 Okay. Thank you. And for the benefit of live streaming, we're testing out whether these microphones actually pick up your voice. So hopefully we'll get some feedback as to whether or not that's working, but it might help if you speak up a little bit just in case they don't pick up. And maybe we can depend on the live streaming folks to let us know if your voice is coming out. You know, in terms of those rules, there will be times when I ask you questions. So when I ask you questions, I do want you to respond. And there are times when I'm purposely trying to get debate going in the class. It's also a cue for you to respond. But I do think it's a good rule that if you've got, say, five questions, take five separate turns. Because that way other people can participate as well. And we're hoping to evolve this live streaming where we can take one or two questions a week from the live stream audience and put them up here. And there will be times when I'm going to ask you to answer the questions being posed from outside. So this might become a good exercise. I got some questions for you today. And I had a lesson planned in Ecclesiastes 9. I hope we're going to get there. But this has been an eventful week. I've probably done six radio interviews on the end of the world that was supposed to happen yesterday. And it didn't happen. And not all of them were saying the world was going to end, but they were mostly saying that yesterday was the day when the rapture of the church would take place. When God would take all the Christians up there. And I don't know if they're right then. I've got some doubts about your spirituality, as well as my own spirituality, because we're still here. But this is deja vu. I'm old enough where I've seen this kind of thing happen at least eight different times. So I thought it'd be good just to kind of go over what happened yesterday. And just so, because I've been having to field questions on Facebook and Twitter from people who said, it looks like they really got the goods. This is really going to be the time it happens. And mainly they're abusing what I would call statistical analysis. So I'm going to try to give you a little bit of statistics and probability theory here today. Just so the next time this happens, you'll know how to respond. Okay. The basis of what happened yesterday is Revelation 12-1. So I'm actually going to read the text. Revelation 12-1. A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven. And that was the claim that yesterday a great and wondrous sign took place in the heavens. A woman clothed with a sun with the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head. And so the claim was that an astronomical event happened yesterday, which is precisely what was predicted in Revelation 12-1. And therefore this is a sign that other events in the book of Revelation would begin to happen starting yesterday. And now I went online yesterday on my Facebook page saying, I predict, they made a prediction, I'm making a prediction. My prediction is they're going to find something dramatic to happen yesterday and say, see, we told you. And that's a pattern I've seen every time people have made these predictions. Hey, we see a sign in the heavens. This is a fulfillment of sometimes of end times prophecy. It doesn't happen. But they find something that is spectacular that did happen on that day and say, well, you know, we were just a little bit off. Something really spectacular did happen. What I said in my Facebook post yesterday is every single day something dramatic or spectacular happens. You can always find something. And so I think there was what an aftershock in Mexico yesterday. So they could appeal to that. Or typically they find something bent in Israel. Again, every day something dramatic happens in the land of Israel. So you can always find something. But this is what they were claiming is that this arrangement of stars and planets was a fulfillment of Revelation 12-1. And you can see they say, well, here's Virgo. This is the woman that was being spoken of in the Revelation 12-1. And it says that Virgo would be clothed with the sun. Well, look how close the sun is to Virgo. Okay, critique number one. They're appealing to astrology. Not to astronomy. Not to anything the Bible is talking about. I mean, I defy you to look at this assemblage of stars here and say, that's obviously a clothed woman. Well, you've got to use a lot of imagination to see that. Moreover, this is not the only woman in the constellations. Question. Do you know the name of another woman that's in the constellations? Cassiopeia. You're right. I should have shown you that the constellation Cassiopeia, it looks just like a big W. But they claim that's a woman sitting on a chair. Well, you've got to use a lot of imagination. And then above Virgo, we have Leo. And they always like Leo because Leo is the lion. And okay, you know, Judah, the lion of Israel. And so they say that's obviously a reference to Israel. And also in Leo, the largest star, the brightest star in Leo is the star Regulus, which means king. They say, well, that's a reference to the king. And so Leo always factors into these attempts to link the star patterns with what's happening in the Bible. Now, in order to get the 12 stars, they would appeal to planets coming through. And they say, hey. And for one reason why you see so many of these Bible prophecies linked with Leo and Virgo, Leo and Virgo are on the ecliptic, which means the path that the planets take as the orbit around the sun. And so the fact that planets go through Leo and Virgo is not at all spectacular. That's just the way the planets are. They're in an orbit around the sun. And there's a line that goes through Leo and Virgo, which is basically the path that the planets follow. So the fact that we got a bunch of planets in Leo and Virgo at this time is not especially unusual. Now, what they're saying is, but look at the 12 stars. And so they pick the nine brightest stars in Leo and they pick up three more planets and say, hey, this is it. Okay. And, you know, these are the 12 stars. Well, I actually looked at this early couple of mornings ago and I could see Venus. I could see Regulus, but I couldn't see Mars and I couldn't see Mercury. And so these aren't really particularly bright. And, you know, Jupiter, I couldn't see either. So now let me show you a little. This is also Leo and the notice here. These are 15 stars in Leo that are all easy to see with the naked eye. If you don't happen to be living in Los Angeles or any other big city with lots of light pollution. In fact, if you look at Leo in Los Angeles, you're not seeing nine stars. You're probably seeing maybe three because of a bad or light pollution is. However, if you go