[0:00] ...shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor cry, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things have come to me.
[0:19] And I want to set my remarks on this last phrase in the letter, for the former things have passed away.
[0:32] And those of you who are accustomed to my way of preaching will know that Pasarul I preach according to the context of the text which I take.
[0:49] I'm not just trying to preach in that I mostly believe in, but we are many good examples for taking a text out of its context and making application of it in other directions.
[1:07] Not to stand even in the script if it's said, and it was done by better men than we.
[1:21] So that is what I'm going to do this evening. The first part of the letter would be too much for anybody to speak on. We can't talk very much about heaven, and we know very little about heaven.
[1:37] We know that God shall wipe away all tears from the eyes of those who are in it. And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor cry, neither shall there be any more pain.
[1:54] But using this phrase for the former things that passed away, in a not-clickable sense, we shall refer it to other things as well as to the glorious state.
[2:12] Now it is only right that at the beginning of the year we should use the occasion to have solid thoughts of what is going to be.
[2:26] And as far as God has told us what is going to be. And God has told us certain things that shall be. And one of the things told us is this, that former things, that the things as we know them now, are going to pass away.
[2:51] Everything as we know it now, is going to come to an end. Earlier on in this book, and this is the first thing I would mention.
[3:05] Earlier on in this book, our heavenly messenger lifted up his hand, and swears by God in heaven, that there should be time to pull up on us.
[3:23] Time is going to pass away. Time as we know it now. I did not try to define it, but you did not just send me.
[3:36] You know that it is a succession of minutes, years, centuries. There would be no time without succession, without progression.
[3:50] There is yesterday, and we are today. Yesterday would be no more. Then there would be tomorrow. Today we shall know as yesterday. And so it goes on, all the time.
[4:03] But time had a beginning. If I may put it like this, it is not the right way to put it, but I know no other way in which to put it.
[4:18] But it is not strictly correct. There was a time, but there was no time. Now that is not the correct way to put it, I know.
[4:30] But we can say there was no time. Time began just as 1977 began.
[4:45] Time began. It had a beginning. When that was, we don't know. But there was a beginning to it.
[4:56] But there was no yesterday. And time began just as the day began. Twelve o'clock at night.
[5:07] It began. God gave it a beginning. Just as he gave to everything else. There was a time.
[5:20] Again, I have to use this expression. Because there is no other way in which we can possibly grasp this or get the thought by using this expression.
[5:35] There was a time when there was nothing. Nothing but God. There was no heaven. And there was no heaven.
[5:47] There were no angels. There was nothing but God. And don't start raising questions in your own mind.
[5:59] Well, where was God? Because that's not a sensible question. God is only presence. God is so different to us. Infinitely different to us.
[6:13] But there was a time when there was nothing but Him said. But we know that He lived in eternity. In our realm of time, Jesus.
[6:26] He is eternal. He has no beginning. And that is something that you cannot grasp. Nobody can. It gives children, I suppose, quite a lot of thoughts.
[6:42] And they sometimes batter and boggle their parents by asking questions. How could God be with us at the beginning? Nobody can answer them that.
[6:55] We don't know. We are too small to know. Now, time, from the moment it was created, from the moment it began, from the moment it got B, time is flowing.
[7:13] Of course, that is of necessity included in the very world, it says. Time goes on. It goes on.
[7:24] It goes on in a necruple flow. Never faster. Never slower. Always at a staying place.
[7:37] Whatever happens in the world, whatever the circumstances, it always goes on at the same place. Of course, it doesn't appear like that to us.
[7:52] To us, it seems very apparent that there are certain experiences which we feel exceedingly long and others which we feel exceedingly short.
[8:07] And that doesn't make any difference to time itself. We may remember the day when we went to school or the day we began our apprenticeship, the day we began our life's work and look back and say that it appeared like yesterday.
[8:32] And so it does appear, I suppose, on the order we grow, the quickest time seems to fly. There are some among us today, some of you ladies, and it seems like yesterday since you were making beads of daisy heads and enjoying it wonderfully well.
[8:57] Boys making cousins on the sand and enjoying it. And it seems like yesterday. How old are you?
[9:09] said the fellow to Jacob. He said, I am one hundred and thirty years old. Few and even have the days of thy servant been.
[9:22] But do I mean, they couldn't have seen it few to Jacob. When they were passing, they seemed few to him after they had passed, but not when they were passing.
[9:39] The absence of Joseph didn't pass quickly. By no means. When he lost his beloved ritual, time didn't pass quickly then, as a corpse lay beside him.
[9:58] Time doesn't pass quickly, like issues like these. But time is really like a, like a rock in an everlasting sea.
