Now, we're starting to enter the holiday season and, hey, look, I know there's something wrong with me mentally. I may be the only person that does this. When the holiday season starts to come around, I start thinking about family members who've died and the brevity of life and I even kind of looked at my age and how long my life expectancy is and I counted how many Christmases I probably have left in case Jesus, you know, doesn't come back before I die.
Am I the only person that does that kind of weirdo stuff? Yes? Okay.
Well, at any rate, the holiday season, I don't know. It just makes me think about the brevity of life and the one thing that really sets Christians apart, those who know Jesus versus the rest of this world, is our view of death and dying. We have a totally different view of this. In fact, we talked to one of our leaders here at the church. He and his family just got back from Rome and I said, what part of Rome did you like the most?
And he said, man, call me crazy. We love touring the catacombs. Do you know where the catacombs in Rome are?
It's 600 miles of tunnels underneath the city where they buried people 2,000 years ago. And they buried pagans and Christians in those catacombs. And, you know, Adrian Rogers said, you can actually go and read the inscriptions of pagans who are buried in those catacombs and you can also read inscriptions of Christians who are buried in the catacombs. And the difference between the pagan inscriptions and the Christian inscriptions, it's crazy. Let me give you some examples of some pagan inscriptions they have found in the catacombs in those burial caves underneath Rome.
Here's one. Live for the present hour since there's nothing else after you die. Here's another pagan inscription. I lift up my hand against the gods who took me away at age 20 even though I had done no harm. Here's another pagan inscription on a grave. Traveler, curse me not as you walk by for I am in darkness and I cannot answer you.
Isn't that depressing? Now, look, here's some examples of some Christian inscriptions they have found in those same catacombs. Here's one. Here lies Marcion put to rest in the hope and the dream of peace.
Another one. Carried away by the angels, called away, he went in peace. Here's another inscription. Victorious in life, victorious in peace, victorious in Christ.
You see the difference between a pagan view of death and dying and a Christian view of death and dying? And in today's passage, we're going to look and get a glimpse as to how Jesus viewed death and dying. So we've been going through the gospel of Marc. We're now at Marc chapter 5, so turn there if you would.
And kind of pick up where we left off last week. Remember last week, a man named Jairus, he is a leader of the local synagogue. He's not a teacher. Every synagogue actually had leaders who would take care of the scrolls that were kind of administrators that would administrate the synagogue school. He's the leader of the synagogue there at Capernaum. He comes to Jesus and he says, Jesus, my little 12-year-old daughter, she's dying. Can you come and heal her? So Jesus drops everything, starts following this man, and about halfway there, remember this, the crowd is around him, a woman comes up, touches the hem of his garment, she is healed. Jesus stops and he has this conversation with her.
Remember that? Now, that delay was a deadly delay because in verse 35, it says this, while he was still speaking to her, messengers arrived from the home of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue. They told him, your daughter is dead.
There's no use in troubling the teacher now. But Jesus overheard them and said to him, don't be afraid, just have faith. Then Jesus stopped the crowd and wouldn't let anyone go with him except for Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. And when they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw much commotion and weeping and wailing. He went inside and asked, why all this commotion and weeping?
The child isn't dead, she's only asleep. The crowd laughed at him, but he made them all leave and took the girl's father and mother and his three disciples into the room where the girl was lying and holding her hand. He said to her, now this is in the Aramaic language.
Aramaic was kind of the common language of Jews in that part of Israel. He says to her in Aramaic, talitha kum, which means little girl, get up. And the girl who was 12 years old immediately stood up and walked around. They were overwhelmed and totally amazed. And Jesus gave them strict orders not to tell anyone what had happened. And then he told them to give her something to eat.
I love that. Now, let me give you a quick overview of the biblical view of death and dying. Now, I can't take you to a single chapter and verse. The Bible is one book, but it's really 66 books put together. And you kind of weave a thread that the Bible talks about death and dying.
And here's pretty much what you come up with. Now again, I don't want to get into biblical cosmology today and all that, but let me give you an overview of death and dying. Look, before Christ, when a person would die, a person, I don't care if you were a believer in God or not, went to a place, the Hebrew called Sheol, the Hebrew word is Hades, it means the grave. So all people went to Sheol or Hades, the grave.
