A Billion Years from now

Transcript

I was intrigued at the findings that Gabe presented about this. What initially decided for me to do this was a class that was asked to do something like this in Southern California that actually four ecclesiastes got together to

hear something like this because they've been hearing from young people also that kingdom age after the millennium sounds incredibly boring, you know, why should I even care about it? And so I started thinking about this. There is no way in the world that I could ever believe that the Lord God, that Yahweh is going to have us bored and idle. That just doesn't make any sense to me. So I did a lot of thinking about this, and I think there are some real good hints in the scriptures. And there are also things we know today that we didn't know even 50 years ago about the universe that has kind of helped me get a better visual picture of possibility. So bottom line, this is all a suggestion. If you don't agree with this, you're perfectly willing to

hear other ideas. So let's move on.

So what is the usual Christian view of the afterlife? Well, it's turned out after thinking more about after Gabe's class, I started looking at what does other Christianity teach? And you know, what they do teach is really incredibly boring. The idea that you're floating around in clouds for eternity just doesn't make a lot of sense. So many seem to think it's incredibly boring, and it's not just Christadelphians. In fact, it seems to be a thing with young people in general in Christianity. And I think the reason is, I mean, young people today are way more educated than they were when, for example, the statement of faith was written, and are not so satisfied with something just saying what was just said earlier, that I had not seen or heard the things that God has in store. So that's kind of an open statement, but it's not really very definite, is it? So here's one of my favorite cartoons about this classical thinking, and he's sitting on his cloud in heaven somewhere, and he says, I wish I'd bought a magazine. And so it's not just Christadelphian, this is kind of perverted and is in, well, the universal internet. So people have been thinking about it. So let's think a little bit about these promises that were made to Abraham. And what I'm going to show you is something quite interesting, I think, in Genesis 22 and 17. The Lord says to Abraham, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and the sand that is on the seashore. Now we could take that as a sort of poetic thing, and I think too often we find things that we take poetic sometimes have real literal meanings and sometimes vice versa. But it turns out that, and a little aristic down there on the lower left, that the Yale Bright Star Catalog has actually counted how many stars you can see with the naked eye. And it's quite interesting that it's not as many as you would think. So this was the Lord's promise to Abraham. But when Abraham and ourselves look at the night sky with our naked eyes, we don't see anything like an infinite number of stars. So it's only recently we can appreciate what God was talking about when he said of the stars of heaven. In fact, the total number of stars that can be seen with the naked eye is a little over 9,000. And maybe somebody middle-aged like me with eyesight only good in one eye, that I could see maybe about 4,000 stars. So that's not really a multitude. So what we know today is quite interesting. In the 1920s, Hubble at Caltech did some remarkable work with a telescope, and he took some remarkable pictures. This is a picture of the Milky Way. The Milky Way is a galaxy, and a galaxy is just a huge collection of stars that rotate around a galactic center. And it turns out that our planet Earth and our sun is part of the Milky Way galaxy, which includes some billions of stars. Now when you look in the night sky in some place where there isn't all the bright lights of city, what you see is this beautiful picture of the Milky Way. And we're actually looking at it on edge because we are in the plane of the Milky Way. And if we could look down on this, we would see a spiral galaxy. And so the Milky Way actually is a huge collection of stars revolving around a galactic center and our planet and our sun is near the edge. And that is very fortunate and maybe is really blessed because if we were further in, there would be so much radiation from all the surrounding stars that life on this planet would be impossible. And so most of the hunt for livable planets and so on has gone around the periphery.

And what we've had happen in the last decade is a tremendous advance in telescopes.

