Question #1 is a question that came from the EBF website: What happens to the unsaved after October 21, 2011?
Chris: This is a good question. May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day. This begins the process of five months. Even though God calls it “the day of judgment,” this extends for five months. God is privileged to do this if He wants to and He does do this in other places. He speaks of Israel’s time in the wilderness, even though it was forty years, as a much shorter period of time.
We read in Hebrews 3:8-9:
Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.
Here it was called “the day of temptation,” and yet it was a forty-year period.
So it is God’s good pleasure if He wants to refer to this as “the day of judgment” and then cause it to last five months. He has set precedent in the Bible showing us that He does this.
The end of the five months will be October 21, 2011. God tells us that this is the day that He will destroy the earth, as we read in 2 Peter 3:10:
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
What are these “works” that God is talking about? Is He talking about the skyscrapers or the works of art? Is He talking about all of these things that man has been building in this world? Of course, these are going to be burned up, but He has something else in mind when He says:
…the works that are therein shall be burned up.
If we go to 1 Corinthians 3, it says in 1 Corinthians 3:10-13:
According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.
The works here are not referring to material things; it is referring to people. The “gold, silver, precious stones” are the elect. The “wood, hay, stubble” are the unsaved who have heard the Gospel. Maybe they were professed Christians, but they never truly became saved. “The day [of]…fire” will “try every man’s work” to see what sort it was. If you turn out to be “wood, hay, stubble,” this means that you will be left behind and that you will be burned up.
So when 2 Peter 3:10 tells us that these works shall burn, one thing that God has in view are those who were called. They heard the Gospel, but they never became born again.
In 1 Corinthians 9:1, it says:
Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord?
Paul was speaking to the Corinthians, “Are you not my work since I shared the Gospel with you?” Either they were built upon that foundation, if they were truly saved, or they turned out to be “wood, hay, stubble.”
So this is one thing that God has in view here in 2 Peter 3:10:
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
Look also at Isaiah 51:6:
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner…
So when God destroys the earth and the universe and burns and melts it, it says:
…they that dwell therein shall die in like manner…
When the universe is destroyed, it is gone forever. That will be it. There will be nothing else. So, too, with all of the unsaved who will be left behind. They are the works that God is referring to. They will be burned up and they will cease to exist forevermore.
This is what we have learned. Annihilation is the judgment of God for mankind. The Bible tells us, “For the wages of sin is death.” When a man died, all throughout history, on the day of his death, his soul died. His body died and he ceased to be. He ceased to exist. The only thing left of him was the physical body that was put into the ground, or however it was disposed of.
This is the body that God will raise, but not back to a conscious existence. The unsaved dead will not be raised back to life, because they are dead. He will just raise up the dead body to expose it. “The earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain” is language that God uses of this coming day to demonstrate the great shame that sin brings upon a person who was made in the image of God but who dies like a beast.
So on October 21, 2011, this is what is going to happen. The unsaved will be completely destroyed. Some people are fine with this, so they say. They are fine with this. They are okay with this. Since there is not a threat of eternal damnation over their heads, what is it to be eternally destroyed and to experience God’s wrath for just a few days?
This is what people say. From the perspective of not actually being there, from being on this side of Judgment Day when this has not yet occurred, people can bravely use this kind of language. They can say, “So? What do I care?”
But when they will be there, when this day will have come and God will have taken His people out of this world and they are someone who heard these things repeatedly, again and again and again and again, they are not going to be so fine with this. If they are left behind, they will know what is going on because everything else happened on May 21st exactly as God said that it would. There was an earthquake. There was the rapture. They witnessed the day of the resurrection. They will then know that they only have five months left, if they can make it. Then on that last day, that will be it. But this will be a miserable, miserable time of great sorrow, tremendous sorrow.
Have you ever thought that you should have done something that you did not do? This upsets you to the point where you could just kick yourself. You ask yourself, “Why did I miss this opportunity?” Well, you will be able to think of this times a million, because now is the day of salvation; but at that time, no more.
There are many like “the rich man” who are now enjoying the things of this life. It will not be until they will be in the torment, like the rich man was, when the one overwhelming desire will come to them for a drop of water. They will also desire Lazarus, that poor beggar. The last time that the rich man saw him, he was a diseased beggar with sores and the dogs were licking his wounds. Yet, like the rich man, their cry will be, “Let Lazarus dip that diseased and filthy finger of his in a drop of water and come and apply it to my tongue, because I am tormented in this flame.”
