Exhibit G

Death of the Wicked

Our study tonight covers a unique event that makes us quite distinct, and gives us an opportunity to react to some of the more blistering concepts about what God does with the wicked.  We study specifically the events of the millennium between the 2^nd and 3^rd coming of our Lord.  If you have studied the materials that have been suggested, you get the sweep of the events at the coming of our Lord.  The wicked are consumed by the majesty of His presence, and for a thousand years Satan and his cohorts are confined to this earth in a rather chaotic state.  In fact the state of the earth at that time is very similar to the way it was before creation week, a ball of mud without form and void in the book of Genesis. 

During this time the saints, among other things are judging the wicked, at least on the surface that what it appears to be.  And then with Christ endorsing what they do they meet out the punishment that is to be administered to the wicked.  At the end of this thousand years Christ comes and resurrects the wicked they behold His coronation, then the judgment is executed upon them and then occurs this big barbeque in the sky, which has been described that way.

We have some real problem here.  We have a problem first of all with way God deals with Satan.  Also there are problems with the way God deals with the saints during this time and what he expects of them, and also what he does with the wicked.

With respect to Satan, doesn’t it seem rather strange that God would take the old boy and rub his nose in the dirt?  What could be gained by confining him in such a state of misery for a thousand years?  Is God sadistic?  What can be accomplished?  Is anyone going to change their mind?  It certainly is not going to be salutatory for Satan and his colleagues.  Are the saints supposed to enjoy the misery that they see on this earth?  What about the saints during this time?  Doesn’t it seem strange that they would get some kind of satisfaction out of meting out the punishment to this group?  Is this now that they are going to get their pound of flesh?  Is God facilitating some kind of sadistic tendency for the saint?

Then horror of all horrors God resurrects the wicked so that in a short time he can burn them.  What in the name of righteousness does this do for the kingdom of God?  Is sin such that God has to impose some kind of suffering to make it worse?

Some Christians, more recently the Anglican church have reacted, justifiably I think against this idea of eternal torment of the wicked.  They have pointed out over a number of years that it is incongruous with God to cause anyone to suffer eternally.  But we really haven’t solved the problem.  We proclaim that God is not a sadistic person in causing individuals to suffer throughout eternity in this eternal burning like some have described in very lurid terms.  But have we really solved the problem if we say, well God doesn’t make them burn for eternity, just for several days.  God is just a little bit not a lot sadistic.  But the problem is still there.  What can God accomplish by burning them at all?  

Of course the Bible describes this burning in such horrible terms.  Isaiah and Jeremiah speaks about it, and we have a terrible description in the book of Revelation.  What kind of a God is this who rubs Satan’s nose in the dirt and requires his people to determine how much the wicked should burn?  And then, rather than letting sleeping dogs lie, resurrects them and makes them uncomfortable and requires  them to burn, granted not for eternity, but for a while.

What does all this tell us about God?  I would like to consider those three issues:  What do we learn about Him when we see the way he deals with Satan, the saints and the wicked.  I would like to start with the wicked first because I think that there are elements in this issue that will help us to understand the other issues. 

Why does God resurrect the wicked?  Is anything to be gained by bringing them into some further misery and then watching them burn? Is there any way that the saints get delight from this?  What kind of people would they be if they could enjoy this?  What does it do for God?  Doesn’t it seem very strange?  Everyone has made their choice.  Does God somehow end some kind of horrible picture of sin that didn’t already exist?  I thought that Christ depicted the awfulness of sin.  What would be advantage of this burning?  If that’s what makes it so horrible, if that is what the wicked are to fear, then I would have to say that Christ really didn’t suffer the full impact of sin.   We are told regarding Him that his mental anguish was so great that His physical pain was hardly felt. 

What could God accomplish by this?  Now really, if you think of it in this respect.  Although most Adventists tend to gloss over this.  They secretly feel uncomfortable for we don’t like to make things bad for God.  But this is the way it looks to many people.  I think sometimes we have not gone far enough in our thinking and really solved some of these major issues people are asking.  Because on first glance, this period does not really look good for God.

We had a rough time with the plagues, but I hope you saw some of the possibilities of a loving God operating in the way He has operated, but what are we going to do with the millennium?  Why does God resurrect the wicked? 

Let me suggest to you that we have not taken seriously the gift which God has given to the entire human race, and that is the gift of eternal life.  God has given and promised, and he is going to stick to his promise, eternal life to the human race.  We recognize that there are some who will refuse it, but it does not always appear at least in history, that the wicked have really refused it. 

