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English Lecture 26

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"Reflections on the 'New World Symphony': Going Home"

  1. Illus: One of my favorite classical compositions is by Antonin Dvorak his Symphony No. 9 in E. Minor--he named it, "From the New World"--and so it is remembered as "The New World Symphony."
    1. The world is especially familiar with the Largo portion of that composition.
      1. I have the entire composition on CD--but I love to play the Largo.
      2. And I must admit that its moving melody has been tucked away in my mind ever since childhood days when my parents would play the music.
      3. And every now and then I catch myself humming the melody.
      4. Particularly since a lyricist got a hold of Dvorak's theme and wrote some words to it: "Going home, going home, Lord I'm going home, going home, going home, Lord, I'm going home."
    2. "Going home"--because I have a feeling tonight that deep within every human heart there is a God-planted instinct, a haunting longing, to go home.
      1. The world survives tonight with the innate, numinous sense that we are not home.
      2. Home is where the heart is, they say.
      3. And the heart, oh how the heart longs and dreams of a better place to call home than this.
    3. Illus: John Lennon dreamed of that place.
      1. He wasn't Antonin Dvorak, but he too dreamed of a "new world."
      2. He dreamed of heaven--before he died in a pool of his own blood on a cold New York sidewalk.
      3. Months before he was tragically gunned down, Lennon wrote, composed and sang what became his most popular solo work.
      4. And I'd like for you to listen to it tonight--because it's a wistful plea for a heaven on earth--for behind his imagining there is no heaven you can hear the heartcry of a man who longed for heaven.
      5. "Imagine there's no heaven....it's easy if you try...no hell below us... above us only sky...imagine all the people living for today....."
      6. PLAY THE RECORDING. [Translators, here are the lyrics: Imagine there's no heaven/It's easy if you try/No hell below us/Above us only sky/Imagine all the people living for today. Imagine there's no countries/It isn't hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion, too/Imagine all the people living life in peace. Ah, you may say I'm a dreamer/But I'm not the only one/I hope someday you'll join us/And the world will be as one. Imagine no possessions/I wonder if you can/No need for greed or hunger/A brotherhood of man/Imagine all the people sharing all the world. You may say I'm a dreamer/But I'm not the only one/I hope some day you'll join us/And the world will live as one.]
      7. Did you catch the words?
    4. Poor John Lennon--if only he could have known that the very heaven he dreamed of had already in fact been promised long, long ago.
    5. Illus: Open your Bible please to a wonderful and glorious promise!
      1. Isaiah 65:17 (p 722).
      2. Tonight--the spectacular promise of heaven, along with a breath-taking portrait of God--all of it wrapped up in our next-to-the-last lecture together.
      3. Read Isaiah 65:17.
      4. My friends, that is exactly what John Lennon wished for so wistfully-- a NEW world where the old ways are gone forever!
      5. Illus: How did Lennon put it? "Imagine all the people living life in peace."
      6. A NEW world where the old ways are gone forever!
      7. In fact, notice how God puts it: "And the former things shall not be remembered."
      8. Illus: I was studying with a man who was preparing for baptism--and when he read this verse he asked why God was going to blank out our memories.
        1. Isn't that awfully arbitrary of God--to erase our earthling memories so that the past is wiped out?
        2. Actually, Isaiah is employing a figure of speech that Jeremiah does also a few pages later in Jer. 3:16, where the prophet writes--and this is the New Revised Standard Version translation [show on screen]--"It shall not come to mind, or be remembered, or missed."
        3. The former things of this life WILL NOT BE MISSED!
      9. Illus: I.e., when God creates a new heaven and a new earth with its new society, nobody is going to sit around singing the exact opposite of Lennon's wish: "Imagine there is cancer....it's easy if you try....imagine there are murders and rapes and robberies on the sly...imagine there's more killing, wars, and morgues and courts...O, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
      10. Mark it down--there will be no longing, no wistful wishing for the hell-hole that earth has turned out to be, thanks to Lucifer and our rebellion from God.
