Episode Transcript
So glad you've joined us for countdown. Back to the Future. Going to be looking at Tutankhamun's treasures and the journey to eternity. You know, when you look at the ancient Egyptians, you realize that they seem to be obsessed with eternity. They believed there were a number of ingredients that were necessary for living in life after death. For example, they believed that you must have the body. And that was so that the soul or the spirit could come back to it each night and so on. They had this idea of a car and a bar, a soul and a spirit. So you had to have a body for that to come back to. And of course, this is why the ancient Egyptians mummified bodies. You needed to preserve the body for that very reason. But not only that. They believed, of course, that you needed to have a tomb to protect the body. No good the wild, you know, dogs or the hyenas or the jackals taking the body. Because then the soul or the spirit couldn't come back anywhere. So they had eventually pyramid building. The elaborate terms for one pharaoh for the afterlife. But all of this was to protect the body. You see, they also believed that you needed the heart. Because the heart was going to be important for you to get through the judgment. Your heart was going to be weighed on the balances in the scales of their judgment process against the feather of truth. And so the heart was put back in the body. When the body was preserved. Then, of course, you needed your name somewhere on the tomb. Because you needed to have the right spirit come back to the right body. So the name for identity. No good. My spirit coming back to your body in your tomb instead of my tomb. So the name for identity. This is why the pharaohs, of course, on the tombs had their cartouches. Basically, like their signature. This belongs to Pharaoh Ramesses the Great. Or this belongs to Thutmose iii, this tomb. So the spirit or the ba. Or the soul could come back. Then they had to have things buried with the pharaohs and the wealthy people for the afterlife. You wanted to enjoy the afterlife. So they believed you had to bury things with the pharaoh or whoever was being buried for the next life. Now, this brings us, of course, to the Valley of the Kings. Now, you'll notice here in the 18th and 19th Dynasties. The Pharaohs got tired of the tomb robbers, you know, getting all the treasures out of the pyramids and so on. Because that's what happened. And we now know what happened was that the people who put the pharaohs in there with their treasures. They were the ones who Got some of the stuff out again. They knew how to do it. So the pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties decided to move their tombs down into the area of Luxor in Andal. Their tombs into the cliffs here. Probably this place because you notice in the background this big hill looks like a natural pyramid. So perhaps this is why they chose this place to put their tombs. Cutting them into the cliff face here and underground. Well, Howard Carter thought, well, we found everybody's. All the pharaoh's tombs except for one. That of a young man by the name of Tutankhamun. And so for six seasons Howard Carter looked for the tomb of Tutankhamun. Finally he found his tomb. And this young man, basically about 19 years of age, was a pharaoh back around 1325 BC. When Howard Carter came here and looked into the tomb, he found it full of amazing things for the afterlife. For example, three beds or so. He had must have planned to do a lot of sleeping in the next life or something. But incredible what was buried with this young man. Life size statues of gods to protect in the afterlife. Evidently. Then his royal chariot, beautifully decorated. His royal throne made of wood overlaid with gold. Notice his wife Ankhesenaman on the right hand side there, lightly touching him on the shoulder. Exquisitely decorated. Now he was a minor king, Tutankhamun. Imagine what they would have found if they had found all the treasures belonging to say, Thutmose III or Ramesses the Great, the greatest of the pharaohs. Then there was the Canopic chest, this big box on the left here. When they opened the lid of that or opened the doors of that, there was an alabaster box inside it. In the middle there, when they lifted the lid off that, there were these four stoppers or jar lids in the shape of the head of the king. When they lifted the lid off those inside was this solid little gold, like a coffin about so long. Solid gold. When they lifted the lid off that, inside were the organs of the king. Livers, kidneys and so on. Very dry of course, but preserved for the afterlife. Then they came to the burial chamber inside the tomb. And there was a huge box about the size of a carport. Inside the first box was a second box. When they opened the door of the second box, inside was a third box, one inside the other. Very clearly. The Russians built these things, right? No, just kidding. Like those little dolls, one inside the other. When they opened the lid of the door of the last of the big boxes, they found the yellow quartzite sarcophagus of the pharaoh stone