The cases in point that are particularly troublesome is where God has had to take some rather dramatic action to cut the wicked short.  We find this all through the Old Testament.  One of the most notable examples is the flood.  We find God opening up the earth to swallow people.  We find Him in various kinds of judgments, seen also in the New Testament.  God seemed to be very harsh with people like Ananias and Sapphira. 

How do we square this with the statement that God kills no one?  I could justify God’s seemingly harsh actions on the basis that if God is to sit back on His throne and do nothing, the world would be engulfed in selfishness.  Selfish persons would take over.  And in order to maintain contact with the human race, God has had at different points in human history to check sin and sinners from taking over.  If you think about that, if God is going to be a responsible God he cannot just sit back and let sin destroy the kingdom of God.  So He has had to take very firm and decisive action at different points in human history.

But how does this square with the notion that God destroys no one?  We could argue that God sees the choices that they have made and that He recognizes that there is nothing more He can do with him.  So he would be justified in removing them from the scene.  But they didn’t have a choice, at least it doesn’t appear that way.  They didn’t say, “God take back your eternal life I don’t want it.”  If God is not going to appear arbitrary or destructive He must be very careful that no one could ever surmise that He has really ever destroyed anyone.

But no one is really dead.  They sleep and are unconscious, but no one has really died in the eternal sense, at least of human beings who have any moral accountability, they sleep.  Any action that God has taken to remove someone from the scene of action is simply putting them to sleep, not destroying them. 

Thus God has an obligation to restore them, to wake them up again.  The only way anyone will ever be lost is that they in their own free choice say, “God I don’t want it.”  The universe has not yet heard that testimony.  It becomes very important that if God really desires human freedom, the freedom of His creatures, every free moral creature must have the last word, and God is going to give it to them.  This goes for the wicked as well as the righteous.                 

So He brings them to life again or more accurately wakes them, and in effect the implication is you can live as long as you want. Every one will come to a moment of realization where you recognize that it is not worth living just with this shell, but not with a context of love.  If they get to the place where they realize that the real hell is to be alone and no one to love, and have no one to love them;  when they get to that realization and tell God they would rather be dead and annihilated and ask God to that for them,  at that moment God will exercises mercy and transforms them matter back into energy, no one will ever say that He was arbitrary and destroyed them. 

But here we have another problem.  What kind of choice do they have if God is going after them with a blowtorch?  Big deal, He raises them up and waits until they ask out and he goes after them with a flame-thrower.  I could put myself in that place and if things got hot enough you would start yelling.  What kind of show is this that people start singing, frying and sizzling then say they want out.  That is not much freedom.

Right here we have made some rather tragic misunderstandings about the nature of this fire.  The classic statement that unlocks this particular mystery about this fire is Hebrews 12:29,  ”Our God is a consuming fire.”  

I have gone through the Bible and collected numerous passages that describe the eternal nature of this fire.  There is a very good reason that it will never go out.  That is because our God is a consuming fire.

We have depicted in terms of this lake of fire not simply something that refers to the lighting of a match.  Now I do not want to infer that this is not something quite specific and physical.  I believe it is something quite more than, and quite different from anything we know.  The majesty of God, who really knows it?  I suppose in term of energy we might think of some parallel we might think of some fission or fusion, or a great big explosion of an “H” bomb.  But I think that falls short, although it reflects in some degree the fantastic energy that is resident in God.   But the fire that is spoken of is not something that  is going to lick up toenails and fingernails all in small pieces.  It’s something that is going to go phuff. 

If God ever unveils himself and comes out of hiding, and he wants to do this, it puts Him in a very uncomfortable state.  To be in hiding when His very nature is to communicate face to face.  But when he does come out of hiding, He will be to those who will receive Him their sun and shield, and this energy will be the very source of life to them.  For those not ready to receive Him, because they are not like Him and see Him as He is, they will be consumed very quickly from matter back into energy.  But this fire is not a punitive punishing fire.  God is recreating the earth.

You ask, what is happening to the wicked at this time.  We will come to that in a moment, but first must look at one other factor. Keep in mind the nature of this fire and the activity that takes place in the earth is a rearrangement of the molecular structure very similar to what God did during creation week.            