      11. God is not going to perform a frontal lobotomy (brain surgery)--we are going to gratefully choose to forget!
      12. Nobody in that new earth heaven will ever wish to go back to the former things--so utterly and thoroughly satisfied will we be with God's new creation!
    6. And no wonder--for look at how the Bible's last book describes God's promise! Revelation 21:1-5 (p 1189)
      1. Read v. 1--Illus: And by the way (after v. 1), when you're incarcerated on a rocky jag of an island in the middle of the Aegean Sea, as John was, it is very, very good news that there will be no more sea--which for John quietly meant, there will be no more separation--You and I, we love the sea--for us it means seascapes and sunsets--but for John it meant separation from those he loved--Heaven will mean no more separation!
      2. Read v. 2--Wait a minute, you say--hold on--what's going on here?--John just said that he saw "a new heaven," and here comes this spaceship city down from God "out of heaven"--how many heavens are there? A very good question whose answer we'll find in just a moment, but read on.
      3. Read vv 3-5
    7. Illus: Did you notice the repetition of a single word: No, no, no, no.
      1. It's an astounding thought--but John has to turn to the negative in order for us to grasp the positive!
      2. Because we live in a world of non-stop heartache, non-stop negatives.
      3. This much I can tell you about the future and heaven, John exclaims--LET ME TELL YOU WHAT WON'T BE THERE.
      4. No more death [we have seen too many funeral corteges wind their way from this campus church to the little Rosehill Cemetery], no more tears, no more dying, no more pain, no more hurt, no more hospitals, no more divorce courts, no more tenement buildings, no more jail houses, no more crime, no more war, NO MORE NEGATIVES, NO MORE.
      5. Illus: The very same word that John Lennon kept repeating over and over in his wistful wish for a new world without heaven...no,no,no,no.
      6. O John, if only you had known that the heaven you didn't want is the new world that will turn out to be what you wanted most of all.
      7. "Imagine there's no heaven."
      8. O no--IMAGINE THERE IS a heaven, a NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH.
      9. Where all the NO's nobody wants will never be there again! [show on screen]
      10. So radically different is God's creation of a new earth from this fallen earth we call home--that the Bible writers who caught a vision of it could only find adequate language by saying NO, NO, NO.
      11. Illus: Harry Blamires has put it this way in an essay: "If only we could have the positives of earthly life without the negatives. But that is precisely what heaven has to offer--the removal of the negatives....[In heaven] both [human sin and the dominion of time] will be swept away. Here below, time withers flowers and human beauty, it encourages good intentions to evaporate, it deprives us of our loved ones. Within the universe ruled by time, the happiest marriage ends in death, the loveliest woman becomes a skeleton. Fading and aging, losing and failing, being deprived and being frustrated--these are the negative aspects of life in time. Life in eternity will liberate us from all loss, all deprivation." ("The Eternal Weight of Glory" XNY Today, Mkay 27, 1991, p 30)
      12. "Imagine all the people living life in peace...you may say I'm a dreamer....but I'm not the only one....I hope someday you'll join us...and the world will live as one."
    8. Oh, my friend, I want to be there--don't you?

  2. Good news tonight--because Somebody else wants us there with all His heart and with all His life and with all His death--that's why many consider this to be the second best loved promise in all of Scripture next to John 3:16--John 14:1-3 (p 1042)
    1. Jesus' words are crystal clear: I am going to leave you soon--and return to My Father's house (which in anybody's book including this Book is heaven--the place where God dwells)--I am returning to heaven from whence I came--but when I return to heaven I am going to begin preparing a place for you--so that one day you may dwell where the Father and I dwell--and in order to get you there, I am going to come back to earth and take you to live with Us.
