day of God’s wrath, but also the day of the resurrection, the day of the rapture, all of the things that God has spoken about in His Word. This will be the completeness of His salvation plan for His elect people. He will gather them and bring them to Himself, like “the precious fruit of the earth.” He is the harvestman. He is the husbandman who collects His fruit and brings it in. This is why He speaks of the Feast of Ingathering in relationship to the end of the world.
Going back to John 5, let us look at the more difficult thing. We read in John 5:29:
…and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
Doing evil is easy to understand because this is what man does naturally. We do evil. We have sinned. We have broken His Law. We have transgressed the commandments.
These individuals did not become saved. God did not pay for their sins in any way. Therefore, they died in their sin. Now they are being resurrected “unto the resurrection of damnation.”
How are the unsaved dead going to rise? Are they going to come back to life, like the ones who were risen to life, God’s elect people? Are the unsaved dead going to be returned to conscious existence and once again stand upon the earth in order to stand before God for judgment?
This does not sound right at all, does it? When the unsaved dead died, they died wicked and rebellious. What does the Bible say about man in Genesis 6? It says that “the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
So at some point in their life, they finally died. Where did they go? Some people who think that man will be brought back to life with a whole personality and with their thoughts intact will have to answer this. However, the Bible is very clear when it states that on the day that man dies, “in that very day his thoughts perish”; they cease to be.
However, people who think that God will reconstitute the person and bring them back to being the same old sinner that they used to be will have to answer, for example, where did someone’s spirit go who died in 1100 A.D.? We know that the body went into the ground, but where did that mind and those thoughts go? They did not go to Heaven to be with the Lord because only the spirit of God’s people at the point of death goes to be with the Lord.
Where did the unsaved man’s thoughts go? People might say that they are in a state of soul-sleep where they are not aware of anything and that the next thing they will know is that they are standing before God for judgment.
People who believe this are saying that God is going to put back all of the evil into that person, all of the wicked thoughts: the adulterous thoughts, the murderous thoughts, the lying thoughts, and the hateful thoughts. They are saying that He is going to put them all back together in order that man can continue to think wickedly and to think evilly, because the thoughts in his heart while he lived were “only evil continually” in God’s sight.
So people believe that God is going to put all of that evil back into that man and then judge him and throw him into a place that God will create that is supposedly called “hell,” according to what they are saying. Then into eternity future, this individual will be able to shake his fist at God and rebel against Him with fresh, new sin. He did not overtly and so obviously sin this way while he was living, but now he is sinning far worse. He is now blaspheming God and cursing God because of the pain and because of the torment of being under God’s wrath eternally, eternally, eternally, without end.
Would this even be smart? Would there be any wisdom in doing this? Would God bring him back in order that the man could continue to blaspheme Him? We could say, “Yes, because he is being punished.”
Well, have you ever seen a murderer when he is thrown into prison because he did something very awful, and yet he kind of flaunts it to the family of the individual whom he killed?
What does this family want? Do they want him to continue to live on death row, to continue to suffer so that whenever he gets an opportunity he can say something that is very disrespectful about the one he killed or to the family of the one he killed? Or do they want him put to death, which ends it?
Death gives closure. They can now turn their minds away from that grizzly thing. How awful it would be if a man could continue to do and say things, as he would continue to exist in pain for his crime.
Likewise, God has no intention of raising the dead and giving them conscious thoughts again in order that they can continually rebel into eternity against Him. This is not possible and nothing in this would glorify God in any way.
Rather, in the day he dies, “his thoughts perish”; they are gone. He ceases to be in his personality. He does not know anymore about the good or the bad or anything else, and he never will again. He is not coming back to life, as God says in Job 20:5-8:
That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment? Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds; Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say, Where is he? He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found: yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night.
Poof! All gone! All gone, except for the body, which is in the ground somewhere and in some form. It might be ashes or it might be dust. Maybe it is just a few old bones, or maybe someone recently died and they still have some flesh that is corrupting on their body.
God’s plan is to raise up the dead, not to life, to conscious existence, but to raise them. The resurrection, the word itself, which is anastasis [note: speaker inadvertently said “krisis” instead of “anastasis”], means “to rise.” It is translated this way two times. It means “to come up.” It does not get into how or in what manner. The word itself does not try to describe what it is to rise, only that it is arising.
So God will raise the dead supernaturally, just as He will raise His people to life. He will raise the dead up out of the ground and then leave them upon the face of the earth and scattered all over the place as He will use earthquakes to open the ground and to bring this all to pass. This will happen on May 21 of next year.