You ask about the awful language that describes all this awful burning and horribleness.  I would refer you back to the comment I made in regard to the third angel’s message.  I would remind you that in a certain period of Israel’s history, outside of the city they had a manmade furnace, a great big garbage pit in the Valley of Hinnom.  The Greek referred to this as “Gehenna,” a word transliterated from the Hebrew.  This word refers to “Hades” or “Hell.” 

What they did is throw all of their junk in this great big pit.  Anyone who didn’t belong or were not part of the Hebrew economy, or were in some way thrown out for their crimes, they threw without proper burial into this garbage pit.  Now you can understand the seriousness of this pit related to putrefaction and sanitation.   So they kept this fire burning all the time, night and day.  The prophets has all kinds of description of this burning and likened to this process at the end of time, including John the Revelator. 

What was horrible about it for the Jew was not something physical.  But for any of the children of Israel to be thrown out onto this pit, meant that they lost their identity and they no longer belonged.  As far as the kingdom of God was concerned they lost their individuality, and nothing could be worse to a Jew.  You recall they had a great interest in genealogy and keeping their family heritage in tact. Nothing could be worse than to be a nothing. 

God allows the prophets to use the most graphic, poignant language, physical terms to create such an awful picture that it would depict the emotions that a Jew would experience when they thought of losing their identity.  This was the same as complete annihilation.  No proper burial, desecrated, brought back to nothing.

This is much of the language used in Revelation in describing this lake of fire.  Taken from the colloquialism of that time, describing the horrendous state that would occur.  You need not be offended if we take this symbolically.  We have to do this with much of the book or Revelation.  We certainly don’t insist in Revelation 20 that the chain wrapped around Satan is literal.  We refer to it as the chain of circumstance.  We have no problem with that. 

If we are going to be consistent we have to recognize the nature of language and what it points to, and that all the description of this physical process is describing something more than just a physical process.  It is describing the worst thing that can ever happen to a person.  That is, to be completely severed from God and His people, complete annihilation and loss of identity.  Man was made in the image of God and having an identity and individuality.  Now those who are not a part of the kingdom of God are reduced to nothingness.        

Now lets pick up the pieces of this problem.  What is God doing with the wicked?  I say first of all that He has awakened them so that they might have a choice as to their future.  Now God knows by the kind of lives that they have lived what they will choose.  But He is not going to expect anyone at this point to take Him at is word.  He desired in the beginning that they should take Him at His word.  But once they failed to trust Him, He must never again allow the possibility to again arise that He be misunderstood.

  He is going to let everyone see.  Everyone will have their final say as to their future, the wicked included.  What He must do is to arrange a setting, which is the natural result or consequences of what they have chosen.  And what have they the wicked chosen?  Separateness, alienation, to do their own thing, to live by their own whims, to be their own little island, separate from God.

At first when they are resurrected they are confused, because Satan walks among them and tells them he was the great prince of righteousness and that he has resurrected them.  He tells them that his throne has been usurped and that he is going to with them to take over the kingdom and that he will be their ruler. 

They will probably have some misgivings about this as they remember what happened during the 7 last plagues.  But they are in panic and out of this desperation, and having really not much control over themselves anyway, and having lost their freedom, they are once again sucked into the designs of Satan.  They choose to believe a lie. 

So they prepare to take the New Jerusalem.  As they march upon the city, they are arrested as Christ takes His place upon the throne high and lifted up above the walls of the city.  All eyes are fastened on Him and this forward military movement stops.  Christ has been crowned King. 

Suddenly through some process we do not understand, everyone sees a great panorama filling the sky.  Everyone is made to see all the major issues of the great controversy.  Each one flashes back and sees the part that they played just as it happened.  Nothing is added or taken away.

Then the horrible realization of what they are going to miss out on hits them.  What they have lost living for the moment.  They have sacrificed a glorious long haul.  Satan in one last frantic effort moves among them and urges them to take the city.  But now he is completely unmasked.  They all turn upon him and themselves, and would destroy themselves on the spot except God saves them from themselves. 

How does He do this?  He brings another dramatic event to capture their attention, which is the recreation of the earth prepared for the righteous.  He does something very similar to that which He did during the creation week. 

This serves to place all the wicked in a somewhat meditative mood, isolating them from their colleagues, their partners in sin.  And now they have complete aloneness and a sense of alienation.  This is the most awful thing that could ever happen to them.  The anguish that they experience, described figuratively as long as their flesh is in tact, they suffer.   But what do they suffer?  Something approximating what our Lord suffered on the cross.  The realization of being separated and being alone, not having anyone to love, and no one to love them is the awful consequence of rejecting the Lord.

