CHAPTER 6

ON THE SABBATH, THE COMPLETION AND END OF TIME, ON ETERNAL PEACE AND THE GENTLE, QUIET JOY OF THE ETERNAL REIGN OF GOD

PART 1

In the previous chapter we discussed the six days of Creation, according to Sacred Scripture in Genesis 1, 2 and 3. Since in the first six days we find nothing but toil, suffering, pain, deprivation and death, we should now turn our attention to eternal rest and the calm, quiet joy of the soul in God, as the origin of our light and life. Genesis 2, verses 1 to 3 says, “Thus heaven and earth were completed with all their mighty throng. On the sixth day God completed all the work he had been doing, and on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on that day he rested from all the work he had set himself to do.” When the Lord God had completed his work with the creation of man—although man did not persist in his original perfection and therefore still on the sixth day* was banished from Eden, from the sight of God, and onto the earth that was accursed through his sinfulness—the Lord God rested on the seventh day from everything that he had made. He then decided upon and completed the great number seven, and this seventh part or day of Creation he blessed and made holy for the rest of the body and the soul, as described in Exodus 20, verse 11, so that man would refresh his body and soul after six days of work by the sweat of his brow. However, since man could not experience this seventh day of divine peace in the Garden of Eden, he would not be able to enjoy at all the unbelievable peace and divine blessing of the seventh day along with the holy spirits in the divine light. Nevertheless, the Lord God gave man a seventh day or period of time in what is commonly referred to as a week, thus instilling in man the desire to share in this peace of the Sabbath. On this seventh day of the week man should not only rest from his external exertions and work, but also refresh his spirit and soul through his reflection on divine things. In this way he could have a foretaste of the eternal peace of the Sabbath in God through Christ.

PART 2

In this period of seven days the entire course and completion of all time determined by God is perfectly prefigured. We read in Matthew 6, verse 34, “Each day has troubles enough of its own.” Just as man experiences his own particular toil and troubles each day and is freed from these each day by sleep (the prefiguring of death), so too, man will be freed by death at the end of his days from his spiritual weakness and resulting sinfulness. In death man will be refreshed, as he is in his nightly sleep, and celebrate in a joyful state the Seventh Period of Time or Sabbath with Christ his Savior, the heavenly Adam, who recovers for us everything that was lost by the first Adam.

PART 3

Just as each day has its own difficulties, so too, each day of the great Week of Creation has its own particular trials, as well as intervening periods of recovery or nights of peaceful rest. This is so, in order that nature should not succumb to the tribulations of the curse, until such time as it will find peace and joy in the period of the Sabbath, or Seventh Day (mentioned in part 2 above), under the glorious rule of Jesus Christ, and until all of nature is taken up into the new heaven and earth and achieves perfect eternal glory. After the mysteries of God are revealed in their entirety, all of the accursed creatures will join them there, whereupon everything will return to its original inheritance, i.e., to the first glory and perfection of the light, in which each creature was created. All this will be accomplished through the glorious and perfect eternal salvation of Jesus Christ. (See Isaiah 45, verses 17 and 22; the Second Letter of Peter 3, verse 13, and Revelation 21, verse 1.)

We will continue our discussion of the glorious course and fulfillment of all time by citing the Book of Revelation in later parts of this chapter, thus completing the reflections of this volume. (For more on this, see chapter 8 of the second volume on .)

PART 4

As we noted in part 3 the entire existence of this earthly world can be divided into six great days of toil and suffering caused by sin, with six great periods of refreshment and peace between them, together with a seventh period or day, called the Day of Rest or the Sabbath of the triumphal kingdom of Jesus Christ. Although our critics may want to know how long such a day and night would last or even how long the seventh day or Sabbath would be, we will not be so presumptuous as to attempt to determine God's reckoning of time in this matter. It is enough for us simply to know that the number seven here contains the fulfillment of all mysteries. The seven great spirits before the throne of God's glory (, , , , , , ; see figure 53) control the course of time within this great Week, but just how long each period is, is known only to God. So too, we cannot say in which Day or planetary hour (to use a term from astrology) we currently live, or how many Days still remain until the Sabbath. Indeed, many have attempted to determine the length of these periods of time by interpreting certain images or numbers from Sacred Scripture. Just how poorly such efforts have fared is evident in their results: they insist that each Day lasts one thousand years, and that the six days of the world's existence total only six thousand years, with the Sabbath lasting yet another one thousand years. Further, they believe that after these seven thousand years the Final Judgment will come, whereby this world will then be destroyed. If these people had considered how meaningless one thousand years are in God's eyes, they would not have brought forth such strange explanations. It would have been far better for them to say that Almighty God, for whom our years and periods of time are as nothing, would not have begun his mighty Creation, nor seen to its fulfillment within such a short period of only seven thousand years. But as much as we hold these efforts in contempt, we do not wish to repeat their errors by presuming a specific length of years for the Week of Creation, since we are certain that Almighty God has reserved such knowledge for himself. Nevertheless, we truly believe that the last World-Day can be unmistakably recognized through certain clear signs in Sacred Scripture, in Luke 21, verse 24 and in Romans 11, verse 25. These passages, and countless other references in the prophets and other books of Scripture, provide us with certain clear signs that must occur before the coming of the seventh Day or Sabbath. We do not wish to pursue this calculation here, but rather will turn our attention at this point to the seventh Day itself, the great Sabbath, the Last Judgment and fulfillment of all time.

