Please turn to Psalm 37. We looked at this several weeks ago. We read in Psalm 37:1-11:
A Psalm of David. Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in JEHOVAH, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in JEHOVAH; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto JEHOVAH; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday. Rest in JEHOVAH, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil. For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon JEHOVAH, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
This Psalm really shows the great difference and the great contrast between the wicked and God’s people and their end. It shows how it is going to turn out for those who are unsaved and for those who are saved by God’s action as He bestows His grace.
Throughout this Psalm, it speaks in many places of the wicked being “cut off,” like we read in verse 9. In many places, it speaks about the meek or the people of God inheriting the earth, inheriting the land. Abraham and his seed were promised that they would possess this land. The land of Israel actually pointed to the Kingdom of God, the new Heaven and the new earth. This is the land that the children of God will possess.
Just to quickly recap Psalm 37, we read in Psalm 37:1:
Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.
Who is an “evildoer”? Murderers, terrorists, rapists, abusers of children - we would say that they are all evildoers. It is true; they are. But God expands this and gives the Bible, the Law Book, in order to teach man that we are the evildoers when we transgress His Law. When we break the Law of God on any point, we have committed evil.
So, in this sense, we are all evildoers; but then God brings the Gospel to His people, to those whom He has predestinated to salvation. He changes them so that they no longer engage in ongoing and consistent evil. We can still sin and this would be an evil thing, yet the course of our lives has been changed from evildoing to doing the will of God and trying to obey His Word; actually, we obey His Word perfectly from the heart, that new heart that He has given to us.
Then Psalm 37:2 says:
For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.
This is referring to mankind who works iniquity. They sin against the commandments of God.
God wrote this. This is a Psalm of David. David died in the year 967 B.C. He ascended the throne in 1007 B.C. He reigned until 967 B.C. [Note: Chris inadvertently said 1067 B.C. instead of 967 B.C.] when in the fourth year of a co-regency with his son Solomon, he died. When David died, then the foundation of the temple was laid. This was in the year 967 B.C.
So we are in the year 2011 and it has been almost 3,000 years since God moved David to write this Psalm, and yet we read that the wicked “shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.” This says that they “shall soon be cut down,” and yet this will not happen until about 3,000 years later.
On one hand, when God looks at this whole world and all of the history of the world, it is nothing. 13,023 years are nothing compared to eternity, compared to an everlasting future. Therefore, it is really not a wise thing when someone’s desire or what they want out of life is to live a long life in this world. They want to live to be 100 or they want to live to be 120.
This is nothing. Look at Methuselah. He lived to be 969 [Note: Chris said Melchisidek when he meant to say Methuselah]. Where is he? Hopefully, his spirit is in Heaven; but he lived a long life, at least nine times longer than someone who would live the longest life in our day, and yet he has been dead for thousands of years. He is long gone, which is as it has been for most of the people in this world who have previously died.
In Ecclesiastes 6, speaking of the sinner or of the wicked, God says in Ecclesiastes 6:3-6:
If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he. For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness. Moreover he hath not seen the sun, nor known any thing: this hath more rest than the other. Yea, though he live a thousand years twice told, yet hath he seen no good…
It is Christ or God who is good. It continues:
…do not all go to one place?
So even if you found a fountain of youth and you were able to live 2,000 years, God asks, “What is that?” It is nothing in comparison to the “eternal weight of glory” that awaits His children.
I think that this must be only because some people have not really thought this through that say, “I do not care about living forever. I just want to live my life now, today, for however long it will be.” They obviously have not thought this through, because this type of thinking is madness. It is insane to prefer the temporal moment and to “neglect so great salvation,” to neglect eternal life. There is nothing that can be compared to this.
Christ even points this out in the Gospel of Mark, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Once you lose your soul, when God finally destroys you, then that is it. You are done. What for? For a bowl of soup, like Esau? For video games? For television? For surfing the net at your leisure and your pleasure?
We have the whole world and Satan has delivered it to us. The whole world is right at our fingertips and right there on the television. How many channels are there now? You can click, click, click, click your life away. The whole world is on the Internet, right there in front of us. Whatever we want, whatever our particular sinful pleasure and desire is, we can find it in abundance and overflowing, to the point where we can choke on it because there is so much of it.