They obviously cannot be with the saints that would not be fair to the saints.  God would not do that.  But they cannot even be with each other.  What is it like to live with someone who will destroy you?  The only thing that God can do is to isolate them.  But this is what they chose. 

Now they see the majesty of God used in a very constructive way to recreate the earth as it was before sin entered.  To see this massive majesty, this power, this display, creatively creating the abode of the righteous.  The anguish gets to them like it has never gotten to them before.  God has added nothing.  He just lets them be.  This is the wrath of God, a very loving thing.  He has simply accepted as Paul states in Romans 1, that having suppressed the truth and unrighteousness, when there is nothing more that He can do for them, he must acknowledge their choice and let them alone.

They get to the point where they realize two things.  1) that they don’t fit.  They just don’t belong in this universe that God is preparing.  They don’t fit there, but they can’t get along with their fellow sinners either.  They would be at each others throats.   Being terribly alone they recognize the impossibility of their situation.  They also recognize something else.  2) That God is a wonderful person.  In this recognition they are encouraged to ask for mercy.  They know that they can get it.  When they get to that moment of truth they ask God for mercy and God says, “I still love you, but there is nothing more I can do.  Your condition is incurable.”  But the moment they ask God then does the most loving thing He can do.  For that individual He unveils His majesty and they are completely annihilated and matter is transformed back into energy and they cease to be. 

Why do some take longer than others?  For the simple reason that their habits have been more entrenched.  It takes some longer because of their blindness to come to this moment of truth.  God must let them be until they ask for mercy.  They can have it any time they want.  They can live as long as they want.  God would have to prepare something special for them if they chose to live, but God knows that they are not going to want that.  He is a very perceptive person and all he has to do is to leave them alone which is what they have chosen.  This is always the ultimate end of selfishness.  They have what they asked for and cannot stand it and ask for mercy.

God does something for them that He did not even do for His Son Jesus.  Remember when Christ got to the point where He would have died Thursday night, the Father sends an angel to strengthen Him so that He might suffer on.  Christ is the only person that has ever lived or will ever live who suffered to full total consequences of sin.  God did not cut that short in righteousness.  Sin exhausted itself in Christ.  God wanted the universe to see this in its totality. 

Jesus did what He did so that no one else will ever have to experience this kind of rejection.  At any point where the sinner asks for mercy He will receive it.  Not so with Christ.  When he asked, If it be possible let this cup pass from me, but the Father did not honor that request, but sent an angel to strengthen him to drink the cup.  But with the wicked, when their cup is full He will take it from them. 

Some must live longer than others simply because of their ingrained habit patterns, the entrenchment of their tendencies.  Satan must live longer than the others, not because God is arbitrary, but because it takes him longer to come to his moment of truth, where he realizes that God is a good person, and what he has chosen for himself is total misery.  He finally asks for mercy.  This mercy is the manifestation of God’s love for one last time. 

It is this love that elicits from the wicked their confession that God is good and merciful and all love.  They come to this point where they now recognize that God is this kind of person.   If they didn’t see Him that way then they would not expect to receive mercy.

This whole scenario tells us something very significant about sin and about God.  It tells us first of all that sin is so bad that God could not add anything to it. If anything, He takes something away when he gives them mercy, which means he shortens their suffering.  It would be a horrible thing for God to allows them to live past their realization.  God adds nothing, He subtracts.  If we have the concept that the wicked have to suffer something Christ didn’t suffer, that raises to many problems.

If we think of sin in the final destruction of sinners as essentially something physical rather than figurative, where somehow the flesh is consumed away, piece by piece, that trivializes sin.  That is the same as saying that sin really is not so bad, that God has to somehow show by His reaction that it’s horrible and that He has to add to it to make it worse, but that isn’t the case.  If anything God takes away from it because it is so awful, doing this when He exercises mercy to the wicked.

Secondly it tells us about the love of God.  He is not sadistic.  He is not resurrecting the wicked so that they can fry.  That is unlike God.  Certainly the saints could not see any justice, mercy and love in this kind of a process.  We see God being consistent with Himself right up to the final annihilation of the wicked.  We can admire and love that kind of God.  And yet, that does not in any sense trivialize the awfulness of sin. 

So why does God resurrect the wicked?  Because God desires nothing more, nothing higher than their freedom.  They must have the final word.  God gave them eternal life and He will never take it away from them, but they can refuse it.  They must do it in a way that it becomes patently evident to the universe that God has destroyed no one.  They have already destroyed themselves.  There would be no point to let them live on in just a shell of selfishness. 