before they had these well-lit cities, everybody could easily see all these stars in Leo. So here's the question. They're talking about 12 stars. Why did they pick nine and three planets? Now, here's the claim that's being made. If I can go back here, I see this all over the Internet. They said this particular arrangement of the Moon, the Sun, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, this hasn't happened in 7,000 years. This is such an unusual event. This must be the fulfillment of Revelation 12-1 because of extremely rare it is. Now, they got a point. This particular arrangement of the Sun, Moon, and Venus, Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter, it hasn't happened in 7,000 years. This particular arrangement. But an arrangement that would just as well fit Revelation 12-1 has happened literally hundreds of times. Okay, because the text says that the Sun would be clothing burgo. Well, the Sun is not quite on burgo's body. It's off to one side. So that means the Sun could have been anywhere around burgo, and they would have said this is the fulfillment of Revelation 12-1. And likewise they say, well, the Moon is at the foot of a burgo, underneath the feet of burgo. Well, technically I would expect for that to be fitting Revelation 12-1. The Moon's going to be over here. But notice that it's here. Incidentally, it's only there for about an hour. The Moon moves 13 degrees per day across the sky. So they just happened to pick the spot that was closest to one of the feet, but it's actually off to the side. And so this isn't a very good fit. If the Moon was anywhere around in this vicinity, they would have said, that's it. And they claim that Jupiter is the king of the planets. That's got to be a reference to Christ. And it's coming out of burgo, so that's why. But again, Jupiter anywhere in this general vicinity, they would have said that fits the prophecy. And then the crown. Well, what they're doing is saying the nine stars of Leo, plus Venus, Mars and Mercury, are the 12 stars that form the crown on the head of burgo. Well, this is kind of the head, I guess. And then you look at that crown. Does that really look like a crown on the head of a woman? Well, very, very crude. And again, those three planets, or any other three planets, could have been anywhere in the general vicinity, and they said it would fit. And I put Coma Bernices on here, because that's a small constellation that basically translates the hair or the tiara of Bernice, the woman. And so you say, gee, how come they didn't pick that as a crown, and they went after the stars of Leo instead? I mean, that kind of fits. And incidentally, there actually is a constellation that's called the crown. The problem is, it's nowhere near burgo or Leo. It's, in fact, you can see it tonight. These are where the sun is, but opposite the sun, you're going to find corona. Let me actually show you the constellation called the crown, corona borealis. It's these stars down here. The brightest stars in corona borealis kind of looks like a crown. Let me actually show you one where you can see these bright stars kind of making the crown. So there actually is a constellation called the crown, but conveniently they ignored that and went after Leo and said Leo is the crown. But again, if I were to go back to this, it doesn't really look much like a crown. It's quite a ways from the head of a burgo. One critique is you've got these Bible prophecy people appealing to astrology to sustain the Bible, and the Bible warns us not to appeal to astrology. It's a tool of the occult. And incidentally, when it says here a great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven, it doesn't say in the heavens. It says in heaven. This may not be the universe. This may be the kingdom of heaven beyond the universe. And so again, you can read the rest of Revelation 12, and it's like, I don't think this is fitting the prophecies that they're claiming. The bottom line is you're going to hear these kinds of claims again and again and again. It's going to happen. In fact, yesterday I had two gentlemen from the Jehovah's Witness denomination come to my door, and as always they're claiming Armageddon is just around the corner. And I said, well, you guys have been saying this for almost 150 years. Tell you what though, if you keep coming to my door and keep telling me Armageddon is just around the corner, eventually you'll be right. And that's kind of my response to these people, serious Bible students going through these texts, saying we see a sign that tells us we're at the time of the end. You keep doing that, eventually you will be right. But the reason I brought this up for the class, there's a lesson in all of this, because the claim is, this is statistically so extremely improbable that it must be the fulfillment of prophecy. The fallacy is this, this particular arrangement is extremely improbable, but an equivalent fit that would be just as well fitting the text as what you see here, that's extremely likely. So this is not an improbable event at all. So, but hey, what really threw me off is, you know, I've made a couple posts on this, I've done six radio interviews on this, and it's like everybody thinks these people have the goods. But what I noticed in the post I had put up on Saturday is that it was a Friday, it was Friday, the Preterist jumped all over me and said, you know, had said nothing about Preterism. How come you guys are taking this as an opportunity? But that's kind of the way the Internet is. You post something and somebody will make a post that's got nothing to do with what you've said, but they want to talk about it, and hundreds of people join in them and you get this big debate going on. Say, how did this ever happen on my Facebook page? Happens to me all the time. And then what's bad about Twitter is they don't control the language, so people start yelling and screaming at one another. So yeah, now that we're live streaming, we're all going to clean up our language here in this class, right? So no one's going to know the hour or the day, but to their defense, because a lot of people made that point, you know, why should we believe these people are saying, you know, this is the hour or the day? And what they were saying is we're not claiming we know the exact hour or day, but we're saying this is the week or this is the month or whatever. So this is going to be the beginning. Well, it could be, although what you do notice is that there's a pattern in the Old Testament when God's going, and incidentally it's reserved for when God's bringing his judgment wrath. This particular prophecy I don't think is in that context, and therefore I don't think you can appeal to this. But what a number of people have pointed