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"THE EASTER STORY!"--By Father David       DFO 972       6 April 1980

       1. PTL! TYJ! EVERYBODY HAPPY? (FAMILY: AMEN!) Healthy? (Family: Amen!) Everybody got your Bible? (Family: Amen!) Well, PTL! TYL! To get the whole Easter story we have to find it really in several places, believe it or not & you might be surprised where it begins. The 27th chapter of Matthew is one place. The Easter Story as we call it, is the story of what? (Peter: The death & resurrection of Jesus.) I wouldn't include the death in this case. Of course He was already dead, but they usually deal with that a great deal on Good Friday. So by the time Easter Sunday morning comes, they try to talk all about the Resurrection.

       2. NOW LOOKING AT THIS PASSAGE, WHERE HERE IN THE 27TH CHAPTER WOULD YOU BEGIN THE EASTER STORY? Where in the 28th would you begin? (Sue: Where He gave up the Ghost?) No, we're not dealing with His death tonight, that's all over with by this time. Well, I gave you too strong a hint already, I gave it away really. He was actually crucified on what day, according to the Bible? Watch out, I didn't say according to tradition.

       3. WHAT WAS BEING CELEBRATED AT THE SAME TIME? (FAMILY: THE PASSOVER.) Yes, & the Passover, as it says in the Bible, was a very high holy day, which actually you can't pin down to any particular day of the month because it was regulated according to the moon, which is why Easter Sunday never falls on the same day of the year every year. It can vary anywhere from somewhere in March to somewhere in April according to the moon.

       4. I DON'T REMEMBER NOW EXACTLY WHAT PHASE, but I think it has something to do with the first Sunday after the full moon after March 21, the Spring Equinox. Yes, the first Sunday after full moon which falls in the Jewish month of Abib, which is what month? (Family: April.) April. What month of the year numerically was this month Abib to the Jews?--And it still is in the Zodiac: As I recall, April is the first month of the Jewish year as well as the Zodiac year.

       5. ARIES IS THE FIRST SIGN OF THE ZODIAC. They don't go according to our months. Isn't that true? Is Aries, the third or fourth month? (Family: Third & fourth) Third & fourth. (Sue: It begins about the middle of March.) Well, that's considered the first sign of the Zodiac. What do you always find at the top of the Zodiac?--Right at the top & you go clockwise around this way. What sign do you always find at the top of the Zodiac?--Aries. They call it the Ram.

       6. WHY SHOULD THEY CALL IT THE RAM? This Ram idea seems to be rather recent, because in most old Zodiacs & old Zodiac pictures that you see, instead of a Ram what will you see? Does it have horns or not? You'll see a Lamb. And that's of course symbolic of Whom? (Family: Jesus!) The Passover fell at this time & in fact, just as they were crucifying Jesus on that eve of this high Sabbath, what was happening throughout the land of Israel? In fact, throughout the world, wherever there were Jews? (Peter: They were killing the Passover lamb.) They were selecting & slaughtering the Passover Lamb, that very day that Jesus was crucified!

       7. I'M SOMEWHAT OF AN ICONOCLAST, AS YOU KNOW, WHICH MEANS WHAT? (SUE: IDOLSMASHER!) And one of the idols of the organised church is what? (Alfred: Their traditions.) Their traditions. And some of their favourite traditions are what? (Alfred: Christmas & Easter?) Their high holy days, their holidays as we now call them. What people today call holiday, that word came from Holy Day, think of that! They're anything but holy nowadays, in fact they're quite unholy!

       8. SO SOME OF THE FAVOURITE TRADITIONS OF THE CHURCH ARE HIGH HOLIDAYS, HOLY DAYS, & they are really held very holy. Oh my, when I was young if you didn't at least go to church on Christmas, you certainly would go to church on Easter! And in the churches I went to, if you didn't go to Easter Sunrise Service on Easter Sunday morning you weren't even a good Christian, right? It's early in the morning when the sun's rising.

       9. ACTUALLY THE SERVICE BEGAN AN HOUR BEFORE THE SUN ROSE & you had to sing, then stand for the sermon & Scripture, & the rising of the sun was the grand finale. I remember I was never a very good early riser & that really tested my religion to go to Easter Sunrise Service! I had to be there an hour before sunrise & I'll never forget how relieved I was to see that sun coming up! It was usually around this time of the year, round 6:00 in the morning. And of course you had to be there by 5:00 which meant you had to get up about 4:00!

       10. AND THEN WE WERE SO RELIEVED TO SEE THE SUN RISING, wherever it was! Some places we were it was rising out of the sea, some places it was rising over a mountain. In California, it rose over the mountains. They always had it out in the valley or the mountainside where you could watch the sun rise over the mountains across the valley. It was very pretty usually, if it wasn't bad weather.

       11. MIAMI BEACH WE ALWAYS HAD OUR SUNRISE SERVICES ON THE BREACH and watched the sun rise out of the ocean, which was quite a sight! It was only the called & the faithful, the most diligent & most loyal Christians, of course, who made it out to Easter Sunrise Service on Easter morning. Because you of course always had to get up about 4:00 to ever make it & be there by 5:00 when it began, & the finale of the Sunrise Service was to watch the sunrise out of the sea about 6:00.

       12. THAT WAS SUCH A RELIEF, BECAUSE THEN, THANK GOD, AT LAST YOU COULD GO HOME & try to hit the hay for at least one hour's sleep before you had to get up & eat breakfast & be at Sunday School by 9:30. So I almost dreaded to see Easter come, that was the acid test of my religion to have to go to Sunrise Service! And then you went to church. You'd already had a pretty rough weekend because of the Good Friday Paschal celebrations.

       13. I TOLD YOU THAT ABIB IS THE FIRST MONTH OF THE JEWISH YEAR & it' also the first month of the Zodiac year & it begins with a lamb. So the Easter season, for most people they call it Holy Week, right? And the week actually ends with what? (Sue: Easter Sunday.) Easter Sunday, right. But they count that whole week as Holy Week.

       14. I'LL NEVER FORGET HOW ASTONISHED WE WERE WHEN WE WERE FIRST IN TENERIFE. We'd only been there I think a couple of weeks, and things there just never closed! The nightclubs & restaurants were open night & day & every day of the week. We hadn't even thought about Easter or Holy Week or anything, we were long gone from the church. We usually ate our breakfast in the hotel room, & we had some very interesting breakfasts in the room in those days! The noon dinner was about 2:00 at the hotel, & then sometimes we'd go out in the evening & eat out.

       15. SO WE DECIDED TO GO OUT THAT EVENING, REMEMBER MARIA? We walked down the street trying to find a place to eat & everything was tight shut, tight as a clam! There wasn't a thing open! Not one single thing open on that Friday night because they were celebrating the holiest of all the Holy Days of the whole week--what? (Sue: Good Friday.) Jesus' death. His crucifixion, as they call it. I think we finally wound up having to go back to the hotel, didn't we? We ate at the hotel because only the hotels were feeding guests. Every restaurant, every club, everything was shut tight as a clam!

       16. SO WHAT DO THEY CALL THAT FRIDAY USUALLY? (FAMILY: GOOD FRIDAY.) I'm not familiar so much with the Catholic celebrations, but I know that it's a very special day to Catholics & Protestants alike, & we always had a Friday evening service in the Protestant churches & all the faithful few were always there, with a message on the crucifixion & death of Christ & what it meant & Salvation, etc., in our good Gospel-preaching churches.

       17. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW PROTESTANT MARIA & MY CHURCHES WERE, they were the Protestants of the Protestants! Protestant means protest-ant, somebody who's protested. They had not only protested against the Catholics, they had protested against the Protestants! They had protested against the major denominations & dropped out of them too & started little ones. Well, they were pretty good folks, really. They really were saved & loved the Lord & they really knew about Salvation, the Gospel & were missionary-minded & all that, right? (Maria: Yes, some of them.)

       18. THEY WERE PRETTY NARROW-MINDED ABOUT THINGS, HOW YOU DRESSED & OH MY! They spent most of their time preaching against movies & dancing & card-playing & short hair & short skirts, etc., they were always protesting against something! So, I've come a long way, haven't I? (Sue: Yes! Hallelujah!) Now I protest that skirts aren't short enough! Only I like nice long robes. I like them short or long, as long as I can see something under them!

       19. BUT THEY ALWAYS HAD THIS SPECIAL GOOD FRIDAY SERVICE ON GOOD FRIDAY, RIGHT? And then Good Friday was always followed by what? (Family: Saturday.) Yes, by Saturday & that was the one day you took off then at least. Some of you have even forgotten your Catholicism. Well anyhow, Saturday you were supposed to just take a day of rest.

       20. SO THEN CAME SUNDAY MORNING WHEN YOU CELEBRATED THE SUNRISE WITH THE SUN WORSHIPPERS--& I've heard of some Protestants who protested against that too! They say Easter Sunrise Service originated as a pagan sun-worshipper's celebration, & of course you'll hear that Christmas originated as a Druid tree-worshipping celebration, which it probably was, so what?

       21. THEN ON EASTER SUNDAY EVEN IF YOU DIDN'T GO TO EASTER SUNRISE SERVICE YOU WENT TO WHAT? (Sue: Mass.) That's the one time the churches are packed, on Christmas Eve or Midnight Mass for Catholics, & then on Good Friday. But the biggest crowd of the year always came when, Maria? (Maria: On Easter, to show off their dresses!) Easter Sunday morning! And one of the biggest things about Easter--of course I remember when I was a little kid they were still celebrating the eggs & the bunnies & things like that--but the biggest thing about Easter Sunday morning service was that you did what? (Alfred: Had an Easter Egg hunt.) Not yet. (Maria: You showed off your new clothes.) You wore new clothes to church!

       22. EVERYBODY WORE NEW CLOTHES TO CHURCH! (Maria: You went bankrupt just to show off your new clothes!) "My new Easter bonnet," parading down 5th Avenue--I think it talks about it in the song, doesn't it? Everybody went to church in new clothes, new hats, & then they'd go out & parade up & down the streets after church to show off all their new clothes.

       23. WELL, IT WAS VERY PRETTY & THE GIRLS LOOKED PRETTY! We boys enjoyed watching the pretty girls in their pretty new dresses, but it wasn't always so easy to wear a brand new suit. The girls always had brand new dresses, but we boys didn't always make it to a brand new suit. We tried to wear something new anyhow, at least a new tie, that was something you could wear on Easter. We were pretty poor when I was young, & in the Depression a suit cost a lot of money.

       24. A GOOD NEW SUIT COST AT LEAST $5, & a really fancy, good new suit cost $10 or $12. I usually wound up with something for about five bucks. It was a lot of money, to have to put out $5 for a whole new suit & knickers.--And I'm not talking about girls panties either! I'll never forget how surprised I was after we first got to London & I finally figured out what they were talking about when they were talking about girls' knickers.

       25. WHEN I WAS A BOY, KNICKERS WERE SOMETHING THAT MEN WORE! They were gathered right below the knee here, kind of like bloomers, or golfer's pants. Those were knickers & that was the style for boys & even men.--Particularly sporty men & golfers & that sort of thing. That was all the accepted style to wear knickers.

       26. I DON'T INTEND TO TELL YOU ALL THIS, but in a way it's like Mama Eve used to say: "Every sermon you ever preach, you've gotta start with Genesis & end in Revelation & you can't leave anything out. You've gotta cover the whole subject from start to finish!" Well, believe it or not, I'm working on something. I'm just trying to show you what a far cry the churches' Easter celebration is from the original.

       27. AND ONE OF THE SHOCKERS I'M GONNA DROP, one of the bombs I'm gonna drop tonight is gonna shatter you tradition & you're gonna be forever disillusioned, but I can prove it by the Bible! That's one wonderful thing about having a Bible & knowing your Bible & reading your Bible. That always settles everything! Well, it doesn't always settle the arguments of the theologians, because some of them will interpret it one way & some another.

       28. BUT THERE'S ONE THING YOU CAN'T VERY WELL INTERPRET OR MISTRANSLATE or give several different versions of, & that is figures--I'm not talking about girl's figures--but numbers. You cant's say, "Now this word three here means two, or this word two means three." Get me? I'm working on something!

       29. SUNDAY MORNING, THEY GO TO EASTER SUNRISE SERVICE OR EASTER MORNING SERVICE AT LEAST, & the church is packed with people in their pretty new clothes, especially if you lived in a small town.--I understand apparently even New York City, because in that song they parade up & down 5th Avenue which is a kind of swanky boulevard, or used to be, and they call it the Easter Parade. Everybody'd get out of church--I think St. Paul's Cathedral--and they parade up & down 5th Avenue & Park Avenue particularly: "On the Avenue, 5th Avenue, la-la-la-la-la-la-la," there's a whole song about it, you know! "In the Easter Parade! My new Easter bonnet with the blue ribbon on it!" Isn't that it? There's songs about it. Quite a celebration.

       30. YOU'RE OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MATHEMATICS THAT YOU CAN COUNT FROM ONE TO THREE, CAN'T YOU? All right. According to the churches, one of their fondest traditions, Good Friday, is on what day of the week? (Alfred: Friday.) And Easter Sunday is on what day of the week? (Family: Sunday.) We know definitely that Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week because it says so, right? In each account, I believe it says that He rose on the first day of the week.

       31. ACCORDING TO THE JEWISH CALENDAR & JEWISH WAY OF TELLING THE DAYS OF THE WEEK, what did they consider the 7th day of the week? (Family: Saturday.) Saturday was called the what? (Family: Sabbath.) Sabbath, & therefore what had to be the first day of the week? It doesn't use the word Sunday in the Bible because did you ever notice that the Bible never uses the English names of the days of the week?--Not one of them. Do you know why? Because every single day of the week was named after either a pagan god or a Caesar or a planet!

       32. THERE'S NOTHING CHRISTIAN WHATSOEVER ABOUT OUR NAMES OF THE DAYS OF THE WEEK. Sunday was named after the day of the sun, those who worship the sun, the sun worshippers, the sun god. Monday, which even translates over into Spanish the same, was named after what? First it's Sunday & the next is (Sue: Moon day). Moon day, right. And what do we say in Spanish? (Family: Lunes.) Moon. And I think even in French it's close isn't it? (Family: Lundi.) Right at the moment I've forgotten exactly what was the origin of Tuesday, but maybe you can look it up in your encyclopedia (Tiw = Mars).

       33. BUT WEDNESDAY, WHERE DID WE EVER GET THAT FUNNY SPELLING OF WEDNESDAY ANYWAY? (Sue: Is it a name?) Yes, it came from a name. It came from a Norse god whose name was? (Jewel: Woden.) Woden, exactly. I always wondered where we got that "D" in Wednesday, I mean you don't even pronounce it in English, notice? But it's Woden's-day. W-O-D-E-N, in English, at least that's the way it's translated into English.

       34. I DON'T KNOW HOW THEY SPELL IT IN SCANDINAVIAN OR GERMAN, but Woden was the chief god of the Norsemen & the Goths & Visigoths & all those Nordics. What was he, a god of fire? (Jewel: He was like the main god.) He was the main head god, like for the Romans it was Jupiter & for the Greeks it was Zeus.