So he gives them the final word and God respects His creatures.  He will respect their judgment when they concede what choices they really have.  In their condition in which they have become indeliblized in selfishness God know that they would never want to live beyond that moment of realization what it was really all about.  So He does this out of respect for the creature and out of respect to the on looking universe, that they might realize the real nature of sin.  

 WHAT ARE THE SAINTS DOING:

            What are the saints doing to judge in this process?  Why do they have to decide how long a person has to suffer?  In GC 661 is a very interesting comment about this.  “They with Christ (Christ endorsing what they are doing, the implication is that they decide according to the their deeds how long they are going to suffer.  Now that might seem strange, but not at all when we take it in the context that I have been describing.)  If God grants mercy too soon before it represents the full choice the wicked, the controversy will always remain open.  There will always be to possibility that they really didn’t choose this God.  Being humans, they understand the character of the wicked.  Thus God will trust that the saints as they go over the records they will recognize that God must hold off long enough for the wicked to come to this realization.  If you cut it too short it might make it look like you have destroyed them. 

          I imagine that might be very antsy, that he wants to get it over very quickly and doesn’t want them to suffer.  But the saints say: “God, you have to be careful now, not too soon.”  Now of course God knows at what point this would be wise to do this.  But God is respecting the judgment of his creatures.  And it is as if the saints were saying, “God you have to wait.  We know you are a loving God, we know it pains you to see them suffer.” 

What loving parent will not suffer even when their children are bad.  Reflecting His own nature, God wants to get this over with.  He does not want suffering, so he trusts the saints judgment in this matter.  It will take so and so this long to come to the moment of truth.  If  it is too long, then God would be in the position of allowing unnecessary suffering.  He wants everyone to understand that there is the right moment for Him to step in and exercise mercy.

What is that point? It’s according to their past deeds on earth and the indelibleness of those habits and works.  That is why some last longer, and the saint pass judgment, not in the sense that the wicked have to suffer, but to recognize what God is doing and that He will not step in too soon or wait too long, but do it just right for every person.  In other words the saints validate what God is going to do before He takes action.  There is nothing arbitrary about God.  He exposes himself to the whole universe and accepts their judgment as to how He should function.

But there is something else the saints are doing during this time.  Their also validating not only what God has done in the lives of the wicked, but also in their own lives.  We have this marvelous statement in the Desire of Ages, “If we could see the end from the beginning, we would choose to have God lead us just in the way He has led us.”  God even says to us, “I give you the final word.”

I have often thought that when I come to the end of my time and look back over my life, I would say: “God that is exactly what I would have done my self, had I know what you know and had been in a position to understand.”  I kind of feel safe if I can make that kind of judgment.  That’s the way I want it to be.  This is exactly what God is going to do for all of us at the time we are talking about.

We must recognize that God will be judged as to how he relates to the wicked, the saints and to Satan and his cohorts.  The saints will be able to look back through all those mysterious moments when it didn’t seem like anything made sense and why God did what He did or allowed in their lives.  God will say, “You take a look and tell me what you think.”  During this thousand years, the saints will get to the position that they understand.  I can imagine that they will say. “God that’s fantastic, that’s exactly what I would have done.  You couldn’t have done a better job by me.” 

This ought to give us encouragement, if everyone gets the final word on God, no one will be able to complain including Satan.  God must stand this kind of inspection.  You see everywhere along the way, even though now it might seem vague, God is doing nothing that you would not have done yourself if you knew what He knows, and if you were loving like Him and want to do the right thing.  You would do exactly what He did.  God will give the final word all of His creatures.

All this is part of the judgment.  Not only how He works with the wicked, but to see how He as worked in their own life.  All of the questions that they have had will be worked through, answered and so that they themselves will come to the conclusion that God is a fantastic person.  The whole universe will recognize the wisdom and love and the graciousness of God.  This thousand years permits that kind of judgment.

WHAT ABOUT THE DEVIL?

          We have not yet figured him out yet.  What the devil is he doing!  It seems like God is rubbing his nose in the dirt.  Not really.  Remember it’s according to their deeds.  Satan, in many respects has deceived himself more than any other being.  GC 660, “Because of his unceasing activity since his fall, he has banished reflection.”  How is Satan ever going to get to the moment of truth when he has been around for so long and has been malicious and self centered as to boggle the imagination?  How can a person like this ever come to his moment of truth.  That will take more time.  So in part the thousand years for Satan and his colleagues is a conditioning process.  He has banished reflection, had blinders on. 