out is that when God is about to bring judgment on the reprobate individuals, He gives a warning. The warning comes, and as the time approaches, the timing of that event gets more and more clear to the individuals that are involved, but never does it get more accurate than the week. So for example, you got Noah getting on board the ark, and he was there on the ark for seven days before any rain came down. And so he didn't know the hour or the day, but he said, hey, if God's got me on the ark with all these animals and all this food and water, it's probably going to happen relatively soon. And so he probably knew at least a month, and then when he saw the clouds for me, he said, gee, I wonder if this is it, but he never knew the hour or the day. And likewise, you can see that with Lot and other individuals who are involved where God's going to be bringing His judgment wrath upon the reprobates. Yes. I'm glad you enjoyed it. But in one of them, they made it clear that they actually called it Darbyism and said that the whole rapture theory was a creation of a pastor named John Darby. And that it's not really something that we should take seriously as Catholics Well, I think that's what happened to me on the weekend, is that a lot of people who are just as concerned as I was that this is getting Christians needlessly focused on the wrong thing. In fact, in one radio show I said, do you have any last words, Dr. Ross, as yes, to all believers out there, please keep paying your bills. Okay. This is not going to be the end. In fact, if you are going to be raptured as so, still pay your bills. Occupy it till I come. But yeah, what happened is a lot of Preterists jumped in and said, there is no basis for this prophecy ever being fulfilled because they believe there will be no rapture of the church. That's a technical term which talks about how in the days before the return of Jesus Christ to planet Earth an event will happen where God will take all the Christians up from Earth alive to be with them while certain events take place upon the face of the earth. There's multiple theories on the rapture. If you're interested, I taught a seven-year nine-month class in the book of Revelation where in part of that we covered all the possible, no rapture, partial rapture, different rapture theories. Incidentally, I got a couple of comments on Facebook saying you've been advertising this Revelation course on MP3. Where is it on your paradoxes.org website? We're going to get it back up there. But yeah, I'm glad people, incidentally people have asked me, are you going to change anything that you would teach there? Yeah, I would because I taught that class 35 years ago. So there are some adjustments I would make. The bottom line is I don't see anything major that I have to change in that, mainly because we covered all the different possible interpretations. But the Preterists basically say there is no rapture. And they claim that all these prophecies that, you know, tribulation Bible prophecy teachers talk about were all fulfilled in 70 AD. And they're basically talking about the Olivet Discourse. So if you haven't heard of the term Preterism, it's the idea that the Olivet Discourse that you see in Matthew 24, Luke 21 and Mark 13, all of that was fulfilled with the destruction of the Second Temple, where the Romans came in and put down the Jewish rebellion. And therefore there is no more fulfillment of that to take place in the future. Which led to a kind of interesting debate I saw on Facebook where I said, well, it's really difficult to say that all the prophecies and the Olivet Discourse were entirely fulfilled and will not be repeated ever again because of the fact that what you see in Matthew 24 are the disciples asking two questions, not one question. Now Mark 13 and Luke 21, there's just the one question. You say, isn't that a contradiction? A lot of atheists like to jump on the Gospels because they say, well, one will say two, another will say one. Or, you know, one about the rooster crowing three times. And one said that that would be repeated and one didn't. Well, it's the usual thing you see in courtrooms where they get a bunch of eyewitnesses up. One eyewitness sees X, the second eyewitness sees Y. We don't say they contradict one another unless it's impossible for X and Y to both be true. In this case, you have one author of the Gospels saying that disciples ask one question that doesn't eliminate the possibility that they also ask the second question. So the questions you see in Mark and Luke and Matthew do not contradict one another, but I would argue the one in Matthew 24 is the most complete. And let me just turn to that. I don't have it marked, so it might take me a minute to find it. I've got an old Bible here where the pages get stuck together. Okay. Jesus left the temple, verse 1, and was walking away when its disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. Do you see all these things he asked? I tell you the truth, not one stone, there will be left on another, everyone will be thrown down. And that's an obvious reference to the Romans coming and destroying the second temple. That actually happened. As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. And here's the question they asked. Tell us, they said, when will this happen and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? Now, Preterists try to claim all that happened in 70 AD. But if you look at what was said there, how could you respond? I'm asking you a question now, okay? Yeah, verse 3 of Matthew 24. Jesus said, when will this happen and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? What it wasn't, I know a lot of people who believe in that stuff. Well, okay, I'm asking everybody here the question. How would you respond based on what this text says, yes? Okay? Exactly. Yeah. Okay, because what I hear from Preterists is they say, well, the end of the age is a reference to the end of the Jewish age where, you know, Israel was actually recognized as a nation for the Jews, and that came to a close in 70 AD. But it goes on to say, and the sign of your coming. Jesus Christ did not return to planet Earth in 70 AD. Now, Preterists will say, well, his spirit came back. Okay? Well, that's possible. But if you read the book of Acts, it tells us that the baptism of the Holy Spirit came upon the Jews shortly after Jesus was raised bodily from the dead, literally within days, and then later it came to the Samaritans and later it came to the Gentiles. But all that happened well before 70 AD. So the completion of the baptism of the Holy Spirit upon Jews, Samaritans and Gentiles, that was all complete, decades before 70 AD. And so that sense, how do you fit the end of the age and the second coming? Now, what