This is a good and vivid illustration of someone who is now in their right mind. Now they have sense. Now they know that everything that they had heard was true. Now they believe God. Now they believe the Bible. Now they want the Gospel. Now they want that opportunity for salvation.
What will be the answer? It will not be possible. The Bible says, “There is a great gulf fixed.” God is the One who set this gulf, and the door will be closed. But the rich man can see Lazarus in “Abraham’s bosom.”
This is pointing to all of those who are here on earth. They will not literally or physically be able to see the people of God, but they will have seen them go up and they will know where they went. They went to Heaven. All of God’s people went to be with the Lord and they are in Abraham’s bosom, and so there is no possibility after this for any salvation.
Question #2: How does Romans 1:18-21 fit in with the doctrine of election?
Chris: Romans 1:18-21 says:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
How this fits in with election is that God can change a person. Man, naturally, is in the situation that we read about in Romans 1:18:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
This word “hold” is like “suppress.” The truth, for instance, is being declared by the heavens, as God writes in Psalm 19, “The heavens declare the glory of God…day unto day uttereth speech.”
So even though it is obvious that there had to be a Creator who created the universe and that the very existence of the heavens and the universe testifies to everyone in the world that there is a God, people developed the doctrine or the teaching of evolution, which goes contrary to what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that God spoke and created the world, and the Bible is very detailed about how God did this. In spite of this, the doctrine or teaching of evolution is produced.
We can expect that in a world of this many, there would be a few foolish people who would present an idea like this. But the amazing thing is that so many people from around the world, intelligent people, brilliant people in some cases, put forth this idea of evolution and then this becomes fact, even though, at best, this is a very poor theory.
So the theory of evolution becomes a fact. Colleges wind up teaching it, schools teach it, and so on. It has become an accepted fact to the world that we began millions or billions of years ago and that everything has been evolving ever since, even though, if you really look at it, this is just stupid.
It is idiotic to think, first of all, that when you ask the question to people who hold to evolution, “Where did that initial and beginning substance come from?” they have no answer. They have no answer, whether they call it the Big Bang or the ooze or whatever it was that was in the beginning. Where did it come from?
They do not have an answer because, finally, they would have to say, “It was something eternal.” This is the only solution to the question, “Where did the stuff originally come from that exploded,” or whatever the latest add-on to the theory is, “and became this world and this universe? Where did that come from?”
So they just try to push this further and further back. They used to say that the age of the earth was millions of years old, and then it was hundreds of millions, now it is billions. This is because their solution to this dilemma is to push it as far back as possible. They could even go back trillions of years if they wanted to; but at some point, when they get to that beginning, what was there?
The answer would have to be that there was eternal matter. This is the only answer that they could come to, but they avoid this by saying, “We do not know. We have not figured that out yet.”
Well, should they not figure this part out before they do the rest of the theory? Should they not know the very beginning point of the theory and how it could have happened, and then build from there?
This is like someone who calls themselves a Christian without having Christ as their foundation. This is an extremely shaky belief.
We look around us, we look at ourselves, we look at our fellowman, and we see very complex creatures. If only one creature developed in the way that they say that it did, like an insect, the tiniest of creatures, if just one of these creatures could have evolved, this would be astronomical as far as a possibility. But to take millions of creatures and then to consider mankind on top of all of this, and then to say that all of this happened by chance, this goes beyond the realm of possibility.
There was a secular scientist whom I found on the web who was not a creationist or a believer, but he said that he did not believe in evolution. He gave the analogy that this would be like a tornado ripping through a junkyard and in its aftermath leaving behind a perfectly formed airplane or a car or a train—whatever you would want to put there. He used a Boeing 747 airplane as an example. Plus, everything would be working—the seatbelts would work, the lights would come on, there would be a “No Smoking” sign; everything would work.
Who believes this? Who believes that a tornado could rip through a junkyard and produce anything worthwhile? Let the example even be an aeronautical junkyard with a lot of plane parts. Who really believes that a tornado or any kind of cataclysmic event could go through a junkyard and form an airplane?