       35. HE WAS THE MAIN GOD, THE HEAD GOD OF THE NORSEMEN, to whom they had temples & sacrifices & all sorts of things. It probably originated way, way back with the original idea of being the main god & then other gods. And of course originally, the other gods came from, no doubt, angels, both good & bad, and spirits, both good & bad. OK, you got Woden's day.

       36. WHERE DO WE GET THURSDAY? Here's a good Scandinavian again: Thor, is Thorsday. T-H-O-R we spell it in English. How do you sell it? (Jewel: T-O-R.) T-O-R. Now what god was he? (Jewel: The god of war.) The god of war. Thorsday.

       37. WHERE DID FRIDAY COME FROM? (Jewel: From Freya, the Goddess of Love.) Ah, really? Good! I learned these once upon a time, but I'd forgotten Tuesday & Friday. I'm so glad you're here, Honey. I wonder how did you happen to remember all those? Is that a Norse god also? (Jewel: Yes.)

       38. SO YOU CAN SEE WHERE WE GOT THE NAMES OF THE DAYS OF THE WEEK, from whom we got them. We didn't get some of them from the Romans, we got'm from the Nordics. How do you pronounce it again? (Jewel: Freya.) Freya, the Goddess of Love! How about that? Well, PG, we've got the Holy Spirit in there! Friday then, after the Goddess of Love!

       39. AND SATURDAY OUGHT TO BE PRETTY EASY. (SUE: SATURN!) It's Saturn day. Yes, there was a god Saturn too. A Roman god was named Saturn. So that's named after not just the planet but after the god Saturn. The planet was probably named after the god, not the god after the planet. Well, that's something else in your Easter lesson you didn't expect! Now we're back to Sunday!

       40. WE EVEN KNOW WHAT TIME JESUS WAS CRUCIFIED ON, I'm not gonna say which day of the week. It even tells in some of the accounts "& it was the ninth hour" & it was such & such an hour. And these hours that the Bible used in the New Testament are taken actually from Roman watches. I don't mean a wristwatch, but guard-duty watches, & they began at 6:00 in the morning with the dawn & ended at 6:00 at night with sunset.

       41. SO WHEN THE BIBLE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT SPEAKS OF THE FIRST HOUR OF THE DAY, second hour of the day, the sixth hour of the day would be noon. It begins at 6:00 in the morning, so from 6 to 7 was the first hour of the day, etc. In the 27th chapter, 46th verse, it says the ninth hour, and that's where you get your 3:00 very, very holy mass, on Good Friday. Somebody read the 46th verse: (Peter: "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is to say, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me"?) Then in the 50th verse it says He did what? (Sue: "Jesus, when He had cried again with a loud voice yielded up the Ghost.") So therefore, it's usually considered that He died somewhere about or during the ninth hour, which would have been between 3 & 4:00 in the afternoon. Then what happened?

       42. NOW WATCH OUT THAT I DON'T TRICK YOU, AS THIS PASSAGE OFTEN TRIPS UP QUITE A FEW PEOPLE! Jesus died somewhere in the 9th hour, because He only cried one more time & He died, towards the end of His crucifixion. It's a horrible death, a horrible way to die invented by the Romans, leave it to them, but it was to make examples out of criminals. You talk about the severity of the Islamic law, the severity of Roman law enforcement & execution in those days was even worse! It was a horrible way to die.

       43. AND USUALLY THE ROMAN SOLDIERS WANTED TO GET THE JOB OVER WITH if they hadn't already died, so they came along & broke their legs and pain would assist them to die. But when it came to Jesus to do this, what did they find? He had already died, so the Lord saved Him that agony. And that fulfilled a Scripture that "not one of His bones would be broken," not one. (Ps.34:20.)

       44. ALL RIGHT NOW LET'S PROCEED WITH THIS PASSAGE IN THE 27th CHAPTER: "He cried with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost, and, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, & the rocks rent; and the graves were opened."--This was quite a momentous event! "And many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves"--when? (Sue: "After His resurrection.") Ha! Oh my!

       45. EVEN IN THE FAMOUS "KING OF KINGS" & ALL THE GREAT MOVIES ABOUT THE DEATH OF JESUS, what do you see immediately? They show Him dying on the cross & what immediately happens in the movie? They have a big earthquake & clouds across the sky & the sun eclipsed & the rocks are rent & the earth opens up & swallows the scribes & the Pharisees! And I even saw one movie where they did show the dead rising out of the graves--when? (Jewel: They show it right when He died.)

       46. THEY SHOW IT IN THE MOVIES & EVERYTHING, & THAT'S THE WAY IT'S BEEN TOLD YOU FOR YEARS, that when Jesus died the veil of the Temple was rent in twain. That was a very important significant event, particularly for the Jews. If nothing else convinced them, that should have convinced them!--Because what was the veil of the Temple? Do you know? It wasn't a nice gossamer see-through flimsy thing like these dresses I've seen the girls wearing, & the boys too, in Heaven.

       47. IT WASN'T OUR USUAL CONCEPT OF A VEIL AS BEING SOMETHING VERY THIN & FLIMSY. Do you have any idea? Have you even read anything about the veil, what it was really like? It was a curtain of the Temple between the Holy Place, the Outer Court of the Temple, & the Holy of Holies. What was it that sat in the Holy of Holies? (Family: The Ark.) The Ark. This is probably an Easter lesson you've never had before!

       48. THE ARK SYMBOLISED WHAT? (Family: The presence of God.) The very presence of God in the Temple, right? It doesn't tell you all these things here in the Bible because you're supposed to know a few things, and if you were a Jew in those days you would have known one thing about that veil, as it was called.

       49. IN THE "KING OF KINGS," IT SHOWS THE RENDING OF THE VEIL BY A FLAME OF FIRE, & it's possible, maybe so. Suddenly a flame or fire just shoots right down the center of this huge big curtain, like a huge stage curtain, & that was what it was like. It was like a huge stage curtain, only it didn't split in the middle until that time. Nearly all stage curtains are split in the middle, aren't they? They are rent in twain, two parts, & come together. Well, the Temple veil was not a split curtain until this happened.

       50. IT WAS ONE SOLID CURTAIN COMPLETELY ACROSS THE TEMPLE, shutting off from the part which had the menorah in it, the Outer Court of the Temple. What was the menorah, do you know? (Family: The candlesticks.) The seven-branched candlesticks. They're all equal on top but they come out like this & there are seven, one in the middle & three on each side. And it had the table of shewbread, it had the altar of incense, & several holy things like that.

       51. THIS IS WHERE THE HIGH PRIEST USUALLY MINISTERED, IN THE HOLY PLACE, in this Outer Court of the Temple. That doesn't mean outside the building. It amounted to about two-thirds of the building. The temple itself was rather small, you might be surprised. The dimensions are in the Bible of the Tabernacle, & the Temple was built about the same. When you see Herod's Temple or models of it or pictures of models of it, they said it looked like a mountain of snow. It virtually covered Mt. Moriah in those days, but that was not all Temple.

       52. IT WAS CALLED THE TEMPLE, BUT THERE WERE A NUMBER OF BUILDINGS surrounding it including stables for the cattle who were sacrificed, & quarters for the priests, & store houses for the grain & gold & everything else, gifts that people brought there. Very wealthy place. And there were all these buildings a in a square around the Temple, but the Temple was in the middle, rather small.

       53. BUT NO ONE EVER WENT BEHIND THE VEIL EXCEPT WHEN? Do you remember? The only thing in that Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant, right? What was the Ark like? Have you ever seen a picture of it? Of course it's drawn from most people's imaginations from the Scriptural description however, because the Lord describes to Moses exactly how to build the Ark, its dimensions & everything.

       54. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKEN IT TO? Does anybody know anything about the dimensions here? I'm sorry I can't recall all these details, but as I recall it was supposed to be 2 1/2 cubits long & 1 1/2 cubits wide, which would be about 2 feet wide & 4 feet long. That's about the size of what? (Peter: A child's coffin.) Yes, or the size of something else that often goes to church.

       55. YES, IT WAS ABOUT THE SIZE & SHAPE OF A COFFIN. When you see one of those ornate coffins, you're coming close to seeing what the Ark may have looked like. Only it was a box made of what? Even more ornate than the coffins! (Family: Gold?) Gold-plated wood! Can you imagine? As I recall--you'll have to look it up in the old Mosaic law there where He was telling him how to build the Ark at the time of the Tabernacle. But that's my recollection, I could be wrong. It's a long, long time since I studied those details.

       56. THE ONLY TIME WE GOT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS WITH MY KIDS WHEN THEY WERE YOUNG. I wanted to read them the whole Bible, so we started in Genesis & I don't think we ever got clear through it. In fact, even while they were small, it took me so long to tell a Bible story, like it's taking me so long to tell you the Easter Story, we'd really get into things & they'd ask me questions & I'd get off on some track & I don't think we ever got any further then Exodus or something like that. And of course, those involve a lot of things, Exodus, & then I would get them into Kings.

       57. I TRIED TO STICK TO THE STORIES and we'd skip over the things like Leviticus & Deuteronomy & all those things which were pretty deep, the legal ceremonies & all that sort of thing, and I'd pick up the story where it continues next, like the time of David, etc.

       58. YOU SEE, I CAN'T EVEN TELL YOU THE EASTER STORY WITHOUT GETTING INTO ALL THESE DETAILS! But this is very, very important, because you've just read one of the most significant things which happened, and which is a real shocker! I haven't gotten to the shocker about Easter yet. We're dealing with something else right now that usually you think happened at the death of Christ, but what actually happened here was two different events, one which had to do with His death & one which had to do with His resurrection.

       59. SOME OF THESE EVENTS OCCURRED AT HIS DEATH & SOME OF THEM OCCURRED AT HIS RESURRECTION. This matter of how the veil was rent is according to tradition or legend or history or whatever, and the Jews have done their best, of course, to hush it up. They completely squelched it & you don't hear anything about it in Jewish history at all. And in a moment you're gonna know why!

       60. THE ARK WAS A GOLDEN BOX & WHAT DID IT HAVE ON EACH SIDE OF THE BOX, LENGTH WAYS? (Peter: Two cherubs.) Well, on the sides of the box were two long staves or poles--for what purpose? (Family: For carrying.) For carrying. It took two men to carry it. They must have been pretty strong men, it may have even taken four to carry it. But you're right, on the ends of the box were two cherubim, some places they're called seraphim, or golden angels.

       61. THEY WERE THE CLOSEST THING THAT THE JEWS HAD TO ANY KIND OF GRAVEN IMAGES. Now the Lord by the Law had forbidden graven images of anything on the Earth, under the Earth or in the Heavens, but there were these two graven images, one on each end of the box, how about that? There's another example of how God makes the rules, so He can break them if He wants to!

       62. AND IN THIS MOST HOLY OF ALL HOLIES IN THE JEWISH RELIGION, THE ARK OF THE COVENANT which represented the very presence of God, were some of their holiest artifacts, holiest material souvenirs of famous past events--what was in the box? One thing was what? (Jewel: The tables that Moses got.) Yes, & what else? Something to do with Moses' brother. Something that showed his authority. (Family: Aaron's staff.)

       63. AARON'S ROD AS IT'S CALLED, AND IT DID WHAT? (Peter: Is that the one that ate up the snakes?) Yes, but also later on it did what? (Family: Divided the Red Sea.) Yes, but Aaron's staff did something very important when there was a controversy over his authority as to whether he was the right High Priest or not. They had some arguments, these Jews were always causing trouble, and one time they even challenged Moses, "Are we not also prophets?" etc. (Nu.12:2.)

       64. MIRIAM HIS OWN SISTER LED A REBELLION AGAINST HIM, especially after he married this Negro girl, Ethiopian Black girl, that did it, that was too much integration! Besides the fact that it was about his fourth wife, as I recall. That's not brought out too clear, the church certainly doesn't emphasise it, nor do the Jews, that Moses had about 4 wives & one of them was a Black girl!

       65. FOLKS, I'M SO SORRY I KEPT YOU AWAKE SO MUCH LAST NIGHT! I'm doing my penance now. I really did want to have a little time with you being it's Easter. Easter's kind of over now, so this is a rather unorthodox type celebration we're having tonight. Now that it's all over we'll celebrate it. I'm sure Jesus felt more like celebrating it when it was all over!

       66. IN THE BOX WAS AARON'S ROD THAT BUDDED. Now on some occasion when there was a controversy over whether he was the right High Priest, they had a test to see whose rod would bud, & Aaron's was the only one that budded. Can you imagine? After the stick had been supposedly dead for years & he'd been carrying it around for years, all of a sudden it sprang buds! (Num.17:8.)

       67. WHAT DOES THE WORD ARK MEAN? (Family: Boat, carrier?) Well, in Genesis 6, 7 & 8 it was a boat. It literally was any kind of a container or a box, or in that case a boat. An Ark was something that contained something. Now you can get back into those details sometime. I've got your curiosity aroused, now you're gonna look up a whole lot of things & read some of those old stories.

       68. IT ALSO HAD IN THE BOX SOMETHING ELSE BESIDES AARON'S ROD THAT BUDDED & the tablets of stone of the Law. Those tables of stone certainly must have only contained the 10 commandments, that's for sure, because they weren't big enough to have engraved all those ceremonial laws of the sacrifices. In other words, they contained what was known as the moral code, the moral law, the 10 major laws. What else was in the box?

       69. THIS THING WAS BETTER THAN A REFRIGERATOR! Not even a refrigerator could have done what the Ark did! Here it contained this rod that budded. (Peter: Did it have some manna?) It had some manna! There was a dish of manna in the box to remind them how God had fed them in the wilderness. (Ex.16:33; Heb.9:4.)

       70. CAN YOU IMAGINE, THAT MANNA KEPT FROM THE TIME THEY FIRST PUT IT IN THERE FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS, & pretty soon you're gonna find out how long.--When ordinarily it only kept how long? (Peter: Just that day, you had to eat it that very day.) You had to eat it right away or the next day it was spoiled! There was only one day of the week that it kept for two days & didn't spoil. What they gathered on Friday always kept over Saturdays so that they wouldn't have to go out & gather anymore on Saturday & work. They say it was something even a little bit sweet like coriander seed, and it was kind of a sweet bread.

       71. WELL, IT HAD A SAMPLE OF MANNA IN THE BOX, Aaron's rod that budded, tables of stone, I can't remember if there was anything else. At least those are three of the major things I remember were in there: All these famous souvenirs of their past history & events.

       72. THEN THE TWO CHERIBUM, ONE ON EACH END OF THE BOX, & which way were they looking? Outward or inward? (Peter: Inward.) How do you know? (Peter: Because I've seen pictures before.) Well, that's true because they were supposed to be looking inward. And how were their wings? Well, if you want to read the exact description, you can read it in the Bible, we don't have time now though. You can go into that yourself. But they had their wings outstretched toward each other with the wingtips touching, sort of like they were hovering over the box. (Exodus 37.)

       73. BECAUSE THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE BOX WAS NONE OF THESE THINGS. In fact, it wasn't a thing. And it wasn't exactly in the box but it hovered between the two angels, & what was that? You look like you're ready to say something. (Alfred: The Spirit of God?) The Spirit of God! And it had a name. (Family: Jehovah?) No. It could be seen. What did it look like? You should read the Old Testament sometime, it's a very interesting book.--Ha! Yes? (Family: Was that the pillar of fire?) It resembled it, yes.

