Chag sameach Sukkot and welcome to the fifth day of the Feast of Tabernacles.

If Yom haBikkurim or the Day of Firstfruits is the Festival of the Resurrection (3rd moed), then Sukkot is the Festival of the Resurrected (7th moed) - not all the resurrected (which is everyone), and not even the disobedient believers who are raised, along with the wicked and unsaved, at the second resurrection - Sukkot celebrates only one group of the Resurrected, those of the First Resurrection, the glorious purified, submitted and obedient Bride. They're the only resurrected souls who will be present at the Marriage Feast of the Lamb, even as it is written:

"'Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.' And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones). Then he said to me, 'Write: 'Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!'' And he said to me, 'These are the true sayings of Elohim (God)'" (Rev.19:7-9, NKJV).

A man does not marry a woman who is in love with two men, does he? If he does, he's a fool, because his wife is divided and has a split-allegiance, and might one day choose the other man over her husband. So it is with Yah'shua (Jesus) who does not allegorically 'marry' a Bride whose loyalty is divided between Him and the world. Should we be surprised? And yet there are believers who claim that the Bride consists of everyone who names the Name of Christ. Not remotely true.

This festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles) does not celebrate the union of the vast mass of Christians and believers generally to the Bridegroom, our Messiah, but only the true and faithful ones. That is why He says to all the rest:

"I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!" (Matt.7:23, NIV).

Those assembled at the Final Sukkot (Tabernacles) won't be thinking, or even be conscious, of 'all the rest' - those evil believers or the evil unbelievers. The latter aren't even resurrected at this time. They will be out of the picture for a full thousand years, languishing in Sheol until it is their turn, a millennium later, to face the music. But their music is not celebratory like the musical strains played at the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. The music they hear will be their lack of faith or lack of obedience.

All those present at this Feast will inhabit immortal bodies. They will be exacly like their Master, Yah'shua (Jesus). They will not only know Him as He really is, but they will also be known (1 John 3:2). Thus, in this life:

"Everyone who has this hope in Him (Yah'shua/Jesus) purifies himself, just as He is pure" (1 John 3:3, NIV).

And additionally, they will have amazing brand new physical bodies unlike those frail, mortal ones we inhabit down here today. Those in Sheol will remain as disembodied spirits - they won't be 'asleep' [1], as some Christians and Messianics believe, save in the poetic sense, but very much alive and contemplating their future.

The importance of the doctrine of the resurrection is never far away from any element of the Besorah (Gospel). How can it be? It's the central doctrine of our emunah (faith). Without the resurrection, nothing else has any meaning or point.

So today I want to ask, what is it that convinces you of the truth and reality of the resurrection? The answer will depend on who you are, how you think, what your intertests and priorities are, and what your life experience has been; but whoever you are, you will have wanted to have evidence because ours is an evidence-based emunah (faith) - it is not blind.

Martin Luther was convinced of it, in part, through nature, and wrote about his conviction with these words:

"Our Lord has written the promise of the Resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring time."

This past summer we have enjoyed a vast array of different flowers in our garden. The perennial, species at least, look dead in the winter but come the spring there is a 'resurrection' of sorts - leaves re-appear, followed by an array of glorious coloured flowers. There are hints of the resurrection all around us. Other plants - annuals and biennials - must start again from scratch each year or every two years, respectively, from the seed alone, and that may perhaps bespeak one of the other two resurrections temporally-speaking.

Most, though, are convinced of the resurrection for the reason the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner gives:

"You believe in the Resurrection, not because it is reported by the Apostles but because the Resurrected One Himself encounters you in a living way."

Such was certainly the experience of the late Russian Orthodox Metropolitan and Archbishop Anthony (Andrei) Bloom (of Sourozh, the Orthodox diocese of Great Britain and Ireland) (1914-2003) who, at a time in his life when he was an atheist teenager, encountered the Resurrected One in a living way.

This proved to be the decisive factor that led him to emunah (faith) so I would like to end my short talk today by letting Anthony Bloom tell his story in his own words:

"I began to look for a meaning in life other than what I could find through purposefulness. Studying and making oneself useful for life didn't convince me at all. All my life up to now had been concentrated on immediate goals, and suddenly these became empty. I felt something immensely dramatic inside myself, and everything around me seemed small and meaningless.

"Months passed and no meaning appeared on the horizon. One day - it was during Lent, and I was then a member of one of the Russian youth organisations in Paris - one of the leaders came up to me and said, 'We have invited a priest to talk to you, come.' I answered with violent indignation that I would not. I had no use for the Church. I did not believe in God. I did not want to waste any of my time. The leader was subtle - he explained that everyone who belonged to my group had reacted in exactly the same way, and if no one came we would all be put to shame because the priest had come and we would be disgraced if no one attended his talk. 'Don't listen,' the leader said, 'I don't care, but just sit and be a physical presence.' That much loyalty I was prepared to give to my youth organisation, so I sat through the lecture. I didn't intend to listen. But my ears pricked up. I became more and more indignant. I saw a vision of Christ and Christianity that was profoundly repulsive to me. When the lecture was over, I hurried home in order to check the truth of what he had been saying. I asked my mother whether she had a book of the Gospel, because I wanted to know whether the Gospel would support the monstrous impression I had derived from his talk. I expected nothing good from my reading, so I counted the chapters of the four Gospels to be sure I read the shortest, not to waste time unnecessarily. I started to read St.Mark's Gospel.