Okay, but then what? Is that it? On May 21, 2011, is this the deal that you are willing to make? Is this the bargain you made because you did not want to give up these things? This is a horrible deal! Do not laugh at Esau. He may have made a better deal than you; at least he could fill his belly.
A lot of the things in the world today do not satisfy. They do not fill anything. The Bible indicates “the eye is not satisfied with seeing.” You can see and see and see, and you will just want to see some more because this life is vain. Only the Kingdom of God and working for the Kingdom of God is “not in vain,” according to 1 Corinthians 15.
Going back to Psalm 37, we read in Psalm 37:3:
Trust in JEHOVAH, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
To trust God and to do good means to keep His commandments or to do His will, and you will “dwell in the land,” which is a reference to “a new heaven and a new earth.” This is the land that is being referred to and this is where we will be fed, as God indicates in the book of Revelation. In Revelation 7 when the “great multitude” appears before God, which will happen in just about two and a half months, this is the “great multitude” that came out of the world and these are those who “came out of great tribulation.”
The Great Tribulation is over on May 21st. This is the 23rd year and May 21st is the 8400th day. Immediately, God puts in the sickle and gathers His fruit. Then we find in Revelation 7 that the statement is made, “Whence came they?” It is like they just suddenly appeared in Heaven, and they did. They did. “These are they which came out of great tribulation.” The Great Tribulation is over and they are now in Heaven serving God who is seated upon His throne, and then it says in Revelation 7:16-17:
They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters…
It is an everlasting spiritual feast that God’s people enjoy as they go into Heaven. The people of God love learning about the Bible. They love to learn about Christ. We do this today. We delight ourselves in the Word of God, and there will be the living Word, Jesus, with His people eternally. We will be able to go to Him and ask Him a question, just like the disciples did. Actually, all 200 million, which in all probability will be the number, will be able to ask Christ at the same time and He may answer them all at the same time. This will not be too hard for Him to do.
So this is the feeding that Psalm 37 is referring to as it says in Psalm 37:3:
…so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
Then we read in Psalm 37:4:
Delight thyself also in JEHOVAH; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
What do you want? What do you desire? This is how it is put by those gospels that are trying to make money. The prosperity gospel tells us that if we decide to become a Christian, God will give us whatever we want; not only salvation, but He will give us the riches of this world. What is the desire of your heart?
He does say in Psalm 37:4:
Delight thyself also in JEHOVAH; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
The only thing is that the heart of man is naturally “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Is God going to give the sinner the desires of his heart?
Have you ever wanted something so badly that you went to God and prayed and prayed, or maybe you were even insisting that God give you something? If you did not receive it, this was because it was probably a sinful desire. Maybe it was a sinful thing that you wanted, or you could have even desired a good thing, but God does things in His own timing. However, it is impossible for someone with an unsaved heart of stone to delight themselves in the Lord. This is why they cannot get what they want.
God says in Psalm 37:4:
Delight thyself also in JEHOVAH; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
This is because you received a heart of flesh, as He says, “A new heart also will I give you,” and this heart desires to do the will of God perfectly and wants whatever God wants in their life. This is why God will grant their desires from the heart. It is because they have a heart that is after His own heart, as He said of David when He referred to David as “a man after mine own heart.”
What kind of heart does Christ have? He has “a broken and a contrite heart.” He has a humble heart. According to Psalm 51, these are the “sacrifices of God.” God is not looking for man to offer up this sacrifice that He would be well-pleased with. Nobody could, because we are proud and arrogant. We are not naturally broken. But once God gives us a new heart, it is patterned exactly after Christ and it is broken and contrite. It desires to submit and to do the will of God, and it does this perfectly and without sin.
Then we read in Psalm 37:5:
Commit thy way unto JEHOVAH; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.
We are called upon by God to trust in Him, to trust the Lord.