[10:11] It's like rock in the Atlantic. A little too long to me. Then sailors see it and pass by it.
[10:23] And it's no more. They go on to the endless ocean. And so's time in the reckoning of God. One day is a thousand years.
[10:35] And a thousand years has one day. Now I did not say, talking about this, I did not say that nothing can stop its progress.
[10:49] It doesn't matter what invention we make. But nothing can stop time progressing, going on.
[11:01] Nothing can stop that. Only God, only divine power could stop the sun in its core. But no human power can do it.
[11:12] We can't prevent ourselves getting old or ourselves dying. The greatest care of our physician, of our doctor, our family doctor, the greatest attention that he can give us cannot keep us from death.
[11:31] Nothing can keep us from that. Not even a lady she could keep us from that. Death is sure to come. That is in the order of things.
[11:44] But death is sure to come. I would like just to say a word about its uncertainty. I won't dwell on it. It is very uncertain for us all.
[11:57] There are dangers on the outside, dangers on the inside. In ourselves there are dangers. We may be dying of our weakness tonight and not know it.
[12:13] We may die of our coronary before the morning night, though we don't feel anything wrong as just now. such things as these insights.
[12:24] There are many, many other things to which we are liable, of which we can die. Outwardly, you have the same thing. You go into the car.
[12:36] You may never come out of it through no part of your own. Perhaps or through an error that you never made. That may happen.
[12:48] Now, friends, there is nothing more difficult than to convince the severe mortality. Although I am saying that to you, I hope I am not conveying the impression I certainly don't mean to.
[13:04] I hope I am not conveying the impression to you that these things may come to you and that they may not come to me. Or the impression that I am always aware of these things.
[13:17] While some of you may not be, I hope I am not giving to that impression. I don't mean to. No, friends, I know that I could die before the morning light.
[13:32] I know that very well. I know that tomorrow morning you may hear the news that your minister is gone. But I don't think you will. I intend to be here next summer.
[13:46] I have every intention of being here next summer. And it is. And that's just the way we resolve. This is not.
[13:56] And this sense of mortality is not any more impressive upon my mind than it is upon it all.
[14:09] It's just as difficult to convince me that what happens to heaven suddenly can happen to me. only this evening I heard of a young boy who was taken to hospital locked in this town.
[14:27] He came home to his father's funeral just a few days before. And he became ill of something very ordinary and he was operated down for a endocinus and came home when?
[14:44] And then something sent in a clock to the court. He was taken to hospital and passed away at the age of 26 within a few days of his father.
[15:00] But the point is that this is not going to happen to you or to me. We say it might but we don't believe it will.
[15:13] And I don't think it will. Oh I can say to you if it could happen to anyone as it could happen to me. I can say that and I mean it when I say it but the realization of it never dawns on me as it should.
[15:32] Otherwise I will be a different man. And it doesn't dawn on you either. I'm quite sure that. It just doesn't. have a beginning.
[15:45] of this fact about mortality. But now I'm being carried away by this thought. But I said that time had a beginning.
[15:59] Well then it is one of the former things that would pass away. Time will have an end. It just doesn't have a beginning.
[16:09] time be. And what will the end of time be? And the answer is in one word. When time shall be no longer that will be the realm of timelessness or eternity if you like.
[16:29] The timelessness. When I was young I used to hear what is to say and I used to read in books. And I still read in this book.
[16:43] Illustrations given to convey the impression of eternity upon people's lives. And one of them was this. But you know little birds came every thousand years and picked up a grain of sand and removed it somewhere and did this with all the sand in the world.
[17:09] that eternity at the end of the dawn after the last grain of sand in this world and put it somewhere else that eternity would be only would only be beginning.
[17:25] Sounds very impressive. good. But you know when you come to think of it there's really nothing in it at all. It is not an art great illustration.
[17:37] It's really there's nothing in it. It's not worthy. It's used as illustration. You can't use an illustration from one relative and conveyed to another relative which is totally like the relative.
[17:54] the relative in which the illustration is. And there's no lightness between time and timelessness.
[18:07] You talk about the bird taking away the sand and you immediately convey to your mind the idea of time. Every thousand years the bird comes and takes a grain away.
[18:20] But there are no thousands in thousand years entirely timelessness and early. Our soul is nature just comes to that the pleasure of us to be able to whatever you do.
[18:36] So it will be then a realm of timelessness and everlasting presence. For all things time included will have passed away.
[18:50] There will come. Break this down a little bit in one or two seasons. In this realm of timelessness there are two places.