    2. Mark it well, ladies and gentlemen, there is a heaven "somewhere out there" beyond the midnight heavens--where God is residing now--and from that heaven where Jesus also lives--He will come ONE DAY SOON--and take His FOREVER FRIENDS HOME TO LIVE WITH HIM.
    3. But that home will not remain forever in heaven--it will some day come back from heaven to earth--which will become a new earth with a new heaven above it.
    4. Sound confusing? It really isn't once you follow the line of Scripture. Let's follow the line of Jesus' promise together.
      1. Promise #1--John 14:1-3--Jesus is coming back to take us home to His Father's House in heaven, where we'll have a mansion, too! (You may live in a hovel or a shack here--but your FOREVER FRIENDSHIP with God promises you a mansion there! Hallelujah!)
      2. Promise #2--and what will happen when Jesus returns?--I Thess. 4:15- 18 (p 1137).
        1. And where are we going? Where did Jesus promise to take us in Promise #1? To heaven and His Father's House.
        2. What a blessed comfort indeed is in this promise!
      3. Now Promise #3 is not very good news at all--but I'd be less than faithful if I didn't read it too you--because it is a promise nonetheless- -turn one more page to II Thess. 2:8 (p 1138).
        1. You see, God is going to sneak up and snatch His FOREVER FRIENDS away.
        2. Are you kidding--after all He has done for them and all that they have clung to in His friendship--no way, Jose--God is going to put on the most spectacular light and sound show in the history of the universe--when Jesus chokes the sky with billions of angels of glory.
        3. But there is a law about God and His glory--and that is that darkness cannot exist in His presence.
        4. Illus: No great discovery there--whenever you turn the light on in a dark room, tell me what happens to the dark--does the light angrily destroy the dark? does it vengefully torture the dark? No, the simple fact is that when light comes around, darkness simply ceases to exist.
        5. WHEN THE LORD OF GLORY RETURNS IN HIS GLORY TO EARTH all those who are clinging to the darkness of cherished sin will simply cease to exist.
        6. This time GOD ISN'T GOING TO TURN HIS GLORY OFF FOR HIS FRIENDS.
        7. And so in the brightness of His coming, all those who chose not to be His friends but chose darkness instead will cease to exist.
      4. But glorious Promise #4 declares that that isn't the end quite yet-- Revelation 20--the great apocalyptic description of the MILLENNIUM--Rev. 20:1-3 (p 1188).
        1. The Bible describes those who rejected God's plea and offer for a friendship as ceasing to exist at the return of Jesus.
        2. But not so Lucifer and his fallen demon angels.
        3. What we have just read describes the most somber and sobering reality any being could endure--and that is--for a prolonged period of time, you must sit there surrounded by the evidence of your own insane rebellion and contemplate your tragic choices that resulted in this mayhem and cataclysm.
        4. The earth is a wreck! The Bible elsewhere describes mountains collapsing and island chains disappearing--like a tornado and hurricane and volcano and earthquake wrapped up into one.
        5. AND NOW FOR 1000 YEARS, SATAN MUST SIT HERE "CHAINED" BY THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF HIS REBELLION.
        6. Nobody here to tempt, no one to deceive--nobody but himself.
        7. Illus: When we laid the cornerstone to our new additions a couple falls ago, we put some of our church records in a fireproof container, and I made the remark to the congregation that we chose a fireproof container so that Lucifer would have something to read when he wanders the broken landscape of the hell on earth he himself created.
        8. PROMISE #4--hallelujah--our arch enemy is going to have to face his own music for a 1000 years.
      5. But glad Promise #5--what's going to be happening with all of God's FOREVER FRIENDS that Jesus has taken back to those mansions in His Father's House in heaven?--read on, vv. 4-6.
        1. Before we reflect for a moment on the breath-taking portrait of God that emerges here, let's share a corroborating line from I Corinthians 6:2,3 (p 1102).
        2. Very clearly the Scriptures describe a very specific task that will come to God's FOREVER FRIENDS during this 1000 YEAR reign with Jesus in heaven--called the MILLENNIUM.