coffin. Lifted the lid off that, and inside there was a coffin in the shape of the body. Lifted the lid off that, there was another one inside that one. When they lifted the lid off that, you guessed it, there's a third one inside that. But this was very heavy. It was solid gold. Imagine that, about 2 meters long, solid gold coffin. When they lifted the lid off this, there was the mummified body of Tutankhamun. And over his face was the famous funerary mask. We call it solid gold. Going from down here over the chest, over the back of his head to his back. Solid gold. Incredible. Now, the ancient Egyptians were not the only people who went to such elaborate processes in preparation for the next life. We find a similar thing in China. We come to China, to the place called Xi' an in China where the famous terracotta warriors are. You see, there was an emperor by the name of Qin Shi wang round about 250 years before Christ thereabouts. And buried with him were a whole lot of terracotta soldiers and horsemen. And you can see that today in Xi' an in China. It's an incredible sight. Just literally hundreds of these soldiers. He planned to have these guys fight for him or protect him in the next life, the afterlife. Then, of course, we go to Mesopotamia. One of the archeologists from Britain, they excavated the death pits of Ur in what we would call Iraq today. And Sir Leonard Woolley was the guy when they excavated, they came across the famous death pits of Ur. And buried with people like the king and so on were these servants and soldiers. This is a soldier. Something's fallen on top of him and his head's got crushed in his helmet. But this is what he had planned to have for the next life, someone to protect him. Living people taking poisoned and buried with the dead to serve them. And in the afterlife, Queen Puabi and some of her attendants, you notice the gold here, these were going to serve her in the next life. The living buried with the dead so that they could serve them. Now, the question is, when we think of the ancient Egyptians, when we think of the Chinese there in Xi' an and now here in Ur, why all this trouble? How come these people went to such a trouble for the afterlife? By the way, we even sort of do that today in our world. There are some very wealthy people who get their body frozen so that hopefully when science, the scientists, come up with an idea of how they can sort of resurrect them, they'll live again. So their bodies are frozen. So why all this trouble in ancient times and even in modern times, there's a very good reason in the Bible it puts it this way. He that is God, he has put eternity in their hearts. You know, it's almost invariably true for just about everybody on the planet. We want to live forever, right? When we get to the end of life, we want more, if we could have more, or we want another life. In fact, we want to be forever young, right? You look at what happens in Hollywood, Some of the actors and actresses, as they get older, they get body tucks to make themselves still look attractive even though they're 70 or 80. But of course, eventually we all die. We want to live forever and we want to live younger forever, it seems. Now, I want you to think of the fragility of the Egyptian belief for a moment. You see, it was a very fragile belief system that they had. Why? Well, for example, the mummies are missing from their tombs. So, you know, how does the spirit of the soul know where to come back to? I mean, the cartouche, the signature of the person, the name of the person is not even on the tomb. They're in somewhere other place. And think about the fact that their treasures have been taken, people have stolen it, so how are they enjoying their afterlife without all their treasures and so on? Something very fragile, when you think about it, in such a belief system, there must be a better way, and thank God that there is a better way. Want to go to the Book of Revelation to understand this important subject. When we go to the Book of Revelation again, we notice Earth's final events. John sees them there in the center of the Book of Revelation. In the center of the book, as we've been noticing, there are these three beasts, the dragon, the sea beast, and the land beast. I sort of won't let you forget about them, will I? Because we're going to be coming to see and understand what they're up to shortly. Now, these three powers forming a global world order eventually cause most people in the world to give their allegiance to the dragon or Satan. That's their end game. And as a result, such people who follow them and give their allegiance to the dragon, they will be excluded from the last empire. And that really worries God because he cares about every one of us. So he sends three final warning messages to help people not go down that track, to help them escape from what these three beasts are wanting to do, to take them to so they miss out on the last empire. Notice what the first angel says in John's 14th chapter of Revelation. Then I saw another angel flying. He's in a hurry. Sometimes you see angels just standing, but this one's