       74. IT WAS A VERY BRIGHT LIGHT, SO BRIGHT THAT THEY DIDN'T EVEN DARE LOOK AT IT OR IT WOULD BLIND THEM. And it was called what? Maybe you never heard of it before. It was called the Shekinah Glory. It comes from a Hebrew word, S-H-E-K-I-N-A-H, as I recall. It was a very brilliant light representing the Spirit of God.

       75. NOW WHY WOULD I GO TO ALL THAT TROUBLE TO DESCRIBE THAT BOX TO YOU & what it represented & why it was so important in an Easter Story?--Maybe because I'm gonna tell you something you won't even find in the Bible, but it's history. Did anybody ever go back there where the box was? (Family: Just the High Priest.) Only the High Priest. How often? (Family: Once a year.) Once a year, very good. And on what very very holy day to the Jews? (Peter: Yom Kippur.) Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

       76. THAT DAY HE SYMBOLICALLY TOOK THE SINS OF THE PEOPLE UPON HIMSELF. It was symbolised by the ceremony & the blood of the sacrifice, etc., he was sprinkled with it & he went back behind this huge heavy curtain. Now you're gonna have a hard time believing this but this is history. Old Jewish histories tell about these things, like the writings of Josephus, the famous Jewish historian.

       77.THE CURTAIN OF THE TEMPLE OF HEROD--& BY THAT TIME THEY WERE REALLY GETTING FANCY--WAS GUESS WHAT? They said it was one of the most beautiful & gorgeous fabrics ever woven, & how they could have ever even woven such a thing I don't know, but it was extremely heavy. And the reason it was so heavy, it was so thick. And do you know how thick it was? (Family: A cubit?) No, no. That's a bit thick. It was about 4 inches thick!

       78. SO THAT WAS QUITE A MIRACLE WHICH OCCURRED when that heavy curtain thicker than any fabric or cloth you have ever seen or any rug or drapery was suddenly split right down the middle, split in two, in twain! Now from this passage you can tell exactly what happened when.

       79. IT SAYS THAT THE BODIES OF THE SAINTS WHICH SLEPT AROSE, came out of the graves after His resurrection. Therefore, who was the first one to be resurrected, to rise from the dead?--Jesus! He was the firstfruits, as Paul says, He was the first one to rise. (1Co.15:20,23.)

       80. WELL, WHAT IS THIS BUSINESS ABOUT THESE OTHER BODIES GETTING RESURRECTED? It does not say their spirits. "It says many of the bodies of the saints which slept arose & came out of the graves after His resurrection & went into the Holy City & appeared unto many." There's an Easter story for you! (Mt.27:52,53.)

       81. JESUS WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO ROSE FROM THE DEAD ON EASTER! Is that quite a bomb? (Family: Yes! Far out!) Have you ever heard any sermons preached by any preachers or priests on that? No, because they've never been able to explain it. For one reason, it sort of upsets their theology a bit to have this extra resurrection, & around this resurrection at the time of Christ's resurrection there has raised one of the greatest theological controversies of the church, as to what kind of resurrection this was & who it was & why it was & how many participated in it blah, blah, blah. But it says who it was, doesn't it?

       82. WAS IT A GENERAL RESURRECTION? Who does it say it was? (Sue: Many bodies of the saints.) The saints. Well, the saints are whom? Not just the Catholic saints. We have saints today, don't we? Believe it or not, even you & I are saints! Saint is a noun from the same word that we get the word "sanctify," & that comes from a word meaning what in the Greek? Sanctify is a verb "to be sanctified" and I gave it to you in a lesson on dishwashing once called "Dirty Dishes." (No.566.) (Peter: To be washed clean.) Yes, to be washed clean.

       83. AND THE MEANING GOES EVEN FURTHER THAN THAT, IT IS TO BE WASHED CLEAN & SET ASIDE IN A CLEAN PLACE, like you wash the dishes. What do you do after you wash them & they're dried? What do you do with them then? Stick them back into the dirty sink? (Sue: Put them away in the cupboard.) You put them away in the cupboard until they're needed again, & you take them out & you get them dirty again. I think I went into that quite a bit in "Dirty Dishes," didn't I?

       84. WELL, THERE'S A NAME FOR THOSE WHO ARE SO WASHED & SET ASIDE FOR THE MASTER'S USE. Obviously if you washed them & set them aside it's done for a purpose, isn't it? For what purpose? To stay that way forever? (Alfred: To be used again.) To be used again. They have to get dirty again, don't they? And they have to be washed & set aside again & again & again. So the process of sanctification, entire sanctification as the Holiness people call it, really in a way has several phases or stages repeated over & over again.

       85. BUT HOLINESS PEOPLE TEACH THAT IT'S A ONE TIME THING. They go through this experience of entire sanctification which they call sanctification, the Pentecostals call it the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Again we have the word "baptism" there which signifies washing, right? Only this time by the fire of the Spirit, so to speak, purified, purged by the power of the Lord. They teach that it is once and it's over with forever. Baptists teach that it has to be constantly repeated, you've got to keep being washed. Well, the fact of the matter is they're both right!

       86. WHAT DID JESUS SAY TO PETER WHEN AT FIRST PETER REFUSED TO LET HIM WASH HIS FEET? (Peter: "If I wash you not, you have no part in Me.") (Jn.13:8.) Right, He said, "If you don't let Me wash your feet, you're not one of Mine, Peter." Well, Peter was an extremist. So immediately Peter says what? (Peter: "Not my feet only but my hands & my head.") First he wouldn't even let Him wash his feet, next thing he wants Him to give him a full bath! He goes from one extreme to another!

       87. PETER WAS A LOT LIKE ME, HE WAS A REAL EXTREMIST! He was a man of great force, he was impulsive, impetuous! He was sometimes violent, he was quite a character. If I had a favourite disciple of all Jesus' disciples, I think I would just about choose Peter because he was so funny, sometimes he was absolutely ridiculous! You could laugh out loud at some of his antics & sometimes he made you want to cry, you felt so sorry for him, when he denied the Lord & went out & wept. But the Lord loved him.

       88. DID YOU EVER NOTICE WHAT THE LORD SAID AFTER HE ROSE FROM THE DEAD? Here's another tie to the Easter story, He said go--what? (Jewel: Go & tell the disciples & Peter.) (Mk.16:7.) Yes. Now why did He say that?--Wasn't Peter a disciple? Had he lost his Salvation through his denial of Christ? Huh? Why do you suppose He said "& Peter"? (Family: To encourage him.) Peter probably thought he had lost his Salvation. He probably thought he'd forfeited his discipleship through his denial. The Lord wanted to let him know he was still a disciple. Hallelujah! TYJ! (Weeps.)

       89. THE LOVE OF THE LORD, THE MERCY OF JESUS! THANK YOU LORD! Isn't that beautiful? My grandfather used to preach a whole sermon on that, "And Peter" it was called, bringing out how much the Lord loved him to reassure him that when He called for His disciples to come--He wanted to see them all now & manifest Himself before all of them, they hadn't all seen Him yet--He said "And Peter." He wanted to reassure Peter that he was forgiven & he was all right. PTL? "And Peter." Isn't that beautiful? (Family: Amen!)

       90. AND WHEN PETER SAID, "WELL, WASH ME ALL OVER, WASH MY HEAD TOO," what did the Lord say then? (Peter: Something like, you need not to be washed because if you are washed you are every whit whole.) He was speaking really symbolically, spiritually. He was as good as telling Peter, "I've already washed you entirely. Now I just need to wash your feet, that's all." (Jn.13:10.)

       91. NOW MOST OF US TAKE A BATH AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK, but how many times a week or a day do we wash other parts of our bodies? You don't take a complete bath as often as you wash your hands, & in those days, particularly the feet got dirty. Why? (Alfred: They wore sandals.) (Sue: It was dusty.) Very dusty country, & they wore sandals, so therefore their feet got quite dirty & wherever they went they didn't have all these nice pavements & it was pretty dusty country, normally rather dry & dusty. And when it wasn't dusty it was muddy like the ranch.

       92. SO ONE WAY OR THE OTHER WHEN YOU GOT TO A HOUSE, unless you wanted to get their floors all dirty, dusty or muddy either one, & also if the host wanted to signify the honouring of a guest, they did what? (Alfred: Washed their feet.) Washed their feet. That was a custom. It was not only needed, but it was significant of honour. TYJ!

       93. WE'RE GOING OVER THE EVENTS WHICH OCCURRED DURING THE HOLY WEEK, AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH & RESURRECTION, etc., which these holidays commemorate. How many times do we wash our hands, & faces compared to how many times we wash our whole body?--Daily & probably many times a day. At least I do. Maria knows how often & how frequently I wash my hands, & usually everytime I wash my hands I wash my face again. Maybe that's why it's held up this long, I don't know! But I don't think you've ever seen a pimple or any acne on my face, or hardly ever--I've always kept it good & clean.

       94. WHEN YOU WERE SAVED, WHAT HAPPENED IN YOUR SALVATION? (Alfred: You got washed.) You got washed from what? (Alfred: From our sins.) What sins? (Alfred: All our sins.) You were washed from all your sins--which sins? All your sins, yes. Well, let me give you another clue. Chronologically which sins? (Dora: Past & future.) All your sins, right? And by faith, yes, all your future sins too. But in this process of sanctification, you wash the dish, & then it's used & in the process of use it gets what again? (Family: Dirty.) So does it have to be washed again? (Family: Yes.)

       95. JESUS WAS CARRYING ON A SIMPLE CEREMONY WHICH HAD GREAT DEEP SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE. He was telling Peter, "You've been washed once & for all & really in a way forever, but I still have to keep washing you a little bit to keep you clean." Daily! Is there ever a day that passes that we don't sin? Really not, none of us are perfect. How often do we miss the mark? How often do we make a mistake? Even a mistake is a sin, in a way. Missing the Mark. So the Lord has to constantly be cleaning us, right? Everyday He has to cleanse us.

       96. WE'RE HUMAN, WE'RE IN THESE VILE BODIES OF FLESH, & DAILY HE HAS TO CLEANSE US--our minds, our thoughts, our bodies, actions, words. I got mad at you here one night because you left the door open & I got chilled, started a sneezing spell, & if you realise what those sneezing spells do to me then you'd understand why I got to upset. I bawled you out & stomped out of here & didn't come back for the whole evening.

       97. I WAS VERY SORRY ABOUT THAT & I HAD TO APOLOGISE AFTERWARD, the next night as you recall. I wasn't very loving & I wasn't very kind & I wasn't very forgiving, & that's a sin. And I had to come back & confess it to you, since you're the ones I had wronged. I felt you had wronged me letting me get chilled with that door open & caused me to sneeze, & it almost brings on a heart attack when I start sneezing & I don't stop sneezing for quite a while. And then as Maria knows afterwards I'm blowing my nose & hocking & spitting & clearing my throat to for another half an hour. I get those sneezing spells real bad sometimes.

       98. MY NOSE HAS BEEN A PROBLEM TO ME ALMOST ALL MY LIFE. In the early days they said I had adenoids & they had different kinds of names for things, a swelling of the polyps they call them, inside the nose. I never could breathe very good. I still can't breathe too well, as I told you at night I have to lie a certain way. If I lay on my right side my nose closes up entirely. So on my right side I have learned automatically in my sleep to lie with either my thumb or finger there to hold it open like that. I can lie on my left side fine & it all opens up & I can breathe without that.

       99. IT WAS BAD ENOUGH TO BEGIN WITH, & THEN WHEN I HAD IT BROKEN IT MADE IT WORSE. One of the nostrils or holes almost closed up entirely. How did I get on that? I get onto so many funny subjects. (Sue: Forgiveness.) But my sneezing really bothers me, & when I get to sneezing I sneeze & sneeze & sneeze & it's very hard on my heart. Sometimes it'll precipitate a heart attack & it is hard on me.

       100. WELL, I GOT MAD AT YOU & I STOMPED OUT, LORD FORGIVE ME, & I'VE BEEN ASHAMED OF MYSELF EVER SINCE. Well, I'm always pretty much ashamed of myself because I'm a pretty big mess. I sometimes wonder how the Lord ever could use me, but I know He does, so I know He loves me & I know He uses me to help you for your sake, & therefore I know He loves you. And He lets you know what a mess I am, that I'm no good either, so you'll have hopes for yourselves, that if He can forgive me, He can certainly forgive you!

       101. LIKE KING DAVID WAS ALWAYS A GREAT INSPIRATION & COMFORT TO ME, because if such a big sinner could be forgiven such big sins & the Lord still turned around & called him a man after His own heart, then you know how great the love & mercy of the Lord is!

       102. SO SANCTIFICATION IS BOTH A ONE TIME THING & A CONSTANT PROCESS, so both of these schools of thought that have argued over this theological doctrine for centuries, whether it was once & for all or whether it was continuous, are both right. And another thing is, I'm quite convinced now since my study of the Word in my later life, that the sanctification that Paul's talking about--& that's why it gets those poor Holiness people so confused--is not at all the baptism of the Holy Spirit. What does it sound like to You? I've just been explaining it to you. In fact you already told me. (Sue: Salvation.) Salvation! Right!

       103. HERE THE POOR HOLINESS PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT FIRST, SECOND, THIRD WORKS OF GRACE, ETC. They're a sad case, 'cause here they spend most of their lives trying to get sanctified, which to them means to be made perfectly pure & sinless & absolutely perfect & never sin again, & of course they never make it! Some claim to have made it, but to themselves they sin. (Maria: You only get one try at it, that's the sad thing, & if you don't get it you can't do it again.)--Ha! Says they!

       104. ACTUALLY WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED TO THEM! They have already been sanctified, right? They have already been saved. And the pity of it is they don't even know it! They're never sure of it. Eternal insecurity! (Maria: It drives them crazy, too!) There was a famous preacher, I read his book, who started out Holiness trying to get sanctified & he nearly went crazy! He wound up in a hospital with tuberculosis a nervous wreck, nervous breakdown, nearly went out of his mind because he never could get perfect.

       105. ALL THESE EXPERIENCES THESE HOLINESS PEOPLE WERE BRAGGING ABOUT: "I was saved & sanctified & I've been in the way ever since."--Many of them are in the way, that's for sure! They practically brag about it because it's sort of a self-glorification of themselves in their own flesh, isn't it Maria? "You know, Jesus saved me, but I sort of sanctified myself. He saved me, but I made myself pure."

       106. IT'S REALLY ONE OF THE GREATEST WORKS RELIGIONS THERE IS and it covers nearly all false doctrine regarding theology--including Catholicism is a works religion, Seventh-day Adventism is a works religion & Judaism is a works religion--all of these religions which you have to partly save yourself & it partly depends on your own works. If it even depends on one little tiny work, then it's a work religion. But we know that Jesus has done it & did it all, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin." (1Jn.1:7.)

       107. I PRESENTED THAT TO THIS DEAR CATHOLIC GIRL WHO LIVED NEXT DOOR TO US ONE TIME, who was always worrying about her sins. She was probably lusting after me for one thing. I know I lusted after her quite often, but I wouldn't even admit that to myself, much less her! I realise now what I felt for her, I really loved her, & I think I was really in love with her. I'll never forget the time she came & grabbed me. She did everything but kiss me.