        3. Rev. 20:4 declares that judgment is given to them.
        4. And I Cor. 6:2,3 describes that judgment as a judging of the inhabitants of earth and of even the angels--obviously the fallen members of both the earthly and heavenly Family.
        5. Very plainly God's friends are going to be immersed in passing judgment!

  3. "But wait a minute," you say. "I thought judgment had already taken place....I mean how could God bring anybody home if He hadn't already made a decision about who was coming and who wasn't?
    1. You're right....the prophecies of Daniel 7 and 8 and 9, along with the scriptural teaching about the judgment of the human race--all of which we shared here together in the NeXt Millennium Seminar--indicate that the great heavenly assize is completed before the second coming of Christ.
      1. So why a judgment during the millennium?
      2. I'll tell you why: BECAUSE THE JUDGE IS A GOD WHO IS WILLING TO BE SECOND GUESSED. [on screen]
    2. illus: Let's illustrate it this way: WHICH KIND OF NEWSCAST DO YOU SUPPOSE GOD'S MILLENNIAL JUDGMENT WILL BE LIKE?
      1. Ted Koppel's NIGHTLINE....or Beijing's Chinese Television Network's evening news. [may change country if China on board]
      2. For the sake of illustration, we go back to the Teiniman Square revolution.
      3. Ted Koppel, night after night, was grilling and probing and reporting the latest bit of evidence that emerged from that student revolt.
      4. On the other hand, we were given video glimpses of China's official state network's reporting of the same news.
        1. Koppel kept saying there's trouble...and showed video footage to document it.
        2. But the state television kept saying, Everything's alright...nothing's the matter ...slight disturbance, maybe....but everything's OK.
      5. Which verdict did the world believe? THE ONE THAT WAS CORROBORATED BY THE EVIDENCE.
      6. So God decides to have another judgment for the benefit of His friends, His children who've come home....which newscast will God's judgment most resemble?
        1. Don't ask any questions....everything's OK.
        2. Or, I thought you might want to go over all the evidence for yourselves....here it is...examine it carefully....and TELL ME, DID I MAKE THE RIGHT DECISIONS?
      7. And so He opens up all the court dockets... unseals all the rendered judgments....displays all the accumulated evidence....AND THEN SAYS, PLEASE EXAMINE MY DECISIONS AND TELL ME IF I DID THE RIGHT THING.
      8. And the record reads that the friends of God will be seated in judgment and examine the court evidence.
    3. You can't believe it!....I mean, what kind of a judge is this?
      1. He's the God who's willing to be second guessed by His friends.
      2. And so God stands up sometime after the millennium has begun in heaven....and He says, "I've dedicated the next l000 years to any questions you may have about Me and My Kingdom and My judgments.
        1. I want this to be a time when you can get to know me even more deeply.
        2. I want this to be a time when the deepest questions that still trouble you can be answered to your satisfaction.
        3. And so I've planned this millennium just for you....and Me....together....
      3. "In fact," I can hear Him going on, "what I'd like to do with your permission is replay for you now the great highlights and summits of human history.
        1. I want you to see the story, His story [and He points to Jesus] and My story, as it really happened.
        2. And so if the videos are ready, I'd like to begin with your creation.
      4. And for the first time....the human race sees at last the truth about creation....which we've debated for so many decades.
        1. God shows it all.
        2. And why wouldn't He, couldn't He?
        3. Our VCR age now makes such a notion utterly comprehendible.
      5. God begins to show for the innumerable throng of His saved children the happy and tragic story of humanity.
      6. You sit there breathless and spellbound as in full color the drama of history is replayed in unerring accuracy before your eyes.
      7. Suddenly the lights go on....or whatever...and a tall man and woman step up to the microphone there beside God...
        1. It's the first man and the first woman.
        2. "Lord, may we speak for a moment?"
        3. And every eye is riveted on the parents of the race....who with fervent conviction and testimony confirm that indeed this is the story we lived.