What is more complicated, a human being or an airplane? How about something even simpler, like a little boxcar that is used in a Soap Box Derby? Can anything be formed by a tornado into something constructive, something that we would look at and see that it was something that required intelligence to have its pieces put together?
The truth is that we could have a tornado go through a junkyard a billion times and never once would it form a working car or airplane or anything like this. Never once; this is not possible.
This is why evolution is so ridiculous, and so the only answer as to why so many smart people hold to this is because they have a prejudice. They have within themselves a desire that there be no God, a desire that there especially be no God of the Bible.
This is what God is talking about when He says that people “[suppress] the truth in unrighteousness.” They just do not get into many of these questions. They do not bother asking very important questions about a teaching that they are receiving, like the teaching of evolution. God, who knows man, knows that this is the case deep-down within.
Then we read in Romans 1:19-20:
Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
It is no excuse when someone says that they are agnostic or an atheist and that they therefore do not believe that May 21st is Judgment Day. This is no excuse, because they should believe. They should believe and know that there is a God. If they do not, they are not being honest; because, deep-down, they know it. This is what the Bible tells us.
We know. Man knows due to the testimony of the creation itself and the witness of God as He has written the Law on their hearts and given man a conscience. People know. They know and yet they have a preference to remain in the darkness rather than to be in the light.
If there is no God, then there is no Bible. If there is no Bible, then there is no Law. If there is no Law, then there is no breaking of the Law. If there is no breaking of the Law, then they can live a life without concern. If they are not a lawbreaker, then there is no penalty, there is no punishment, there is no wrath of God. People desire to live this way and a teaching like evolution supports this kind of life.
Question #3: What is the significance of the children in 2 Kings 2:23-24?
Chris: We read in 2 Kings 2:23-24:
And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of JEHOVAH. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
There is significance with there being forty-two little children. These are representative of those who would identify with God but who are not saved. In other words, this identifies with those in the church.
Here, Elisha, a prophet of God, is traveling to Bethel, the house of God. These children come out of the city and start mocking him. This is God’s doing, and so God moves Elisha to pronounce this upon them. Then two she bears come out of the woods and tear the children apart. The number two would be representing the church under the rule of Satan at this time.
What is Satan doing with those in the churches and congregations? He is certainly not helping them. He is not delivering them at all. He is destroying them. This is why this points to our day of great tribulation.
Question #4: Who are the locusts a picture of in Revelation 9:3-5?
Chris: We read in Revelation 9:3-5:
And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them [or it has been said] that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.
These locusts are a picture of the true believers. On that day, on May 21st when He takes His people up and out of this world and brings them into Heaven, God will deal a deadly blow to those left behind. This will result in five months of torment and incredible sorrow for everyone who was not taken up and who is still here in this world.
As far as “they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing,” this action of God in bringing His people to Heaven is not designed in any way to hurt a child of God, not in any way. No matter how you look at this, this is not designed to harm the true believer. This has been designed by God as the beginning of Judgment Day, which is the battle of Armageddon. God will use this as a sword towards the enemy, all of those who are unsaved. This is why they are able to be tormented for the five months.
This is one of those verses that helped us to understand the period of time from May 21st through October 21st. This was a perfect fit. We came to the knowledge of the end of the great tribulation and that the full 23 years would end on May 21st.
This is going back years, but we knew that the Feast of Tabernacles/Ingathering had to play a part in the end of the world. However, there was a gap. You might also remember that for awhile we thought that the Feast of Tabernacles would end on October 20th. It was after being corrected and the end of the Feast of Tabernacles was nudged over by one day to October 21st that the five months could be clearly seen. Then it all came together.
Once we understood time perfectly, then judgment fell into place. This is when we realized that God begins judgment on May 21st while people are still on this earth. Then we began to understand that God’s wrath would be on those remaining on this earth, not in hell. His wrath would not be upon man in a place called “hell.” It would be upon mankind who are left behind. This is where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” This is where there will be torment or this incredible sorrow.
This verse then fit and then we saw the other verses that had references to five months. All of these other verses were teaching a certain aspect and perspective of these five months, and so this is where we are now.
Question #5 is a question that came from the EBF website: I heard about May 21st from a friend. I am worried. Before I heard this, I had a dream not two weeks ago that the world would end soon. I did not take this seriously, but it felt so real that I woke up really scared and quickly said to myself that it was just a dream. Thank you. I will tell people about this.