And the idea, of course, is to put telescopes in space where they're not looking through the atmosphere of planet Earth because our atmosphere, in fact, just about blurs the background for anything further away. And so the first thing that went up was this Hubble telescope in 1990. And more recently, the James Webb telescope was launched on Christmas Day 2021. And to give you some idea of the James Webb, the James Webb is a much huger telescope. It actually folds up and was fit into a rocket, shot up into orbit. The rocket was discarded and this was unfolded. And so you see this, these bars which will fold it in. And it's a mirror type telescope with each one of these elements focusing toward the center point and putting the data on the collector, which is this big black thing in the middle. And what have they seen? Well, if you look up at the night sky, you see individual stars, but seeing galaxies turns out to be impossible with the naked eye or even with a good, even with a homemade telescope because they're so far away and they are dim. But with the James Webb and the Hubble, you can see galaxies all over the place. And I just point out these are just clusters of stars like our Milky Way with some billions of stars in each one and each one. And if you look around, this is what has been shown. So each of these galaxies contains between 100 and 400 billion stars. That's pretty impressive. And so looking at big numbers, scanning the sky with the James Webb and the Hubble, they've come to the conclusion that there can be as many as 10 trillion galaxies in the universe. That's a pretty big number. And just to visualize it, it's a one with 24 zeros after. That's what 10 trillion is.

So that's an incredible number of galaxies. And if each one of them has several billion stars, that leads to something that I think you would be quite surprised. Just measuring the sand on the seashores around the Earth and just figuring out by taking some samples here and there, you can get a pretty good guess at how much sand is in the seashores on the Earth. And it turns out, surprisingly, that there are actually more stars in the universe than there is sand on this planet. In fact, there are 10,000 stars for every grain of sand that exists on this planet. And so when Abraham was promised that his offspring would be as the stars of heaven, that's a very, very big number. And not just a few thousand that he could see with the naked eye. And just I want to add one other little thing in here, because astronomy was not my field of physics, it was molecular and atomic physics. And I found something very intriguing, that if you take a drop of water, in fact, to show you how marvelous the Lord's creation is, if you took 10 drops of water, not extra big ones, just regular drops, and counted the number of H2O, the number of water molecules in those drops, you would get a number equal to all the stars in the universe. So this is how the marvelous things that God has created, from the infinitely small to the infinitely large, involves a tremendous amount of matter. So what raises the next question? We can have all these stars, it doesn't mean much if there's life elsewhere in the universe, if there aren't planets. And when I was in school in the 50s, it was believed by astronomers that Earth was just unique, that there was almost no way that it could be

planets circling stars and everything, that it's something very unusual here. Well, what's happened with these new telescopes, and very surprisingly, they're finding that virtually every star system has planets revolving around it. And to me, it makes kind of sense, because sometimes as human beings, we kind of think that the whole universe was just made for us, and that can't be right, otherwise there wouldn't have been angels. So let's think about this a little more. What scientists have done is measure distant planets revolving around distant stars. And they've been looking for planets about the sides of Earth so that the gravity is about the same, and having liquid water. Now, of course, all this presumes that this is the only kind of life you can have. And it's biblically, it's probably not a bad assumption because we know that the angels look like us. And if a planet is in the right zone, so the distance from its star doesn't overheat it, and it has liquid water, it's called the Goldilocks zone. In other words, just right. And by September 2020, astronomers have identified 24 super-habitable planets, meaning almost identical to Earth, from more than 4,000 confirmed exoplanets that they've been able to see in nearby stars. And we know now that there are maybe as many as 6 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, according to new estimates with the James Webb Telescope. That's a fantastic, fantastic find. So he says to Abraham, I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your