this generated was a big debate. Okay, you're actually claiming then that the Olivet discourse is a prophecy that has two fulfillments, one in 70 AD and one at a later time, and they claim the Bible never engages in double prophecies. Is that really true? Does the Bible never engage in double? Can you give me an example? There's actually several in the Bible, but can you give me an example? You know, this side of the class is out having all the action. I was hoping to get something out of this side of the class. Hey, the question is this. Okay. Now, again I want to be careful here because preterism has a broad spectrum. Not all preterists are the same. So I just want to be careful, but a certain segment of them will be making the comment that there are no double prophecies in the Bible. Therefore the Olivet discourse, since a lot of these events did happen in 70 AD, that settles it, it's done, it's not going to happen again. But is it really true there are no double prophecies in the Bible? Yeah. I think there's a double prophecy manual. That's a prophecy about Christ coming, but there actually was an historical fulfillment of someone named the manual during that time if I'm not mistaken. Would that be an example of what you're talking about? Yeah, that's a good example because you have the prophecy in Isaiah that the virgin will be with child. And then it talks about how before that child knows right from wrong and can talk, the Assyrians that are threatening to wipe out the land of Judea and Jerusalem, they'll be defeated, they'll go away, and you'll survive. And that literally happened by the time Isaiah's son, Mahar Shahal Hashbaz, was about two years of age. Now notice what you see there. Yeah, yeah. Easy enough for me to say, right? That's the way I feel when Fuzz Rana talks biochemistry. Every word out of his mouth has got at least eight syllables attached to it, so. But... Thank God for closed captioning. Okay. But notice what you see in Isaiah. It says the virgin will be with child, but there's two virgins and two sons that are born of the virgin. Now you say, well, are you saying that Isaiah's wife was a virgin? If you read the text, you'll notice that it's his betrothed. He wasn't married yet to her. But basically the prophecy was saying, by the time the woman you're betrothed to, and you two are married and you have a child, and before that child knows right from wrong or can speak, there's enemy which is threatening to wipe out your nation, they'll be gone. And you can read later on the text, the miracles that happened in the Syrian army and why they retreated in the face of... Anyway, you can read the story, it's a fun story. Well, you have one prediction of a future event that's fulfilled not just once, but twice. But the clue you get in the book of Isaiah, two women, two sons. Two women living at completely different times, two sons with two different names. So that gives you a clue that it actually is a double prophecy. What is the term? The term. Oh no, the word I had was for the son. That was born from the woman he was betrothed to. Mahershahal Hashbaz. Okay, so don't worry about that. That's what they do in youth classes. They have these Bible questions where they come up with all these skeer names to see if people really read through the entire Bible. But you notice you get the same thing in Matthew 24. We get two questions that can't be at the same time. Therefore, at least some of what's being taught here in the text is being fulfilled at a different time than we see here. So, not that that's going to persuade very many preterists. And the reason why I discovered that preterism is so entrenched and many segments of Christianity is because of how they see people who take a pre-millennial perspective and end times prophecy, get into the kind of abuses we're talking about. And so it sets them to such a degree that they basically say, basically it's called throwing the baby over the bath water. Preterist was the word I was looking for. Okay, good, yeah, technical term. Okay, and again, I want to, just to word of caution, there's a whole family of preterist doctrine that's out there. And some are quite extreme and some are not that extreme at all. So, Steve. In Judaism and Christianity, Christians have a two-coming messiah. Jews have a one-coming messiah. Isaiah has a messiah who is not commonly who would want him, sometimes called Ben Joseph. But then David, who the Jews are looking for, is yet to come, the victorious messiah. Does the messianic prophecy itself in its core is often doubled? Well, that's a good point that we could use when we're talking to our preterist brethren. It's okay, if we're saying that there isn't any double fulfillment here, how is that going to help us reach Jews? Because, yeah, that's a big difference. We Christians believe that the messiah comes twice at two different times with two different fulfillments, and they believe it happens all at once. And you could argue, well, how could he come as a messenger of peace and a messenger of war at the same time? Because that's really what we see in the Old Testament prophecies. Some of the prophecies referring to the future messiah, the messiah comes as a messenger of peace. Others say he comes as a messenger of war. It's hard to reconcile those two. And so I think we need to step back and say how rational is there a claim that this happens only once? And I always think it's an enigma with Jews how they believe that Elijah comes twice, but the messiah comes only once. And they say, well, nobody can come twice, but they believe Elijah comes twice. I mean, we look at their way they celebrate Passover. They have an empty chair for Elijah because they believe he's going to come back. And actually, you see that in the New Testament. If you read on the book of Revelation, it speaks about the two witnesses that come from heaven. One representing the law or one representing the prophets. And one, most people think one is going to be Moses. The other is going to be Elijah. Why? Because those are two individuals mentioned in the Old Testament where their bodies are not found here on earth. Moses died, but it said his body could not be found. That he was taken. And likewise of what the story of Elijah was, he did not even die. He was taken up to heaven before he died. Which, incidentally, is a text that a lot of people who say from a pre-medal perspective is going to be rapture. Hey, if God raptured Elijah, why can't you rapture a bunch of other people as well? So, again, the whole point, Bible consistency. I don't want to say any more about this, but I will say something about the Preteris that actually match what I experienced with the two Jehovah's Witnesses who were at my door yesterday. Because