Chris: We have to be careful, because dreams cannot give us true insight. We cannot trust dreams nor can we trust our feelings.
I remember seeing one of the news reports on a Family Radio billboard that was up in an American city. They went out right to the billboard and asked people what they thought about the billboard since it said that the Lord was coming on May 21st. This one young man said, “I have a bad feeling about this. I have a really bad feeling that this might happen.”
The Lord can work with people however He wants to work with people, but one thing we can know is that Judgment Day is not going to happen because of how someone feels. We know that this is not going to happen because someone had a bad dream. This is going to happen because the Bible says that this is going to happen, and the Bible is much more absolute and trustworthy.
If we are going to worry about something, worry because it is something that the Word of God is telling us. If we are going to be concerned, be concerned for this reason; because God’s Word is true and faithful and trustworthy in every way.
Question #6 is a question that came from the EBF website: (This question is from Roanoke, Virginia.) If you really believe that the end of the world will happen on May 21, 2011, why do the vehicles that you use here in Roanoke have state tags that expire the end of June 2011?
Chris: I tell you, people are watching. People are watching and they are looking for the slightest thing to point out.
When you get your car license tags renewed, and in this case this would have been done in June of 2010, the tags are renewed for one year. This means that they would have been renewed to June of 2011. This is how most state governments operate when they assign licenses and tags.
This reminds me of people who have been complaining about Family Radio renewing their broadcast license. Maybe their new license went a couple of years beyond 2011; but do you know how something like this works? I do not know how this particularly works. It could be that you renew and you get a period of three, four, or five years upon each renewal.
These things should not be the focus. The focus should be that we are running out of time. We are running out of time, so you can get out a magnifying glass and look at license plates, or you can use your time wisely and get hold of a book like We Are Almost There! and get out your Bible and read it and pray to God for mercy. These other things are of no importance.
Question #7: On Judgment Day, there will be no mercy and no grace. When I read a passage in relation to God’s judgment, for example like Genesis 7:18-24, I try to get an idea of God’s relationship to mankind during this time. Also, what will the relationship be during this time, for example, between a mother and her children? I have been trying to do a study on this. I am trying to just find more information on Judgment Day itself.
Chris: Let us start in Genesis 7:16. It says:
And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and JEHOVAH shut him in.
This is the 17th day of Noah’s 2nd month. This is after seven days when the Lord shut the door of the Ark. Noah did not shut the door. God shut the door and we know that this was a picture of salvation.
Christ is the door. He is the entryway into Heaven. As long as the door is open, potentially, from our perspective, anyone could enter in through God’s mercy and become saved. But after the door shuts, no one will be able to get in. They might try going up some other way, but they will not be able to get into Heaven. They must go through the door. There is none other way.
So after telling Noah, “For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth,” historically, seven days later the flood came, the eight souls were in the ark with the animals and God shut the door. This was a picture of May 21, 2011.
It is not a small thing that May 21, 2011 is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Hebrew calendar. Just think about this sometimes. Meditate on this. May 21st is the 8400th day, a full 23 years from when the great tribulation began that ushered in the end of the church age in 1988, and these things were worked out completely apart from the 7,000 years in relation to Noah’s flood. These things were worked out years ago.
So there had been the question of these five months in between May 21st and October 21st when we got to the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. When God nudged over that day from October 20th to October 21st, then the five months or the 153 days of our calendar could be clearly seen.
At this point, God was locking this in and confirming this with an infallible proof that everything that had been developed with the timeline was correct. It could not fit any other way. May 21st, which is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Hebrew calendar, fits perfectly with what follows here in Genesis 7 when the flood began.
It says in Genesis 7:17-24:
And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
What is 150 days if we were to relate this to months? This would be five thirty-day months. This is exactly true.
Look at Genesis 8:3-4:
And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.
The door was shut on the 17th day of the 2nd month. One hundred and fifty days later was the 17th day of 7th month, which is just as we see in the time span from May 21st to October 21st. It is very easy to see this five-month period of Noah’s calendar from the 17th day of the 2nd month to the 17th day of the 7th month.
So, amazingly, God has five months in view in Genesis 7 after He shut the door. Then the waters were triumphant; “the waters prevailed.”