Through the creation of these circumstances God takes the blinders off.  After all, Satan must have the final word about his fate. Obviously it will take longer for him and his buddies.  God give him this opportunity during the thousand years to take of the blinders. 

There is another interesting thing happening during this time.  In Revelation 20:1-3 where it speaks of the bottomless pit, the Greek word is “abusos.”  We get our word abyss from this.  In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, in Genesis 1:2 where it says, “And the earth was without form and void,” (The stuff was there but God hadn’t formed it yet.)  “And darkness was on the face of the deep.”  That word “deep” is the word “abusos.”  The same word as the “abyss” or “bottomless pit.”

In the book Great Controversy we are told that this earth will be brought back partially to its original state.  Now there is something significant about this.  In the beginning, Satan became jealous of Christ in terms of his role as Creator.  We are told that he wanted the power to create.  We are not told too much else about this, but in putting all these passages together, which I did some years ago, there was something that lit up like a neon sign to me.  I thought, “I bet God gave him a chance.”  I have no evidence for this but circumstantial evidence seems consistent with what we know, but would sort of fills in the picture as I will explain in just a moment as to what might have happened.  I thought,  “I’ll bet that God had this ball of mud He had created.”  Satan wanted to be creator.  He really couldn’t create so God had to give him this ball of mud.  So God said, “OK Satan, it’s yours, do what you want with it.”  What did it look like when he got through?  It was “without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”  It was an abyss, a mess.  What did the Creator do?  He stepped in artistically and creatively.  I think that God had fun during the whole creation week, delighting the whole universe.  With ease he fashioned this ugly icky ball of mud into something that was fantastically beautiful.

The design and order we see in creation week is fantastic.  I have suggested to you before in a study about the Sabbath that the first week in design and preparation antedates the fourth day.  That is, the 1^st day prepares for the 4^th.  The 2^nd day prepares for the 5^th.  The third day prepares for the 6^th. This is a very interesting design.  Of course the 7^th day is the grand celebration of what it was all about.  “Let’s get together and celebrate.”  In fact before man ever started to work he had a celebration with God.  The universe must have been fantastically ecstatic.  Job tells us that all the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy.  They must have been jumping up and down with excitement.  They may have had eons to see what Satan would do.  By the way, this might give us some interesting keys about the age of earth.

God took this abyss and made it into something beautiful. Satan couldn’t hack it.  There is another point about the millennium.  Might God give Satan one last chance to create?  Here he is for a thousand years with his angelic cohorts, and what does the earth look like when he gets through?   The same way, and abyss just like the way it was when he left it the first time.  What does the Creator do again?  Our God who is a consuming fire, a God of majesty and power, steps in again like He did in the beginning and then recreates the earth as it was before sin.  He does not destroy the elements. 

When the Bible says, “Behold I make all things new.”  The Greek word for make is “kinos,” not “metos.”  Metos means something new that has never before existed.  Kinos means new in quality.  God does something very similar to what He did in the first place with this ball of mud.  The elements are OK but they have been twisted up.  So what does God have to do?  Her rearranges and restructures them.  The earth is in tremendous upheaval described as fire belching all over the place.  He is doing something very creatively.  It might be another week just like He did in the first place.      

Of course this will be a very impressive scene to watch for all the righteous as well as the wicked.  This has significance in terms of what God is doing to Satan.  Satan gets another crack at creation.  If he wants to build his kingdom and restructure and be creator he has his chance, but like in the beginning, he can’t do it.  This helps Satan to realize that he can’t do it.  He has never come to that moment of truth.  He has never admitted, probably not even to himself because he has banished reflection.  He had blocked reality.  So God gives him one last shot at reality, another opportunity to do what he has wanted to do all along, but he can’t do it.  And once again the Creator steps in.

And so we see that with the wicked, the saints and with Satan God is a very wonderful person.  There is so much wisdom in the way He has handled this controversy.  He will show that he is not a mean, vindictive tyrant who is going to raise someone to sizzle.  I think we have trivialized sin with such a perception.  The language doesn’t even demand it.  If we really get in and understand these expressions it all makes sense.  In no way am I trying to allegorize this.  But I think this particular scheme makes a tremendous amount of sense.  I think it does justice to the language and gives us the real picture of sin.  But more important than anything I think it vindicates the character of God.