often with the Jehovah's Witnesses, you get a guy who's older, typically an elder with somebody younger. And so that was the case. There was his elder there. He said he was 72 years of age, and I thought that was really old until I thought about my age. So, and then there was the young man. And I always want to speak to the younger one. Not the one who's already been locked in to the Jehovah's Witness doctrine for decades. But I always begin by saying, have both of you, or one of you, read through the entire Bible word to word. And they both claim that instantly, every Jehovah's Witness has come to my door has claimed that they've read the entire Bible. But as we begin to talk, it becomes quite clear. They're very familiar. They're just parts of the Bible, not the whole of the Bible. And I always like to encourage them, well, you know, maybe you want to read the Bible again. Don't try to refute the fact that they've not read the Bible. So just read it again. You read it in a short period of time. And incidentally, I would say that to Christians as well. A lot of people have a schedule where they read through the Bible in two years, or one year. It's really hard to see how everything consistently fits together if you take that much time to read through it. I like to read through it in six weeks. And you say, how can you possibly read through a book that big in six weeks? Well, I've watched my son go through, what's that set of novels that come up in that lady in Britain, Rawling? Harry Potter. I mean, each of those books, it's got more words in it than the entire Bible. And they read through it in less than a month. But here's the problem. You can't read the Bible cover to cover in six weeks and get everything that it says. Don't try to do that. Kind of pick a theme. Let's just look at what the Bible's got to say about, say, marriage and family. Or what it's got to say about end times prophecy. Or what it's got to say about creation, kind of what we're doing here in the class. Pick a theme because you're not going to just read through it once. This is the word of God. You're going to read through it many times. But if you read through it quickly enough, you'll be able to see who all the pieces fit together. After all, it's 66 books, not just one book. So that's how I began my conversation. But I said, what do you think is going to happen to true believers in Jesus Christ? And they said, well, the 144,000, you always get that out of them, they're going to be up in heaven. I said, well, what about everybody else? Oh, we're going to be here on earth. We're going to be just like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And I said, is it going to be with the same son? Yes. Are we going to have gravity? Yes. Electromagnetism? Yes. A few Jobas witnesses actually thought through whether or not it's possible to have life here on planet earth for very much longer. We're going to be here for all of eternity. Well, what about the sun getting brighter and brighter? They said, it's just going to stay the same. They said, that's not the way it's been. I said, that was their whole point. It's going to be just like us what it's been since creation. Well, I said, if that is the case, they said, well, our scientists say, and I said, who are you? And I said, well, I'm an astronomer, so I kind of got them listening. And I said, the time window for human beings, even if we got rid of all of our technology and even if we had a very low population with our billions of us, just a million of us, we're still out of here in less than 10 million years. We can't survive more than 10 million years. And I said, if you're talking, you know, a fun guy, they can probably last maybe 30 million years. Bacteria may be 40. And then the planet is sterile forever. And that got us into a really good conversation. But also another point was this. If you're seeing planet Earth as our eternal home, and again, it's not just still with witnesses of belief, it's a large segment of the body of Christ. I've been in seminary campuses, very conservative seminaries where they believe that God's simply going to restore the Earth to the condition it had during the time Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden before they sin. Oh, and it says, it's going to be global. And so, well, in that case, you're claiming that the number of people who will be redeemed by Jesus Christ will be a small number. And I said, what do you mean? And I said, well, the planet's only 8,000 miles in diameter. How many people do you think you can have living on this planet? And I said, well, there's 7.5 million of us, 7.5 billion of us right now. Do you think that's going to be the number? Is it not going to be bigger than that? I said, you know, it's simply not possible. In fact, I heard an interesting lecture last July where it said the maximum carrying capacity of our planet Earth with the level of technology and standard of living that the average person in the United States enjoys right now is 1 billion. It says we can sustain 7.5 billion because most of the world's population aren't as wealthy or technologically equipped as we Americans are. So yeah, but while they have 10 billion people on the face of the Earth and have that sustainable, it must be a much lower level of technology and a much lower standard of living. And so, the problem with a lot of these preterists and with the Jehovah's Witnesses that came to my door yesterday is you've got a small number. Now, incidentally, that fits Jehovah's Witness doctrine. They believe it will be a relatively small number. And I think that goes with the fact that when they go door to door, they mean the experience rejection. And so I think that's why they think it's going to be a really small number. But I don't think that squares with evangelical Christian doctrine. It's not going to be a small number. It won't be a majority, but it's going to be a big number. And one place you can go in Scripture for that is Zechariah 13. Zechariah 13 says, A day will come when one-third of all the Jews will recognize the one that they have pierced. A reference to the fact that a day will come when a third of the Jews living in the world will become faithful followers of Jesus Christ. Notice it's not a majority, but neither is it a small minority. We're not talking 1%. Well, I mean, look at the number of Gentiles today that are followers of Jesus Christ. It's way more than 1%. Even if you discount all the people who play to be Christians, we look at the number of people that are serious about their Christianity, regularly attending church, regularly contributing or involved and bringing other people of faith in Jesus Christ. I mean, it's at least 10% of the world's population. That's not a small