Zechariah chapter 14 The subtitle says, the Lord comes and reigns. You could almost take the first few words, a day of the Lord is coming. This chapter is all about a day which I think is still in the future when God's going to return. A day of the Lord is coming when your plunder will be divided among you. I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it. The city will be captured, the houses ransacked and the women raped. Half of the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as he fights in the day of battle. On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem. And the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, forming a great valley, with half of the mountain moving north and half moving south. You will flee by my mountain valley, for it will extend to Asel. You will flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come, and the holy ones with him. On that day there will be no light, no cold or frost. It will be a unique day, without daytime or nighttime, the day known to the Lord. When evening comes there will be light. On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half to the eastern sea and half to the western sea, in summer and in winter. The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and His name the only name. The whole land, from Giba to Rimon, south of Jerusalem, will become like the Araba. But Jerusalem will be raised up and remain in its place, from the Benjamin Gate to the site of the First Gate, to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the Royal Winepresses. It will be inhabited, Never again will it be destroyed. Jerusalem will be secure. This is the plague with which the Lord will strike all the nations that fought against Jerusalem. Their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet. Their eyes will rot in their sockets and their tongues will rot in their mouths. On that day men will be stricken by the Lord with great panic. Each man will seize the hand of another and they will attack each other. Judah too will fight at Jerusalem. The wealth of all the surrounding nations will be collected, great quantities of gold and silver and clothing. A similar plague will strike the horses and mules, the camels and donkeys, and all the animals in those camps. Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. If any of the peoples of earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord Almighty. They will have no reign. If the Egyptian people do not go up and take part, they will have no reign. The Lord will bring on them the plague He inflicts on the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. This will be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. On that day, holy to the Lord will be inscribed on the bells of the horses And the cooking pots in the Lord's house will be like the sacred bowls in front of the altar. Every pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to the Lord Almighty. And all who come to sacrifice will take some of the pots and cook in them. And on that day, there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord Almighty." Let's pray. Father God, please open your words Help us to understand the words. Help us to know what's being said here. I pray that you would make it clear what was meant when Zechariah said these words all those years ago. Please help us to understand it in our minds. But then, Lord, speak to our hearts and our souls. Please, may we have our eyes open to what you're doing in the world. Please help us to be gripped by the message it contains and to transform our lives as we learn to serve you. In Jesus' name. Amen. This is a puzzling bit of the Bible, I think, in many ways. There's lots here that's not... some of it makes us feel uncomfortable, some of us just makes us plain confused. I bet you weren't expecting the whole book to end up talking about cooking pots. with Holy to the Lord written on them. It's difficult for us to understand and we need to work to know what Zechariah is talking about here. We're going to try to work through the passage twice. There's two themes that I want us to pick out as we work our way through this chapter. The first is war and the second is worship. And actually there's a movement in the chapter. from war to worship. It starts off with lots of description of war and fighting and judgement and punishment. and then it moves on to talking about worship and God being enthroned, people worshipping him. And so that's what we're going to kind of try to follow as we work through this passage. First of all, we need to know what it's talking about. And as I said, it begins with these words, a day of the Lord is coming. This, in a sense, wraps up the whole book. We've just had a brief whiz through the book and see how it all works. Do you remember how it begins in the third verse? of the first chapter, it says, therefore tell the people, this is what the Lord Almighty says, return to me declares the Lord Almighty and I will return to you. And then we've had 13 chapters describing different things, different aspects of what it is to turn to God, different aspects of what it is for God to return to you. And then we arrive here, a day of the Lord is coming and we're told very clearly I will step in, the Lord will go out and fight against those nations. Verses 3 and 4, his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives. So this is God returning. This is what Zechariah promised in the first chapter. If you return to me, he said to the people, if you repent