And here's a picture of that. Now, in Luke chapter 16, Jesus says something kind of interesting. In Luke 16, Jesus teaches there are two compartments of Hades or Sheol or the grave. One compartment was a place of torment, a horrendous place of punishment where the wicked would go. There was another compartment in Sheol or Hades or the grave that's called Paradise or Jesus called it Abraham's bosom. It was a good place and that's where the righteous would go. So everybody would go to the grave, lost, saved, believers, unbelievers, but the wicked would go to this place in Sheol called the place of torment and the righteous would go to a place called Paradise or Abraham's bosom. Now something amazing happened, something cataclysmic happened when Jesus died on the cross. Jesus Christ actually, when he died, he descended into Hades or descended into Sheol or descended into the grave, it's all the same thing.
And how many of y'all come from a liturgical background, like maybe Presbyterian, Anglican, Catholic, whatever? Remember y'all quote the Apostles Creed and said, I believe that Jesus descended into hell? Have you said, hell is not the best translation, it's no. I believe Jesus descended into Hades. And what he did is he takes this compartment, the righteous compartment of Sheol or Hades or the grave, and he actually takes that to heaven. You see that in places like Acts chapter 2 verse 3, Ephesians 4 verse 9, 1 Peter 3, 18 through 20. He actually took the good compartment, the bosom of Abraham, Paradise, and he takes it to heaven.
In fact, you might see a glimpse of this. Have you ever heard of this in Matthew 27? It kind of sounds like creepy, like something from the night of the living dead. It says that when Jesus died, the tombs burst open and all these saints walked out. Have you read that before? I think it's alluding to that part, that Jesus Christ takes paradise. He takes all these Old Testament saints who had died, and now he takes that part to heaven. And so now, when somebody dies, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, a believer in Jesus Christ, you go straight to heaven. If you don't believe in Jesus Christ, if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, you go to the place of torment in Hades. I don't like that. That's very narrow-minded.
Don't email me. Email Paul and Jesus and the writers. You kind of give your beef with them because the Bible says if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you go to heaven. If not, you still go to that place of torment. Now, one day, and we see this in Revelation chapter 20, one day that unrighteous compartment of Sheol, Hades, hell, will be thrown into the lake of fire, and there will be everlasting torture and punishment.
So y'all with me on that? So now when you trust in Jesus Christ, when you die, your body goes in the grave, but your soul, your spirit goes to be with the Lord Jesus. Now, this passage that we've just read is actually a good springboard to answer maybe just a couple questions that we have about death and dying and Jesus' view of death and dying. Don't worry about my view. I don't really care about your view. The only view that matters is what does Jesus say about death and dying?
So let me throw out a couple questions here. Number one, what should our attitude as those who believe in Jesus Christ, what should our attitude toward death and dying be? I want you to look here at verse 38. When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw much commotion and weeping and wailing.
I love this. He went inside and he said, hey, what's the deal with all this commotion and wailing? Now, to understand what's happening with Jesus, you know, in funerals today, our funerals are expected to be really quiet and low-key. Nobody says it.
It's very, very quiet. In Jesus' day, it's just the opposite. In Jesus' day when somebody died, if there's a family member, you actually expect to hire professional wailers, professional weepers to come to your funeral and scream and cry and raise all kinds of havoc.
That was one part. A second part of the funeral is you're expected to tear your clothes in grief. In fact, I think it's the Talmud, had 39 rules for tearing your clothes at a funeral. For example, if it's a close loved one that died, you're expected to tear your clothes right over your heart. So again, today our funerals are quiet.
Theirs are loud. Today you're expected to wear your nice clothes to the funeral. In those days, you don't wear your Gucci suits to a funeral.
You wear your Goodwill T-shirt that you bought five years ago to the funeral, okay, because you're going to rip your clothes. And there was another part of the funeral as well, and you see this in this passage. You had flute players. And this isn't pretty flute music.
It's loud, cacophonous, grating music. And so Jesus walks into that environment. In verse 39, I love what he says.
He says, hey, what's it do with all this racket? Jesus had a totally different view of death and dying. You can listen to me. We're dealing with a world out there that is messed up. They're afraid to die. They don't know what's going to happen when you die. They have one view of death.
You and I need to have a different view of death. In fact, I'm going to read a passage to you right here, and this is what I call, it's a yonder verse. You know what I mean by a yonder verse? It's a verse I've read to you so many times, when I start to read you, I've already heard that.
Listen to me. 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 is an incredible verse. Here's what Paul says. Paul says, and now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died, look at this, so that you will not grieve like people who have no hope.