number. And the Lord hasn't come back yet. The fact that he hasn't come back yet tells me he's looking for a bigger number than about 10% or 12%. I think the number he's looking for is somewhere between 25% and 40%. Now, if the number is that, the percentage is that big, our planet simply isn't big enough to house all those people, even at just one time, let alone for the rest of eternity. And what was really funny was talking to these Jehovah's Witnesses as a door and showing them a calculation and how much time must go by before the heat of the sun totally incinerates the earth and the earth is just vaporized. I said, well, when's that going to happen? I said, four billion years from now. I said, that's a lot less than eternity. I said, yeah, that's a lot less than eternity. But even before then, if you read my book, Improbable Planet, we're talking a maximum of 1,400 years before we exit our time of extreme climate stability. And we exit our time of extreme climate stability, it will no longer be possible to sustain billions of human beings on the face of the earth. We need that extreme climate stability to grow enough food to feed billions of people at one time. That's why I believe that when the Lord returns, he's going to relatively quickly take us to a new earth, not this earth. In fact, it tells us in Revelation, everything will be brand new. Everything that is old will disappear. He'll be replaced. But the problem is, I think I see my Preterist friend saying, look at all the texts that says that Jesus will restore. What he's going to restore is a spiritual state of humanity that existed before Adam and Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden. I don't think you can find biblical support for the restoration of all the physical stuff. Yes, we're going to be in a physical state in the new creation, but it's going to be with radically different laws of physics and radically different space-time dimensions. It may not even be space-time dimensions. It could be something completely different. Well, and why the universe is the way it is, I make the point that what's unique about Christianity compared to the other religions of the world, it's a two-creation model. Not a one-creation model, but a two-creation model, where God creates His universe first as a vehicle to eliminate evil and suffering permanently. And when that happens, then the universe will fulfill its purpose. God no longer is a need for it. So He replaces His universe with a brand new creation. And the new creation, you've got no gravity. You've got no thermodynamics. Read Revelation 21. It says, no de-death, no death, no decay. Nothing will decay. If you've got thermodynamics, things decay. Thermodynamics makes everything decay. If you don't believe that, look at the person sitting next to you. Everything's in a state of decay. Now, we've got some children in this class, but even the children in this class, even though they're getting healthier and stronger day by day and their brains are growing, they too are in a state of decay. You know how quickly liver spots begin to spread upon your skin? It happens when the day you're born. Now, a three-year-old is going to be really hard to find those little liver spots. They're microscopic. Someone like me, they're not microscopic anymore, they're really big. The signs of age and decay are upon us all, and the new creation, no decay. That alone tells you it's got to be a completely different realm. And then you see the description of the new earth in Revelation 21. It says that it'll be a new Jerusalem dropped to the heaven and will sit on the earth. Notice how big that thing is. It's used with stadia. Now, one stadia roughly equals one mile. But it says this building is 1,500 by 1,500 by 1,500 stadia. It's a big structure. A structure that big on the present earth would violate the law of gravity. But it also tells me this new earth is a whole lot bigger than this earth. We're only 8,000 miles in diameter. God's going to give us a new earth that is so big and so vast will all be able to live there. In fact, I remember running into R.C. Sproul, the theologian, and I said, Hugh, please tell me that I get a golf course in my mansion in the new creation. And I said, well, even if you just look at the minimum that Revelation 21 speaks about, every inhabit, even if a third of all humanity has ever lived is there, each one of us will have a private estate big enough to house two championship golf courses and whatever else you want to enjoy. I mean, I like mountaineering and I can think of, well, of all I look at is the new Jerusalem by itself with no law of gravity 1,500 miles high. How about having 750 stories where in every story you've got a 2 mile high mountain. That'd be kind of fun plus golf courses. And, you know, that is big enough that 30 billion or 40 billion or 50 billion human beings could each have a square mile estate with a mansion on it, two championship golf courses and a ski slope running down one of those mountains. So, now, I'm not saying that's the way it is, because a text says no one can think or imagine how great and wonderful it will be, but hey, it's not the Garden of Eden. It's way better than the Garden of Eden and it's a much bigger place than what this planet Earth is. Now, every time I come to class I drive here, I look out and I see the beauty of this planet. I'm amazed at how gorgeous of a planet God has made for us human beings to enjoy. When you're an astronomer that becomes very apparent because every other body we see in the universe looks really drab. This is the only place that had this incredible, unbelievable beauty. And, incidentally, as you'll see an improbable planet, God put us human beings on planet Earth at its scenically most beautiful time. There's a window about 12,000 years wide when our planet has extraordinary scenic beauty. And we humans exist in that 12,000-year window. I think God knew we needed some refreshment from the beauty of creation. Now, I've got friends over at Caltech. They get that refreshment from just looking at the equations of physics and mathematics. But most of us we need to get that just from looking at nature. In fact, I've seen it with my Caltech friends, is that they behave differently when you get them out into a splendiferous scenic location like the high sierras here in California. I would notice how differently they behave and how eager they were to enter into spiritual conversations which didn't happen in the hallways of Caltech. So, getting back to the subject of Heaven if you'll forgive me. Is it just going to be fun and games? Do you really think it's like that? Or are we going to be doing meaningful stuff too? I mean, not to say that fun and games are meaningful but you