       108. SHE REALLY CAME IN DESPERATION FOR PRAYER FOR HER LITTLE BOY. She thought he was dying & he might have been. He was rolling & writhing in agony. He was about 3 years old, I guess, somewhere I think between Techi & Davida, & doubling up in pain & screaming in pain! She came & threw her arms around me. Now I realise the feeling I had was perfectly normal & natural & not wicked & sinful, but at the time I thought it was very wicked--I liked it! And I think she did too!

       109. SHE GRABBED ME & CLUNG TO ME IN REAL DESPERATION! I'm sure that wasn't particularly lustful at that time. She said, "Come, come quick! Would you please come quick & pray for my little boy, he's in terrible pain!" And he was, I could hear him shrieking. I was over working on the church & they lived next door & he was screaming. Of course, he was a pretty noisy little rascal anyhow & I wondered what he was screaming about this time. She came rushing over there & grabbed me & hustled me over there to pray for him.

       110. SHE SAID, "I KNOW YOU'RE A MAN OF FAITH, A MAN OF GOD!" I'd had many conversations with her & talked to her about the Lord & Salvation & with her husband too. Rosenberg was their name. He was, I think actually Jewish, Jewish-Italian, an Italian Jew & had been converted to the church or something to marry her, a Catholic. So I laid hands on the little boy & prayed for him.

       111. I PRAYED DESPERATELY & WANTED GOD TO REALLY TOUCH & HEAL HIM, not only for his sake but for her sake, & particularly as a testimony--it was a real test of the power of God. She had a lot of faith in me, she called me a man of God, a man of faith; well, now I had to prove it. I said, "Lord, you prove it."--And He did instantly! The boy stopped crying, relaxed, stretched out, & he was so exhausted from pain & screaming that he just went straight to sleep in his mother's arms.

       112. AND IF I EVER SAW A FACE SHINE & LOOK ADORING & WORSHIPFUL INTO MINE, IT WAS HERS! I could have grabbed her & kissed her then, she looked so beautiful! She was very pretty. And of course in hot Arizona she went around quite scantily clad a good deal of the time too, which I could see through her windows while I was working on my church. I didn't feel very holy, but I had to act like a preacher, & preachers were supposed to be very holy men.

       113. SO I USED THAT SCRIPTURE WITH HER, I SAID, "IT SAYS THAT HIS BLOOD CLEANSES US FROM ALL SIN." It has cleansed us from all past sin, it cleanses us from sins every day & from all future sin as well, otherwise we'd never make it. But it's Christ's work that's already done, & yet it's constantly being done by Him daily.

       114. AND THAT WAS WHAT THE LORD WAS TRYING TO SHOW PETER THROUGH THAT EXPERIENCE, THE MAJOR WORK HAD BEEN DONE. He was now a saved sinner, a saint, & cleansed once & for all, past, present & future. But it was a continuing process. Like a child grows day by day & learns day by day.

       115. WE WATCH TECHI, DAVID & DAVIDA GROW & LEARN, they're doing better all the time aren't they? They're growing, maturing, learning, they don't make as many mistakes as they used to, right? They don't make as many little mistakes, sometimes they make some bigger ones, since they're getting bigger. But right now even walking is a little difficult for her to keep her balance. She toddles around & falls down & has quite a few falls. (Easter 1980, one year old.)

       116. LIKE MARY BAKER EDDY SAID ABOUT SIN. The Christians & Protestants were always condemning her, but she had some good ideas. She said, "Every fall in a way is a fall upward." She was trying to say that we even learn by our mistakes, don't we? So therefore we even learn by our sins too, don't we? And that's why she said every fall with a saint or us sinners is a fall upward. Because even though we make a mistake, we learn by it, don't we? Praise the Lord! (Chair falls.) Oooh my Lord! That was to illustrate, I guess, the point!

       117. SO WE GOT ON TO PETER & HIS SANCTIFICATION, & WE HAD A WHOLE SERMON ON SANCTIFICATION NOW IN THE PROCESS! So according to that, if you have been sanctified by the Lord & His blood & Salvation, the noun for a person so sanctified is a saint! As you put the sanctified dish, washed, cleaned & dried, back on the shelf, it's only temporarily on the shelf, right? It has become a what? It was sanctified, so now it's become a saint!

       118. A CLEAN DISH IS A SAINT! But it's not gonna stay a saint very long, is it? In this case it gets dirty again. But actually underneath it's always clean, right? It just has to be washed off a little bit. It was originally cleansed & purified how? Most dishes?--By fire! In a furnace. A fire of nearly 4000 degrees F. usually, if it's ceramic or that glazed surface. Nearly all of our dishes are ceramics, only they're usually white. They put a white glaze on the outside.

       119. FIRST OF ALL IT'S A CLAY DISH & then it's coated & then put in a very hot furnace & the coating is burned on there permanently, & it's called a ceramic glaze. I know that's the way ceramics are made, & I think the way most dishes are made. These dinner dishes are actually pottery that we use, that's why they break. They're made that way in the fire.

       120. WELL, IF WE'RE GONNA GET AS FAR AS WE SHOULD TONIGHT ON OUR EASTER SUNDAY EVENING SERMON, I'M GONNA TRY TO WIND UP. That's at least one thing about church, you don't have to sit & listen to the preacher for an-hour-and-a half usually. Usually you couldn't stand to listen to that drivel very long anyhow! Well, at least I allow you to participate & I'm like a teacher, I ask you questions & make you think. Lots of times I ask you questions which I know you can't answer, but I ask them just to make you hungry for the answer.

       121. IT'S WHAT'S CALLED A RHETORICAL QUESTION, when you ask people a question you don't expect them to answer. But like waving a tidbit in front of you when you're hungry, doesn't it make you instantly eager for the answer? (Family: Yes!) It's almost like plowing the furrow & then the nice open furrow is ready for the seed. And of course I always think about sex when I think about that. You have to do a little plowing first to get her ready, right? She opens up & then you plant your plow & it plants the seed, Saints!

       122. SO WE'RE ALL SAINTS! We have here Saint Peter, Saint James, Saint Sue, Saint Dora, Saint Jewel, Saint Alfred, Saint Maria, even Saint David! A dear lady we knew, a rich millionaire hotel owner on Miami Beach, she was a Jewish Polish Catholic! And she lived on Miami Beach amongst the Jews, if you can imagine, down on South Beach. And she was quite rich. But amongst all these Jews on South Beach they were mostly the poor class who were nearly all Orthodox Russian Jews.

       123. THE RICH JEWS WHO HAD ALL THE MONEY & THE BIG HOTELS MOVED UP-BEACH TO NORTH BEACH, where all the new part of Miami Beach was & all fancy & new hotels, & they had moved also up-beach in another way too from South Beach where the Orthodox synagogue was to North Beach where the Reform synagogue was--upper-class Judaism!

       124. AND TO WALK INTO A REFORM SYNAGOGUE you would not be able to tell the difference between that & the average Catholic or Protestant church, because it's arranged the same way--platform up front, stage or whatever you want to call it. It's a raised dais & you have to walk up some steps to get onto it. Anyhow in the Protestant church they call it the platform & in the theatres they call it the stage.

       125. THE REFORM SYNAGOGUE WAS MUCH MORE MODERN & MUCH MORE LIKE THE GENTILES & THE CHRISTIANS, & to hear some of those Reformed rabbis preach sometimes, you could hardly tell the difference between a scholarly modernistic Christian church preacher & one of those Jews! In fact, they both preached about the same thing: They claimed to believed in God, of course, supposedly, but He was a rather dead God with no hereafter--Sadducees!

       126. THEY PREACHED JESUS AS A GREAT TEACHER, a great Rabbi, a great Philosopher, a great sort of a Prophet in a way, but not really the Son of God. He was only the Son of God in a certain sense & blah blah. They were not afraid at least to utter His Name & preach about Him & even be proud of Him as having been a Jew, in the Reform Synagogue. That was up-beach where they had gotten more modern & they looked down on these Orthodox Jews on South Beach.

       127. WELL, I DON'T KNOW HOW THIS DEAR OLD LADY GOT STUCK DOWN ON SOUTH BEACH. I guess because of her property, but she was actually a Christian & a Catholic & there were no Catholic churches on South Beach. In fact, I don't think there was a Catholic church in all of Miami beach, as I recall. There was a modernistic Christian church way up North Beach.

       128. BUT BEING A GOOD CATHOLIC, GOD BLESS HER, SHE WANTED SOME KIND OF A PLACE OF WORSHIP & she was always on the job taking care of her hotel & everything. I guess she didn't want to get too far away, & to go to the Catholic church you had to go clear across three miles across the water to Miami. So she built a little chapel right in the top of her hotel, a special big room that was up there, & she even called her hotel the St. David Hotel!

       129. AND SHE CALLED HER LITTLE CHAPEL THE ST. DAVID CHAPEL. Well, it was a good place for David, on the beach full of Jews a popular name, but they couldn't figure out how she got this saint business mixed up with David because saint was a Catholic expression. Anyway, my, how many things can I get out of one word? St. David--I'm even St. David!--Ha!

       130. SO ANYWAY, THE BODIES OF THE SAINTS: WHO GOT RESURRECTED? I thought nobody was supposed to get resurrected until the Rapture? Who said nobody was supposed to be resurrected till the Rapture? Isn't that the time when all the saints are gonna rise, huh? Which saints? It says here "that many bodies of the saints which slept arose"--you can't tell whether it was all of them or not--"came out of the graves after His resurrection, & went into the Holy City & appeared unto many." I would help you on that verse in this way, as it sounds like they didn't all rise.

       131. BUT WHY SHOULD SOME RISE & SOME NOT RISE, AS IT WAS SOME KIND OF A GENERAL RESURRECTION? Was there a general resurrection at the time of Christ's resurrection, or was there a partial resurrection? Have we got any authority in the Scripture why there should be just a partial resurrection?--Only some saints would have been raised & some saints wouldn't have been raised? Would there be any logic or reason for that? If there was any resurrection at all, is God so partial that He would only raise some & not others?

       132. WELL, I BELIEVE THAT THAT PART WHICH SAYS THE GRAVES OPENED & MANY BODIES OF THE SAINTS WHICH SLEPT AROSE & came out of the graves after His resurrection--& did what? (Family: Went into the city.) Went into the city & did what? (Family: Appeared unto many). Appeared unto many. In other words, they didn't see them all, right? But they had quite a few stories, tales to tell about the saints & different ones that had appeared to them. But that does not mean that they were not all raised! You get it?

       133. AND THIS DOES NOT SAY JUST THEIR SPIRITS, DOES IT?--THEIR BODIES! NOW THAT'S A RESURRECTION! When I die & my spirit goes to be with the Lord--is that a resurrection? (Family: No.) Some of you are almost afraid to think or answer me sometimes because I'm so full of surprises, you're afraid you're gonna be wrong. No, that's not a resurrection, that's just a Homegoing of the spirit. But my spirit will have some kind of body. They call it a theophany or God-body or spiritual body of some kind.

       134. IN ALL THESE DEATH EXPERIENCES THESE PEOPLE STILL HAD BODIES OF SOME KIND but they were spiritual bodies, they were like I felt when I died a couple of times. I just felt very light & airy & feathery like I could just float, & I presume I could. But this Scripture is very very specific. It says that their bodies arose & came out of what? (Family: The graves.) They didn't come out of Heaven, but out of graves!

       135. THE BODIES ACTUALLY GOT UP OUT OF THE GRAVES & WERE RAISED--when did it happen? (Family: After His resurrection.) After His resurrection. They appeared to many after His resurrection, but it is my opinion--I can't prove it, it doesn't say so--but it's my opinion at least & you can take it for what it's worth that when Jesus was raised, then the Lord raised them up afterward, the Old Testament Saints!

       136. WHEN JESUS WAS RAISED FROM THE DEAD FIRST, HE WAS CALLED THE FIRSTFRUITS, WASN'T HE? First fruits of the dead. First one to be raised. But I would generally theorise that almost immediately or very soon thereafter He raised the dead, & many of them appeared to the other saints, the Christian saints who were alive. Yes? (Dora: I don't know if maybe I misunderstood, but you said after His resurrection were they resurrected?) Yes. See you missed the first part of the movie!

       137. THE WAY THIS READS IT SOUNDS LIKE IT HAPPENED RIGHT AT THE TIME OF JESUS' CRUCIFIXION, doesn't it? Yes, but you go right on down & see what it says. I didn't say it. That's specific right there. (Dora: Verse 53, "And came out of the graves after His resurrection.") Right, so they were not resurrected until after He was resurrected, right? And they appeared to many people in the city.

       138. THERE WAS ANOTHER MARVELOUS MANIFESTATION WHICH OCCURRED IN THIS HOLY WEEK HERE ON EASTER SUNDAY, as it's usually called, because it was what day of the week? We know it was Sunday. How do we know He was resurrected on Sunday, which is now called Easter? (Family: Because it was on the first day of the week.) It's called the first day of the week. And it became a custom thereafter for Christians to meet on what day of the week?--Sunday.

       139. MOST OF THE FIRST CHRISTIANS WERE NEARLY ALL JEWS. So they were accustomed to attending what? (Family: The synagogue.) The synagogue on Saturday, the Sabbath. And then, particularly like the concision, they would go to synagogue on Saturday to appease the concision & the circumcision & the scribes & Pharisees & the Jews to show they were still good Jews, & then they would meet together as Christians on what day of the week? (Family: Sunday.) First day of the week, following day. It became a Christian custom.

       140. THIS IS HOW THE CATHOLICS & THE PROTESTANTS TOO FINALLY WOULD UP SELECTING SUNDAY AS A DAY OF WORSHIP. However it's not the Sabbath. Now the poor sad Holiness people from whence we came constantly called Sunday the Sabbath. And particularly amongst the Pennsylvania Dutch, they seldom ever use the word Sunday. They'll say next Sabbath. "We'll see you next Sabbath in church." Well, it's sad, because of course Saturday is the 7th day, last day of the week, & it is the Sabbath & not Sunday.

       141. EVEN YOUR AMERICAN & BRITISH CALENDARS PUT SATURDAY AS THE SEVENTH DAY OF THE WEEK & SUNDAY AS THE FIRST. I was surprised & amazed however when I got to Europe & found that in Spain, Sunday was the 7th day! It shows you how somehow or another the Jews & the Catholics must have gotten together somewhere to make sure that they all worshipped on the right day--and maybe made it a lot easier for the Jews to join the Catholic Church, for one thing--and made it a lot easier for Catholics to justify their worship.

       142. (JEWEL: I THINK THAT CHANGED RECENTLY BECAUSE IT USED TO BE SATURDAY WAS THE LAST DAY OF THE WEEK and then they changed it.) Is that only recently? Is that a fact? How about that! Well, I presume it makes it a lot easier to be a Jewish Catholic, right? Because that's one of the most important things to worshippers of religions, what day of the week you worship on & what day you go to church on.

       143. THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS HAVE A GREAT CONTROVERSY RAGING BETWEEN THEM & THE REST OF THE PROTESTANTS about what day of the week you should worship on, & your religion is judged by whether you worship on Saturday or on Sunday. And the Muslims worship on what day? (Family: Friday.) So Friday, Saturday & Sunday! They've gotten pretty holy, haven't they? You & I are still worshipping on Sunday right now, but if I don't shut up pretty soon we're gonna be worshipping on Monday! Well, we're getting around to some pretty important things.