This is the glorious picture of God at work during the millennium.  I think this also does justice to Adventist theology.  If you find some cracks in this, speak up or ask questions for further clarification. 

QUESTION: There is a text that says that “at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.”  Will that take place at the end of the millennium?   

ANSWER:  Yes!  I think it takes place even before.  I think there are several moments during the great controversy at least for the onlooking universe where acknowledgement is given to God.  There are several peaks that everyone gets before this time.  But the grand climax, when every knee shall bow (both wicked and saved) recognizes this.  I think this is particularly applicable at the end of the millennium at the coronation of Christ.

When Christ assumes His rightful place I believe the Father will be right there with Him.  The book GC indicates that the Father came with the Son three times.  Once when Jesus came, again when he comes back the second time, and again the third time at the end of the millennium.  But each time Christ is given preeminence because of His peculiar role in the controversy.  But the whole Godhead is represented there and every creature will recognize the wonderfulness of God.

QUESTION:  The Bible says that there will be those who have never been.  Where to they fit in with what you have been describing?

ANSWER:  I believe that this refers to individuals who never reach the stage of accountability, such as the severely retarded who never had any options, a choice to make.  It would seem that the only thing a loving God could do is to treat them as though they had never been.  They never reach any kind of personhood, or potential.  This is one of the tragedies of sin that there should be such blots on the creation, but what else can God do but treat them as though they never were. 

QUESTION:  How does God’s statement that, “Vengeance is mine”  fit into this picture?

ANSWER:  Ultimately God is going to, with the assent of everyone else, in the final analysis really direct traffic as it were.  He does not want us at points of passion and misunderstanding and self-centeredness to direct traffic.  He says, “You let me take care of that.”  If there is any repayment going to be, He will do it.  Of course He waits long enough for everyone to see, and says, “God we really don’t want you to anything more than what you have already done.  These are human terms used to help us grasp God.  We must be sympathetic to the limitations of human language.  God is saying, let me take care of the finer points and don’t feel you have to take things into your hand now.  When the saints get to the place where they really reflect the character of God, then He can make a little more sense to them.  Reflecting Him perfectly they really would not want God to take them apart by the seams.  That is why God wants us to leave it to Him.

QUESTION:  Why couldn’t a loving Heavenly Father forgive and recreate those who will be as though they never were and given them a new life?  They ended their life in suffering or suffered all of their lives in some way.

ANSWER: If you are you referring to those who never reached any kind of accountability, God cannot give character.  How would he do that?  In my view I don’t see why God couldn’t once again resume His creation.  I don’t see that once the controversy is settled, God might choose to again create and bring new beings into the universe.  As long as He has a universe that understands, so that the problem of sin will ever rise again.  The first time, He had no one to represent Him. 

But God cannot create character.  He can’t take someone who really never was a person and make them a person.  Freedom is a problem here.  He does not create character.  He only creates the options and possibilities for character.  If the possibilities were never there He cannot create it.     

QUESTION:  I have one question about the other created beings on other worlds looking on in awe and wonder and watching God His trick at the end of time.  Somehow I can’t erase from my mind the idea that the rest of the universe like spectators at a coliseum and God is on the floor doing His thing.  How can these other created beings on other planets and places look on and see what God is doing on the earth.  

ANSWER:  They are not just looking on they are participating.  This is where God has made everyone a participant.  The best way to understand is to get everyone involved.  All of these beings in some way are participating in this ongoing activity.  The best way to learn is not to simply stand apart and inspect.  They are actually being involved.  Angelic beings, ministering spirits, and the created beings are moving hither and yon.  All have a part in this controversy.

We are not told an awful lot about this except the implication is quite apparent that they are all involved in some degree.  It is my view that they are very much involved in the whole process, participating in some way of which I don’t know about.  1 Corinthians 4:9 tells us that we are a theatrical stage to the worlds and to angels and to men, But at the same time everyone is watching.  To participate they would have to be watching also, but more than that I believe they are involved because of the effect sin had upon the whole universe when Satan was cast out of heaven.  Ellen White states that she saw Trees of Knowledge of Good and Evil on each of inhabited planets in the universe and that after sin is finally eradicated and our earth is made new that they will be removed.

QUESTION:  In reading the Great Controversy it says that at the second coming all the wicked die.  If this is so, how can they observe his crowning?  Then too, I assume they could not look upon him because of his brightness. 