seashore. So let's think a moment. Was that just poetry? Well, if it is, the explicitness of the promise seems kind of strange. And if this is true, we know right away that there's no way that this planet could take in a number of people that size. So what does that kind of mean? It means we need to think about this. Maybe God's efforts in promising to Abraham that he would inherit, his people would inherit, such a large number of these people would inherit. If we don't take that as figurative and take it as literal, then these people have to be dispersed places other than Earth. So what has happened? Scientists now realizing some years back that there may be a lot of other Earth-like planets around set up what was called SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. And they have been searching for some time now, hoping that this intelligence would put out some kind of signals that would advertise that they're there and they're intelligent. Now, we know that there must be life elsewhere in the universe because of the angels. That's for certain. And we know that Jesus Christ is somewhere else. And we probably also know that Elijah is somewhere else. So it doesn't surprise Bible scholarships that life doesn't exist just on Earth. But the idea of intelligent life somewhere, the cynic might say there's not real proof that there's intelligent life even on this planet. And given the wars and incredible, horrible things that have happened on planet Earth and just in my lifetime, you know, living through World War Two, Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, Afghanistan War, you would think that there was not a lot of intelligence on this planet and making this a comfortable and nice place to live. So what does the Birmingham amended Statement of Faith actually say about the future? Now, I'm just going to look at two clauses, which are explicit. Clause 19 and 30. Okay, clause 19 says that God will set up a kingdom in the Earth, which will overthrow all others and change them into the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ. That's pretty explicit. And then 30 says at the end of the thousand year reign of Christ and the redeemed from the first resurrection, that the government will then be delivered up by Jesus to the Father, who will manifest himself as the all in all sin and death had been taken out of the way and the race completely restored to the friendship of the deity. Now, I've read that many times over the years, and I don't think I've thought about it enough, because what saying is, you know, we all have pretty good image of the Millennium Age as a place of cleaning up the Earth morally and physically. But what does it mean to be all in all? Because Christ will reign forever on Earth, but he's going to turn over the Earth to God for some greater purpose. And what might that be? Well, the BASF doesn't say much about it. And yet, a thousand years, the Millennium is a very, very small time compared to eternity. It's comparing the thousand years to eternity is like comparing a speck of dust to the size of the universe. So I think the Bible gives us actually, I believe the Bible gives us some sufficient hints at what we possibly might be doing for billions of years. And I'd like to present some suggestions of that. And I want to emphasize this is this is my thinking and suggestion is it's not dogma at all, because I don't think that God could have revealed in detail what would happen after the Millennium, because given how long the Bible has been in existence, I don't think anyone until maybe our times have had a sufficient view of what the universe was even all about. I mean, you know, up until the 16th, 17th century, people thought the universe was just a canopy over the Earth. So what does the Bible say? What is the prime directive? What is God's purpose? Now, science might answer a lot of things about how things work, but it can never answer why we are here and what is God's plan. And I think this is a really key verse in the scriptures, number 14 and 21. The Lord says, as truly as I live and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord. And it's repeated again in Habakkuk. So here's my suggestion. I suggest the Lord God, having created the vast universe, did not do that just for our benefit here on Earth. It is entirely conceivable that his ultimate goal is to fill the entire universe with his glory. And that makes a lot of sense to me because otherwise the entire universe that we know out there becomes a very sterile place.

As for life elsewhere in the universe, while scientists search for it, as I have said just earlier in this talk, we can be pretty sure that there is life elsewhere in the universe. So let's consider what could be the role of the redeemed in the millennial age and afterward. OK. Jesus, in correcting the doubters of the resurrection, he explained to them this very simple passage in Matthew 22.30 and in Mark 12.25. He says, we're in the resurrection. They neither marry nor given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven. Now, I just want to focus on that last part, but are like the angels in heaven. So what are the angels in heaven like? So if we will be like the angels in heaven as the redeemed, then we need to find out in the scriptures just exactly what do angels do. OK. First observation is that angels look like us.