and return to me, I will return to you. And here we are, right at the end of the book, God returning. So it's the day of the Lord, when God's going to return. I think it's quite clear from reading this chapter that this is talking about the end of the universe as we know it. I think this is talking about what we might describe as the Day of Judgement, the second coming of Christ. I think that's clear. It looks to me like this is a special day. If you look at verses 6 and 7, on that day there will be no light or cold or frost, it will be a unique day without daytime or nighttime, a day known to the Lord. When evening comes, there will be light." I think this is something out of the ordinary. I don't think this is an example of God working in history. We know that God has worked in history, don't we? Down the centuries, God's been at work through different things, raising up groups of people, working through his prophets, working through Jesus, all of it in history. This seems to be at the end of history, when God's going to return and we've got a unique day, a day of the Lord. And interestingly here, we don't know, there's not much said about, nothing said in this chapter about the Messiah. The previous five chapters have all been about the Messiah, the Messiah coming, riding the donkey, being struck down, providing his life for the sheep, the reign of the Messiah, all of that's been in the previous few chapters. Here we're talking about God himself returning. The word there that's used, if you see, the Day of the Lord, where it says L-O-R-D in capital letters, the people who translated the Bible have substituted that for the personal name of God in the Old Testament, which sometimes has been called Jehovah or Yahweh, it's a Hebrew word, which was the personal name of God. And for a variety of historical reasons, the people who translated this Bible chose to write L-O-R-D in those letters. They haven't written the actual name. But the name there is Jehovah, or Yahweh. And it's saying, it's the personal name of God. This is God's day, when God himself comes and returns to the earth. There's been an awful lot of debate historically about how to interpret this chapter, as there is for much of this book and actually for much of the Bible, particularly bits of the Bible that talk about the future. And you probably know there's lots of some quite sane, some much less sane people trying to interpret the Bible and suggesting what these verses might mean. Some say this chapter has all been fulfilled, that this was describing God's judgment on Jerusalem in A.D. 70. when the Roman army came and destroyed Jerusalem, and they would suggest that that's fulfilled now, that's the end, it's all happened. This idea of a battle, the nations coming and destroying Jerusalem, and they would say that's all happened now, it's all taken place. Maybe there's echoes of that in what happened to Jerusalem, but I don't think there's any way that this can be describing just the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Because, as we've said, it's a day like no other, without daytime or nighttime. This seems to be something huge and unique happening. And obviously, the universe has continued since that time. There have been various different people at different points have said this applies to different aspects. Some people have said this is about the Roman Catholic Church, or about Hitler and the Second World War, and all these interpretations really have fallen away. There's a very big group of people who are known as dispensationalists, who would say this is about something that's going to happen in the future. They say Jesus will come down, he will reign with the Jews in Jerusalem. So this is before the end of the world. Jesus will come down, will reign with the Jews and with Christians and they'll set up a physical kingdom centred on Jerusalem and in Judah. and all the world will come against with tanks and missiles and guns and there'll be a great big battle and they see this as fulfilling that and then Jesus will reign for a thousand years in Jerusalem before the end of the world with Christians living and dying and non-Christians there as well outside the gates. That's one interpretation. I think that's not the right interpretation here but just so you know that that's one way to interpret it. I think, from reading this, this is quite clear, I think this is talking about the end of the world. I don't think Jesus is going to come twice, once to reign for a thousand years and then a second time to end the world. I think it's clear looking at the whole Bible together that Jesus is going to come back another time once and on that final day the whole universe as we know it will cease to exist or will be changed or will be transformed forever. I don't think Jesus is going to come and reign for a period of time. I think he's going to come and there'll be the day of judgement and things will be separated out and there'll be judgement and there'll be peace for believers and then the new heavens and the new earth with Christ reigning. And so with that in mind, that's how I'm going to try to explain what I think the passage says with that in mind. So, as I said, there are these two themes that weave themselves through this passage. One is of war, and the other is of worship. And there's a movement from war to worship. Verse 2, I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it. The city will be captured, the houses ransacked, and the women raped. Half