PART 5

“In the days when the seventh angel poured out his bowl and a voice from heaven cried out…” (Revelation 16, verse 17) it came to pass that Babel and all else that stood against God and Christ fell and was destroyed, after which the glorious Day of the Lord, that is, Jesus Christ, dawned, as Revelation 20 so clearly describes, “Then I saw a powerful prince of angels come down from heaven with all his heavenly host and seize and bind Beelzebub, the serpent of old, the devil or Satan with all his legions, and cast him down into the abyss with Lucifer for a certain period of time” (which is often said to be one thousand years and which can indeed be one thousand of our solar years). “…[A]nd he sealed the abyss over him, so that he might no longer seduce the nations” (that is, those who do not know Christ). With Satan locked away “…the seats of judgment will be brought forth, and the twenty-four elders will sit upon them in judgment, and all the martyrs who were tortured and killed for God's sake, or who otherwise died in perfect harmony with God's ways, will be resurrected and celebrate with Christ, their Savior, this great Sabbath” (whose length is said to be one thousand years). The others who had died would not rise again until the completion of the Sabbath or the reign of Christ. Among these dead, however, are those who did not die in complete corruption, but who rest in a region of purification, until their time there has been fulfilled. This was described in some length in the previous chapter and need not be repeated here, except perhaps some comments on the Last Judgment.

We might ask where this reign of Christ can be found or where the great Sabbath is celebrated. We should first consider that those who are to be resurrected first actually experienced physical death and decay and then, according to Saint Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians 15, arise with a heavenly body. We can therefore conclude that they reign and live with Christ the Lord in Eden (also called Paradise). And just as Adam, before his fall, ruled the entire world and could move freely among the various circles of Creation, these heavenly bodies will be able to do the same, and visit those people on earth of one spiritual seed, in order to comfort them regarding the approaching fury of Satan and to strengthen them for when his peoples rebel against the armies of the holy ones, so that they are prepared for the Last Judgment and look forward with joy to a glorious future with Christ Jesus (see Luke 21, verse 24).

And when this Sabbath is ended and the time of the heathen has been completed, Satan will be released from his prison for a short period of time, so that he may incite and seduce the heathen (referred to as Gog and Magog in Scripture, which mean, according to the true Cabbala: the nations among all the nations; however, we do not need to elaborate on this just now) against the armies of the holy ones and against the holy city. Then, a great battle will occur among the peoples of the earth (see Ezekiel 38) and the fire of God will rain down out of the heavens and completely consume the survivors of this battle. And when this has been carried out and fulfilled, the devil, who seduced them, will be cast down into the pit that burns with fire and sulfur, and on the sixth day of the Great Week, immediately before the Sabbath, the beast and the false prophet will be cast down into the pit and banned, to be tortured day and night for all eternity. We could say much about this beast and false prophet, who they are, and why they were cast into the fiery pit before the others. But we have a particular reservation about this topic that prevents us from addressing this further. And so we must move on. This point will be touched upon, however, at some later point.

PART 6

After this is completed, judgment will be passed on the damned and all their works, and Christ, the conquering prince, will appear in all his glory as the judge of all, and with him will appear all those who have reigned with him during the preceding period and celebrated the Sabbath of Peace with him. They had shared in the first resurrection and can thus no longer die or taste death. The heavens and the earth will bow before the countenance of the powerful judge and be transformed from their current state. (This is further explained in chapter 6 of the second volume on .) At that time, all the dead will be awakened and come forth, for the conscience of each man will be his own accuser and judge. And his works will follow him and testify as witnesses to his life. All those who repented of their sins through their faith in Christ Jesus (which we discussed in detail in the previous chapter) will move out of the crowd and toward their Lord and Savior. And during this great judgment the sea, death and the grave shall all surrender their dead, so that each person can be judged according to his works. After this, death and the grave—the two terrible princes of darkness—shall be cast into the fiery pit with all the damned, where they shall suffer with the devil and his armies and allies, with the Beast and the False Prophet the new death of separation from the light and from God's countenance, until their time of suffering is fulfilled. (For more on this, see chapter 2, part 6 and chapter 3, part 9.) After all the damned have been cast down to the devil in the fiery pit, Almighty God will surround and seal off this pit (hell and damnation) with a thick, dark, filthy slag, so that no one will be able to escape this prison before the appointed time. The chosen, on the other hand, will be transfigured in glory—the one more magnificent than the other—according to their works; but all will be content. The damned will have to endure torture and suffering commensurate with the quantity of their evil deeds and be assigned a particular circle where they will remain. That is, those in the circles closest to the center (Lucifer's seat of power, the focal point of all suffering and damnation) will suffer the greatest. Those in the circle that surrounds the maelstrom of fire will suffer somewhat less, according to their distance from the center point, and so on through the outer circles all the way to the ironlike slag that covers this place and imprisons all the devils and the damned. The reader must take note of what we have said here and in chapter 5, part 12, in order to understand what will follow.