Do you know what he's saying? Let the rest of the world scratch your head and be depressed and all that. You and I, yeah, we grieve, but we don't grieve like those who have no hope because we have hope in Jesus Christ. I'm telling you, folks, our view of death and dying has always set us apart from the rest of the world. In fact, in 125 AD, the philosopher Aristides was commissioned by the Emperor Hadrian to study this weird group of crazy people called Christians. Here's what Hadrian said. He said, I'm killing them left and right, and instead of subjugating them, the movement's growing. So Aristides, go do an investigation on these people called Christians and find out why are they growing, why is the movement growing despite persecution? And Aristides wrote back to the Emperor Hadrian in 125 AD, and he said, look, Emperor, quote, if any righteous person of their number dies and passes away from this world, they rejoice, and they give thanks to God as if that person was leaving one place and going to another place.
Isn't that great? Hey, I've done funerals of people who know Jesus, who have the hope of Jesus, and I've done funerals of people who don't know Jesus and don't have that hope. I'm just telling you, there is a world of difference. I've shared this story with you before. I think it just made a huge impression on me. When I first started pastoring, I was called to the hospital to visit the family of an old man that was dying, and that family didn't know Jesus. They'd started coming to our church, the son and his wife and grandson, but the family didn't know Jesus, and the father didn't know Jesus. And I remember walking into that room when that old man died. He was horrible. When he finally drew that last breath and the thing went, he's gone. That son, I don't know what had happened between him and his father, but he just started crying, Daddy, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I never told you I loved you. Daddy, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. It was just, it was horrible, because there was no hope. And man, it rattled my cage. And I stood there, and I ministered to the family the best I could.
I'll never forget this. I left that room that had no hope of Jesus, and I started walking down the hallway and almost across the hall from that room, I don't know who this family was, but I heard them singing. And I walked into the room, and there's an old lady about the same age of the man that just died. And she's dying, and that family knows Jesus. And she knows Jesus, and the family's gathered around her bed holding hands, talking about memories about how Grandma led me to Jesus, how Grandma's faith sustained me through tough times. And as she's dying, they all start singing these old hymns to the Lord Jesus Christ.
It was the most beautiful place I'd ever been in. And I saw the distinction between those who don't know Jesus in this room and those who have the hope of Jesus Christ in that room. There's a difference.
I'll give you another example of the difference. The United Church of Canada, and you say, okay, good, this is going to be a Christian perspective. I'm going to give you something from the United Church of Canada, and it's not a Christian perspective.
It's a pagan perspective. Canada is now endorsing and pushing something called medical aid in dying. It's euthanasia, it's physician assistant suicide for people who are physically sick, and now here's what Canada has done.
They've taken another step. Oh, I don't care if you're just physically sick, if you are mentally ill, we'll help you kill yourself. If you're depressed, we'll help you kill yourself. If you deal with some mental illness, we'll help you kill yourself. That's voluntary euthanasia.
I'm not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I'm going to tell you right now where this is headed. This is voluntary euthanasia started with those who are physically dying. Now it's gone to those who are mentally ill. Trust me, the day is going to come where it's involuntary euthanasia. Your mom is a drain on you, let's kill her. Your daddy's got some mental illness and he's a drain on you, let's go. Trust me, that's where this thing is going.
The United Church of Canada is supporting this mess. I'm going to read something to you. A pastor with the United Church of Canada said, I'm going to write a liturgical prayer for people who've decided to kill themselves. I want you to read this. Again, this is not a Christian prayer, this is a pagan prayer. Listen to this.
Here's an excerpt of that prayer. I am afraid. I feel fear penetrating my mind and my heart. I feel fear in my gut. I am afraid to die.
I do not know what lies beyond the barrier of death. I am afraid to release myself to the great unknown. I am heartbroken and afraid to leave my family.
I am still needed. I have let go of hope for healing and I hold on to hope for the next life. I am afraid that my family and loved ones, children and grandchildren, will be troubled when I tell them I plan to die using medical aid in dying. But in the midst of my fear, I have hope that my family and loved ones, children and grandchildren, will understand the choice to end my suffering. I hope they'll be proud of my decision and will understand that this choice is consistent with the love and compassion of Jesus.
And it goes on. I don't know that I've ever read a more depressing prayer in all my life. Nothing about the hope of the resurrection. Nothing about trust in Jesus Christ who walked out of the tomb, who's going to raise my body from the dead. Nothing. That's our pagan world's view of death. I'm just telling you, brothers and sisters, we've got a different view of death.