       144. I'M GOING TO TELL YOU ANOTHER SHOCKER NOW THAT YOU MAY HAVE NEVER HEARD OF! It's been suppressed particularly by the Jews, & why the Lord didn't have it mentioned here in the text, I don't know! He could have had it mentioned right at the same spot. Who knows, maybe even the Jews had something to do with it being erased from the text if it was ever.

       145. I'VE GONE THROUGH ALL THIS TO EXPLAIN TO YOU WHY IT'S SO IMPORTANT, telling you about the Ark & the cherubim & what was in the Ark & Shekinah Glory, the symbolism of the presence of God Himself. He was there, it didn't just symbolise His presence, He was there!--This bright light that was almost blinding, called the Shekinah Glory which hovered between the two cherubim.

       146. OF COURSE WE KNOW THAT GOD IS EVERYWHERE. He's omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, you can't pin Him down to any particular place, so in a way it was a representation of the presence of God, even the light, right? Now you've read this many times, "the veil of the temple was rent in twain," did you ever wonder why? (James: Well, that was like the Holy Place where the Spirit of God lived for the people of Israel. Was it to show that now there was no physical Holy Place but it was rather in people's hearts?)

       147. SOME SCHOLARS HAVE LIKENED THE RENDING OF THE VEIL OF THE TEMPLE[DELETED]' The Temple was symbolic of what? The Temple was all kinds of types & shadows & pictures of spiritual realities. Now what did the Temple itself symbolise? Peter says that God's house was now built with what? (Family: Living stones.) Living stones. (1Pe.2:5.) So the Temple was symbolic of what? (James: The dwelling place of the Spirit of God.)

       148. WHAT IS THE DWELLING PLACE OF GOD TODAY? (Sue: The people.) So what is His house today? What is His temple today? Your bodies are the temple of the holy Spirit. (lCo.3:16.) And all of them together is the one great Church of Christ, right? The great Temple of God. So the old Jewish Temple was symbolic of what? (Family: God's house?) The great church of God, His body, the Bride, the people, really, right?

       149. WELL, THIS TEMPLE HAD ALL THESE SYMBOLISMS INSIDE, but we don't have time to even go into it. If you're an Old Testament scholar you know what all those things are significant of that are even present in the church today, believe it or not. And of course the Shekinah Glory was symbolic of the Holy Spirit, God Himself and His presence. And the Ark of the Covenant with these souvenirs & artifacts in it, etc., was a particularly Holy place, like He speaks of your heart.

       150. YOUR HEART IS PART OF YOUR BODY BUT IT'S WITHIN YOUR BODY & yet He speaks of Himself as dwelling within your heart, right?--In a particularly holy special place in your body. What was the heart of the Temple? (Sue: The Chamber.) But even more specifically, the Ark. Right? And there was the light of God under the wings of the cherubim. Well, now, here's something it doesn't tell you here unless you've studied some history that has been suppressed, particularly by the Jews.

       151. THIS 4-INCH THICK CURTAIN WAS QUITE A VEIL, IT WAS NOT A WOMEN'S VEIL, & for it to be suddenly torn in two was nothing less than a miracle! Now that you can't pinpoint here, because the only thing you really know here that happened after His resurrection for sure was the resurrection of these saints, right? Some of these events may have happened at the time of the crucifixion, some between.

       152. WHAT WAS THE FINAL THING THAT REALLY MADE SURE JESUS WAS DEAD? (Family: His heart breaking. When He was stabbed with the spear.) Actually He was already dead, but they just wanted to make sure, so the centurion thrust the spear into His heart. And there flowed forth what? (Family: Blood & water.) We know that it was necessary for Him to shed His blood for our Salvation, but what was the water? Why water?

       153. SCHOLARS FOR YEARS WONDERED WHAT THE WATER WAS ABOUT, but science in more recent times has discovered that some people who died of a great anguish of heart such as heartache, heart-break--they even call them heartbreaks, don't they?--That they have been discovered to have a tremendous accumulation of water about the heart. I don't know what causes it or if they've got any explanation for it, they probably have by this time, probably to try to soothe the heart or something.

       154. BUT IT SHOWS THAT JESUS THEREFORE DIED OF A BROKEN HEART! (Weeps.) Hallelujah! TYJ! For you & me. And at that time feeling like the lost sinner, right? He went through an experience which, thank God, we will never have to go through: Not just crucifixion, not just the agony of body, but the agony of mind & heart & spirit feeling that God had actually deserted Him! He said, "Eli, Eli lama sabachthani? My God, My God why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (Mt.27:46.)

       155. HAD GOD FORSAKEN HIM? Yes, momentarily He had. He had to, that He might die the death of a sinner, as a sinner dies, without God! Think of it!: He died the death of the unsaved in agony! God had to turn His back on His Own Son temporarily that He might die the death of the sinner for our sins. He took our punishment for us.

       156. IT WASN'T JUST CRUCIFIXION, IT WASN'T JUST AGONY OF THE CROSS, IT WAS HEARTBREAK!--Desertion by His Own Father! I've written Letters (Nos.564, 566) on how this must have made the Father feel. How would your children feel if you temporarily turned your back on them when they were most in need, it seemed, & needed your help? Yet He who was without sin & totally righteous had to feel the experience of death without God!

       157. DID GOD ANSWER HIM? There's no record of an answer, is there? He cried out to God & God didn't answer! This wasn't just stage play, He wasn't just acting, He meant it! Jesus felt that God had deserted Him at that moment! He felt it, & He cried out & He said, "Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Because God had forsaken Him, because God had to forsake Him that He might die the death of the sinner for our sins!

       158. SO HIS DEATH WAS FAR WORSE THAN MERE CRUCIFIXION & the physical agony that He was suffering. He was suffering the spiritual agony of the dying sinner, lost, without Salvation, without God, dying for His own sins, only in His case He was dying for ours & He bore the sins of the World! What a death! He did that so you won't have to do it. He did that so you won't have to go through that horror of dying a sinner's lonely death!

       159. MY MOTHER WAS WITH LOTS OF DYING SINNERS & some doctors have had to go through it. It's a horrible traumatic experience! We were seeing that film on the doctors that you should see sometime, on how hard it is. It's very interesting. One doctor said, "No matter how many times I've been through it, to have to sit through the death of a patient is still a terrific traumatic experience for me."

       160. SOME OF THEM SCREAM, SOME OF THEM WRITHE IN AGONY, some of them act like they're already in the torments of Hell, & some of them cry out about flames & demons & Hell, sinners who die. You don't hear many stories like that, do you? They hush that stuff up because they don't wanna scare you.

       161. PEOPLE DON'T TALK ABOUT DEATH VERY MUCH, DO THEY? In the World that's one subject that's taboo. This doctor who wrote the book on after-death experiences brings out how strange it is that almost the greatest experience of your life outside of birth is a taboo subject which nobody is supposed to talk about & yet everybody's gonna go through it sometime or another. People just don't like to face it, they don't like to talk about it, they don't like to hear about it, & so it just isn't discussed & it's a very unpopular subject.

       162. BUT I'VE HEARD SOME TALES ABOUT HOW SOME SINNERS DIED WITHOUT GOD, feeling already the torments of demons & flames & Hell & whatnot. Just like you have heard some beautiful stories about the death of the saints, who already saw Heaven & Jesus & were already feeling glorified & thrilled! (Like St. Stephen, Acts 7.)

       163. "EARTH RECEDES, HEAVEN OPENS!--THIS IS MY CORONATION DAY!" is the famous quote. It's what my grandmother said the day she died. I don't know why she did it, I guess it was symbolic to her: As she was dying she pulled the rings off her fingers & put them in my grandfather's hand. Then she raised both arms to Heaven & said, "I hear singing, the angels are singing!" (Weeps.)

       164. WHY SHOULD WE CRY? WE'RE NOT CRYING FOR THEM? THEY'RE HAPPY! Let's face it, we're sorry for ourselves. That's why people cry at funerals. Of course, if they died a sinner, I can understand why they might be crying for them. And the Catholics & some people who may be Christians also cry for the dead because they went to the wrong place & they know they did & they feel sorry for them--lost sinners!

       165. BUT I'VE SEEN MANY CHRISTIANS CRY AT FUNERALS OVER DEAD SAINTS. Why should they cry for them? They are not crying for them. Usually we're crying for ourselves, right? And let's face it, what is one of the main things that you cry about? Why are you crying for yourself & what are you sorry for? You're sorry for yourself for one thing, & you're also very sorry that perhaps you didn't love that person enough, you weren't good enough to them, you didn't do as much for them as you could or should have.

       166. I THINK THIS IS ONE THOUGHT THAT PEOPLE OFTEN THINK OF AT FUNERALS: They are reminiscing & they are sorry, & they are penitent & repentant for not having shown more love, been kinder. They think of some of the bad things they did to that person, caused them heartache or suffering. Particularly since it's usually a loved one, parents first & then later perhaps a mate, & we cry that we were not always kind, we were not always loving.--Sometimes even a child.

       167. I CRIED A LITTLE BIT & WAS SORRY after I left the room that night, stomped out in anger, angry at you, but then I was sorry that I acted like that. I was sorry for you in that case, & me too, both. Well, we can't have resurrection without a death can we? TYJ! Amen!

       168. WELL, I KNOW YOU'RE TIRED & YOU HAD A LONG DAY & forgive me for going on so long, but perhaps you can appreciate the joy of Jesus' resurrection more when you realise what agony He'd just been through. Not only dying such a horrible death, but the mockery of His enemies. It looked like a triumph for the Devil & his crowd. It looked like He had lost & they had won, right?

       169. BUT THEN CAME THAT FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK, MORNING. How do we know it was early when He rose? We don't even know exactly when He rose. All we know is that what happened? (Peter: That Mary Magdalene & the other Mary came at dawn.) Yes, & apparently they were the last ones there. Also if you notice this passage, after He was buried they were still sitting there leaning up against the grave. 61st verse. They put a stone over the door.

       170. THE JEWS WANTED TO MAKE SURE HE DIDN'T RISE FROM THE DEAD. The Devil wanted to try to keep Him from rising. The Jews wanted to make sure the disciples didn't steal His body & claim He'd risen, so they put a stone over the door with the governor's seal upon it to make sure they didn't even roll the stone away because the seal would be broken, & they put a Roman guard there as well, some soldiers to guard it to make sure. Well, you give the Devil enough rope he'll hang himself. [EDITED: "Mat.27:62-66."]

       171. THE LORD ALLOWED ALL THAT, DIDN'T HE? He allowed them to put the stone there & the seal & the Roman guard because that absolutely proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that He did rise from the dead! Right? Otherwise they might have been able to claim, "Well, they rolled it away & stole His body & rolled the stone back again & just nobody ever knew about it."

       172. BUT THE JEWS HUNG THEMSELVES. '[DELETED] It merely proved even more that His resurrection was a miracle, right? Do you like this little study? There's a lot in it. I'm sorry to take so long but I'm covering a lot of things. I haven't even finished up with the veil yet! What did it symbolise?

       173. IT'S USUALLY THOUGHT OF AS THE TIME OF HIS DEATH AT THE MOMENT HIS FLESH WAS PIERCED BY THE SPEAR! His flesh was rent, right? And that was His body, right? I think Paul speaks of it as the veil of His flesh. (Heb.10:20.) As His flesh was rent in twain, as He died, for example the veil was rent in two! His spirit departed from His body, right? Where did He go? (Dora: The heart of the Earth.) Yes, & here comes one of your shockers!

       174. THE APOSTLE TELLS US THAT HE SPENT THREE DAYS & THREE NIGHTS IN THE HEART OF THE EARTH or as some people call it, Hell or Hades or Purgatory or whatever you want to call it. Peter calls it a prison, how about that? And Peter says ... what was there? (Sue: The spirits in prison.) It was a spiritual prison, full of spirits. Which ones? (Family: The dead.) Yes of course, definitely. What does it say, read it. (Burps.) TYL!

       175. THAT GAS HAS BEEN HURTING ME A LONG TIME! I was sitting here thinking, "Well now, if this is the time go to, what a way to go!" Ha! Hallelujah! But it came off, thank the Lord! I had some gas around my heart. I was wondering if this was the way Jesus felt when He had that agony of heart. I feel better, TYL! TYJ! Hallelujah!

       176. (PETER: 1ST PETER 3:18-20 SAYS, "FOR CHRIST ALSO HATH ONCE SUFFERED FOR SINS, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also He went & preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometimes were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah," & then it continues on about Noah.) What a strange passage! My mother used to say, "I wish Peter had never written that!" She said, "That upsets my whole theology!"

       177. WELL, IT'S NOT STRANGE THAT WE SHOULD FIND SPIRITS IMPRISONED IN THE HEART OF THE EARTH, IS IT? We usually think of Hell as being in the nether world the underworld, below ground, down yonder. We usually think of Hell as that direction & Heaven which direction? Well, it depends on which Heaven you're talking about. Take a deep breath. You just inhaled & exhaled some Heaven!--One of the heavens, the atmospheric heavens.

       178. THERE ARE HOW MANY HEAVENS ALL TOGETHER ACCORDING TO ST. PAUL? He was caught up to a third heaven! (2Co.12:2.) There are actually seven heavens & you're living in one of them right now!--Ha! You're living in what you might call the first heaven, the lowest one, at least, the atmospheric heavens.

       179. THIS BUSINESS ABOUT THE DEATH, BURIAL & RESURRECTION OF CHRIST & what He was doing in the meantime is a pretty big subject. I don't know if we can cover it all tonight, but I'll try to tie up a few loose ends that I started. I don't want to leave you hanging till another time, but we may have to cover all the rest of it some other time.

       180. JESUS HAD TO DIE IN ORDER THAT WE MIGHT LIVE. His body had to die so that He would suffer death for the sinner & also then be resurrected so that we might be raised from the dead. And here's another important point that you never even noticed before until you read it tonight, the way I read it, & I paused deliberately just before that phrase "after His resurrection."

       181. ALL OF A SUDDEN SOME OF YOUR FACES BRIGHTENED UP & YOU WERE TOTALLY SURPRISED, "AFTER HIS RESURRECTION"! You thought that happened when He died! They were not resurrected until after Jesus was resurrected. He was the firstfruits of the resurrection (1Co.15:20,23), the Apostle tells us, & then they were resurrected. Now if some saints were resurrected, it stands to reason--I can't prove it, but I'm pretty convinced of it--that all the dead saints, from the beginning of time until that time, were resurrected at that time & went to be with the Lord when He went to the Father!

       182. IS THAT A NEW DOCTRINE FOR YOU? Now I've just blown some of your theology all to bits! Why not? What kind of a doctrine have you got that disproves it? I challenge you to find me something that disproves it, & if you can find it in the Bible, I might believe you. Why not? Why shouldn't they have been? Right away you're gonna say,

       183. "OH! BUT WAIT A MINUTE, IN THE RAPTURE, THE DEAD IN CHRIST SHALL RISE FIRST, then we which are alive & remain shall be caught up together with Him in the air. We shall not prevent them." (1Th.4:15-17.)--Literally meaning precede them in this case. We're gonna follow them in fact. In the resurrection, who's gonna rise first? The dead in... (Family: Christ!) Not the dead in Moses or the dead before Christ. It's so plain! In other words, the Church!--Christians!