Let us look at a couple of verses. We read in Proverbs 3:5:
Trust in JEHOVAH with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
Here is another reference to the heart. This is where the trust comes from. Anyone who does not have this new heart is not going to trust God. They are not going to trust Him and His Word, and yet God commands us in Proverbs 3:5:
Trust in JEHOVAH with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
Judgment Day is coming. The Bible indicates that Judgment Day will be here shortly. Where are we hearing this from? We are hearing this from the Bible itself, and God would have us to trust Him and “lean not upon thine own understanding.”
God came to prophets of old in the Bible. He came to Abram and told him to go into a land that He would give him. It says in Hebrews 11 that Abraham “went out, not knowing whither he went.” God told the prophet Isaiah to walk “naked and barefoot” for three years. Why? You can read about this in Isaiah 20. In that chapter, there were a couple of verses that God applied to the Ethiopians where God discusses how they were taken captive in relation to Isaiah being told to walk naked and barefoot for three years – and this is what Isaiah did; he wore no clothes.
Things like this are not very reasonable when we apply our own thinking and our own understanding and our own reasoning to God’s commandments. God said to Abraham, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac,” who was the son of the promise, “and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering.”
Where was this reasonable? Where does this make sense? Yet the response of God’s people to these things was obedience. They did it and they did not question it. They did not question God left and question God right and question Him up and question Him down. They heard it and they did it. They obeyed. They were trusting in the Lord. They were trusting in God and in His Word.
Regarding trusting in God, look at Psalm 119. We read in Psalm 119:42:
So shall I have wherewith to answer him that reproacheth me: for I trust in thy word.
We trust in Thy Word, the Bible. It is synonymous: trust God, trust His Word. They are one and the same. Do we trust God if we do not trust His Word? Then we really do not trust God, because the Word comes forth from Him.
It is a great blessing and privilege that we have the whole Bible, that we have the Scriptures and that God has opened up and revealed many things, including the Day of Judgment. It is all coming from the Bible. The information is there. Anyone can check this out. If anyone wants to take a little time, they could read the booklet, We Are Almost There! This is available free from Family Radio’s website (www.familyradio.com). You could read it there or you could ask them to send you a free copy and they will. This shows where in the Bible we can find the information pointing to May 21, 2011.
But a lot of people do not trust the Bible; they do not trust God. They do not trust His Word. This is why they say that this is not going to happen. They do not think that it is even possible that this will happen. We can ask them to look at this verse and that verse, but then they can also quote a couple of verses; for example, “of that day and that hour knoweth no man,” and verses like this.
But, really, when people do this, when they look in the Bible, not to see if something is so, but instead to go into the Word with a more negative mindset, they wind up going to the Bible for the purpose of trying to prove that something is not so; and if they go with this mindset, God will allow this. He will allow people to search the Scriptures in order to find what they want to find. For example, someone can try to prove that there is no election, that people are saved by their own free will. They can do this if they have a wrong way of approaching the Bible. If they do not allow the Bible itself to instruct and to teach them, then people can do this.
But this information is coming from the Bible, which is the right place. This is the true source and we can trust the Bible, and yet there are some who say, “I trust the Bible, but I do not trust you.” Actually, I do not necessarily believe this, because anyone can say what they want about the Bible.
Then some go on to say, “If God came to me personally and told me that May 21st would be Judgment Day, just like He came to Noah and told Noah personally when the day of the flood would be when He said, ‘For yet seven days,’ then I would believe this.”
I think that people are probably being honest when they say this, in a sense, because they do not realize what they are saying; but, actually, this would not be true. If they do not believe the Word of God today, then they would not believe God if they had been alive during the days of Noah, because this is one and the same; it is only the matter of a different way of having this information brought forth.
God did speak to Noah directly before the Bible was completed; but since the Bible has been completed, He speaks to us through His Word, the Bible. If we do not trust what we read, then we are not trusting God, as it says in Luke 16 with the rich man who is in torment. God gives us this parable to teach us some things about the nature of His judgment. It says in Luke 16:27-31:
Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him [Lazarus] to my father’s house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
“Moses” is referring to the first five books of the Bible. “The prophets” is referring to the Old Testament, which is the Bible that they had at that time. If they do not hear “Moses and the prophets,” if they do not hear the Word coming from the Scripture, they will not be persuaded in any way either; because this is “the power of God unto salvation”: and so God is able to warn us today in a real way, and He has, just as He warned Noah.