      8. And when Adam and Eve are seated, up steps another gentleman....who describes divine mercy and compassion that pleaded with the race before the flood...it's Noah...someone in vast crowd whispers...
      9. And then Abraham and Sarah and Joseph and Moses and Ruth and David and Daniel and Paul and Mary and Peter and the Thief on the Cross and John who prophesied about the millennium.....
      10. One by one the greatest men and women of all time step up to the microphone to tell their stories and praise their Lord.
    4. Hours and days and weeks and maybe even years fly by.....the story slowly builds as the evidence is carefully examined....UNTIL THE DAY COMES WHEN GOD IS READY FOR THE CROWNING PIECE OF EVIDENCE AND HISTORY.
      1. As there He stands before the throngs of heaven.
      2. It is Immanuel Himself...Michael to the angelic race, Messiah and Christ and Jesus to the human race....
      3. I dare not even try to describe the electric thrill of that moment when our Savior stands there and with His nail-scarred hands outstretched TELLS HIS STORY, HISTORY....ALL OVER AGAIN.
      4. Replayed on the screen of a cloudless sky, we watch the full-color drama from Bethlehem to Calvary.
      5. God is love....God is love....over and over will ascend the cry.....JUST AND TRUE ARE YOUR WAYS, O LORD GOD....
    5. The God who lets His friends 2nd guess Him.
      1. Because there will be some other stories that troubled hearts must hear if they will have peace at last.
      2. Because husbands will look for wives and not find them there...and wives for the husbands ...and parents for their children...and children for their parents....BUT THEY WILL NOT BE FOUND.
      3. Why? why didn't you save her, why didn't you save him? You promised you would save them. Why?
      4. And with His arm around that troubled heart, God will quietly walk to the archives.....and replay the record....and when the story's over He will ask, DID I DO THE RIGHT THING....DID I HONOR WHAT HE REALLY WANTED IN HIS LIFE? DID I RESPECT HER FREEDOM TO SAY NO? DO YOU STILL SEE THAT I LOVED HIM TO THE END?
      5. It's no wonder that it is only after the millennium that the Bible declares that GOD WILL WIPE AWAY ALL TEARS.
      6. Because the time of judgment will not be sterilized from the pain and hurt of the human reality....not yet....NOT UNTIL EVERY QUESTION IS ANSWERED..AND EVERY QUERY IS SETTLED.
    6. A l000 years next door to God.....that's why He's planned it.....side by side...heart to heart.... the millennium.
      1. What a God we have as our Friend!
      2. What a wonderful gift--this 1000 year gift of time--God alone with His friends in heaven.

  4. And by the way, this 1000 year gift of time is not only for second-guessing God's judgment and reviewing the decisions those who are not there have made--it will be a healing time together--God and us, and us and us!
    1. Have you ever pondered the millennium from God's point of view?
      1. What do you think God is going to do when we come home to His wide open door?
      2. Illus: I know the answer--He's going to turn off His telephone and turn on His answering machine on for the universe: "I'm sorry I can't come to the phone now...you see My children just came home...you know who I mean....My friends...the ones whose lives I opened to you during the final judgement...you saw their lives and loyalty and love for me ...that's right...My very own children, adopted into My Family forever through Jesus....they're home now...and so I can't come to the phone... call me in a thousand years....at the sound of the beep, please leave a message."
      3. Listen, friend, THE MILLENNIUM IS GOING TO BE GOD'S GIFT OF UNINTERRUPTED TIME WITH HIM and WITH EACH OTHER-- TIME FOR A GLAD, JOYFUL REUNION.
      4. Illus: Why even the profane press recognizes the almost sacred nature of a home-coming!
        1. illus: when the hostages came home...when the astronauts come home....THERE IS THAT PERIOD OF TIME GRANTED TO THE REUNITED ONES...WHEN THE OUTSIDE WORLD IS KEPT AT BAY...LET EM ALONE... LET THEM SAVOR THIS MOMENT ALONE.