were talking about eternity here, right? Talking about eternity, I mean, I think the golf courses are going to be a whole lot better than they are here. You will have time to enjoy and play, but you're also going to be working. That's something you see in Paul's writings, especially in Corinthians and in the book of Revelation is that when we enter the new creation, we're all going to be employed and we're all going to be having very challenging occupations that will engage us for the rest of eternity. So there'll be no more evil though? There'll be no more evil. There'll be no more sin, which means we don't need gravity anymore. We don't need the laws of physics or the dimensions of this universe. We call that in place as tools to eliminate evil and suffering and there will be time for us to enjoy our lives and enjoy relationships with one another but we're also going to each get a career. And this is why Paul tells us run the race of life for all your work. As we've been studying Ecclesiastes that message comes through King Solomon's writings. Take this life very seriously because it's going to determine the career you'll have in the new creation. Now, everybody will be fulfilled because the training you get here will be commensurate with the role you'll have in the new creation. Okay, a question for all of you. We're not going to be sitting just on harps. They're sitting on clouds playing harps. That's the traditional view you see in literature of what heaven's like. Each one gets a cloud and a harp and you sing kumbaya for the rest of eternity. That would get old really fast. What kind of careers are we going to have in the new creation? What is our role? What is our job going to be? And then I've got a follow-up question of that. Why? What kind of career? Yes. One of them will be teaching the angels. Okay. Now, why are we put in a position? We covered this last week. Why is it that God takes us weak human beings who presently are way below the angels? The angels haven't sinned. We're sinners. We're trapped in these corruptible bodies and we're trapped in the physics of this universe. Why does God elevate us to a position where we're actually teaching the angels? Now, something else it says. It says we'll be judging the angels. And so we're going to be in a position of judging angels and teaching them. That doesn't seem rational that we weak human beings would be given such a high role. Why? Okay. Angels don't get to go through the course that we go through. I mean, just like the fact that I didn't get a Ph.D. in astronomy until I took a whole bunch of courses and had to go through some rigorous exams and write a thesis. The angels don't get to go through that. We do. So we're being trained. What else that we experience that angels don't experience? Paul says they watch. We do. What is it that we do and they simply watch? We covered this last week so somebody ought to remember. Yes. We experience evil. We experience evil. The angels also experience evil because there's evil angels. In fact, Revelation 12, if you continue reading Revelation 12, speaks about a war between the righteous angels and the evil angels and how the evil angels get kicked out of heaven along with Satan. But you're close. Okay. Now, a bunch of you were here last week so this should be here. That's it. You got it. We experience the grace of God. The angels watch the grace of God. In fact, Paul tells us that we're surrounded by angels that are watching us. So something to think about as you walk away from this class this afternoon is that you're being watched. Angels are watching what's happening in your life. Why are they watching us so intently? To learn about the grace of God. To them, it's a huge mystery. Now, Paul also explains it's a mystery for us as well. But we get to experience it and because we get to experience it, we're trained in a way the angels are not trained. But we're in a position because we've been the ones who have experienced God's grace and therefore developed a greater understanding of what God's grace is all about. We're in a position to teach and instruct and judge the angels because all they've been able to do. So they're going to be asking us questions. Tell us about this grace that you experienced during these 80 years you've spent on the face of the year. I watched you for 80 years and I still don't know what was going on here. What's going to happen to you when you enter the new creation? Angels are going to be chasing after you to try to figure out what is this grace that you experienced in your life when you were on the face of the earth? Tell us about it. We want to understand it. That's what's going to be happening. They don't see it now. Well, they watch it. But they don't get to experience it. So they basically have little TV sets watching us saying, you know, that was really strange. What happened there? Why God forgave that miserable human being given everything that that person did and they didn't seem to deserve it? But that's what grace is, right? Definition of grace? What's a good definition of grace? Unmerited favor. We didn't deserve it. Our behavior was despicable but God blessed us with His grace anyway. Yes. Well, it does mention guardian angels one place in the Bible. Anybody remember where that text is? Or what does it says? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, that's right. It's a warning. Be careful when you abuse these little ones because their guardian angel is watching over them, referring to little young children and how if you abuse one of them, a millstone will be hung around your neck. Not a literal millstone, but a spiritual millstone. Now, how much that extends to the population? We don't know. People have been speculating are there enough angels to go around? There might be. The minimum number of angels that we see recorded in Scripture is what number? Myriads of myriads. Because that's what Jesus said. You call upon myriads of myriads. Revelation talks about myriads of myriads. Okay, what's a myriad? Ten thousand. So myriads of myriads are big, a number. Yeah, ten to the eighths. So it's basically saying they're in the hundreds of millions. So that's a lot of angels. And that could be billions. That could be tens of billions. It could be trillions. But we're told it's in the uncountable hundreds of millions. So there may be enough angels to go around for all of us. Maybe there's enough that four or five can be attached to us. You've got to watch this guy. So there may be several angels watching you, even though they don't have enough to go around. There's twice as many good angels as bad angels. But it's interesting when I talk to people who are into satanic cults, they say, we're going to win. Because yes, God's got twice as