Over and over again, angels introduced are introduced

in the way that there's no differentiation between them and other people. Same height, range, same bodybuild, same general features. And what do the angels do? Well, in Genesis 1.27, we're told, so God or the Elohim created man in his own image and the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Now, I want to point this out, although they haven't pointed out in any detail anywhere else. But the fact that he says that male and female are made in the image of the angels means that there's probably angels who have that kind of appearance also, even though most of the time, all the time that's actually revealed in scripture, it happens to be a male. So I'm just going to say it suggests this passage suggests that angels can also be female, though not specifically named in scripture. And I'm not saying this to be politically correct. I think this passage is pretty clear when he says male and female, he created them in their image. Now, we know that God alone has immortality, Yahuwah, who dwells in unapproachable light, who no one has ever seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. So we cannot be in the image of exactly of God. And again, proof that angels don't look any different than we do, he says, let brotherly love continue, Hebrews 13 and 2, do not neglect to show hospitality to the strangers for their boys, some have entertained angels unawares. So for that to have happened, they must be indistinguishable in any blatant way that would say, oh, somebody shows up my door, it's an angel. OK, another observation about angels were the agents that made our planet habitable and created the multitude of life forms. So they were the moving force behind God's power. In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth, the earth was without form and void and darkness over the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water. And God said, let there be light. And there was light, et cetera, et cetera. And it's down to verse 26 and 27 of Genesis 1. Then God let us make man in our image after our likeness. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. So male and female were made in the image of the Elohim. That's pretty, pretty explicit. And so God's power worked through the angelic host. And I think that's pretty reasonable because a lot of work to do here. And God is the creator of all things. But if I'm creating something or doing something in a lab, I might have other assistance to carry out the detailed work.

And so to me, for my kind of thinking and the way I usually work, this makes perfect sense. Okay, observation three, angels learned sin from experience and were redeemed at some time, somewhere in the past and made immortal. Because remember, I was very explicit that God only has immortality. So the angels could not have been created as sort of robots, you know, they went through an experiential period in which they learned what sin was all about. Genesis 3 and verses 4 and 5, but the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, but God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So the Elohim knew good and evil. And the only way we can know that is through experience, because if you're a robot, you have no way of making those kinds of moral judgments. Genesis 3 22, the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. So that's pretty even a more explicit statement of the Elohim or the angels knowing sin through experience. Okay, another observation about what angels do, they nurture and protect life until a society matures. And there are many examples of this in the scriptures. I'm just going to point out a couple. He says, behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice. Do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him. So again, you see the Lord God using angels to carry out the actual work. And in second Kings 19 and 35, he says, that night the angel Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when the people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. Okay, so another observation about angels is that the angels shepherd God's plan and protect individuals who are key to carry out the Lord's prime directive. And I think this is also very explicitly shown in scripture. Genesis 16, seven through 10 says, the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to the shore. And he said, Hagar, servant of Saria, where have you come from and where are you going? She said, I am fleeing from my mistress Saria. The angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her. The angel also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude. And so, you notice two things here, by the way. The angel was sent by God on a direct mission to make sure that Saria is taken care of. But here, there's no, there's nothing saying your offspring will be like the sun's, the stars in the heaven or the sand at the seashore. It just says there's going to be a large multitude. So that promise was not expanded to Saria and her descendants. So, another example, I think we're familiar with Acts 5, 19 through 21, and I won't bother reading this, you can see it on your screen, is when the angel came to free the apostles from prison. God's plan had to be protected. And if Peter and the apostles had died in prison, the preaching and the spread of the gospel would have taken a serious blow. And so, the angels don't just create at the beginning, but they actually nurture life so that God's plan is carried forward towards his prime directive of filling the earth with his glory. Another thing that is pretty obvious in scriptures is that angels can travel around the universe to perform as needed. And there's several examples of this. Daniel 12 and 1. At that time, Chalorize Michael, the great prince who is in charge of your people, he's called the Archangel Michael in Jude and in Revelation. And I think this is important because if you're going to organize work, it's reasonable that there'd be, even among the angels, leaders. So an archangel, what is called a chief angel, apparently have ranks, which is logical, is one is going to organize their work. It's not just done helter skelter. It's very well planned what God wants to accomplish. And similarly, we know about Gabriel, another archangel who has mentioned a number of times in scripture. I think this tells us something else, too. You notice Michael is mentioned in Daniel, and then he's mentioned again in Revelation, and there's five or six hundred years between those two mentions. Same with Gabriel, mentioned in Daniel, and again, four or five hundred years later. And so it shows us quite clearly that the angels are