flying. There's no time to lose. He's in the midst of heaven, very prominently right in the midst of heaven, so that everybody gets everybody's attention, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation, tribe, tongue and people, because God loves the whole world. So this angel goes everywhere, saying with a loud voice, in the Greek, that's the word megaphone in which we get the word megaphone, a loud voice, Fear God and give glory to him. Why? For the hour of his judgment has come and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water. Why the urgency? Why is this angel in a hurry? Why is he prominently in the heavens? Why is he shouting to everybody? The answer is there in that passage. Because the hour of God's judgment has come. The last empire, in other words, is about to appear. The last empire with no tears, no pain, no sorrow, no death. It's about to take over the kingdoms of this world. So the angel is urgent now. How can we be in this forever? Last empire? That's a vital question. How can we live forever? In other words, what do we have to do? Well, I want you to notice embedded in this very passage of the first angel's message, who's trying to counter those three beasts is this message. I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven. He's carrying something. It's the everlast gospel. To preach or proclaim to those who dwell on the earth. The gospel he's carrying. That gospel means the good news. The good news about what? What is the good news? Well, the answer is given very easily in the Bible. The gospel or the good news is the way to eternity. That's the good news. How do you have eternity? Notice what Paul said as he wrote to his friend Timothy. Jesus Christ, who has brought life and immortality. That means you don't die anymore. He's brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. It's the gospel in the Bible that shows us how to have eternity, how to take a journey to eternity. I want to bring you to a very famous place in the Middle east, in Israel, actually. I want to come here to this. Well, here. This is in a place called Nabilus in Israel today. It's a Palestinian settlement or city, big city, actually. But it was here at this very well, probably. It's believed that Jesus one day met a lady and he talked to this woman. She was A Samaritan. They sat together and talked beside the well. Want you to notice what Jesus said to this lady so long ago, he said, Jesus answered, whoever drinks of this water, the water that's in the well, will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him or her will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him or her. What a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. So the water that Jesus was talking about was the everlasting life. And I've got it. Jesus was saying to this lady, you know, he was really offering her quality eternal life. That's what he was doing. I've got something that you desperately need. I want you in my last empire because that's quality eternal life. No tears, no pain, no sorrow, no death. A forever empire. Now. No wonder that the lady responded, sir, give me this water. I need this water. Well, before Jesus could actually give her the water, he had to help her understand humanity's massive problem. Every one of us on this planet have this massive, humongous problem. And what is it? This is it in a nutshell. According to the Bible, all of us are sinners, meaning all of us have done wrong that which is wrong in God's sight. Notice what the Bible says. As it is written, there is none righteous. No, not one. For all have sinned. In the Greek language, that's the past tense. We've done wrong in the past, but he says, and fall short. That's present tense. We fall short now of the glory of God. We fall short of what we should be doing, thinking, saying, and so on. Now, there's a serious problem with the sin problem that all of us have. The Bible says sin brings eternal death. We may not like that assessment, but that's the reality. The Bible puts it this way. Paul is writing to his friends living in Rome. He says, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. God's gift is eternal life, but it contrasts it with death. He's talking about the eternal death. Which brings us to a vital passage that Paul wrote to his friends in Corinth so that nobody could pull the wool over their eyes that they would get this point because we need to understand this as a human race. Notice what he wrote to his friends. He said, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? He's saying, those who cling to their sin and hold onto it, they will never inherit the eternal the kingdom of God. They won't be in the last empire. That's what he's saying. Do not be deceived. He's using strong language, isn't he? Don't let anybody pull the wool over your eyes on this thing. He's saying, neither fornicators, that's those having sex outside the marriage relationship, nor idolaters, those who put anything before God, of anything and more important than God in their life, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor, he says, thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. Paul is very plain because that's what Jesus was saying to this dear lady. We need to know that sin, if we hold onto it, we cannot be in God's last forever empire. In fact, John in Revelation lays out a few more things on this. He says, but murderers and whoremongers and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the second death. That's the eternal death. So this is serious. Jesus is trying to help us all understand we need to front up and own up that, hey, we've got a problem, a massive problem. Cause it's going to lead us eventually to miss out on the last empire. And that's why God sends the final warning messages. Because he loves us and he wants to help us. He sends the final warning messages. And what is the gospel or the good news that's the heart of this first angel's message? It is three things. Number one, it's the gospel of God. It's the good news about God and from God. Because you see, God loves people, all people. It's from God because of his love to every one of us. The Bible puts it this way. We've seen it before. For God so loved the world. Now, that doesn't mean a ball of dirt on this planet. It means people in the Bible and a special type of a person, a rebel who's against God. It means God so loves those, that's all of us. Cause we're all rebels at heart as human beings. Till we find God or He finds us. So you see, because of his love, love found a way to bring eternal life to us. And that brings us to the second thing that the gospel or the good news is it's the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's called Jesus in the Bible. Notice what the Bible says in this is love. This is the love of God, says John. And he's writing a letter to some friends. In this, the love of God was manifested or shown toward us toward us human beings. That God has sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. The gospel comes to us through Jesus Christ. He, in fact, he is the gospel. He's Emmanuel, God with us. God, our creator, the one who fashioned us and made everything, brought everything into existence. This is the one who became a creature forever. He's forever become a human being. But it's much greater than that. God just didn't become one of us. His love went even far deeper, far beyond that. Let me read you an amazing passage in the Bible that speaks of this. John is writing to his friends and he says in this is love. Not that we love God. Because at first we didn't. We ran from God. We sometimes, as human beings have shaken our fist in God's face. We haven't even believed there is a God. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us. Listen, my friend. You may not believe in God, but He believes in you. You may hate God, but He loves you. You may run from God, but He runs after us because he loves us. He'll never force us, but he will do all he can to rescue us. But that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Now that's a pretty fancy big word, isn't it? Propitiation. What does propitiation mean? What does that fancy word mean? Want to take you to some amazing and amazing places for a few moments. Want to bring you to Petra. Petra is a fascinating city carved out of stone. If you would in Jordan today. It's found right here between the Dead Sea the and the Gulf of Aqaba. You can see the red dot in the middle there down the bottom. That blue, that's the Gulf of Aqaba coming up through to Jordan. And up above, there's another blue bit. That is the Dead Sea there. Between those on the Jordanian side is Petra. Now, when you come to Petra, you come down a wadi. It's a dry riverbed. And as you come down through this dry riverbed, soon the cliffs tower on either side of as you start to walk down this narrow cleft or seek between these great cliffs. They tower about 100 meters above you as you wind your way. Takes you about three quarters of an hour to get down through here as you see all this amazing narrow passageway. But as you come toward the end, you see this building in front of you begin to emerge. And when you break out of this sea or cleft between these rocks, there emerges this magnificent facade of a building it's known as Al Khazna, the treasury. When you move past this building, you come out into the valley here and you will see right throughout this valley area, houses and tombs carved out of the rock. You can come way up here to the back. It's a good climb and you'll come to El Diure, called the monastery. This is a great facade of another building. You can see how large this is. If you look at the bottom where the door is, someone's trying to climb inside. You have to heave yourself up to get into the door of this massive facade of a building. But I want to take you to another place in Petra. It's believed by some that in the early hours of the morning before the sun rose, the priests, the Nabataean priests, because these were the people who did this carving. They came up these steps to the top of the. Of the mountains where we have probably the best preserved high altar for sun worship in the world. Up here you will notice some believe they brought the