When this process is completed, the things that Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 will come to pass, namely that each person in his time will be given eternal life. The first was Christ, our leader, and after him all those who belong to him upon his return, that is, those who will reign with him in heaven and enjoy the great Sabbath of Peace. After them come those who are absolved of guilt at the Last Judgment. Christ will then reign with his chosen ones and crush all his enemies beneath his feet, destroying the authority and power of the reign of hell, where the last enemy of all, death—who is Lucifer, the highest prince of devils—shall also be vanquished. When the time of purification is complete, the fire of retribution of the living God, as well as all darkness and the elemental material that arose from it, and the image of the devil shall be entirely destroyed, whereupon everything shall be returned to its original state at Creation, its true inheritance, by Christ Jesus. This will mark the end of all time and the beginning of the eternal reign of glory that he will give over to, and himself be subject to the Father, so that everything will be united in God and the words of Zachariah 14, verse 9 will be fulfilled, “On that day the Lord shall be one Lord and his name the one name.” Then, the new heaven and the new earth shall come forth (see Revelation 21, verse 1 and following) and the old earth and its seas shall pass away in accordance with the completion of the judgment. And the perfect shelter of God shall be with all men, and death (the last remnant of damnation) shall no longer be. Neither shall there be suffering, nor cries of pain, nor pain itself, for these things will have passed away and the majestic City of God, the New Jerusalem (described in the preceding chapter) will be revealed to all of Creation. The gates of the new city will never be closed and in this glorious city the throne of God and of the Lamb will be found. From this throne issues forth the river of living water, whose waters are clear as. crystal. Within this city and on both sides of the river are the Trees of Life that bring forth twelve types of fruit, so that the blessed would eternally have enough to eat and drink. And nothing more will be forbidden, that is, there will be no more hell or death or damnation, and everything will once again exist in divine light, peace and holiness. As long as there are forbidden things, there must be a hell and damnation, but when these are no more, there will no longer be anything that is forbidden, according to the word of Scripture. Instead, all creatures will see the countenance of God and his name will be imprinted on their foreheads. There will be no more night and men will no longer need a candle or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will illuminate them and they will reign for all eternity. He who would help us and all men who place their faith and hope in him, is the beginning and the end of all things, the true witness, the firstborn of the dead and the king of all kings on earth. It is he who loves us and who washed us clean of sin with his blood and made us kings and priests of his Father. To him be all honor and power for all eternity. Amen.

* Let us consider how the Lord God first created all the animals and beasts of the earth on the sixth day of Creation and thereupon (presumably) toward evening created man. And let us also consider how God, according to the witness of Moses, first planted the Garden of Eden and then placed man within it, in order that he tend it and care for it, and how God then brought all the animals and birds of the air to man, so that he could name them—which he then did—after which he fell into a deep sleep. During this sleep God created woman out of his flesh and bone and presented her to the man, who had awakened from his sleep. We should then consider how the woman entered into conversation with the serpent and how it seduced her into eating of the forbidden fruit, and after she had eaten of it, how she seduced Adam to also eat of it. They then became aware of their nakedness and made loincloths out of fig leaves, in order to cover their shame. They then fled before the voice of God, who nevertheless called them to him and judged them. Finally clothed with animal skins, they were expelled from Paradise, etc. It is difficult to believe that this all occurred on the sixth day of Creation, unless one would also believe that a day of Creation was not the same as the twenty-four-hour day with which we are familiar, but rather much longer in duration. All things that occur in a natural manner take place in a natural duration of time. Thus, these things that Moses reports—from the creation of man up to his banishment from Paradise into the accursed earth—cannot possibly have occurred in the course of so few hours. But each person can believe what he wants in this regard, as long as he endeavors to be renewed in the image of him who created us, and to be made upright again from the Fall of Man through Christ. We admonish the inclined reader with heartfelt affection to do precisely this, and to reflect on these things which we have outlined here.