Think about this. Everybody wants to be Noah and be the one whom God spoke to directly. How many others in that day did God speak to directly? We do not find anybody else whom God spoke to directly. If they think that this was better revelation, then imagine being all of the people of the world and you had to trust what one man said that he got from God. This man then told the whole world that the flood was coming, and this was all that they had to go on. Imagine if all that the people of the world had to go on was one man’s word that he had received revelation from God. The people of Noah’s day had nothing to check this out to verify it.
It was the same when Jonah went to Nineveh and proclaimed, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” There was nothing for the Ninevites to examine. There was nothing that they could have checked out to verify this.
In Noah’s day, it was God’s Word to one prophet who then shared this information with all of the world. How much better off are we today when God has given us the whole Bible and He is telling us that this is the Day of Judgment? We have all of these verses that can be produced to show this and people can go and check it out themselves.
This is something that people could have never done if they had been living before the flood. This is something that people could have never done if they had been living in Sodom in the days of Lot. None of those people could have checked out and verified this information; but God, in His goodness, has given us the Bible and made it available to where we can check this out. This is superior revelation than what God did with prophets of old when He spoke to them directly. This is superior for the people.
Noah was blessed. He heard directly from God, but none of the people did. Where did Mr. Camping get this information from? He got this from the Bible. Where are we getting this information from? We are getting this information from the same source.
So we have within our ability to check these things out to see if they are so; therefore, the people of God trust God. I know that this is impossible to believe for the people of the world because they cannot see God and they do not know what it means to trust Him and to trust His Word; and yet the true believer, by God’s grace, is able to do this.
Going back to Psalm 37, we read in Psalm 37:6-9:
And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday. Rest in JEHOVAH, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil. For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon JEHOVAH, they shall inherit the earth.
“Evildoers” are those who transgress God’s Law. How many transgressions does it take? It only takes one. It says in the book of James, “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.”
You are a transgressor, you are an evildoer, and you need a Saviour to pay for that sin. You need Christ to have died for you and to have paid for your sin from before the foundation of the world; and yet you should not get caught up in this. It is God’s business as to whom He died for. You are just to go to Him and beseech Him, “O Lord, could it be that I would be one of those elect people?”
So we read here in Psalm 37:9:
For evildoers shall be cut off…
Let us look at this word for “cut off” in a few places. Let us go to Deuteronomy 19:5. This says:
As when a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the ax to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die; he shall flee unto one of those cities, and live:
This is referring to the “cities of refuge.” A man goes into the forest with his neighbor with an ax “to cut down” the tree. This is the same word for “shall be cut off.”
Also in Jeremiah 6:6, we read:
For thus hath JEHOVAH of hosts said, Hew ye down trees, and cast a mount against Jerusalem…
“Hew ye down” is the same as “cut down” or “cut off” the tree.
In Numbers 13:23, we read:
And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes…
This is speaking of the spies who searched out the land and brought back a cluster of grapes.
We read also in Exodus 34:13:
But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:
The word “cut down” is being used here in relationship to idolatry.
1 Kings 15:13 is speaking of Asa the king and his mother Maachah, and it says:
And also Maachah his mother, even her he removed from being queen, because she had made an idol in a grove; and Asa destroyed her idol, and burnt it by the brook Kidron.
This word for “destroyed” is the same word for “cut off.”
In 2 Chronicles 15, this is also about Asa and his mother. We read in 2 Chronicles 15:16:
And also concerning Maachah the mother of Asa the king, he removed her from being queen, because she had made an idol in a grove: and Asa cut down her idol, and stamped it, and burnt it at the brook Kidron.
He destroyed it. He not only cut it down, but he stamped it and burned it. This is how horrible idols are to God and His people.
Jeremiah 11:19 says:
But I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter; and I knew not that they had devised devices against me, saying, Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered.