victim, perhaps a child, to this place here. There's a big basin just on the left and laid the victim out, washed them or the priests themselves washed themselves before they participated in the ceremony. Then they came up here, over to the right to the altar and a little Bedouin child is laid down on the altar for me here to take a photo. But as the sun is rising up over the hills, some believe that's when the priest plunged the knife into the victim, the child. And as the heart was taken out and pulsating, the blood ran down this channel. Well, we're not exactly sure how it was, but it was for sun worship of their gods. And some believe that human sacrifice took place up here. Human sacrifice was practiced a lot in the Middle Eastern world, especially among the Canaanites. In earlier times, a lot of it went on among the Phoenicians. You go to Carthage. I'll take you there in a presentation shortly and we'll see. We'll visit where they practiced human sacrifice in Carthage and in Israel itself. You can come over to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and you can see the Mayan civilizations is one of their pyramids, their stairways to their gods, if you would. But here in Chechen Itza, they had a game that if you won the game, you got to be the sacrifice. I tried to lose the game. I'm a bit of a wimp. I don't want to get sacrificed. But that's what the game was. You win, you get to be the human sacrifice. Then we come to Teotihuacan. This is just outside of Mexico City. And you have these great big pyramids. Pyramids to the sun, pyramids, pyramids to the moon. And they discovered that in the pyramid to the sun, there were the bones of little children at the base. Human sacrifice. As the building had its foundations laid, the Aztecs, of course, right there in the central center of Mexico City at Tenochtitlan, they did a lot of human sacrifice. In fact, the Aztecs tell us that in the reconstruction of their great temple here in this place, right in the center of Mexico City Today, they had 84,000 people sacrificed in four days. Now, scholars have looked at that and they say, how could you kill that many people in four days as human sacrifices? Well, whatever it was, it certainly was a lot of people that were killed by the Aztecs as sacrifices to their gods. Now, even the Incas practice human sacrifice. Not up here at Machu Picchu, we don't think, but certainly down at Cuzco, down below, at the base, down the bottom of these mountains. Human sacrifice. This is pagan propitiation. What was it? What did it mean? Well, this word meant a sacrifice to appease an angry God. Some God, one of their gods is angry. So what did calm their tempers down by presenting a human sacrifice? In this case, it was to remove sin that people had done wrong. So a human sacrifice to remove the sin, or the other thing was to reconcile two parties. The God's not happy with the people. So this brings them back together again. Now, the Bible picks up this word because this was practiced in the cultures around. The Bible picks up this word, but God twists it. Twists it in a good sense. Notice how God twists it. The God brings the sacrifice, this time, not human beings. In fact, God was the sacrifice because it was Jesus, God in human flesh, who was on the cross. God is the sacrifice. And finally, God is the one that reconciles people to himself, not human beings. God was the one reconciling, so picks up a word that people are familiar with, but he uses in a different way, in a very special way. You see, Jesus is the only valid human sacrifice because he is God in human flesh. Amazing. That's why in the book of Revelation we read these words. John says in Revelation, chapter five, you talking of Jesus? You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood, meaning your death out of every tribe, tongue, people and nation. What a God loves the whole world and died to redeem us? We saw that In a previous presentation. What does redeemed really say to us as human beings? Redeemed by God means we're wanted, we're loved, we're valued by God. Hence he pays an enormous price. He himself pays the price. You know, your husband may think you're rubbish, so he leaves you for someone else. Or your wife may leave you, Your parents may have decided they don't really want anything to do with you. Maybe your children never come to visit you and you feel like nobody cares. Let me tell you. God values you. God wants you. How do we know? Look at the price he paid for you and for me personally. The Bible says in his love and in his pity, he redeemed them. Redeemed them at the cost of the death of God in human flesh. Never forget it. You are special to God. God values us, you and me, more than his own life. Because he gave his life so that you could have life. What a God. You know, there are two basic truths that we all need to understand in this book. Number one, sin leads to death. We get that. We talked about that very clearly from the Bible. But righteousness leads to eternity. Those two basic truths of the Bible are brought out at the cross of Calvary. You notice the Bible says sin reigned