[19:04] There is heaven and heaven. And heaven is mostly described to us by things that are not there. And that's a good way of doing it.
[19:16] It's a good way of convey to your own minds what it is like. well I'm not going to dwell upon many of these things. But we are taught in this verse that there will be no tears.
[19:29] Now tears belong to the Christians and the form of things will have passed away. Tears are of different kinds and one responds as the sparks fly upon them.
[19:45] There are tears which people easily shed emotional people and there are tears which nobody else ever sees tears that are shed in the silence and in the darkness of the night and that are shed during the day but not visibly.
[20:08] There are tears that come from the reservoir of a broken heart in this night well in heaven there will be no tears the surface of the reservoir of the time or the reservoir will affect there will be no reason to have tears anymore the tears of air they will not be there there will be no sorrow there too there will be nothing to be sorry for there will be nothing temporal death so there cannot be temporal sorrow but you know what sorrow is we all know what sorrow is sorrow of some kind sorrow but there will be no sorrow in heaven the former things that passed away you will not even be sorry for the sins in heaven repentance will a given way to absolute complete glory and there will be no repentance in heaven some people say that the saints in glory will remember their sins well I don't know if they will or not
[21:36] I have no idea I never read in scriptures that they will and I have never read that they will not so I don't know whether they will or not but I know perfectly well that even if they do they will have no sorrow for them and it's difficult to imagine the remembrance of sin without sorrow for sin but if there is a remembrance of sin this is our element which there will be no sorrow for sin repentance will not be there and then we are told that there will be no cry and there be no pain now just summing up these things I can't talk upon them at the end to the jury it just means this that the ruin that the fall got upon us is going to be repaired completely this temple that
[22:43] God made in Egypt so beautifully a temple glorifying himself from cleatness and sinlessness the devil entered into it and ruined it through his own presence whatever the devil needs there is ruin and spiritual devastation and God is going to put him out and he's going to repair everything that he's spoiled and he's spoiled every faculty of the soul and he's spoiled every member of the body and the existing stay of death is free dawn and God is going to repair the door and cleanse the temple of man body and soul of that leprosy of sin and the high priest shall proclaim it clean forever and ever does it not say that and there shall be no more death in it now while it is right enough
[23:51] I suppose you take the meaning out of it and think of physical death there would be no physical death in it there would be no under death in heaven no funerals no coffins no cemeteries that would not be there would be no widows or widows in heaven there would be no orphans in heaven man's crazed enemy will have been forever trampled upon oh death where is thy sting the death is here with its sting narrow and it stings us it stings us physically it stings us with its pain the things that are company its separation is as sting in its sin but it doesn't as sting for the saints in the sense of destructiveness silent destructiveness it does not so there would be no death there now this leads us at once to the glory of the resurrection body and the glory of the glorified soul that joins after the long separation well the former things will have passed away the tears now against them come into our realm when we cannot swim this is what the faith of the
[25:34] Christian comes into action faith comes into action for you cannot understand it is going to wait to understand everything before you believe you never believe because you never understand anything or very much even like that and even after you could be in there are lots of things that you won't understand very much about and there isn't any man on the earth nobody in the world ever did or ever will understand what is really meant by the spiritual body by our product of the mind and body by immortality for we've never seen immortality we don't know what immortality is in our experience although there is something among them in it but we know that there shall be no more dead in that sense there shall be no more dead because death has yielded up its prey and the resurrection body will be passionate like death of the glorious body of
[26:50] Christ and here again we come into one of those realms of the Christian religion that makes it much it from every other religion that devil was or ever being when a body died in that is there well forever and ever no means not even the ancient Greeks as the wise ancient Greeks believed they laughed at the resurrection the doctor of the resurrection of the body but the bible tells us that there will be a resurrection of the body and the former things the pain and sorrow and the aches the naturalness of the body the corruptiveness of the body the mortality of the body the former things they will have passed away and the same with the mental properties all that will pass away the way they are the way the corruption affects them the way sin affects them
[27:53] I wonder if you ever think of what it will be when you are tempted of the devil when it comes with his wicked and lustful thoughts I wonder if you think of what it is going to be like when you will never have an evil thought at all to follow what things then to pass away there is coming now here again I must not say a time but you are going into a way when time is not in which there is no evil thought and it is in which it cannot be available in which the set the set cannot be it out there in which there will be no sense of distance from God something that has been made perhaps the bitterest experience of your whole life a sense of distance from your