God does liken men to trees in several places in the Bible. Here they are speaking about cutting Jeremiah off like they would cut down a tree; because when you cut down a tree, you stop its growth. You kill it and it will not produce fruit; however, there is a chance that a tree might grow again; but there is no chance with man.
Regarding the tree and how it relates to mankind, God makes reference to this in the book of Job. We read in Job 14:7-10:
For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth…
God is making a contrast here between mankind and the tree. It continues:
But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?
The tree can be cut down and there can still be a slight hope for the tree to sprout again, and yet there is no hope for mankind when they are cut down, when they are cut off.
Going back to Exodus, we read in Exodus 31:14-15:
Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to JEHOVAH: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
This is referring to being cut off from the Kingdom of Heaven. You are done. You died and you perished. You ceased to be. You were cut off. Your life was cut down like a tree, but you do not even have the hope that the tree does for coming back. There is not even this hope for you; because when man is “cut off,” it is eternal and forever.
If we go back to Psalm 37, we will see several references to being “cut off.” In Psalm 37:22, it says:
For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off.
Psalm 37:28 says:
For JEHOVAH loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.
We read in Psalm 37:34:
Wait on JEHOVAH, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.
Then Psalm 37:38 says:
But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.
That is it. Your life is over. You are done as a human being. You will live no more. There will be no eternity or eternal place for the wicked, such as hell. This is not possible. God indicates that once someone is cut off, that is it.
Look at Obadiah 1:10. This is a book that is dealing with Esau, especially as he relates to the unsaved in the churches and congregations. It says:
For thy violence against thy brother Jacob shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever.
This is speaking of an eternal cutting off, which is what we have learned. It is annihilation. This is when an individual ceases to exist. They have no more life, like the tree or the grove that is cut down. They have no more physical or spiritual life of any kind after the coming Day of Judgment. This is what will happen to everyone who has rebelled against God and continued to go their way, despite all of these warnings. They heard the sound of the trumpet, and yet they took not warning.
Going back to Psalm 37:9-10, we read:
For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon JEHOVAH, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.
Where did they go? It is almost as if God’s people, after they have received the new Heaven and the new earth, are pondering this. We know that “the former shall not be remembered” by the people of God, but God is just giving us this illustration of His people if they were able to think of this life and this world and all of the many people in it. It would be as if they just ceased to be and did not exist anymore. “Diligently,” we would “consider his place” and it would not be there, because mankind will possess the new earth, which God is going to give to His people for an “eternal inheritance,” for an “everlasting possession”; but first, God has to wipe all of the unsaved off the face of the earth.
God actually said this to a false prophet in Jeremiah 28. This prophet had been teaching rebellion against the Lord because he had been saying that what Jeremiah had been saying was false. This false prophet was prophesying that the vessels of the house of the Lord would be restored and that the Jews who had been taken captive would be returned from Babylon, which was basically denying the judgment of God upon Judah.
This is exactly what the churches of our day are doing. They are saying that God is not judging the churches. They misapply some verses, like the one that states that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” They do not realize what God is saying in the last couple of verses of Jeremiah 28. We read in Jeremiah 28:15-17:
Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet, Hear now, Hananiah; JEHOVAH hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie. Therefore thus saith JEHOVAH; Behold, I will cast thee from off the face of the earth: this year thou shalt die, because thou hast taught rebellion against JEHOVAH. So Hananiah the prophet died the same year in the seventh month.
The Feast of Tabernacles is held in the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar. This means that this year in October, which is the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar, all of the false teachers, which are multitudes in the churches and congregations, will die. May 21st begins Judgment Day. October 21st ends it. Somewhere in there, they are going to die and they are going to be cast off the face of the earth in order for God’s people to inherit “the land.”
This is just as when God sent the Israelites into the land of Canaan and told them to destroy all of those nations, because Canaan was the Promised Land. It was then that Israel possessed the land. The word “inherit” is actually translated many times as “possess”; and what we have is a “promise of eternal inheritance.”
Maybe someone in your family, a grandfather or a grandmother, promised to give you riches or leave money to you, but this only takes effect once that individual has died. You then possess it; you inherit it; you have it.