        2. There'll be time for questions and answers later ...but right now they just want to be together.
      5. And so let the cosmic worlds wait...God's turned the answering machine on....He wants to be alone for a millennium with His children who've come home!
    2. But not only God...I have a feeling there are going to be a few hundred other million people who'll want some precious time alone, too.
      1. Because the last time they were together was in a funeral parlor.....and one of them was very much asleep in death.
      2. The last words spoken were in that hospital room.
      3. Or was it that day they were hurrying out the door ... just another day it would be, they thought...but the car slid out of control.
      4. Oh, my friends, when I think of the millennium I think of God's gift of time...TIME FOR A JOYFUL, TEARFUL REUNION.
    3. But when I think about the millennium I think of it as more than just a time for reunion...IT WILL ALSO BE A TIME FOR TRANSITION.
      1. Let me explain.
      2. illus: Do you remember King David and a woman named Bathsheeba and her husband Uriah?
        1. Passionate but childlike David will be in heaven during the millennium.
        2. And so will Bathsheeba the mother of the wisest man who ever lived, Solomon.
        3. And so will faithful Uriah....whose gentile loyalty to the king and his kingdom will be eternally rewarded.
        4. David had Uriah killed in battle to cover up his adulterous relationship with Uriah's wife, Bathsheeba.
        5. And if heaven's going to be a place of harmonious and unselfish love....THEN SOMEONE'S GOING TO HAVE A BIT OF EXPLAINING TO DO....
        6. Even some confessing.
        7. Oh yes, David poured out his heart in contrition to God in Psalm 5l.
        8. But Uriah was dead....too late to repent to him.
      3. And so God graciously and gracefully grants a l000 years for our still very human hearts to pass through a time of emotional transition.
      4. Because human reality is that some things in life are never fully resolved.
        1. Someone died before there could be reconciliation.
        2. illus: I visited a few years ago with someone out of state who was carrying the guilt of sexual child abuse in her heart.
        3. But the one who could've made the difference was dead.
        4. And this woman carried the deep sense of guilt and shame.
        5. The reality of life on this planet is that some things in life are never fully resolved.
        6. It is unrealistic to think that all is resolved for the saved in this life.
        7. Hearts wounded deeply by divorce may not ever be able to fully experience the healing of reconciliation in this life.
      5. But during the millennium God will grant to every heart the opportunity for emotional transition....TIME TO HEAL RELATIONSHIPS.... TIME TO ANSWER THE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS....

  5. You see the millennium is good news, very good news about the God who is our FOREVER FRIEND.
    1. The tragedy is He is not everybody's FOREVER FRIEND.
    2. But God honors those free and independent choices.
    3. Illus: And so the final scenes of the millennium are a picture of God respecting those choices.
    4. Promise #6 is laced with heartache and hope--Revelation 20:7,8,11-15 (p 1188).
      1. You see, Jesus was telling the truth in John 5:28,29: [on screen] "'Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth--those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.'"
      2. Every human who has ever died will come forth in one of two resurrections--those who chose a FOREVER FRIENDSHIP with God will arise at the second coming of Jesus; and those who chose Lucifer's lordship instead will arise at the end of the millennium-- every human now asleep in death will be resurrected in one of those two resurrections.
      3. Some will die once, and some will die twice.
      4. AND THE SECOND DEATH WILL BE THE FOREVER DEATH, never to rise again.
    5. Is it mean of God to raise them up so that they might die again?
      1. No, for it is the only way God can honor their free choices and at the same time make it evident to any who might wonder in the end if perhaps they have changed their minds.
      2. Were God to leave them dead, there would remain the unanswered question, Did they really choose in the end not to embrace God?