not bound by the same physical limitations on their bodies that we are. Another thing that I found pretty interesting thinking about this is the angels aren't robots. They have discretion in making decisions. So God sends them out on a task and empowers them to do something, but he doesn't manipulate them like a bunch of puppets. I don't believe that we in the Kingdom Age and beyond that we're going to be just a bunch of automatons. And that's often a view presented in a classical organized religion, but that can't possibly be true. So let's take a couple of quick looks at this where the angels have discretion. Genesis 18, 20 to 33. And I'll just read this key part. Then Abraham drew near and said, Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? And we find Abraham and the angel disgusting. What was incessant is the bottom line, saving Sodom and Gomorrah or saving the righteous from Sodom and Gomorrah. And I think when they came, it wasn't their job was to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, but explicitly who to be saved at Adam. That was something to discuss with Abraham. Again, first Kings 22, 19 and 21 is really intriguing. Micaiah continued. He says to prophet Micaiah, Therefore hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the multitudes of heavens standing around him on his right and on his left. And the Lord said, Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there? One suggested this and another that. Finally, his spirit came forward and stood before the Lord and said, I will entice them. So it seems like God presented something, you know, I want him to be enticed. How are you going to go about it? How do you want to do it? So apparently it's almost like the angels were having a brainstorming session on how to carry out God's task. And there are other examples of this in Daniel chapter 10, and a few other hints in revelation. So I suggest if God's grace, we are granted eternal life. Jesus said we will be like the angels. Then all seven observations that I just showed, and probably even other attributes that I haven't thought about will certainly apply to us. If we are the redeemed. And as you go to this incredible passages in 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15 is probably the best proof text in the entire Bible that shows that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the dead is a fact, because the Bible doesn't leave it to just hearsay. They spell out explicitly the witnesses that verified Christ's resurrection. And these witnesses had nothing to gain from it. In fact, one of the reasons I think that they were allowed to suffer and die in many cases, horrible deaths was to prove that their testimony was absolutely honest.

So the chapter then goes on to say, what happens after the

Millennium period is over? He says, then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom of to God the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power. So this seems to be the main objective of the Millennium period to destroy sin, morally and physically. What has happened on this planet? I'm sorry, and what has and is happening on this planet? So he says, for he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. But when God has put all things in subjection under his feet, but when it says all things are put in subjection, it is plain that he has accepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him that God may be all in all. So that all who live on earth at that time after the second resurrection will be immortals and they will be like the angels. And I submit that my suggestion is that they're going to be like the angels. They're going to follow all of those seven observations that I previously made about what the angels are like and what they do and what their tasks are. So let's take a look at some exciting things that have done with astronomy in the last, mostly in the last decade. This is an artist concept based on feedback from

telescopic observations of a planet called Kepler 1649 and what it might look like. It's a rocky planet with water. It revolves around one sun, a red dwarf, which has about the same temperature range that we have here on earth and liquid water exists. So if we're assuming that if there is life to be made elsewhere in the universe, and we're part of the angelic host to work in accomplishing that, that this kind of planet will be a place that will be made habitable at some point. I believe the Lord God intends to fill the universe with his glory, and it will be the task of the immortal redeem to participate with the angelic host to carry out this task over billions of years, and the redeem will not be bored. Given how large the universe is and how many potential habitable planets there are in the universe, it is clear that God is prepared from Abraham's offspring. And by offspring, I mean all those who of faith have been grafted into those promises of Abraham, that there will be work to be done. And God willing, we may be a part of that exciting task. We will not be sitting around doing nothing. This will fulfill literally the promise made to Abraham in Genesis 22 17. He says, I will surely bless you. And I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand is on the seashore. So I'm asking you to take that verse literal. And I know that's about to swallow, but what we found out in recent years from astronomy is filling the universe with God's glory is indeed something that will take the work of enough people that number as much as the stars in the heavens. And I always love this verse, and I'm sure you've all thought of this already. First Corinthians 2 9 and 10, he says, but as it is written, what no eye has seen nor heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those who love him, these things God has revealed to us through the spirit for the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.