ANSWER:  The crowning is at the third coming when he comes and resurrects the wicked.  There is an interesting statement that Satan looks on and he sees another veiling of the majesty of the Father.  The Son has already had his majesty veiled.  That is why He can be the go between.  Although after the coronation He then unveils His majesty.  The Father is there but veiled so that they can see as much as they can without being cremated.  God has to make it possible for them to see in part.

QUESTION:  I would like to clear up my understanding on the point that God cannot create a character.  What exactly is a person and how is it that character is formed?

ANSWER: Character is formed by options and choices.  God creates a person with the possibility for individuality.  This means the person has the capacity to think.  Thinking means to transcend the momentary experiences, feelings and our touch with the past, present and the future.  We do this through symbols.  The capacity to think and do something about it and take rational responsibility makes up our identity or individuality.  A statement in the book Education says, “Every human being created in the image of God is endowed with the power akin to that of the Creator.”  Individuality is the power to think and do.  As a person sees that he can choose this or that, particularly where it comes to a moral option.  That is where one has opportunity to act either out of love or out of self-centeredness.  This is where character comes in.

If a person chooses to act in a loving way with the power that God gives them, that choice is what builds character.  Character is a composite of moral habit patterns, of moral choices, predispositions to respond in a certain way.  After a while a person who has lived a certain way for so long a period of time, either loving or to be selfish, like at the close of probation, it becomes crystallized into some moral predisposition.  Once a person has developed a strength or tendency it is unlike them to be anything else.  That is where character comes in.

QUESTION:  What is the carnal nature?

ANSWER:  The carnal nature refers to the tendency as the result of Adam’s sin.  Through the generations there is a genetic bias towards self-centeredness.  When we are born we come into the world with a tendency towards self-centeredness.  We cannot help it.  We are born that way.  That is why we have to be born again.  It is utterly impossible until a person is born again to be a loving person.  Now we can do loving things, although quite often that is done for unloving purposes or selfish desires.  “The heart deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it.”   We don’t even know it ourselves.  Many people claim that they can be good without God. But they are doing these things for very self-centered purposes and don’t even know it.

Now it is true that the Holy Spirit can flash at a given time with a given person and prompt them to do some loving thing.  There is no question about that, but this is not their tendency to be that way.  They are not that kind of person.  There can be flashes of loving action here and there but they are not really a loving person until they are born again.

The nature that we are born with refers to the fact that we have uncontrollable tendencies toward self-centeredness.  Now conditioning, education and good training can get us to do nice things.  We can develop a society that has at least a modicum of good behavior. But it does not make a person basically good.  They must be born again.

QUESTION:  Is this character thing kind of like we are pawns in a chess game between Satan and God, creating circumstances where a person is going to make a choice?

ANSWERS:  We are not pawns.  We get choices too.  I get to control some circumstances.  If God wants to make a move, we can foil it by our choices.  We are created with the capacity to make these kinds of choices.  I don’t this the chess analogy here is quite appropriate. 

QUESTION:  You make mention that after the wicked acknowledge God, through His mercy they will finally be liquidated and returned to energy.  Revelation tells us that “The smoke of their torment, ascends up forever and ever.”   Could you define that torment for me?

ANSWER:  That is from this barbecue pit outside of Jerusalem.  This is a colloquial expression.  This pit was a constant reminder that they had lost their identity.  It refers to a kind of eternal nothingness that it will always be. The language is taken from this city dump was kept burning night and day.  To the Jew that was a reminder, that was final.  When the smoke of their torment went up which indicated they as a nation had been annihilated into nothingness, which would be eternal.  This became an expression to typify that.

Dear hearts and gentle people, hope you don’t all believe the way I do.  You need to represent in God’s kingdom different points of view.  But I tell you this I will challenge you very militantly if you say we all have to be pressed into the same kind of thought form and all believe identical in every little detail.  You can’t press God into one person’s mind. 

Maybe if I were to give this same study a year or two from now, I might say something different.  As I get more light and understanding I change my ideas to meet the advancing light.  What I have presented what makes sense to me.  I have tried to as best I can to read everything that I can find on this subject.  I have given you a feeling from my study, comparing passages with passages of how things appear to me and come up with some kind of a composite whole.

 I believe truth must filter through personality recognizing that it might get warped in the process.  We all see truth per se.  We see it through our filters.  I don’t have a grasp of absolute truth.  I can only grasp it through my limited perception.  Lets hope we all don’t say the same thing, for if that happens we will stop thinking.