       184. NOW I'M STILL SAYING IN A SENSE I CAN'T PROVE IT BY THE SCRIPTURE, I'm theorising, but I can certainly prove by the Scripture that some of the Old Testament saints arose at this time, & if any of them arose, if there was a resurrection of some of their bodies, it stands certainly to logic & reason & the fairness of God they all rose!--All the saved of the old Testament period.

       185. WHAT DID JESUS' DEATH MARK THE END OF? (Family: The end of the Law.) The end of the Law, the end of the Old Testament. A testament or a contract was often sealed with the testator's blood. They would sometimes prick their finger & sign their name in blood as proof that they really meant business.

       186. WHEN JESUS SHED HIS BLOOD, IN A SENSE, HE WAS SIGNING HIS NAME TO THE COVENANT IN HIS OWN BLOOD. But it was what kind of covenant? Which one did He sign? The old one or the new one? (Family: The New one.) Of course! It was a new contract! A whole new promise! In a way it wasn't new, it had been foreshadowed & foretold all through the Old Testament, & even the Old Testament saints were saved through what? (Family: Faith.) Through faith, yes, children of Abraham by faith. But through whom?

       187. DID THEY GET SAVED BY SOME OTHER ROUTE THAN JESUS? No! As Paul says, they without us, it wouldn't be complete, would it? (Heb.11:40.) They were saved the same way we were saved, by faith, only they were looking forward to Christ & His death. But as far as God was concerned it had already happened. The Lamb who was slain since when? (Family: From the foundations of the Earth.) From the foundation of the Earth! (Rev.13:8.)

       188. WE SAW A VERY INTERESTING SCI-FI FILM CALLED "THE QUEST FOR LOVE." As far as God's concerned & when we get out of this life, what's gonna be no more? What did the angel announce in the 10th chapter of Revelation, with one foot on the sea & one on the land & his head in the clouds?--Must have been a giant angel! (Alfred: Time shall be no more.) Time shall be no more! (Rev.10:6.) Boy, there's another shocker! How can that be possible?

       189. SCIENCE IS STILL NOT ABLE TO EXPLAIN TIME. Look how many subjects we can get into out of just Easter! They have discovered some things through some of the theories--in fact, Einstein was working on this, as I understand, when he died, on this theory of relativity regarding time. We speak of three dimensions. We live in a three dimensional World.

       190. ACTUALLY WE LIVE IN A FOUR DIMENSIONAL WORLD. What do we call them usually? (James: Height, width, depth...) Well, usually we call it length, breadth, depth or you can use various different terms just like you said, but what other dimension? (Sue: Time.) Why do you have to have time as one of the dimensions of objects? Why is time the fourth dimension?

       191. MASS HAS WHAT YOU'D LEARN EARLY IN SCHOOL, IT HAS VOLUME, RIGHT? If we just have width, length & breadth we have one single plane & no depth & we have no volume. But you soon learn how to find volume of things in cubic inches or centimeters or whatever, so many cubic so & so's. But if this had no time to it, if it didn't last a little while, it wouldn't be there, would it? So how could it have length, breadth & depth or volume without time? It's gotta have a little time or it wouldn't exist at all? Time! Oh my, now we got on another big subject. Oh, we just don't have time to go into that tonight.

       192. IN THE FIRST PLACE IT'S DIFFICULT TO EVEN DEFINE TIME. Oh, some of you say it's not hard to define time. There was a beginning & there's an end & time is the space in between. Oh. And what's outside of that? You & I are living in time now, aren't we? But I had a dream just as clear as anything & the angel or my guide or whoever it was said, "It's 2125 A.D.!" I said that's impossible, that hasn't happened yet! And he said, "Well, it has now." Where was I then? Where was he? (James: In the Millennium.) Yes, we were. How?

       193. WILL THERE BE TIME IN THE MILLENNIUM? Yes. Why? (James: It's a thousand years long.) We know it's a thousand years long for one thing, & we know the Earth will be as it is today more or less, except it'll be more like the days of the Garden of Eden with the curse removed, etc. There will be other people than us, there will be natural flesh-&-blood people still alive who survived the holocaust & the Tribulation & the Wrath of God & all the rest.

       194. SOME PEOPLE WILL LIVE THROUGH IT ALL & COME OUT ON THE OTHER SIDE & BE IN THE MILLENNIUM WITH US.--Saved or unsaved? (Peter: Unsaved.) Unsaved. How do we know they're unsaved? (James: Because they're gonna rebel.) Because they eventually rebel again under the leadership of Satan himself. Not the Antichrist this time, not the Devil incarnate or in the flesh, but the Devil in person! (Rev.20:7-9.) Why does he have to appear in person this time? Who's gonna be there in person? (Peter: Jesus.)

       195. JESUS IS GONNA NOT JUST BE IN HIS BRIDE & THE CHURCH & HIDDEN, HE'S GONNA BE ALIVE & WELL AND VISIBLE!--The visible, personal reign of Jesus Christ, the King of Kings! So to match such a personal appeal, what does the Devil have to do? He's gonna have to appear as an angel of light. He's gonna have to manifest himself to see him almost as powerful as Christ Himself.

       196. IMAGINE, AFTER A THOUSAND YEARS OF THE PERSONAL VISIBLE RULE & REIGN OF JESUS CHRIST & all the supernaturalness of it, the marvel of it, the wonder of it, the perfect World--an almost perfect World, not quite because it still has the Devil & wickedness & wicked people--but the Lord has done everything He can to make things as beautiful & as perfect as He can with what He's got to work with.

       197. FACE-TO-FACE WITH JESUS, THEY'LL BE UNDER HIS REIGN & HIS PERFECT GOVERNMENT in an almost perfect World, restored to the beauty of the Garden of Eden before the fall of man! There's long life again & all of this, & us Christians there ruling & reigning over them in also miraculous, supernatural resurrected bodies which can appear & disappear & walk through walls & doors & travel with the speed of not light, but thought! Think of it!

       198. AFTER ALL THIS, THESE PEOPLE ARE STILL GONNA TURN AGAINST US & AGAINST GOD & BE LED AWAY BY THE DEVIL INTO REBELLION! He must have a pretty powerful appeal! He probably takes quite a few things out of his bag of tricks to persuade people to follow him.

       199. WE KNOW THAT THE ANTICHRIST IS GONNA DO MIRACLES, mighty signs & wonders, etc., & this is what persuades people to follow him & worship him. He's gonna actually do miracles because he will be the Devil in the flesh, & the Devil has power & he's able to do a certain amount of miracles. God has allowed this, & apparently the Lord allows it again just to see who's gonna be tripped off & ripped off.

       200. TO ME IT'S THE FINAL CONCLUSIVE PROOF THAT THE HEART OF WICKED MAN IS VERY WICKED. That after all of that they will still turn on God & on His Christ & follow the Devil again! It certainly shows that their punishment is justified. It certainly justifies the judgement of God after they've been given every chance possible to believe & follow Christ.

       201. THESE PEOPLE WERE WICKED BEFORE THE RAPTURE, RIGHT? They were still wicked after the Rapture & the coming of Christ weren't they? They were wicked who suffered the torments of Hell on Earth during the Tribulation & during the judgements of God, right? Suffered all that & still would not repent, the Bible says. "They still repented not of their evil deeds." (Rev.9:20,21.) In spite of every kind of punishment & wrath & judgement & plague & everything, they still didn't repent--they were like Pharaoh!--Totally incorrigible!

       202. THEY LIVED RIGHT ON INTO THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST, although in a sense they're being ruled over, they're like our slaves. Still, a slave who serves in the House of the King is a pretty blessed & privileged slave, right? So here they are the serfs, you might say, of the World, the slaves of the Kingdom of God.

       203. THEY ARE STILL WICKED, UNREPENTANT, REBELLIOUS, BLACKHEARTED, TREACHEROUS SLAVES who turn as soon as they get a chance, as soon as God gives them a chance at the end of the Millennium to follow the Devil again, which proves that's where their hearts were all the time! To me that's like God showing another sample of His love & mercy, but in spite of all that, they still turn back. So He certainly is justified in wiping them out then.

       204. NOW AT THE COMING OF JESUS CHRIST, WHO RISES FROM THE DEAD? (Family: The dead in Christ.) When do the Wicked rise? It says very plain in the Bible. (Peter: At the White Throne Judgement.) At the end of what? (Jewel: At the end of the Millennium.) End of the Millennium after what? (James: Battle of Gog & Magog.) In other words, the battle of the Devil really in person leading the forces against Christ. The Antichrist forces rise again! And the Lord then wipes them out with what? (Sue: Fire!) Including the whole surface of the Earth & the atmospheric heavens are destroyed!--Purified by a flood of fire!

       205. YOU TALK ABOUT A SONIC BOOM OR ATOM BOOM, THAT'S GONNA BE ONE! The prophets saw it like it was a scroll rolled away! Did you ever see certain types of fire that rolled? A gasoline fire or a gas fire just sort of rolls. That's how the atmosphere is going to explode!

       206. THE ATMOSPHERE & SEAS ARE COMPOSED OF GASES. Water is made of hydrogen & oxygen (H-2-O), a very explosive mixture if turned to gases in certain proportions. If it were not for a few other gases mixed in, we would no longer be sitting here! The first spark would have blown up the whole place, in fact, would have blown up the whole atmospheric heavens!--And that's what's gonna happen some day!--A Worldwide hydrogen bomb!

       207. GOD'S GONNA ALLOW THE BALANCE TO BE UPSET in order to destroy all the pollution & the whole stinking surface of the Earth, even made beautiful again like the Garden of Eden, still polluted by man. It's still bound to be polluted because they're gonna still be flesh-&-blood people. There's still gonna be garbage, there's still gonna be some dead, there's still gonna be offal, awful offal, waste matter, shit, sewage & all the rest.

       208. BUT IN THE NEW EARTH & THE NEW HEAVENS HE'S GONNA MAKE, THERE'S NO MORE FLESH & BLOOD, there's no more waste matter, no more sewage, no more dead, no more garbage, nothing evil or stinking or polluted of any kind. And we're all going to be spiritual there. No wicked there except the saved wicked--you & me. PTL? My oh my, how many subjects can we get into on this subject of death & resurrection? There's so much to it!

       209. WELL, THERE ARE TWO VERY IMPORTANT STORIES I HAVEN'T FINISHED YET, one about the veil of the Temple, which is a shocker, & then I'm gonna explode one of your favourite traditions which I went to a great deal of trouble to reconstruct & show you how much the church believes in it & how wrong they are. Maybe some of you have heard this before.

       210. WELL, UNTIL THE TIME OF JESUS' DEATH THE CENTER OF THE ONLY TRUE RELIGION IN THE WORLD--which was supposed to be true, it isn't very true any more--was what? (Family: Jerusalem.) Where? (Family: In the Temple.) The Temple. But it was all a symbolic religion, it was all symbolism, because God hasn't really changed any. His church has always been the body of people, the believers, & it's always been by faith & they were always saved by Christ, even in the Old Testament. So nothing has really actually changed.

       211. PASSING FROM THE OLD COVENANT TO THE NEW, the Old Testament to the New, He merely wiped out these little old models & illustrations & children's pictures on the walls & all of that legal stuff! Paul says it was our kindergarten, so to speak, our school we were in, & the law was our schoolteacher, in a sense. We were being told about things that we don't really know much about that are being illustrated to us with pictures & symbols & the Temple & all these things in it. But he tells us that when all this is wiped away, then we're gonna have the real thing. (Gal.3:24,5.)--& we've got it!

       212. YOU SAY, "BUT I THOUGHT THEY HAD THE REAL THING, they could see the Temple, go in it, out of it, feel things in there. Wasn't that the real reality? "Well, those Jews still think so, & they're gonna try to rebuild it again. What does the Apostle also say? "For the things which are seen..." (Family: "Are temporal.") Oh, we get back to time again: --Temporal!

       213. NOW THAT'S ODD, I THOUGHT EINSTEIN TAUGHT THAT THERE HAD TO BE A 4th DIMENSION, TIME, FOR THINGS TO EXIST. Well, oddly enough the Bible teaches--& here's a shocker for you--that there have to be things for time to exist! There has to be a material World in order that time exists. Isn't that amazing? And when God wipes out the present material World & atmospheric heavens & all the rest, & He creates an entirely new World & a New Heavens in which time no longer exists. There will never again be any beginning. Never again be any end. It will just be one great grand Eternal Now!

       214. NOW THAT'S REALLY BEYOND OUR CONCEPTION, almost as much as Einstein's theory of relativity was beyond the conception of early caveman, if there ever were any. I presume, there were sometime or another, they found pictures on the walls, but not because the were evoluting, but because they had devoluted. I like the way British pronounce evolution:--Evilution! Sure got the right name that time!

       215. NOW EASTER SUNDAY'S OVER & MONDAY'S HERE! Do you want me to wait & tell you about the veil tomorrow night? (Family: No! Tell us now!) Or do you want me to wait & tell you about how long Jesus was in the Earth? Do you want me to wait & tell you what day He was really crucified? Well, even a little child can figure that one out. I can remember wondering about that myself. I thought, "Well, it says He rose the third day," & He did in a way.

       216. HE WAS CRUCIFIED ON THE FIRST DAY, He was in the grave the second day & He rose on the third day. But you have a pretty hard time getting around the Scripture that Peter wrote & Jesus Himself spoke of that He was gonna be three days in the grave. (Mt.12:40.) You say, "Well, He was in the grave part of the time on the first day & the full second day & part of the time maybe on the third day." Well, He sure got up awful early in the morning that day because even the two Mary's missed it!

       217. HE WAS ALREADY UP & GONE BY THE TIME THEY GOT THERE, when they came even at dawn early in the morning. (Sue: As it began to dawn.) Just began to be dawn. They waited until it was just light enough to see their way. Because they hadn't had a chance to do what? What were they coming to do? In those days they buried bodies how?

       218. THEY DIDN'T ACTUALLY MUMMIFY THEM, but it was just a custom apparently, & they tried to preserve them as long as they could. They wrapped them up in what? (Family: Linens.) They wrapped them in cloth, but they wrapped within the cloth what? (Family: Spices & oil.) Oils & spices & things that were intended to preserve the body as long as possible.

       219. WELL, THE LORD SAVED DEAR MARY & MARTHA THAT TROUBLE: He managed to die late enough, they very hurriedly got this hanging out of the way because they were getting ready for the high & holy day & they didn't want these thieves still hanging on the cross & everything to spoil their fun on this great High Sabbath the next day. So here it was 3:00 in the afternoon & they hurriedly got Him down & buried Him. They wanted to get it done before dark of course--it wasn't too easy to do things after dark in those days.

       220. NOW HOW DO WE HAPPEN TO KNOW THAT THAT PARTICULAR SABBATH HAD TO BE A SATURDAY? We know that the third day later was the first day of the week, so how could we know it was a Saturday?--Just because the Jews called it the Sabbath? No, It was the Passover Sabbath which fell that year on Friday!--So He was crucified on Thursday! Passover Eve!