We read in Genesis 7:18:
And the waters prevailed…
Did you hear this several times? It says this also in Genesis 7:19:
And the waters prevailed exceedingly…
Then we read in Genesis 7:24:
And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
Revelation 9 speaks of five months of torment. So what does it mean that the waters prevailed for five months? What are the waters referring to? They are referring to the Word of God.
Go to 1 Peter 3. 1 Peter 3:18-19 says:
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
This is strange language, but we might have some “spirits in prison” right here. There might be some here who are in the dungeon of sin and wrapped about by the chords of their own iniquity. Satan is the one who is actually operating in them because they are “children of disobedience,” as Ephesians says. This is what this verse is referring to. Christ or the Spirit preached to sinners still in their sins, to “spirits in prison.”
When did this happen? We read in 1 Peter 3:20:
Which sometime were disobedient…
This word “sometime” is better understood as “aforetime” or “in times past.” It continues:
Which [aforetime] were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
The flood water saved eight souls. What saves people? What saves people is the Word of God and God likens the Word to water. This is what saves.
God has been telling and telling people something that we have known for some time but are actually seeing come to pass, which is that His intention is to warn the whole world. He is going to do this, but I do not know how. We are seeing a lot of progress in this area, but there is still the nation of China where we do not have much advertising. Of course, Family Radio reaches China. We know that God is going to do this. We just do not know, in every case, how He is going to do this.
So people are being forewarned that this day is coming. Everyone is being forewarned, which is a great blessing. It is a great blessing to know of this in advance, whether you are saved or unsaved. Even if you remain unsaved, this is a great blessing. It says in Hebrews 11 that Isaac blessed both Jacob and Esau “concerning things to come.” It is a blessing to have this information.
God is telling the world that Judgment Day is May 21, 2011. The response of the people in the world who have been living their lives paying no attention except to mock at the churches—and today the churches have become a mockery because they are under the wrath of God—is to live their lives completely apart from the Bible and the Gospel. Judgment Day is a message that comes right from the Bible. They spent their lives blowing off the church, which is a good thing in our day, but they also blew off God and the Bible, which is not a good thing. They went about their lives to have as much fun as they could and to obtain as many things as they could.
Well, now, these people are being confronted with the Gospel. The people of the world are seeing these billboards. They cannot be missed. There are also other forms of advertising, like signs on park benches or on buses or on cars. People are wearing T-shirts.
With everything that God’s people are doing, the people of the world, people who have managed quite well without ever having anything to do with the Bible, are being confronted with this knowledge. They are hearing this message and a lot of people are angry that this kind of message is reaching their eyes and their ears. They do not like this at all.
So we are getting all kinds of notes from people in the churches as well as from people in the world. They are reading the tracts. They are hearing about this and they are mocking, mocking, mocking, as they say things like, “See you on May 22nd,” or, “Do you want to make a bet?”
If I brought in a list, you would be amazed at some of the things that people say. They say these things because they just do not believe this. Naturally, they do not believe it. Man does not believe the truth of the Bible, and it is not because things have not been plainly stated. The Bible plainly states that God created the world. Does man believe this? No. So if there was a verse that plainly said that May 21, 2011 would be Judgment Day, man would not believe this either.
This is not a matter of not being able to prove this; this is just a matter of unbelief. The church is probably the greatest offender, because they should know better. They should be willing to check these things out in the Bible to see if they are so. Instead, they casually and superficially go to a verse like, “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man,” and they stop there. This is as far as their study into this matter goes. They are not going to dig any deeper.
All of this behavior is a rejection, but it is not a rejection of you or of me or of Family Radio. This is a rejection of God. God is graciously, kindly, and compassionately warning people. Everyone will be warned, and yet many people are blowing this off. They are dismissing this and ignoring this. They are paying this no mind.
Okay; they can laugh now, but God says in the Bible that there will come a day when “the day of their calamity” will be upon them. Then He will laugh. This is what He says in His Word. On that day, He will laugh at their calamity. This day is May 21, 2011.
So God in Genesis 7 is making a point of emphasizing that “the waters prevailed” for five months. It says, “The waters prevailed exceedingly,” and this is speaking of His Word. The Bible will be glorified in the eyes of all the world at that time. This is what He is saying.
We will stop here.