in death. Sin leads to death. Even so, might grace reign through righteousness to eternal life. So if you can have righteousness, you'll have eternal life, in other words. And you see, that's where the cross is so important. The cross is the great exchange place. If we could put it that way. Notice what the Bible says. The Bible says, for he, God the Father made him. That's God the Son. Paul is talking about God the Father made Jesus, who knew no sin. Jesus never sinned, never did one thing wrong. Never a nasty word to anybody. Never a lie, never an evil thought, never, never coveting anybody's things. He never did anything wrong. He knew no sin to be sin for us. Why? So that we might become, or we might be, the righteousness of God in him. What's he saying here? What he's telling us is this. Our sin was taken by Jesus. And that's what caused his death. Your sin and mine. When he took our sin upon himself. The wages of sin is death. But when we accept him, his righteousness is credited to us. And if righteousness, the very goodness of Christ, all of it is credited to your account and mine, then we have righteousness credited to us. So we have life. Because righteousness leads to life. Now, it's not what you've done. Because he just credits your account with his perfect righteousness. And therefore you can live because it's credited to you. So what do you and I have to do? That's what God has done. He's made provision for us. He's made a way for us to have eternal life. Well, that brings us to the third and final thing about the Gospel. It's called the Gospel of God's Grace. Because, you see, it's free. It's free. Paul on one occasion came here to the city of Ephesus. In fact, you notice on the left, this big amphitheater. It was here that they shouted for two hours, great is Diana. Great is Diana. That's the God of the Ephesians, Diana or Artemis. You can see her statues in museums. And Paul wanted to come here and speak to the people that said, don't go in there, Paul. They want to kill you. So they held him back. But this is the place. Ephesus. Many people come here today to see the amazing ruins. There's the Library of Celsus on the right. Well, Paul, when he preached the gospel to the people in Ephesus, many of the people in Ephesus became believers in God. Their lives were changed dramatically. Peace came into their life, a hope for the future, meaning and purpose in life. Joy came into their life. And Paul had to leave eventually. But he wrote them a letter. Notice what he wrote them for. By grace, you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. And it is the gift of God. How amazing is that? It's the gift of God. Now, grace. Perhaps a simple way to say that is its unmerited favor. We don't deserve it. Imagine if I came to your house, for example, and I shot your husband. And I did terrible things to you and your children. And then the police come pick me up and took me to jail. And then you come visit me in jail and you say, we forgive you for what you have done. You have messed up our family's life. You've killed my husband, and you've done terrible things to us. But I want you to know, Gary, that we've just deposited $10,000 in your bank account for your wife. Because you're going to be in here a long time and she needs to live. I didn't deserve any of that. Deserved a bullet to the head, maybe, but that's what we call grace. We don't deserve anything. But God, in his kindness and love, has just showered upon us his goodness and kindness to us. Now, by grace, you've been saved through Faith, it's a gift. Question, how much does a gift cost? Well, you say, don't be ridiculous, Gary. A gift is free. That's what a gift means. It's free. You can't pay for it. It's free. You can't earn it. There's nothing you can do. We can't earn or buy what God has done for us. It's free. Just reach out your hand and take the gift. In other words, Paul wrote this way about these things to his friends in Galatia in what we would call Turkey today, a man is not justified. That means declared right with God. A person is not right with God. He's saying by the works of the law. That means obedience even to God's laws. That's not the way we get right with God. For by the works of the law, that's by human effort. No flesh, no person, in other words, will be justified, will be declared right by God or before God. It doesn't come by what we do. Have you ever tried to lift your shoes up by your yourself, up by your shoestrings? Kids try that, don't they? You don't get very far, I can assure you. You know, and so he's also saying to us, listen, it's not by our human effort. We need God to do a work for us. So how do we receive this free gift that we can't earn? Well, this is where your part and my part comes in for eternity. We must believe in, in Christ. That's the first thing we must do. The Bible puts it this way. Whoever believes that means who trusts, who takes God at his word. Whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. You know, we sort of see this in the natural world, the world we live in, don't we? You know, when you go and fly on a plane like