We understand. Listen, I've got a friend. He actually has in his office a framed matted picture of just punctuation marks. It's like question marks, exclamation marks, semicolon.
That's all it is. Punctuation marks. Listen to me. A period means end of sentence, end of story, end of book, it's over with. A comma means slow down, pause, catch your breath, but there's more coming.
Listen to me, beloved. Never put a picture where God has put a comma. For a Christian, death is not a period. Death is a comma.
Slow down, catch your breath, but there's a whole lot more to come. That's our view of death and dying. God has the final say. So here's another question. What happens to a Christian when he or she dies? Look at verse 39.
He went inside and asked, why all this commotion and weeping? The child isn't dead. She's only asleep. Listen, for a Christian, death is like falling asleep in this world. Your labor is over, your job is done, and now you fall asleep.
Isn't that gentle? You see this in the Bible. You see this in places like First Thessalonians 4, 14. We believe God will bring with Jesus those who have what? Fallen asleep in him. Acts 7, 60. Stephen is being stoned to death, and when he died, it said Stephen fell asleep. That's what Jesus says about this young girl right here. She is sleeping.
Now watch this. Sleep, this is very important, sleep is a Christian view of what happens to the body, not the soul or the spirit. When you die, it's as if your body has fallen asleep and we're gently laying you in the ground. Your body, incidentally, and I want to get off on this because I'm going to go on a vacation soon. I don't want everybody mad at me, but I was going to tell you this is why. If your loved one knows Jesus Christ and he or she dies and y'all cremate him, they're still going to heaven.
You do realize that, right? But one of the reasons I'm against cremation is the biblical view of what you do with the body. The body is still sacred and you gently lie that body, lay that body in the ground. You don't cause the body to pass through the fire. If you're a Christian and you've been cre- well, if you're here and you've not been cremated, but you understand, if you're a Christian and you have your Christian loved ones cremated, they're still going to heaven, okay?
But the biblical view is asleep. You gently lay them in the ground. And I'll get people mad at me and they'll email me and I cremated my loved one.
And how could you say that? Do what you want to do. Light them up.
Do whatever you want to do. I'm just telling the biblical view of what you do with the body is you lay them in the ground. You're still going to see them in heaven one day, whatever. But that's with the body. That's not the soul.
Your body goes into the ground. Your soul, if you know Jesus, either goes to heaven to be with the Lord Jesus Christ or goes to this place of torment. And the Bible is very clear about this. If Jesus is dying on the cross, there's a thief dying next to him and says, Jesus, just remember me when you get to heaven. And Jesus said, I assure you, 2,000 years from now, you'll be with me in paradise. Is that what he says?
Today. As soon as you leave this body, you're going to be with me in paradise. Acts 7, 60, Stephen is being stoned. As he died, he says, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Implication, my spirit is about to go to you.
Here's another one. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 8. We would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord. To be absent from the body is to be what?
Present with the Lord Jesus Christ. So how do we look at death? When you die, if you know Jesus, your body goes to sleep. Your spirit, your soul goes to be with the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's one more question. What will happen to our bodies after we die?
I mean, these physical bodies, they're going to be laid on the ground. And is that it? Is God done with your body?
Why don't you look at verse 41. Holding her hand, he says to this little girl, tathakum, which means little girl, get up. And the girl who was 12 years old immediately stood up and walked around. They were overwhelmed and totally amazed. And Jesus gave them strict orders not to tell anyone what had happened. And then, I love this, he told them to give her something to eat.
Isn't it amazing? She's raised from the dead. And Jesus, everybody's going crazy. She's been raised from the dead. Jesus said, yeah, but she's hungry.
Give her something to eat. You know, same thing happens to Jesus in Luke 24. The very first time Jesus appears to his disciples.
Now keep this in mind. They think he's dead. They think he's gone. And they're all gathered together in this room and Jesus shows up. Luke 24. You know the first thing he asked?
He sounds like Chad Harvey. He said, hey guys, you all got anything to eat? You know, forget I've just defeated Satan, crushed the head of the serpent.
You know, I'm now the Lord of life. I'm hungry. Which tells me either getting raised from the dead makes you really, really hungry or Jesus is trying to say something. And here's what I think he's trying to say. I think what Jesus is trying to say when he says, give me something to eat when he's raised from the dead. Give that little girl something to eat when she's raised from the dead.
