I agree about the resurrection, however, were do you get the idea that people will have a second chance to prove themselves?
How many people have lived and died over these many centuries never knowing about the true God and his rescue mission for all humanity in the sacrifice of Christ? It would not be just to judge them without giving them an opportunity to learn about Jehovah and to decide for themselves whether they will obey him or not, once they gain that knowledge. It would not be fair to judge them without giving them that opportunity.
"The wages sin pays is death" (Romans 6:23)....so all who have died have paid the highest penalty there is under God's law. Their former sins are gone. (Romans 6:7) Christ's sacrifice guarantees them a resurrection with a fresh start....a new beginning. What is the point of judging someone as unworthy of life if they have paid for their sin with their own death, only to bring them back to life to throw them into some kind of hell? God's justice could never demand such a thing. The sin we carry is not our fault, so God gives us a way to receive forgiveness, as long as we try our best to fight the sinful nature that is our inheritance. (Romans 5:12) There is no eternal punishment, except everlasting death. The "second death" is the one from which no one is resurrected.
The 144,000 is a number used to represent the saints. The one who are all saved.I do not mean to look over the other topics, but I want to focus on this for a moment. We can get to the other topics specifically next, but is Peter one of the 144,000?
The "saints" are those whom Paul describes as having "the heavenly calling" (Hebrews 3:1) They include all who are chosen to rule with Christ in his Kingdom. So all of the first Christians whom God chose were "saints". The Apostles were the very foundation of Christianity and their preaching after Christ's death carried the full weight of the holy spirit......but there was a hiatus in the choosing because of the foretold apostasy. Very few were chosen during the centuries that followed because the Roman Catholic Church became the only "Christianity" being practiced and it had left the teachings of Christ to adopt the corrupt teachings of men, just as Judaism had done before it. Only a relative "few" (just a remnant of natural Israel) left that apostate system to follow Christ.
During the time when the "weeds" of Jesus' parable overtook Christianity, only a few who dared to speak the truth were considered by God as saints....true Christian martyrs. These were routinely tortured into forced confessions and burned at the stake as heretics....something Jesus would never have sanctioned.
This is why, when Jesus comes as judge, he is able to say to those who thought that they were Christians, "I NEVER knew you. Get away from me you workers of lawlessness". (Matthew 7:31-23) When apostasy took over the church, Christ left the building.
It was Daniel who prophesied that at "the time of the end" God would "cleanse" a people...he would 'whiten and refine them'. He would provide an abundance of knowledge. (Daniel 12:4; 9-10) The prelude to this was the Reformation, which disempowered Rome and gave God's word back to the people. They had it translated into many languages and people were free to choose their own way to worship God. Rather than unifying Christianity however, it broke it up into many fragments all claiming to teach the truth. Most of these retained Catholicism's core doctrines, so they still did not teach the truth. They just eliminated the more extreme doctrines. (Idolatry, adoration of Mary, Mass, purgatory, transsubstantiation etc)
God said that the wicked would continue on it their way with no insight or understanding. So if we see the application in our time, Christendom is the weeds of Jesus' parable, and only those who accepted the cleansing, whitening and refining in this "time of the end", would be acceptable to God as his people.
Just like the first century Jews had to get out of that apostate religious system based on the traditions of men, so only those who responded to the cleansing in our day would qualify to fill the remaining places in the kingdom. We have to get out of "Babylon the great" (Revelation 18:4) because God will put it into the hearts of world rulers to destroy her in the near future.
We can already see that God is absent from the agenda of world rulers. The further they get away from God, the worse their situation becomes. As the world becomes more secular and God's laws are ignored, chaos ensues. The world has never been in such a mess....politically, socially, mentally and spiritually. No one knows what to do anymore....it was all prophesied and we can see it as plain as day. No one will believe what's coming until it is here, and according to the Bible, they can do nothing to stop it.
This is what I believe.