the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city. The Bible does seem to say that as the world progresses, wickedness will get greater and the opposition to God's people will grow. God always promises to protect his people, to look after them. There's no way that God's plans can ever be thwarted, but it's clear from the Bible that there is a great spiritual battle going on and that the Bible describes the devil in different places as the ruler of the kingdom of this earth, that he is in some way in charge of unbelievers. and using them to his purposes, both destroying their own lives and trying to destroy God's work in the church. And the Bible says very clearly from here, from Jesus' teachings, from Paul and from Peter and Revelation and other places in the Old Testament, that there is going to be some kind of climax when the world will unite against Jesus and against his church. And it's pictured here as a great battle where God brings all the nations of the earth together against his people, his Jerusalem, his city. So we shouldn't be surprised if we meet opposition as Christians. We're not part of this world. We are and we're not. We're part of this world. We're citizens of two kingdoms. We belong to Great Britain or whichever country you're from, but also we belong to God's kingdom. And our ultimate allegiance is to God. We're Christians first and foremost, we're servants of Christ and that means that the world will hate us. It means that the people we work with, the people we live with, the people we know, ultimately are fighting on a different side. We shouldn't be surprised when we face opposition. It will get bigger and these awful scenes of war is how God describes this clash between his people and the world. But we're reassured, verses 3 to 6, that God is on our side. He's a God who defends and delivers. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations as he fights in the day of battle. The Bible describes God as a great warrior. He won't leave his people to be destroyed. God will step in and will defend. And on this final day, when Jesus returns, There will be no battle to fight. God will utterly destroy people who fight against him and against his church. For the moment, God's withholding his judgement. For the moment, God's waiting. He's not treating non-Christians how they deserve. He hasn't treated us how we deserve. He's waited out of mercy. He's waited and waited and waited. But one day, He's going to return and there will be judgment, the Bible says. And He will judge, He will defend His people, and He will fight against those who oppose them. Then we're given a description. It says, He'll stand on the Mount of Olives. This is a mountain just east of Jerusalem, I think. Does it say that? East of Jerusalem, yeah, he will stand there and he'll actually divide the mountain, this is the picture, to create a valley in the middle so that his people can escape through the valley and God will step in, he'll deliver his people, they'll be safe and the people who fight against God will be destroyed. We get a similar idea of judgment as we move later in the chapter, verses 12 to 15. This is the plague with which the Lord will strike all the nations that fought against Jerusalem. Their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets and their tongues will rot in their mouths. On that day men will be stricken by the Lord with great panic, Each man will seize the hand of another and they will attack each other. Judah too will fight at Jerusalem. The wealth of all the surrounding nations will be collected, great quantities of gold and silver and clothing. A similar plague will strike the horses and mules, camels and donkeys and all the animals in those camps." So God's destruction of these people who oppose him is going to be absolute. And there's no way of getting around this if you're serious about reading the Bible. There's no way of escaping the fact that God promises to judge his enemies. I think there's part of us that would wish it wasn't true. because we'll know people, we do know people, we know huge numbers of people who are going to face God's judgement. And we would love it in a sense if it wasn't true, we would love it if it wasn't the case that these people are going to be destroyed. But God is both a God of love but also a God of justice. And people who oppose him and live all of their lives ignoring him and fighting against him one day will be destroyed. And the language the Bible uses to describe that is horrific. The idea of these rotten eyes and rotten mouths and so on. It's deliberately horrific. It's not something we should read and just think, oh, that's nice. This is something we should read and think, oh my goodness, that's awful. It's designed to shake us up, to worry us. When God comes, it's terrible. plagued, panicked, plundered. And then the final passage speaking about the war, about the battle, about the judgement, is from verse 17. If any of the peoples of earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, they will have no reign. If the Egyptian people do not go up and take part, they will have no reign. The Lord will bring on them the plague He inflicts on the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of the Tabernacles. This will be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of the Tabernacles. We had a discussion among the young people last week in the meeting at our house. What's the worst sin? What's the worst sin someone can commit? And someone said, homosexuality. We