There are some words that we just assume as soon as we hear them that we know what they mean because we have been indoctrinated or taught the meaning of certain words. One of these words is “damnation.” We know what this means, to be damned.
Again, we read in John 5:29:
…and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
“Damnation” means “hell.” “Damnation” means “eternal damnation,” and it is translated this way.
In Mark 3, in reference to the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, this word is used along with the word “eternal.” We read in Mark 3:29:
But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation:
We had thought that God was definitely referring to “hell,” a place that He would create. This is what I thought before God opened the Bible and corrected us. He has shown us that there is no eternal hell, but there is a judgment. There is a Judgment Day and there is payment that must be made for sin.
The word “damnation” is found 48 times in the New Testament. Actually, this is the word krisis. When I said that this was another word, that was incorrect. The word “damnation” is the word krisis and this is used 48 times in the New Testament. It is used three times as “damnation,” twice as “condemnation,” twice as “accusation,” and 41 times as “judgment.”
This word is used of God to indicate that He will bring about the judgment of man, which is what Jesus is saying in this passage. He will raise His people to life and them who have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment. This is speaking of judgment and it is referring to Judgment Day; and because “damnation” is a word that has such connotations, do not even think about this word. It is the resurrection of judgment. It is God’s time that He has designed in which He will judge man.
What is the nature of this judgment? It is five months of torment, from May 21 through October 21.
Let us go to a couple of other verses before we close. We read in Jeremiah 8:1-2:
At that time, saith JEHOVAH, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves: And they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth.
It says in Matthew 24, “He shall send his angels…and they shall gather together his elect.” The fruit is gathered in. It is the Feast of Ingathering.
By the way, if you carefully read the information concerning the Feast of Ingathering, the fruit is gathered before the Feast. Some people try to say that we have to wait until October 21 until the last day of the Feast; but no. Read the verses again. The fruit is gathered before the Feast is held.
So on May 21, God will gather in His elect people, “the precious fruit of the earth,” and He will leave behind all else. This is what is in view here in Jeremiah 8:2:
…they shall not be gathered, nor be buried;
Then it goes on to say:
…they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth.
In Jeremiah 9:22, we read:
Speak, Thus saith JEHOVAH, Even the carcases of men shall fall as dung upon the open field, and as the handful after the harvestman, and none shall gather them.
This is a leaving. This is the fruit that is a stench. This is the fruit that is rotten, like the rotten figs and the good figs. The good figs went into captivity. The evil figs stayed in Judah. They were the rotten fruit, but you do not gather rotten fruit when you conduct your harvest. As you are going down the field, you gather the good fruit and you throw away the bad, as God indicates with the fish in a parable in Matthew 13 where they “gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.” This is what He intends to do on May 21.
In Jeremiah 25, God speaks of His judgment on Jerusalem first and then on all of the nations of the world. We read in Jeremiah 25:28-33:
And it shall be, if they refuse to take the cup at thine hand to drink, then shalt thou say unto them, Thus saith JEHOVAH of hosts; Ye shall certainly drink. For, lo, I begin to bring evil on the city which is called by my name, and should ye be utterly unpunished? Ye shall not be unpunished: for I will call for a sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth, saith JEHOVAH of hosts. Therefore prophesy thou against them all these words, and say unto them, JEHOVAH shall roar from on high, and utter his voice from his holy habitation; he shall mightily roar upon his habitation; he shall give a shout, as they that tread the grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth. A noise shall come even to the ends of the earth; for JEHOVAH hath a controversy with the nations, he will plead with all flesh; he will give them that are wicked to the sword, saith JEHOVAH. Thus saith JEHOVAH of hosts, Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth. And the slain of JEHOVAH shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung upon the ground.
God is very clear. He is very clear with what He intends to do next year. This is the incredible thing. It has finally come. The time of the end of the world has finally arrived.
God also says in Isaiah 26:20-21:
Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. For, behold, JEHOVAH cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.
Man has been put into the ground. Man has sinned and died for thousands of years. For thousands of years, the earth, in a sense, has covered the slain. In a way, it has covered up all of the sins and the iniquities of man. God is going to open up the ground and reveal this. He will bring up the dead and they will be littered across the face of the earth. This is the resurrection of the just to life, and the resurrection of the unjust to damnation, to judgment, to experience the wrath of God and the five months of torment.
Let us close here.