"While I was reading the beginning of Mark's Gospel, before I reached the third chapter, I suddenly became aware that on the other side of my desk there was a presence. And the certainty was so strong that it was Christ standing there that it has never left me. This was the real turning-point. Because Christ was alive and I had been in His presence I could say with certainty that what the Gospel said about the crucifixion of the prophet of Galilee was true, and the centurion was right when he said, 'Truly He is the Son of God'. It was in the light of the Resurrection that I could read with certainty the story of the Gospel, knowing that everything was true in it because the impossible event of the Resurrection was to me more certain than any event in history. History I had to believe, the Resurrection I knew for a fact. I did not discover, as you see, the Gospel beginning with its first message of the Annunciation, and it did not unfold for me as a story which one can believe or disbelieve. It began as an event that left all problems of disbelief behind because it was a direct and personal experience.

"...I became absolutely certain within myself that Christ is alive and that certain things existed. I didn't have all the answers, but having touched that experience, I was certain that ahead of me there were answers, visions, possibilities. This is what I mean by faith - not doubting in the sense of being in confusion and perplexity, but doubting in order to discover the reality of the life, the kind of doubt that makes you want to question and discover more, that makes you want to explore." [2]

Christianity/Messianism is definitely for Explorers! And once you have encountered the Living Messiah, you will become intrepid in your exploration. You may come to a testimony of the resurrection through a direct experience like Anthony Bloom, through journalistic investigation like Lee Strobel, through historical analysis like N.T.Wright, or any number of different ways. But as Emil Brunnber points out, a living encounter has to be part of that journey at some point or another.

Sukkot (Tabernacles) is the assembly of believers who have enountered the living Messiah, each in their own unique way, chosen to believe, chosen to obey, and chosen to overcome. Those who believe and walk in the resurrection have to be overcomers. There's nothing passive about them. These are men and women of emunah (faith) and will-power - they choose and they loyally stay the ground. They are, indeed, a special 'breed', from all walks of life, of all ages, of both genders. And they can come from any number of different directions, be it Eastern Orthodox like Bloom, Anglican like Wright, or a mix of Lutheran-Reformed like Emil Brunner. Or you could be a Messianic Evangelical like myself. The point of origin of our journey is not so important as the common destination - and that destination is the Final Sukkot.

See you tomorrow again!

Endnotes

[1] See the Soul-Sleeping website
[2] Anthony Bloom, School for Prayer (Longman & Todd, Darton, England: 1970), p.xi

Comments from Readers

[1] "Rev 20:4-6 says that the first resurrection and ruling with Christ during the Millennium is ONLY for those who die for the testimony of Christ, and those who will be found faithful (and alive) at the end of the great Tribulation at Yah'shua's second coming. These verses are meant to encourage those who will suffer the most for Christ, and will give their lives to remain faithful to Yah'shua:

Then I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of [b]their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark on their forehead and on their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. 5 The rest of the dead [both the just and unjust] did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years" (Rev 20:4-6 NASB).

"For all true believers, the hope is NOT ultimately the Millennium, but the promise of eternal life lived with Christ and Father Yahweh in the New Creation and New Jerusalem (described in Rev 21). This is what Sukkot points to - not the Millenium, but the ultimate, final enduring rest and joy the Bride will have in Christ, when all their tears will be removed and they dwell with Christ and Father Yah forever in their midst" (GM, South Africa, 28 September 2018).

Author's response: The scope you present is too narrow. Souls have been dying for the testimony of Messiah for centuries who are no less worthy of sharing the rewards of the tribulation qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones). If indeed the purpose of this revelation was to encourage the tribulation qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones), and there is no reason to doubt that is one of its purposes, then the same encouragement was made to the first centruy believers too, along with the same promise:

"If we died with him,
we will also live with him;
if we endure,
we will also reign with him.
If we disown him,
he will also disown us;
if we are faithless,
he will remain faithful,
for he cannot disown himself"
(2 Tim 2:11-13, NIV).

To declare that only the 'great ones' of the tribulation shall inherit the Millennium, being the first to be resurrected, fails to take into account, as well as degrades the 'great ones' from the pre-Messianic dispensations who were raised 2,000 years ago as the bikkurim or firstfruits of Yah'shua's (Jesus') work on the cross. And to degrade them is to degrade Yahweh. Is one group of martyrs greater than another? Is one group of believers who live and suffer for Messiah greater or lesser than another who perish with their lives? Obviously not as then those who are alive at the Second Coming, who were not martyred, would then be inferior and not worthy to inherit the Millennium along with those who laid down their lives.

Where are those early resurrected qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) from the days of Messiah and the apostles to go when Yah'shua (Jesus) returns to assume His Throne on the Millennial Earth? Remain where they are to wait yet another millennium on top of the two they have already waited as resurrected beings? Or are they to be un-resurrected? Obviously not.

This should be a clue that there is a bigger picture to be considered and that the tribulation martyrs are not the only ones to be accorded a place in the Millennium.

There is an even wider sense of judgment by Yahweh's people that must be included in the overall picture. We are given a hint of this by Paul:

"Can it really be the case that one of you dares to go to law against a neighbour, to be tried before unjust people, and not before Elohim's (God's) people? Don't you know that Elohim's (God's) people will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you really incompetent to try smaller matters? Don't you know we shall be judging the malakim (angels)?" (1 Cor.6:1-3, NRSV)

In summary of your main point, then: the word 'ONLY' does not appear in the text. This is your own interpretation. Our position is that the context is specifically those of the Tribulation period but does not exclude others from other periods of time.

There is great disagreement between divines as to which parts of Revelation apply to the Millennium and which to the Aeon after it. This is too big a subject to get into here.

Which brings me to the question of measuring time, also a subject too big to enlarge upon here but which is covered in great detail on our AEONIAN TIME website. I mention this in regard to your reference to "everlasting life" and "everlasting contempt" which are not two equivalent categories but then you already know that.