many angels as we have, but we've got twice as many human beings. And so they actually appeal to biblical texts because humans are going to be higher above the angels. That's our target. We're going after the humans and we think we're going to win. But yeah, angels are more powerful than us. But yeah, we get to go through a program of training and schooling and trial and testing that they don't get to experience. Now, there's going to be something else we're going to be doing in the new creation. It's not just going to be instructing and judging and teaching the angels. We're going to rule and reign over what? The entirety of the new creation. No. Jesus will be the ruler in chief, but he's going to be appointing magistrates to work with him because that's something you see in the Bible is a division of labor. Notice how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit divide their labors. So it's a biblical principle, division of labor. It's something we've discovered. Your business will be more successful if you divide your labor. And so one thing I've learned as a president of reasons to believe, it's important I don't know everything that's going on. Because that way things will get slowed down. I need to delegate and divide labor. And so there will be a division of labor. And we're going to be assigned by Jesus the ultimate ruler to say you're in charge of this particular component of the new creation. You'll say, what does that involve? Well, we only know in part who knows what God's going to be creating in the new creation. People are saying, well, is my pet dog going to be there with me? I get into lots of trouble whenever I talk about this because people get so attached to their pet dogs. I remember running into this guy last week he said, you know Hugh, I know you make the point that it's only spiritual beings that are eternal and maybe God will have spiritual pets in the kingdom of heaven that could be. People have argued maybe we're the pets that God has adopted so could look at it from that perspective. But you had this interesting comment. This man said, I've had 13 dogs in my life. I really don't want all 13 of those dogs with me for the rest of eternity. People, but not all 13. So, and, you know, people ask me then, why does God allow us to bond so powerfully to these birds and mammals? Well, he bonds very powerfully to us. I notice that most of our pets don't outlive us. And so we have that sense of brokenness when our pet leaves. I mean, I grieved when one of my cats died a couple of years ago because that was a cat that was really strongly bonded to me, so strongly bonded in fact, that when I went out of town I had to talk to him on the phone to get him to calm down. He would misbehave until I called him on the phone. My wife would say, you've got to talk to your cat. But, you know, just as we feel a loss and we lose one of our pets that's bonded to us, likewise God feels a deep sense of loss when we walk away from us. And every one of us has done that once in a while. We've turned and walked away from God. I see Dave there standing at the back there and it was an exciting week what we went through. Hopefully this has been of some benefit to you because my goal is this is going to happen again, these kinds of things, these kinds of doctrinal disputes. I just want you to be ready. And particularly how to deal with some of the abuses and statistics that go on. Let me give this review of where I want to go because it's actually relevant what we taught here. There's a passage in Ecclesiastes 9 and for the benefit of the live streaming people we're doing here in paradoxes we're going through all the major creation texts in the Bible. And we've been doing this for years. We're about halfway through the Bible now and we'll continue to pick up these texts. But most of the Ecclesiastes does deal with science and creation. But there's an interesting text here that's actually relevant what we've been talking about today. King Solomon says I've seen something else under the sun. The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong nor does the food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned but time and chance happen to them all. No man knows when his hour will come and evil times fall unexpectedly upon every person. In other words what Solomon is talking about in the previous passages and chapters is there's every benefit to being wise and to be learned to be swift and strong physically to be brilliant every advantage but recognize time and chance happened to everybody. Now you think God being God why wouldn't he work it out that he would give us a motivation? To be learned these are the advantages you're going to accrue and there are advantages you will accrue they're basically saying you don't count on it because chance can happen to everybody evil times fall upon every person why does God do that? Why does God allow chance and evil to fall upon every one of us? After all these God he could intervene and save those that have been righteous towards him save those who have been diligent in learning the things of God why doesn't he step in and make sure that they benefit and prosper? Why does he let time and chance and evil happen to every human being? There is an answer and we've discussed it maybe two years ago in this class I've been with this for a couple of years you'll have the answer but as you go down further in Ecclesiastes 9 it gives you a hint the question non-christians pose all the time if there is a God why does he let bad things happen to good people? and it's basically what Solomon is saying here bad things will happen to good people it's God's intent that that would happen how do you answer this skeptic say I don't think that fits an all powerful all loving, all knowing God that's the big answer that atheists have against Christianity they say we know your God doesn't exist because if he's all powerful all loving and all knowing he would never let bad things happen to good people like God's got a reason for doing that next week, thank you, let me pray Father in Heaven I want to thank you for this time we've had I want to thank you for what a week this has been and Lord I just want to thank you that people are engaged in discussing issues of great doctrinal importance and significance and bringing people to faith in Jesus Christ Father I pray you would bless or study as we prepare for next week and Father I pray too you would give those of us who know you as Lord and Savior opportunities to communicate the love, life and truth of God in such a way that that love, life and truth would penetrate hearts and bring them to salvation help us always to be ready to give good reasons for the hope we have in Jesus Christ in Jesus name, amen