said, no, no. There will be homosexuals in heaven. The worst sin you can commit is to reject God, to refuse to go up to worship the king in Jerusalem. And isn't that amazing? Because that's a sin that nice people commit. That's a sin that nice, ordinary, run-of-the-mill people commit every day of their lives. The worst sin that you can imagine is what people commit every day. Ignoring God, refusing to worship Him, refusing to worship His Son. And that is the worst sin. That's the sin that brings the worst punishment. Now let me just stop there and say, are you someone who's worshipping the King? Are you someone who's living their lives, serving Jesus, bringing him your offerings, worshipping him? Are you on God's side or are you on the devil's side? Because there will come this day when Jesus returns and suddenly there'll be no more chance to choose. The moment you've got the chance to choose, are you going to serve God or are you going to oppose him? Choose now to serve God. So that's one side, there's this war, very clearly when Jesus returns there's going to be a huge war, there's going to be a huge judgement and for one group of people there's going to be a terrible judgement, a terrible plague, a terrible defeat to face. But ultimately, the ultimate story on that day is not one of war, it doesn't finish there, it doesn't say there's going to be a huge battle and that's the end of it. There's actually a movement through the passage from war to worship. And we've seen already how God steps in to deliver his people. There's a group of people who aren't going to be destroyed. The plague is not for the whole of the world. God steps in to deliver his people. He delivers them out of Jerusalem. We saw that. He made this valley and they escaped. He steps in to defend them. And there's some amazing promises here of what's going to happen when God returns. Verse 8. On that day, living water will flow out of Jerusalem half to the Eastern Sea and half to the Western Sea in summer and in winter. In other words, all the time, perennially, whole year round, there's going to be living water. And this isn't described here, it's described elsewhere in the scripture that the nations will come to this water and will drink and will live forever. Isn't that good? If you're in God's people on that day, there'll be this river and you drink it and you live forever. Hallelujah. Praise God. Isn't that good? And things will be renewed. There's pictures of wonderful trees springing up, fed by this living water that grow and give fruit and give plenty and abundance. This is what's going to happen on that day. Living water. We can drink and live forever. Oh God. Verse 9. The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord and His name, the only name, You might think that this sounds very difficult, very exclusive. Aren't we better with lots of gods? Aren't we better with each person doing their own thing? The Bible says no. The Bible says the false gods bring terrible problems. False gods lead to false religion, lead to false practices, lead people astray, lead to people's lives being destroyed and messed up. When we serve God, that's where true peace is, true happiness, true contentment. And on that day, all the false religions will be stripped away. There'll be no more confusion. There'll be no more people being misled and distracted and pulled away into sin and into destruction. On that day, there'll only be one God. There'll only be one King. And He's the good God. Everything good comes from God. So when He's King over the whole earth, He won't tolerate any suffering. He won't tolerate any sin. He won't tolerate any cancer or any depression or any car crashes or anything like this. When God's the King over the whole world, the whole world will be perfect. will be perfect, because he won't tolerate in us the bitterness and the greed and the nastiness, he won't tolerate the sadness, the regrets, the guilt, all of that stuff will be gone. I mean, God's King of the whole earth, the whole earth is perfect and wonderful and brilliant. That's what we have to look forward to. Now, we have some interesting sort of geographical things going on in verse 10 and 11. The whole land from Geba to Rimon, south of Jerusalem, will become like the Arabah, but Jerusalem will be raised up and remain in its place, from the Benjamin Gate to the site of the First Gate, to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the Royal Winepresses. It will be inhabited. Never again will it be destroyed. Jerusalem will be secure. What this means, for those of you who don't have an intimate knowledge of the geography of that part of the world, is the whole of the rest of the nation of Judah is going to be squashed down. It's going to become like the Arabah, which was a desert. It's going to be flat. And Jerusalem, the whole of Jerusalem, that's all these different gates and towers and wine places, the whole of Jerusalem is going to be lifted up. And that crops up in Isaiah as well, that idea, that God's going to lift up his city and the rest of the world's going to be squashed. And Jesus is going to be king in Jerusalem. And it's secure, it's established, it's there for the whole of the rest of the world to come to. And there's going to be no more of this, you know, people attacking Jerusalem, Jerusalem being insecure, needing walls, needing defences. God's going to be there. He's going to protect his people. He's going to protect his king. His people are going to live there with him. There's going to be no more doubt about who's in charge. God's going to be very clearly and very visibly enthroned over the whole earth. Verse 16. This is amazing in the Old Testament. Look. Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. These are pagan nations. the very nations that were smashing themselves up against Jerusalem, that were bringing, you know, siege engines and firing rocks and all this, building ramps up against Jerusalem, these very nations who once hated God's people and were trying to destroy God's people, actually from them there's going to be survivors who've learned to serve God and will be there with God's people. will be there with the Jews, with God's special people, part of his people who are going to rule over earth and they're going to go up year after year taking sacrifices and good things and worshipping God. Now isn't that amazing? Some people say very lazily that the Old Testament is a God of violence, he hates other people who aren't Jews, he's a local nationalistic God. Quite the opposite. Right here in the heart of the Old Testament, the plan is that all nations on earth are going to be blessed through God and through His Messiah. And there's this promise that people from every nation on earth will go up and worship God. Right at the end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, John sees the same thing. He says there's people in heaven speaking every language. There's people in heaven with every colour of skin. people in heaven with every different culture on earth. People wearing European clothes, people wearing Chinese clothes, people wearing clothes from the jungle, and clothes from the Arctic, and clothes from the outback, and all these different people are going to be there in heaven. People from all over the earth are going to be there in heaven and we're all going to be one people joining together to worship God. These people are going to be going up year after year to praise God. And it particularly picks out this thing, the Feast of Tabernacles. In ancient Israelite religion, there were three big festivals each year. There was the Passover, there was the Day of Atonement, and there was the Feast of the Tabernacles. And of those three, the most joyful occasion was the Feast of the Tabernacles. It was a time when people remembered, when they came into the land and they remembered how God had looked after them. And it was also a kind of harvest celebration. They'd gather in all their good things, all their, you know, all the produce of the land, they'd gather it all together and they'd worship and praise God for what he'd done. And they would actually live for a period of time in tents, remembering how bad things used to be when they were in the desert. That's what tabernacles means. They used to live in tents for a week to remind them, oh, how awful it is away from God. And then, now we've got given our land. God's provided for us. He's made us secure. And that's what it's going to be like on that final day. All of the world is going to be gathered in, a bit like the harvest. People from every nation are going to be gathered in together to worship God and to stand there and say, look at what God's done for us. He's given us this secure place, this wonderful Jerusalem raised up. He's made us secure. He's made us his people. And then we get on to the sort of slightly puzzling bit, the last few verses from verse 20. On that day, holy to the Lord will be inscribed on the bells of the horses, and the cooking pots in the Lord's house will be like the sacred bowls in front of the altar. Every pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to the Lord Almighty. And all who come to sacrifice will take some of the pots and cook in them. And on that day, there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord Almighty." It seems a funny way to conclude the book, doesn't it? Talking about bells on horses and cooking pots. I think what it's trying to say is, on that day, the whole of Jerusalem will be perfect and pure. Even the bells on the horses will say, Holy to the Lord, on them. That phrase, if we go back, you don't have to turn, but if you go back to Exodus, chapter 19, verse 6. We'll read from Exodus 19, verse 3. This is God and Moses speaking in the desert. Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel. You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations you will be my treasure and possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." These are the words he were to speak to the Israelites. So the Israelites were supposed to be a holy nation and they should set apart from all the other peoples on earth, they were God's special people and they were supposed to be holy. God gave them the law and said, this is how you're to live, and they were supposed to obey the law and be a people to honour God. And how they failed. The whole of the Old Testament is about how they failed. Immediately afterwards, they're grumbling, they make a golden calf, they fail, they sin, they cheat, they lie, they steal. They get everything wrong. They weren't a holy people. But the promise here, Zechariah, at the very end of the Old Testament, where we've just seen for centuries how God's people have got it wrong, the promise here is that one day they'll be made perfect. They'll be that holy people they were supposed to be. All of them. Even down to the bells on the horses and the cooking pots. Everything in that new Jerusalem is going to be perfect. And it says, the cooking pots in your houses are