       221. JESUS HIMSELF SAID HE WAS GONNA BE THREE DAYS, Peter makes it real specific so you couldn't miss it. You might figure the three days, but how are you gonna get the three nights in there? Jesus Himself said, it "So shall the Son of man be 3 days & 3 nights in the heart of the Earth." (Mt.12:40.) And according to Peter He spent it preaching to the spirits in prison. (1Pe.3:19.)

       222. NOW IT'S ANOTHER BIG SUBJECT TOO, WHICH SPIRITS? Well, it tells you. From what period particularly? (Peter: "Who were sometime disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing.") (1Pe.3:20.) What? Is that true? That's in the Bible? You mean the Mormons are right? Oh me, everybody's a little bit right! You can't always be all wrong all the time, even if you're a false doctrine or a false religion. Even I'm right once in a while!

       223. BUT COMING DOWN TO ONE OF YOUR FAVOURITE TRADITIONS OF THE CHURCH, how are you gonna squeeze into that period of Jesus being slain on Friday afternoon, & buried & rising again on Sunday morning, where are you gonna get three nights out of that? You might get three days out of it. In fact, it sounds like quite a bit less than three days, doesn't it?

       224. THAT USED TO BE EXPLAINED BY THE PREACHERS, that the first day He was killed & buried, the second day He was in the grave & the third day He rose, so there's your three days. But where are the three nights? No way! You can't squeeze them in their anywhere, not at all. So here goes one of your old traditions all shot to pieces!

       225. WE KNOW WHEN HE WAS RESURRECTED, WE ALSO ACTUALLY KNOW WHEN HE WAS CRUCIFIED, but because of your general conception of the Sabbath the church gets the idea that it was on Friday just before the ordinary Sabbath, the weekly Sabbath. But this was a special Sabbath, a very high Holy Day which they called a Sabbath, which had almost become their common word for holiday, Sabbath.--Even though this one did not fall on, as is commonly presumed, Saturday.

       226. BUT THE NEXT DAY WAS TO BE WHAT? That night they were killing the Passover lambs for the Passover Supper. How come Jesus & His disciples didn't eat it that night when they were supposed to? What were they celebrating at the Last Supper? In a way they were going to celebrate the Passover Supper, but the Lord instituted a new type of supper.

       227. IT WAS NO LONGER A PASSOVER, IT WAS THE LORD'S SUPPER. And as far as we can see, from what they had to eat, there was no lamb. Why? Jesus was there in Person! They didn't have to symbolise Him. Besides they were never gonna celebrate the Passover anymore. Well, the church managed to get around to it anyway, & now they celebrate Easter sort of instead of Passover. They both occur around the same time.

       228. BUT THE HIGH & THE HOLY DAY THEY WERE ABOUT TO CELEBRATE WE KNOW, because it was what special Holy Day? Not just Saturday Sabbath, but what kind of a special Sabbath? (James: Passover.) Passover! And He was being slain on Passover Eve, which was the time they ate the Passover Supper, killed the lamb.

       229. HIS OWN DEATH & HIS OWN SLAUGHTER WAS BEING NOW LIVED OUT IN REALITY, what they had been symbolising for thousands of years with the Passover supper, the killing of the Lamb. Now it was happening, actually happening to the Lamb of God. Think of it! On the very evening, at the very hour of the day that they usually killed the Passover lamb! They had to do it in the middle of the afternoon so they could see & they'd have enough time to cook it for supper.

       230. SO JESUS DIED AT THE SAME TIME THAT MOST OF THE PASSOVER LAMBS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD WERE DYING & being killed & slaughtered at that very hour. He was not only the Lamb, but He was dying at the same time that they were dying. Think of that! What a marvel of fulfilment & how dumb & blind [EDITED: "they"] were not to see it.

       231. WELL, JUST TO MAKE SURE THAT [EDITED: "THEY"] WERE WITHOUT EXCUSE, as He was killed & the spear was thrust into His side & His living veil of flesh was rent in twain, so was the veil of the Temple rent in twain!--& why? The spirit left His body, which was also in a sense symbolic of us in a way. He had become a member of the human community, right? A human being, He had flesh like we have. In a sense He was part of the body. Which part?--The head!

       232. THIS IS ALL SYMBOLS & SYMBOLISING THE REALITY, & the reality was happening at the same time the spiritual reality was occurring, or God was revealing it. It had already happened, but God was revealing. At the moment His flesh was rent & He died, the veil of the Temple was rent in twain, & guess what? Why was it rent in twain? Not only to fulfil the symbolism in the Temple itself, that the body was being rent in twain, but also to reveal that the spirit was departing from the body!

       233. WHY DID GOD REND THE VEIL IN TWAIN?--Because otherwise nobody could see back there, right? The high priest only went in there once a year, & he went in with what tied around his foot? In case God didn't accept his offering & sacrifice for the sins of the people & struck him dead, what happened? They didn't even dare go in there to get him out. They just pulled him out by the rope attached to his foot.

       234. NOBODY ELSE WAS ALLOWED TO GO BACK THERE. Nobody ever saw back there. Nobody was ever allowed to see the Ark & the Shekinah Glory. Once the Temple was built & it was placed back there, only the high priest could ever go back there to find out whether God was till around. But when that veil was rent in twain & it fell apart, the whole public could look in! And what do you suppose they saw?

       235. WHY DID GOD, IN A SENSE, DRAW THE CURTAINS FROM OFF THE STAGE & LET YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENED? Not only had the Shekinah Glory departed, do you know what else departed?--The whole Ark was gone! This is one of the greatest secrets of Jewish history that they have hushed up, like they hushed up who Paul was & Jesus & all the rest. They tried to hush up the whole works. They tried to hush up the knowledge of the Resurrection, everything.

       236. BUT THAT IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST SHOCKERS OF ALL! That has been one of the great mysteries of Jewish history, what happened to the Ark? Because at that time it was still there, until suddenly it had disappeared! The Jews have all kinds of theories about it. They claim, "Well, we don't even know how long it might have been gone. It might have been stolen years before because nobody ever went back there but the high priests and maybe they were all covering it up."

       237. BECAUSE THEY DID COVER IT UP AFTER THAT! They apparently sewed up the veil & put it up again, & they hushed it up & covered it up as quick as they could to not let the people know that the Ark was gone & the Shekinah Glory of God was gone!

       238. AND THE NEXT TIME WE SEE THE ARK IN THE BIBLE, WHERE IS IT? (Family: In Heaven!) (Rev.11:19.) It went to Heaven, with the Shekinah Glory representing the Spirit of God, & it was gone! Can you imagine the consternation of those scribes & Pharisees who killed Him & the high priest & all the priests? There must have been hundreds of people there in the Temple on this very high holy Sabbath Eve.

       239. JEWS CAME FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD TO ATTEND THE TEMPLE, the special holy services. And here right before their eyes the veil is rent! I like the way they did it in "King of Kings." They represented it as a flame of fire that just ripped the Temple veil apart! You saw a few astonished priests, but the place must have been packed when it happened!

       240. THE WHOLE WORLD COULD SEE IT & KNOW THAT GOD WAS NO LONGER IN THAT TEMPLE or that building, & the Jews were no longer in control of religion, the religion of God! It was no longer just confined to them & their holy Temple it was therefore no longer holy. It was no longer a truly holy place because God was gone! The Spirit of God had departed, & even the holiest thing which even made the temple holy at all, the Ark & all those special holy things were completely gone! Hallelujah!

       241. THE JEWS HAVE ALL KINDS OF TRADITIONS & THEORIES ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ARK. "Well, it was stolen or it was captured by some of our enemies & buried somewhere & nobody knows where it's buried blah blah blah blah blah"! They even tried to claim that it had been missing for several years & it was probably stolen before that & the people just didn't see it until that time.

       242. BUT IT WAS OBVIOUS GOD WAS TRYING TO SHOW THEM SOMETHING. Why did He open the curtains? (Family: To show them the Ark was gone.) That it was gone. Can you imagine what a shocker that must have been? Of course, none of them had ever seen it anyhow except the high priest, so they didn't really know whether it was there or not. But they had always been taught it was there & the high priest always told them it was there & they had told them about the Shekinah Glory & the angels & all that.

       243. CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT A SHOCK IT WAS TO THEIR FAITH & THEIR RELIGION TO FIND OUT IT WASN'T THERE? There was no longer any excuse for the Temple! There was no longer any excuse for the veil! There was no longer any purpose for their priesthood! There was no longer any purpose in the sacrifice!

       244. THERE WAS NO LONGER ANY EXCUSE FOR THEIR WHOLE RELIGION!--Because it was all based on the Temple & Temple sacrifice & the atonement by the high priest, a type of Christ, to go back behind the curtain & present the sacrificial blood before the Ark to God for the remission of sins. So there could no longer be any remission of sins of the Jews!--Because without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins, the Bible tells us. (Lev.17:11; Heb.9:22.)

       245. BUT THEY KEPT ON GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS FOR ANOTHER 40 YEARS, THINK OF IT! They probably must have sewed up that curtain in a hurry! They probably shooed everybody out of the church real fast & hoped they'd forget what they saw, & they probably claimed that those people were seeing things, it never happened. And I bet they did some fast job of sewing up the veil, restoring the veil so that the truth would never get out.

       246. BUT THAT IS THE STORY THAT IS TOLD, & it came out I think in some Catholic or other kind of history that when the veil was rent in twain, the Ark was gone & God was gone, & that meant their religion was gone & the Temple was gone & the Jews were gone because there was no longer any point in being a Jew!--Or Judaism or the Temple or anything to do with them. They were no longer special to God, really, except for the fathers' sake, as Paul says, & I think he put a little too much emphasis on it because he was a Jew. In fact, he did some pretty stupid things because he was still trying to save them when they were almost unsavable!

       247. THE WHOLE EXCUSE FOR THEIR WHOLE RELIGION WAS ALL GONE, EVERYTHING! The Holy of Holies was gone. There was no further purpose for the priesthood. And very soon the Temple itself was to be destroyed. God saw to it that the whole thing was gonna get wiped out, because He saw the Jews were gonna keep on trying to perpetuate it in spite of all that. In spite of His presence gone, the Ark gone, they were gonna try to keep the shell going, while the life was gone, the spirit was gone. They were gonna try to preserve the old dead body just like they have ever since. [DELETED]

       248. GOD DESTROYED THE TEMPLE THEN, & SINCE THEN THERE HAVE NEVER BEEN ANY SACRIFICIAL OFFERINGS because there's no more altar. They had to be done according to the law, & it couldn't be done anymore. Because without the Temple & without an altar there couldn't be any sacrifices. Therefore there could be no more remission of sins as far as the Jews were concerned.

       249. I ASKED A RABBI ONE TIME, "Your own Scriptures say that without the shedding of the blood there's no remission of sins, & yet there are no longer any sacrificial offerings, there's no longer any Temple, no altar. How do you get rid of your sins today?"

       250. THAT'S QUITE A QUESTION, HUH? That's something that oughtta shake up the Jews if they know their Bible. Of course most of them don't even know there Bible. You read them the 53rd Chapter of Isaiah & they think you're reading from the New Testament. I've read many a Jew that chapter.

       251. I USED TO CARRY A COPY OF THE OLD JEWISH BIBLE PUT OUT BY A JEWISH BIBLE SOCIETY, I mean Judaism, a parallel translation with the Hebrew on one side & the English on the other. I'd read them right out of their own Bible that they publish, the 53rd Chapter of Isaiah, & they would swear up & down I was reading the New Testament. I'd turn around & show them, "Look, printed by you, this is your Bible!" I'd say, "Who does this sound like?" "Oh, it's Jesus of course! You're reading to me from the New Testament."

       252. I'VE HAD MANY A JEW DO THAT, & then after I turned around a showed one Jew that it was one of his own Bibles he got [EDITED: "furious"]! He knocked the thing out of my hand flat on the floor & stomped on it, because he thought I was reading to him about Jesus from the New Testament & that's what he thought it was. He wouldn't believe it was one of their Bibles. He even thought it was some Christian Bible Society that just had some Jewish name.

       253. THERE ARE NONE SO BLIND AS THOSE WHO WILL NOT SEE. The Lord in His mercy even showed them, He even paralleled it so that He was killed & being sacrificed at the same hour of the sacrificial lambs, & He rent the veil of the Temple in twain to show them that He was no longer there & the Ark was gone & the heart of their religion was gone, therefore their religion was gone. The whole works was dead now! All they had was the dead body, the empty shell--the spirit was gone, & yet they did not believe!

       254. THAT'S PROBABLY ONE OF THE BIGGEST COVER-UP JOBS OF HISTORY, to even keep that Temple going for another 40 years, can you imagine? The story must have gotten out & the rumour must have gotten around because it's reserved in history, but it must have been one of the greatest hush-up jobs that was ever done to try to put it down & counteract it just like they try to do the resurrection of Christ.

       255. THEY WENT BACK & SAID, "WELL, TELL THE PEOPLE THAT HIS DISCIPLES STOLE THE BODY," etc., & they paid men to even go out & tell this story, that He didn't really rise from the dead. That's the kind of a trick they pulled, they were just that crooked, liars, thieves, crooks, deceivers[DELETED]!

       [DELETED]

       259. IT'S JUST A MIRACLE [DELETED] that Libya hasn't been just completely swept off the map by Egypt or the Jews & Israel & all of his enemies, almost the whole Western World against him, as it probably will be one of these days, tried probably by Egypt with Americans arms & American encouragement to grab it to get the oil, but Russia's gonna get it instead!

       260. EGYPT'S GOT THE PEOPLE, EGYPT'S GOT THE EDUCATION, THE TECHNICIANS, it's got everything but anything else that's worthwhile. It has no raw materials, no resources, no nothing. What it needs is money & something to sell. And if they could grab Libya & the oil they'd have it.

       261. MAYBE WE'LL HAVE TO SETTLE THE MATTER OF THE DAY OF JESUS' CRUCIFIXION SOME OTHER TIME, but it couldn't have been on Friday because there had to be three days. You might figure days but you'll never put three nights in between Friday afternoon & Sunday morning. The reason it was such a high & holy day was that the great high & Holy Sabbath they were gonna celebrate was their special, special holiday that followed, that had to do with the Passover. And therefore Jesus was actually crucified on what day?--If you're gonna make three days & three nights? (Sue: Thursday.) It had to be on Thursday!

       262. SO WHAT, YOU SAY, SO WHAT? I MEAN, BIG REAL! SO JESUS WAS CRUCIFIED ON THURSDAY INSTEAD OF FRIDAY. Well, the fact is that it just happens to be the truth, & therefore the church in celebrating His crucifixion on Good Friday for centuries has been right or wrong? (Family: Wrong!) Quite wrong. If they can be that wrong about something they cherish most dear, my God how many other things are they wrong about?

       263. I'VE TOLD THAT TO CATHOLICS, & THEY ALMOST GO NUTS! They just refuse to believe it because the church can't be wrong, so it doesn't matter what the Bible says! You can show it to them out of the Bible, one of the chief ways you can have of showing them how wrong their religion is.

       264. OR LIKE THAT VERSE ABOUT JESUS' BLOOD CLEANSES US FROM ALL SIN. She said to me, "Well, I don't understand it." And I approached her about it again later. She said, "Well, I'm gonna have to get my priest to explain it to me, it can't mean that. We can be forgiven of venial sins but we cannot be forgiven of mortal sins, so it just couldn't mean that!" I said, "It cleanses us from all sin."