This is what God is saying. Actually, these verses in Jeremiah will be fulfilled this year. God will cast the unsaved off the face of the earth. This is what He will do this year to all of those who are teaching rebellion and contradicting the Bible left and right by saying, “Stay here in the church. Do not worry about Family Radio. They are heretics. Do not listen to that date.” Not only are they not doing anything to actually bring the Gospel to the world, but they are standing in opposition to this and God is taking note. It is His plan this year to do what we just read about in Jeremiah.
Going back to Psalm 37, we read in Psalm 37:10:
For yet a little while…
I remember that someone said to me maybe a year or a year and a half ago that we were talking about something so far in the future that it was hard for children to grasp and to get hold of. Have you grasped this yet, children? We have less than three months. This is not far. We have a little less than twelve weeks. How fast does one week go? It goes very fast, and we have less than twelve of them. Then what God has said will happen. This is truly “a little while.”
Psalm 37:10 says again:
For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.
Philadelphia is a place. New York is a place. This earth is a place. Where did the wicked go? Where is their “place”? If God created a place called “hell,” then He would not say:
…thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.
He is indicating that there is no locality; there is no “place” for the wicked. Once they are destroyed, that is it forevermore. They go to nothing. This is the only way to describe it. As the Bible says, it is “the blackness of darkness for ever.” If we had to describe what “nothing” was, this is a good way of describing it. It is blackness; it is darkness. When you try to picture nothing in your head, you close your eyes and you just see black. This is what God is indicating. The place of the wicked is this earth. Luke 16 mentions, “lest they also come into this place of torment,” which is referring to the grave, because this is referring to “the rich man” who died and was buried. If any place or locality is in view, it would be this earth for the five months of torment. Then the place for the unsaved people of the world will be gone. It will be no more. There will be “no more sea.”
This is as God says in Revelation 20:11:
And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.
There will be “no place for them” after the world is destroyed. There will be no place for the wicked. It will all be gone.
We really should not begrudge the poor people all around us the little pleasures and the little enjoyments that they have left. If this is how they insist on going, then they had better “eat, drink, and be merry” a whole lot, because they are not going to have any time after May 21st to enjoy this earth. Then, finally, God will destroy this whole world, and it is then that He will give the promised inheritance to His people, as it says in Psalm 37:11:
But the meek shall inherit the earth…
We know of this from the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. It says in Matthew 5:5:
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
The “meek” are going to inherit the earth. Who are the meek? The word “meek” that is found in Psalm 37 is also translated as “humble” in Psalm 9:12. It is translated as “poor” in Amos 8:4, and it is translated as “lowly” in other places; and so the other words in English for this same Hebrew word that is translated as “meek” are “lowly,” “poor,” and “humble.” These are all synonyms. We can definitely see that God is referring to His elect people. After He gives them a new heart and a new spirit, they are the meek.
If we go to Zephaniah 2, there are some great verses there that really apply to our day. We read in Zephaniah 2:1-3:
Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired; Before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of JEHOVAH come upon you, before the day of JEHOVAH’S anger come upon you. Seek ye JEHOVAH, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of JEHOVAH’S anger.
To “seek meekness” is to seek the heart of Christ, that lowly heart, that broken and contrite heart, that humble heart. God imparts this to His people and this is what we should be seeking after. This is how we should seek after the salvation of God, not proudly, not lifted up in any way, but meekly. Even when we share the Gospel, the Bible tells us, “And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves.”
So we share the Word of God not in a proud or arrogant way. Humbly and meekly, we bring the Gospel to the world. God is encouraging us to seek meekness, because He will not despise the meek and He will not destroy the meek.
Let us return to Psalm 37:11 again and then we will stop. We read:
But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
Are God’s people going to receive this world? No, they are not going to receive this world. They are going to receive a new earth and they will possess it, as the word “inherit” also means “to possess,” and then will come eternity future, those great blessings of God forevermore upon His people.
Whatever troubles we have, whatever afflictions, whatever we are going through right now, it is certainly temporal. It is just “a little while” and then God will fulfill all of His promises and give His people the completion of His salvation plan: a new resurrected body and a new earth.
Let us stop here.