[28:54] God there will be nothing like that the former things will have passed away no fear no disbelief no spirit of depression there would be nothing like that no need for prayer no sacraments no means of grace for they shall see his face as sacraments would be useless and means would be meaningless for he has said they is actually press through well now there is another side to it which I will just say a word or two the former things have passed away things that we know now have passed away from the other side take for example prayer without I suppose which you would not do at least so do you you would never go to bed without praying and you have been doing that for many years and nothing has ever come on it well friend at time at days coming which you will pray no more or rather to be more correct let me say you're going into a way in which there will be no prayer made either by saint or sinner that's the kind of prayer into which you want to go and as you will make no prayer there will be no prayer made for you now let me say to you people unconverted people if you have a praying father and or a praying mother or a praying grandfather or a praying grandmother or a praying friend you have the most priceless message upon
[30:53] God said there is nothing to compare to it rubies or diamonds if there is somebody mentioning your name at the throne of grace and praying that God will meet with you in mercy if there is somebody in the spiritual attitude of the father in the parable of the chronicle looking towards the far country waiting to see the approach of the sun coming back or that Christ said you have but in the other way the former things will have passed away you have them watching over your soul all the night but there will be nothing like that in the realm to come there will be no prayer made for you and there will be no space to repent in the world to come and there will be no repentance in the dimension of there would be no repentance in the place of glory and there would be no repentance in the place of torment either no the lost will not repent of the sins blasphemy be repent sometimes in this world repent in a sense with repentance of the kind they were told that they did something but there will not even be that and that will have given way to nothing but blasphemy
[32:27] God tormented them we are told in this book and blaspheme to the God of heaven who sent the pain and in hell my friends there will be no repentance blasphemy to its utmost and its completeness will have taken its place and the more they are tormented in the sight of God then the more they blaspheme the name of the God and the former things are passed away there will be no Bible anymore there will be no Bible anymore think of what it is if it were obliterated in every page and it would black it would you do without it would you be quite happy well I want to tell you new Bible less people one of these days you are going into a
[33:28] Bible less world unless God in his mercy will meet you and the Bible that you so easily do without will not be available until the day passed passed passed away now just in a word before
[34:43] I conclude I want to say to you that time and the end of it is an after of weeks we don't know when but it is an after of weeks do you know when as soon as this day will come to twelve o'clock there is an appointed time for time to come to an end God has appointed that in the ages of eternity he set the clock of time moving and some people say it's been going on for millions of years well let that happen same we don't know we are not confident to judge but whether the clock has been going on for millions and billions of years makes not a particle of difference the clock began and God has appointed the very moment at which it's going to stop and then stop to end and the form of things will pass away what a time what a daylight will be my friends is coming well what then does this teach you it teaches us to improve time while we have it to stand very loosely and carelessly by the things of the world what do they mean anyway they are tits they are a mist a morning mist that will soon vanish away we can't grasp them forever they would be taken away alone by them make so much of them let me use this illustration and it has something it has a basis in fact something that I heard about the soul but it has a basis in fact suppose you were offered a beautiful house very convenient and luxury and you were offered at that price that you could afford although it was worth far far far more than you ever owed but it was offered that next tonight to you but upon this condition that you could be turned out of it tomorrow or that you could be turned out of it next year but that in any case the landlord was going to come and turn you out someday you were going to have an uncertain and a temporary lease
[37:34] I ask you in all soberness would you take it no friend you would rather have the humblest cottage you would rather lie on a bed of straw than go into a place with an uncertain and a temporary lease a place from which you would be turned by anything well then that's the kind of life you have now what would be the use of the luxuries what would be the use of furniture its artiches and its attractions if they would not be used but certainly at such as time well then many of the former things are already passed away you know them and I say this just to glitch what I am saying just to show you that what
[38:34] I'm saying is true many of the former things are already passed away you think of the village when you were born start thinking of how many people how many of your contemporaries are still there if you're 60 or a little bit over if you're 70 they're empty and if you're even much younger than that a lot of them are gone many of the former things are passed away take the temple of the body of sin the eyesight hearing the memory the alertness that you draw many of the former things are passed away and are passing away and then at last the complete resolution will come well then friend this is my last question and just asked in a word and I leave it to you how is the end of time going to find you ready or ready where is the end of time going to take you to heaven or to heaven where are you going to be it be a year from tonight or a week from tonight twenty years from tonight yours will be left where is going to take to you is that it shall not profit as it became the whole world and do so so and
[40:18] I don't speak contemptuously at all I don't want to slight your intelligence in any way I don't say this a project I mean but I don't want to see that I am certain you but I say this to you that there is no fool upon the face of the earth greater man or the woman who does not prepare for the endless time for the world realm of timelessness into which she's going to go and where is late will be the doctor will be fixed may God give you grace to prepare it