going to be the same as the special pots in the temple. In the temple there were special dishes and pots and so on to offer sacrifices to God. It says even your little frying pan at home, your cooking pot, is the same. Because there's no bad and good, there's no unholy and holy and perfect. The whole of the place is holy and perfect. Even when you're at home cooking, it's the same as if you're worshipping God in the temple. The whole of the land on that day is going to be perfect. All of it's dedicated to God. All of it's worship. They're going to be made perfect in every single way. It says, there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord Almighty. That might be meaning Canaanites as an example of idolatry, a false religion. All of that will be gone. It says there, you've got the alternative translation in the footnotes. It might be merchants. The idea that all of the corrupt financial system, all of that's going to be gone. There'll be no more merchants in the house of God. All of that's going to be stripped away. And actually the whole place is going to be pure, and holy. And if you're a Christian, that's your destination. You're going to be there. You're going to be made perfect. The sin's going to be taken away. All your deep motivations and desires are going to be transformed. You're going to have holy on the Lord stamped on front of you, if you like. There's that promise back in chapter 3 when God gave Joshua, the high priest, his new clothes. and they put a stamp on him saying, holy to the Lord, that phrase comes up there again. They're not just the priests now, the whole nation is going to be holy and pure before God. And we might be a little bit afraid of holiness. Sometimes we get so twisted in our thinking and we equate sin with having fun, and we equate holiness with having a hard time, working hard, struggling, trying our best. Quite the opposite. Where there's holiness, there's happiness, there's contentment, there's fulfilment, there's joy, there's peace. That's what it's going to be like when God returns. purged of all sin. All the sin, the distress, the misery of the world is going to be gone. We're going to be perfect. Every single part of the new world is going to be perfect. We're going to live in it for Christians. We're going to enjoy God. We're going to enjoy each other for the whole of time. God's kingdom is coming. See, Jesus said when he was preaching, the kingdom of God's here, and it started. And maybe you get a taste of this when you come to church. You get a taste of what it's going to be like. On that day, the kingdom will fully come, and all of the bad stuff's going to disappear. The kingdom of this world, we read at the beginning, is becoming the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. He will reign forever and ever. A whole pendulum of time is moving. Jesus will return, God will reign and the whole earth will be his kingdom. How wonderful is that? We've already drawn the application that if you don't know you're in that kingdom, sort it out tonight. Come to know Jesus as your king tonight. Don't face the terrible judgement for those who aren't part of that. But if you do, remember that on that day, holiness is the big thing. If we're going to worship God, we've got to be holy. Let's start work on that now. Start making yourself ready for the day when Jesus returns. Jesus says, I'll come like a thief in the night. Be awake. Be alert. Be ready. Prepare yourself to meet Jesus. He's returning. If you're one of his friends, you'll be safe, you'll be there. But make sure you're living a life that you can stand before Jesus and say, this is how I'm living, this is how I'm serving you. Live your life in the light of what's to come. We're citizens of two kingdoms, we belong to the UK, we belong to Britain, but we belong to God. and we need to live as citizens of his kingdom. I once worked for a consultant. He was a consultant neurologist who was quite old and quite senior and he was quite wise as well. And we'd just had a patient, I can't remember what they had, but it was a bit depressing. It was a kind of condition that's going to get worse slowly over time, not going to get better. And I said something to him afterwards. I said, oh, that's a bit sad, isn't it? I said something like, isn't it a bit depressing to have to give that kind of news? He said, no. He said, what you must do as a doctor is give a diagnosis. That's what patients want. It doesn't matter if it's bad news. They want to be told what's wrong with them. That's the first thing. Then he said, you need to give them a prognosis. You need to tell them what's going to happen next. He said, if you can cure them, fine. But what they want to know is the truth. And we've seen that today. We've seen the diagnosis that the kingdom is coming. God's kingdom is coming. We've been told the prognosis that if you're not part of that kingdom, you're going to be destroyed. If you are part of that kingdom, you're going to be with God forever. That's what the outcome is. And amazingly, there's actually the chance of cure as well. And there's the chance to come to Jesus, to be forgiven today, and to be part of his kingdom. Praise God. We're going to finish with a song that is about that day, number 281. There is a day that all creation's waiting for, a day of freedom and liberation for the earth. On that day the Lord will come to meet His bride and when we see Him in an instant we'll be changed. We're going to become those holy people in the New Jerusalem.