this, Air China cargo plane. If you fly on a plane, you trust the pilot. I don't think there's too many people who sit there the whole flight and they biting their fingernails, wondering, is this pilot going to get us to the next destination? Most of us just, you know, flick on the TV screen and watch a movie or some documentary, whatever it is, for the rest of the journey. We don't usually sit there and worry. We trust the pilot. We believe he's flown these things before and he'll get us there. So, okay, just believe what God says. In this book, Paul is saying, I love the story of Blondin. Blondin was that great tightrope walker in America many years ago, walked Across Niagara Falls on a tightrope, you know, with his balance pole across. And when he went across, the people clapped and cheered and said, blond and you're the greatest man. You are the greatest. You can do anything. He said, how many of you think I could carry a man on my shoulders and walk across Niagara Falls on the tightrope? No problem. They said you could easily do it. Okay, who will jump on my shoulders? He said, no one moved. They didn't trust the guy, did they really? If they trusted him, they'd jump on his shoulders. That's a bit like that with God. He makes some promises and he says, I mean what I say. If you put your trust in this Jesus who died, you have eternal life. There's a second thing we must do if we want to have this eternal life. And the Bible says we must repent of sin. Notice what Jesus actually said speaking to his people he was talking to there way back when he was here. Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, the good news, and saying repentance and believe in the gospel. Well, what does repentance mean? Repentance means a change of mind. We've been going in the wrong direction in life. We've just been plowing on in the wrong direction. Repentance means to change, to choose to turn away from sin and go in a new in the right direction. That's what repentance means in the biblical records. You know, I'm reminded of the story of the monkey and the hunter. There was this monkey that kept stealing the peanuts of a hunter. And he got sick of being having his peanuts stolen. So he thought, I'm going to trap this monkey. So in his tent he got a nice long jar, big high jar. But it had a very narrow neck and bulge at the bottom. So he poured the peanuts down in the bottom, got some glue and stuck this jar to his table in his tent. Then he went behind with his gun and went to sleep. In the middle of the night, he heard the scritchy, scratchy sound of the monkey in the front part of the tent. So he peered out and there's this monkey with a fist full of peanuts in his hand. But he couldn't get his hand out of the jar. Cause he wouldn't let go the peanuts. And the hunter, you know, finished him off. That was the end of that poor monkey. But I've thought of that, you know, so often. We try to hold onto the things we could say. The peanuts of this world. We need to let go the world's peanuts. The things that hold us back from following God, we need to let them go. That's repentance. Let go and take hold of the hand of God. Let go of sin, in other words, the things we know that are wrong, that we're doing or have been doing. Let it go and give it to God. It's a bit like this as the Bible is saying, we must believe and repent. It's a bit like this when you go. Perhaps you get, you know, lost out at sea sometime. I hope that doesn't happen to you. I know of a friend, happened twice to him, lived in Kiribati and missed the island. Bad he was days at sea. But imagine there you are, you've been bobbing around in the Pacific Ocean all alone for days on end, holding onto a piece of driftwood and a boat comes by and they throw you a lifebuoy. Now you have to make a decision right here. Am I going to let go the piece of driftwood? That's repentance. Let it go. Let go the peanuts of this world and grab hold of the lifebuoy that's thrown to me. That's a bit like it is with God. We let go to grab hold of what God is giving us. The free gift we need to let go to grab hold of that gift. You see, Christ is the key to eternity. That's what we're seeing here. I want you to know that God wants us to know that we can have eternal life. I love the words of John who wrote the book of Revelation. As he writes to his friends, he says these words, these things I have written that you may hope. No, he doesn't say hope. He doesn't say wish. I write to you that you may know that you have eternal life. Have it now. What's he getting at here? What do you have to do to have eternal life Begin now? Well, then John takes his readers to, as it were, a court scene. Now, you know when you go to court, wherever you live, wherever it is, you're gonna, if you're a witness, you're gonna put your hand on a holy book. Maybe it's the Bible, maybe it's the Quran or some other holy book. Swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, depending on what rel you are. Now, used to if people swore on a holy book to tell the truth, people would believe them and they would tell the truth. But today, of course, people