Here's what I think he's trying to say. I want to prove to you, this is not a ghost. This is not some weird spirit. My body has literally been raised from the dead and to prove it, give me something to eat.
Listen to me. The Bible teaches very clearly that one day, now listen to me, one day your bodies that have been laid in the ground and bombed or un-unbombed and laid in the ground, God's going to raise your bodies up one day. We call that doctrine the doctrine of the bodily resurrection from the dead.
That doesn't just mean that Jesus came back to life physically. It also means all people will have their bodies raised up. Some of us will have our bodies restored and raised up and connect with our spirit and go into heaven, some to a place of eternal darkness and damnation.
But your bodies will come back. And again, the Bible is very clear about this. 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says very clearly, your bodies will one day be raised back. Revelation chapter 7 verse 9, I love this. John looks up into heaven and he says, I see every tribe, tongue, and nation, which means cultural distinctives go on into eternity.
Now, forgive me, I'm not trying to be, I'm just going to be honest, going to be brutally honest with you all. I grew up in an all white community and I just assumed when all people died, they went to heaven and became white. Revelation 7 doesn't say that. Revelation says, if you're black on earth, that resurrected body, you'll be black in heaven. If you're white on earth, white in heaven. Latino on earth, Latino in heaven. Redneck on earth, redneck in heaven. I'm just telling you, you're just going to go on through eternity because God loves the differences in races.
God loves that diversity and God will raise you up and you're going to have continuity with what you are like here on earth. That's God. Now here's, alright, well Chad, how are you going to do this? How's God going to do this?
Let me give you an example. Chad, what about the man whose arm got blown off when he was in Europe in World War II, so he lost his arm. He comes back to North Carolina, he's in a car accident, he loses his leg, he's working in a sawmill and he chops his finger off.
This is a really unlucky guy. He chops his finger off and then when he gets old, he moves to California. How's God going to bring his body back? His body's spread out all over the world. How's God going to bring him back?
Well, here's another one. What about the man that dies? He's buried, he decomposes. They plant an apple tree over the top of him.
The roots of the apple tree kind of goes down, gets that decomposing dirt with him in it, produces an apple, a man eats that apple and now he's all over the world. How's God going to raise him up? Two answers to that. Number one, he's God. That's his problem, that's not my problem. God will take care of it, okay?
That's number one. Number two, I want you to think about this. As frail and stupid as we human beings are, do you know we have a technology to get one strand of DNA from 500 years ago and we can clone and reproduce an entire human being with that one strand of DNA?
If we, with our frail minds, can do that, don't you think God has the power? Hey, first law of thermodynamics, matter can either be what? Created or destroyed. That body is going to exist in some form and on the day of judgment, God's going to bring that body right back together.
In fact, I love how John Dunn put this back in the 1600s. He said, where are all the atoms of the flesh that have decomposed? What about the ashes of bodies burned a thousand years ago? What about all the bodies drowned in the ocean which are now jelly at the bottom of the sea?
What about the arm that was lost and buried in Europe and the leg that was lost in Africa or Asia? What about the fact that a worm will eat our dead body and then that worm dies and molders into dust and that dust is blown into a river and that river tumbles into the sea? Still God knows in what part of the earth every grain of every man's dust lies and as he calls forth the bodies of his saints in the twinkling of an eye, that body that was scattered all around the world will come together and sit down at the right hand of God in a glorious resurrection. That's what God's going to do one day.
I don't know, beloved. Even the scientific world, don't you love it when science finally catches up with the Bible? I did a little Google search this past week on the whole thing of science and near death experiences. You know what I mean about near death experiences? People die, they see something, they experience something you can't explain because there's no brain waves and they come back. We understand the reality of life after death.
Science is now starting to look into this. I did that Google search and I found a June 1st, 2020 article in the Scientific American about near death experiences. I found an article three weeks ago in Medscape on near death experiences. I found another article three weeks ago from SciTech Daily on near death experiences. A June 25th NPR article on near death experiences.
CNN, March 13th on near death experiences. Even the scientific world is the same. These Christians are crazy. They're crazy. But there's something going on with this death thing. We're right. In fact, I was talking to a hospice nurse and talking about some of the experiences she had.
It's kind of interesting. She talked about an 80 something year old female patient that was dying. She took the vitals and it's obvious she's dying. And she said, I'm there at her house. And that old lady keeps looking up in a corner.