      3. And so God lifts His throne high into the heavens, and from that vantage point with the billions and trillions of earth now spread out before His throne, God opens the books--the video records of the lives of those who rejected Him--and REPLAYS THEIR STORIES SO THAT THEY AND ALL CAN SEE THAT IN FACT THEIR CHOICE WAS TO BE WHERE THEY WERE.
      4. Illus: And when God does, the Scriptures declare that: [on screen] "...that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:10,11)
      5. Every man, woman, young adult and child who rejected God's offer of a FOREVER FRIENDSHIP will then confess that in fact God was love all the way through their lives and that Jesus is the only Lord of all.
    6. DO THEY CHANGE THEIR MINDS?
      1. The sad record in Rev. 20 is that they try to storm the City instead.
      2. And in that instant, all hell breaks loose.
      3. And for a span of moments there will be hell on earth.
      4. Reread vv. 14,15.
      5. Ladies and gentlemen, what you have just read is the final and tragic chapter to God's passionate commitment to human freedom.
      6. The fire that descends from the heavens only cleanses the earth and melts the last broken horizon of sin.
      7. It is NOT a forever fire, for the very next words (21:1) describe a new creation on this very same planet where the cleansing fires fell!
      8. But in those fires the final traces of sin will at last be eradicated forever and ever.
      9. And as the prophet Nahum exclaimed [on screen]: "Affliction will not rise up a second time." (Nahum 1:9)
      10. No more sin, no more death, no more tears, no more of all the NO's we know more of than we ever wanted to know.

  6. In fact, for the rest of eternity there will be only one reminder of sin.
    1. And it will be purple to the eye and rough to the touch--but forever and ever the scars of Jesus will remain upon His hands and feet and side--rough, purple scars that will quietly go on telling the eternal truth: GOD IS LOVE AND HE WILL BE YOUR FOREVER FRIEND FOREVER.
    2. Oh my friends, I want to go home to that FOREVER FRIEND, don't you?
    3. Illus: I close tonight with a story about Theodore Roosevelt, president of this nation at the turn of the century.
      1. He had been in Africa on a great hunting safari and was boarding a ship at an African port, heading back to this country.
      2. Great crowds were gathered there to celebrate his visit and bid him farewell:
        1. The red carpet was rolled out for him.
        2. A band played in his honor.
        3. And he was given the best suite on board that ship.
      3. He was the center of attention during the sail home.
      4. At the same time, there was another man aboard that ship--an old missionary who had given his life for God in Africa.
        1. His wife had died there, his children were all gone.
        2. And so now all alone, he sails back to his homeland.
      5. At the ship's arrival in San Francisco, the President was again honored--the whistles blew and the bells rang and the crowds cheered, as Roosevelt disembarked in pomp and glory.
      6. But there was no one there to meet the old missionary.
      7. He went to a small hotel room, and that night as he knelt beside his bed he prayed, "I'm not complaining, Lord. But I just don't understand. I gave my life for You in Africa and it seems that no one cares. I just don't understand."
      8. And it seemed in that moment that the Lord reached down His hand from heaven and placed it on the old man's shoulder, and whispered: "MY CHILD.....YOU'RE NOT HOME YET."
    4. Oh my friends, WE'RE NOT HOME YET.
      1. This isn't home.
      2. The pain, the tears, the heartache, the brokenness, the loss.
      3. This world is not our home.
      4. We belong with our FOREVER FRIEND in His home.
      5. That's why Jesus is coming very soon.
      6. And when we go home with Him, there will be a wild and joyous home-coming the universe has never seen!
      7. "MY CHILD, YOU'RE NOT HOME YET."
    5. ALTAR CALL.
      1. If there is a man here tonight, a woman, a young adult, a child who has yet to settle the choice about His FOREVER FRIENDSHIP and accept His offer of a FOREVER HOME with Him-- my friend, then tonight you must decide....right now....and right here...
      2. His nail-scarred hands are outstretched to you...right now.


    Further Study:

    Discover Guide - Is God Fair?     (Lecture Study Guide from Discover Bible School)




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