       265. I BET I REPEATED THAT TO HER SO MANY TIMES THAT SHE NEVER FORGOT IT, she could never get it out of her head! And I bet she thought about it every time she went to mass & every time she went to confession & every time she was preached at about venial & mortal sin, that I'm sure the Holy Spirit must have resurrected that thought in her mind constantly. The faithful Holy Spirit was quoting her that Scripture. "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son, cleanses us from all sin."

       266. I STARTED TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE SCI-FI "QUEST FOR LOVE." It's about this guy that suddenly gets a certain kind of a shock & his life seems to split. Time has split. Science has gotten far enough now that they realise that even time is relative, has to do with that theory relativity.

       267. IT'S ILLUSTRATED IN ONE OF DR. IRWIN MOON'S MOVIES that if a thing such as a meter-long rod could travel at the speed of light, it would shorten. And that theoretically if it were able to travel fast enough it would shorten so much it would totally disappear. And therefore since time would be no more, the thing also would disappear. He guessed the speed could be so rapid that both time & the material thing both would disappear!

       268. THIS IS A THEORY WHICH YOU'VE PROBABLY HEARD OF. I've forgotten exactly the name of it now, but it all came out through Einstein's relativity & it's being used as a basis of a lot of sci-fi stories & movies & things about going from one time sphere to the other, dejá vu, a crack in time or split time like in this movie, or the time machine going back in time, several different things like that.

       269. ONE OF THE THINGS IS THAT THE SPACE TRAVELLERS LEARN TO TRAVEL SO FAST that although they don't grow any older, by the time they get back to the Earth, the whole Earth & everybody's grown older & all their people have died, blah, blah. They use this same theory in a lot of the space stories, etc., now. And sometimes they travel the wrong direction or something & they grow old real fast too, that's another one of the things they bring out.

       270. GOD IS PREPARING THEM, EVEN WITH SCI-FI, SCIENCE FICTION, FOR THE SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE! Really, one reason I like to see these science fiction things, there's so much spiritual in them, spiritual parallels & how the people are transported, teleport, tele-transportation. We have an equivalent of it in the spiritual like dear Philip, he sudden got teleported. (Ac.8:39.)

       271. MOST SPACE MOVIES HAVE TELPORTS, YOU KNOW. They can't wait for space shuttles, they've gotta get their bodies transported straight from out of the space ship down onto the other world & so on by a means of tele-transportation. Well, we've got all of that coming.

       272. THE DEVIL & HIS PEOPLE ARE IMITATING ALL THESE THINGS, especially in science fiction, but God's allowing it. All the things which are going to come to pass in the future with us. You see these fantastic space cities, well, they're all poor imitations of what the real Space City's gonna be like. But there are similarities, they resemble it.

       273. WE EVEN SAW ONE WHERE THEY FLOATED THROUGH THESE RINGS, just like I had in my vision of Space City! (See No.75A.) They formed passageways, corridors, in which they just float along & they don't have to walk. All these things are imitations of the real reality we're going to have one of these days.

       274. SO I WON'T GET INTO THAT THURSDAY THING, WE'LL HAVE TO FIGURE THAT OUT A LITTLE BIT BETTER. I've forgotten some of the details. But no way can you squeeze the three nights in, He had to be crucified on a Thursday because He spent 3 days & 3 nights in the heart of the Earth, preaching to the spirits in prison, Peter tells us, & therefore He was quite busy. It took Him quite awhile.

       275. THEREFORE THERE GOES ONE OF THE FAVOURITE TRADITIONS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH & THE PROTESTANTS TOO! All this great reverence for Friday, & they already missed the boat. It already had happened the day before! PTL! TYL! Well, I've kept you too long, I'm sorry, but we haven't had a Bible study for awhile & that was a big territory to cover. TYJ! PTL! TYL!

       276. IT'S A WONDERFUL BOOK, YOU SHOULD READ IT MORE OFTEN! Beautiful! I was gonna read you all these Scriptures on resurrection tonight, & we never even got through the first passage in Matthew! Well, maybe that was interesting anyhow. So, TYL! Hallelujah! PTL! Close the book, ring the bell & let's blow out the candles. TYL! "Bell, Book & Candle." (No.203.) Maybe I got the order reversed: Ring the bell, close the book & extinguish the candle.

       277. THAT ACTUALLY COMES FROM AN EXORCISM, DOESN'T IT? Isn't that part of the exorcist's liturgy? That title, of course, was not original with me, it was the title of a book & a movie, & it came from the exorcist's liturgy. Well, let's pray. TYL! PYJ! Amen! TYL! Hallelujah!

       278. HOW WONDERFUL, HOW MARVELLOUS, IS MY SAVIOUR'S LOVE FOR ME, Lord, to think You were willing to do all that & go through that for us. You didn't really want to, You didn't desire it, "but nevertheless Thy will, not Mine be done." Not my will but Thine be done. May that be the words & the thought & intent of the hearts of all of us, that although You usually give us our choice & You usually give us the desire of our hearts, there are times & there will be coming times when "nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done."

       279. TYL FOR YOUR LOVE! Hallelujah! TYJ! Thank You for being willing to go through all that. What a day of rejoicing that must have been when You rose & You realised it was all over, You had won the victory, the World was saved! You had accomplished Your mission! You had gone through the horrors of Hell for us & death agony, all of it, Lord, & it was over! Hallelujah! TYJ!

       280. YOU COULD RISE IN VICTORY, JOY, LIBERTY, FREEDOM FROM YOUR ENEMIES & from the hands of men & the meanness of men, cruelty of men, never, ever, Lord, to die again. Never to have to go through that again. So that You could redeem us as well from the same, & prevent our having to go through it. Therefore, "O death, where it thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin. But who hath delivered us from the body of this death? I thank the Lord through the blood of Jesus Christ." (1Cor.15:55,56; Ro.7:24,25.) Hallelujah! TYL!

       281. FORGIVE US FOR ALL OF OUR SINS, FORGIVE US FOR OUR CONSTANT MISTAKES, LORD. We're never perfect, from day to day we make mistakes, commit sins, we're not always pleasing to Thee, forgive us, Lord. Help us to do better, be more loving, more kind, more helpful, more patient, more faithful.

       282. AS WE THINK OF THE SEEMINGLY TERRIBLE DEFEAT THAT YOU SUFFERED, but how it resulted in such a tremendous victory, we can only hope that You'll get a greater victory out of some of our seeming defeats as a result, & that we will go on to win more victories for Thee, Lord, & Thy children.

       283. WE THANK THEE, O GOD FOR THE MARVELLOUS MIRACLE OF THE MAGAZINE, LORD & THY WORD. It's Thy book, it's Thy Word, Wonderful Wonder Working Words to go around the World! Bless it & keep it & the folks who print it & the folks who organise it & the folks here who work on part of its creation. The folks here & us, all of us who work on it & the folks who help us to work on it.

       284. BLESS THE FOLKS HERE THAT TAKE CARE OF EVERY LITTLE THING, even our cooking & our bodies & our beds & all the rest, Lord, who make it possible for us to work on it. TYJ! We thank You, Lord!--These many hands & handmaidens & Thy servants who minister to us that we might work on Thy Words. Bless them for it & we know You have & we know You will, & continue to make them a great blessing as You have all of us around the World to encourage many hearts, feed many souls & to feed Thy sheep.

       285. THE LAST THING YOU SAID TO PETER WAS "LOVEST THOU ME?--FEED MY SHEEP!" (Jn.21:15-17.) And that's what we're trying to do, Lord. You died for them. We can't exactly do that, although in a way we do. We've had to flee & move many times, die many times, forsake all many times, so in a sense we're dying daily for them, all of us sacrificing something.

       286. BUT LORD, IN SPITE OF ALL OF OUR SACRIFICES, YOU MORE THAN REPAY US with so many blessings we can't even count them all. You're so good to us. We've had to give up some things, but You've only showered us with more & You've always out-given. What little we have given, Lord, You've given much more & repaid much more, so that we feel like Livingstone, we could hardly say that we've ever made a sacrifice, because You always give back so much more. We thank You for it, Lord!

       287. WE ASK NOW THAT YOU BLESS & KEEP US TONIGHT & GIVE US ALL A GOOD NIGHT'S REST, in Jesus' name. Thank You for Your Word, Lord. Thank You for this wonderful Word! We've been talking a lot about it, we didn't read much of it tonight, but we've been explaining some stories & things that are not in there which perhaps will make it even more interesting & make some of these want to read it even more.

       288. THANK YOU LORD FOR THAT GLORIOUS VICTORY! You wiped out that false religion in a single stroke with Your death, the rending of Your veil of flesh at the same time the Temple veil was rent in twain & revealed that their religion then from that moment on was totally empty, an empty dead shell like all false works religions, & the Spirit was gone!

       289. YOU WERE GONE, & THEY WERE LEFT WITH NOTHING BECAUSE THEY REJECTED YOU, slew You & rejected their own Saviour, their own Messiah. So you left them with nothing but an empty shell, a hollow building where emptiness merely echoes within the shell & the horror of their valueless religion! Their religion can [DELETED] not even have any flesh-&-blood sacrifices since they've rejected the ultimate sacrifice, & therefore they cannot rid themselves of sin & they bear the heavy weight of it & their rejection of Thee, their King!

       290. [DELETED] They have rejected You from generation to generation, & they continue to say "His blood be upon us & our children" by their very deeds & their attitude & their state of mind & heart & the way they treat others with no love, no consideration, no kindness.

       291. THEY THEMSELVES, HAVING BEEN HOMELESS & WITHOUT A HOMELAND for years, thought nothing of driving others out of their homes & stealing their homes! They had complained that others had done that to them, now they turn around & do the same to others.--Trying again to re-establish their country & their religion & trying again to influence & convince the World that they are the chosen people, they are the ones.

       [DELETED]

       293. BUT HELP US LORD TO TELL THE TRUTH! Like You rent the veil & revealed the truth, the shocker, the emptiness, we have rent the veil of their lies, their hypocrisy, their empty shell to reveal the awful truth of the emptiness of their hearts, the deceitfulness of their tongues & the horrors of their leadership & what they've done to others & what they're doing to the World, leading it into another war by which it will almost destroy itself.

       294. THANK YOU FOR KEEPING US, LORD, IN SPITE OF IT ALL. We've kept these poor ones late, Lord, & they're very tired. Recoup their strength & energy. Give them an extra good sleep so they'll be strong & well for Thy service tomorrow. Thank You for keeping our little ones, in Jesus name. PYL! Hallelujah! TYL! Amen, we have so much to be thankful for, Lord, all of this & Heaven too. In Jesus' name, amen.

       295. EXCUSE ME FOR PRAYING SUCH A LONG PRAYER BUT I JUST HAD IT ON MY HEART, I guess I just had to. I'm so thankful, I'm so grateful, Lord forgive me for not being more grateful & doing a better job. I guess I'm doing the best I can. I'm doing the best I can, but the Lord has to do what I can't. Amen? Well, I hope you learned something of value, but that's quite an Easter Story, huh? I bet you never heard that one before! (Family: No!) It's almost unbelievable!

       296. HITLER TRIED TO WAKE UP THE WORLD, BUT HE TRIED TO DO IT IN THE WAY OF THE FLESH & the way of the Devil & without spirit. It shows you how wrong you can be & how wrong you can even do right, like he tried to do, but he did it the wrong way. Instead of that he just made a bigger mess out of things. [DELETED] [EDITED: "S"]o in the long run, sad to say, he did more damage than good. [DELETED]

       297. IT'S KIND OF LIKE WORKS RELIGIONS. They do more damage with their works religions than if they didn't have them at all. Because they're so deceitful & such lies & they deceive people into thinking that they're religious & saved when they aren't. Well, it's really only 12:00 so don't feel so bad. That ought to make you feel a little bit better.

       298. THERE'S SO MUCH YET TO LEARN! Just think of all I know that you don't even know yet! And just think all the Lord knows & the saints in Heaven know that I don't know! I'm gonna be so full of questions by the time I get there, it'll take me the first few years to get all the answers! Hallelujah!

       299. ACTUALLY YOU'RE LIVING IN TWO OF THE HEAVENS. Not only the atmospheric heaven but also right here you're surrounded with the realm of the spirit & we're encompassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses. (Heb.12:1.) This room is full of them, isn't that wonderful?--Observing what we do & enjoying our fellowship. Although there's a gulf, in a sense, fixed between, & we can't rend that veil except in the spirit. Then the Lord can show us things & we can take a little peek in once in awhile.

       300. WILLIAM BRANHAM USED TO SYMBOLISE IT by saying, "These spiritual experiences that I have, these visions & revelations, they're sort of like when I was a little boy. I wanted to see what was going on at the ball game & I couldn't afford to pay my way in, so I used to climb the fence & cling to the top of the fence & peek in.

       301. "THAT'S SORT OF HOW THE LORD DOES WITH ME, only I don't do it in my own energy anymore. Now it's like my big brother used to lift me up & hold me so I could peek over, the Lord sort of lifts me up & let's me peek in." He said, "Then once in awhile I'd find a knothole in the fence where I could see through a little hole, see what was going on with just one eye, but not very clearly."

       302. "FOR NOW WE SEE THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, BUT THEN FACE TO FACE." (1Co.13:12.) These spiritual revelations, even the things that I get & you get & the Lord gives to all of His children in some way at some time, dreams, visions or some revelation. You've probably all had something at some time, some spiritual experience or something, but even then you only see as through a glass darkly.

       303. THEY DIDN'T HAVE VERY GOOD GLASS IN PAUL'S DAY. You know, it was pretty murky. We don't really know what he's talking about nowadays because the glass we have is so good, so clear. But have you ever seen those real old-fashioned windows with the big globs in them & wavy wrinkles, & everything you see through it is sort of distorted? That's what Paul was talking about, seeing through a glass darkly, somewhat distorted.

       304. EVEN WHAT WE DO SEE IS NOT AS CLEAR AS WE'RE GONNA SEE ONE OF THESE DAYS. Then we shall see & we'll know even as also we are known. Then we'll see not as through a glass darkly, but how? (Family: Face to face!) Isn't that wonderful? We see some things rather murkily, some things it's amazing how clear they are. I've sure had some funny dreams, haven't I? Maria's heard about a lot of them you've never even heard of, a few that I still can't figure out & the Lord hasn't revealed to me what they mean.--And some that I have.

       305. BUT IT'S KIND OF FUN EVEN SEEING THROUGH THE GLASS DARKLY, HUH? (Family: Yes!) And maybe in a way I've kind of opened your eyes a little more & you see a little bit better now after even such a lesson. Maybe you understand a little better. At least you're beginning to think about it & wonder about it, even if you don't understand it all now.

       306. THERE'RE SOME THINGS THAT I'VE TRIED TO TEACH YOU THAT YOU NEVER EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT BEFORE because the question never even occurred to you before. Maybe you never thought about that three days & three nights, so it was no problem. Now I've asked the questions, posed the problems, now you've gotta find solutions! I've roused the hunger to want to know the answer, & maybe we answered a few tonight, maybe we'll answer the rest of them later. Amen! GBY! ILY! KGFG!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family

       

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family