And I finally said, what are you looking at? She had a young man dressed in white. Don't you see him?
She looked in the corner. There's nobody there. No, he's there. He's dressed in white.
I experienced, I remember a couple of years ago visiting a 90 something year old man who loved Jesus Christ and it was his final day on earth. And I was talking to him and he's having a normal conversation. And he'd stop and say, did you see that angel? And he started talking. There's another angel. And we started talking. He said, Chad, I see Jesus. Do you see Jesus? It was the most amazing thing.
It was like he was caught between this world and the next world. This thing's real. And beloved, we're living in a messed up, depressed world that thinks this is it. The phrase I keep coming back to, beloved, I don't know if I made this up. I probably ripped it off of somebody else.
I rip things off of people all the time. I'm not smart enough to come up with this on my own, but I love this whole phrase. I love this. Listen, this world thinks we are in the land of the living headed toward the land of the dead. But for those of us who know Jesus Christ, we are living in the land of the dead. But praise God, we are headed toward the land of the living.
We have the hope of Jesus Christ. And that makes all the difference in this world. Craig Groeschel talked a while back about a friend of his. He said we were young and this friend, sharp guy, he says, one night I get a call and his wife's on the other line and she's just losing it. I said, honey, what's going on? And she said, my husband, your friend, he's just committed suicide. He's just killed himself.
I need you right now. He said, me and my wife, we were in different places, but I called my wife. My wife drove to the house. I drove to the house and tried my best to minister to this young widow and her kids, whose daddy was being pulled out of the room by EMS because he just killed himself. He said it was the worst night of our lives.
None of us saw it coming. And he said when the night was over and we kind of got in the family stabilized, my wife and I left. She drove her car.
I drove mine, headed back home. And he said, it's in the morning, it's early in the morning. And he said, I'm still weeping and I'm stunned.
My friend's gone. And he said, when my car got to the top of this hill, I looked and I saw, he said, the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen. He said, even to this day, I can't describe how beautiful it was.
It looked like an artist had just painted the landscape. And he said, I just pulled over, got out of my car and wept like a baby. And I said to myself, if my friend could have just held onto the morning, he would have made it.
If he could have just held onto the morning, he would have made it. And beloved, I know this place is depressing at times. I know it seems like this place has fallen apart. I know there's all kinds of trouble in this world. I know sometimes you feel like giving up, but let me say to you, if you'll just hang on to the morning, you're going to make it. If you'll not give up and if you'll just hang on to the morning, you're going to make it because the day is going to come when you're going to close your eyes here at night. And when you open your eyes again, you're going to see the most beautiful morning you have ever seen where there's no fear, no depression, no sickness, no news, no politicians, no reprobates, none of that stuff. And you will see the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. You will look upon the face of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Hang on to the morning because the morning is coming.
Can the people of God stand up and praise the one who died for their sins. Stand up and lift up holy hands to the one who is coming back for you. Y'all ready to see Jesus? Hey, y'all ready to look upon his face?
Don't give up. Hang on because the morning is coming. Let's sing to the Lord Jesus. Soon and very soon we are gonna see the King. Soon and very soon we are gonna see the King. Hallelujah, hallelujah, we're gonna see the King. No more crying there, we are gonna see the King. No more crying there, we are gonna see the King. Hallelujah, hallelujah, we're gonna see the King. No more dying there, we are gonna see the King. No more dying there, we are gonna see the King. No more dying there, we are gonna see the King. Hallelujah, hallelujah, We're gonna see the Kingdom It's soon and very soon We're gonna see the Kingdom soon and very soon We're gonna see the Kingdom soon and very soon We're gonna see the Kingdom Hallelujah, Hallelujah We're gonna see the Kingdom Let me ask you something. Y'all really believe what you just sang? We are closer to the Lord's second coming now than we've ever been before? You believe there's hope after the grave and life after death?
You really believe that? If you believe that, you gotta leave those doors with what I've called divine cockiness. Your head held high, your shoulders thrown back, not depressed, not anxious, understanding you are more than a conqueror through him who loved you.
Have you received that? Then raise your hands and receive this blessing from the Lord. Because it's all about who? Jesus, it's all about Jesus. So now to him who is able to do amazingly more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us. To him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen and amen. God bless you, beloved. Go change this world for the Lord Jesus Christ. God bless.