will say they're going to truth by almighty God and lie through their teeth, of course. But Once upon a time, this was the way it was. So John says, we're going to law court, and God is wanting to say something in this court as a witness. Notice what John said. If we receive the witness or the Testimony of men, I.e. human beings, men or women, the witness or the testimony of God is greater. I mean, you can surely believe what God says because he doesn't lie. For this is the witness or the testimony which God has testified of his son. God wants to say something in this court about his son. He who does not believe God has made him a liar. Whoa. In other words, John's really getting, getting serious. He said, listen, if we don't believe what God is saying in this book about his son, we're calling God a liar. We're saying, you don't really mean what you say. Bad enough to call a human being a liar, but God a liar, that's another thing. So he who does not believe what God has said has made him a liar because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of his son. So believe up. John is saying, trust. Well, what does God want to say in this, as a, as a witness in this law court, what does he want to say? This is the testimony that God has given us eternal life. And this life is in his son. He or she who has the son has life. He or she who does not have the Son of God does not have life. And God sits down, he's finished. What he needs to say, if you have my son, you have life. If you don't have my son, you don't have eternal life. So how do you have Christ then? Well, I'm glad you asked. It's a very important question. When we go to the beginning of the book of Revelation, we encounter the very way to have Christ and therefore to have life. John writes these words. Jesus is talking. Behold, I stand at the door and I knock. If anyone. That means anyone, literally, if anyone hears my voice, if anyone hears me knocking at the door of their life, I want to come into your life and opens the door, I will come in. God will never barge his way in. He gives you the freedom of choice. But he is knocking at our door of our life. I want to come in. Cause I have life to give you. He's saying, you know, it's a bit like this. Here we are two cliffs. All of us are on one of those cliffs, one or the other. We begin on this cliff, eternal death. Because unless we find a way to get from this cliff to that cliff, which is eternal Life. We will not have life. So how do you get from this cliff, eternal death, to this cliff, eternal life. That's how you get there. The cross is the bridge. Jesus is the bridge to life. We have to walk across. We have to believe that if we accept him, we will have life. You know, there's a story in the Bible of a thief next to Jesus on a cross. At first, both thieves made fun of Jesus. They mocked him. They laughed at him like everyone was. But after a while, one of those criminals on either side of Jesus realized, game's up. My life's about to end and I'm not ready. If I die, I know I won't have eternal life. So as his other friend is making fun of Jesus, if you're the Son of God, get off the cross and save yourself and us. As his friend is saying all that, he turns, as it were, to him and he says, don't you fear God? We are in the same situation as him. We're about to die, man. We deserve what we're going to get because we've done stuff that's. But this man's done nothing wrong. And then he turned to Jesus and he said, lord, would you remember me when you come into your forever kingdom, your last empire? You know, you could have heard a pin drop right there at the cross. At that day, everybody paused to listen. How would Jesus respond to this man who had just been mocking at him, making fun at him? How would he respond? They didn't have long to wait. Cause quick as a flash, Jesus said, listen, truly, I say unto you on this horrible day, when it looks like my cause is washed up, I want to tell you, you are going to be with me in my Father's kingdom. What amazing love. And that's how simple it is to have eternal life. The moment you and I accept Christ, that moment we begin the life eternal. This is mighty good news, isn't it? The good news that God loves us. He has a plan for your life. There's a reason for living. There's a hope for the future. And if we put our life in the hand of Jesus, we have a hope that's brighter than tomorrow. Let's thank God as we close. Thank you, Father, for your amazing love. Thank you. That like the thief, we can cry out to you, oh God, have a place for me. I believe Jesus died in my place. May each person listening right now just tell you, Lord, I need Jesus. Thank you for accepting us because we believe your words in Jesus name. Amen. Well, we're so glad you joined us with Countdown Back to the Future in this presentation. Whatever you do, don't miss our next presentation. We'll be looking at Endpoint and the final Showdown. How to preserve your most important relationships in life. You need to invite a friend to go to the link for 3 ABN. They mustn't miss this presentation. We look forward to seeing you at that time.
