We have just finished the autumnal Holy Day season with the Feast of Tabernacles for 2025, and have learned more about God’s Holy Days which clearly reveal the incredible master plan of salvation for mankind.
Our understanding of the Feasts of the LORD (compare Leviticus 23:2) is a magnificent description of this plan for all of mankind and is priceless information that is not understood by the world at large.
On our website under the heading “Statement of Beliefs,” we read this about the Last Great Day (the 8th Day) following the Feast of Tabernacles:
“The Last Great Day which immediately follows the Feast of Tabernacles, once a year. This day symbolizes a 100-year period called the ‘Great White Throne Judgment,’ during which all persons who have ever lived and who were never called by God for salvation during this life, will have their first opportunity to accept Christ as their Savior (Leviticus 23:36; John 7:37; Revelation 20:11-12).”
It is a repudiation of the false concept of going to heaven or hell at death (usually heaven for everyone!) and via purgatory for the Roman Catholic Church. It also negates the hell-fire preachers who think that they have to get everyone saved now because this, they suppose, is the only day of salvation, not a day of salvation.
But one aspect of all of this is that those who have lived and died, without being called and knowing the Truth of God in this age will, in their next waking second after death, be brought back to life in the Second Resurrection – the Great White Throne Judgment.
We may, from time to time, wonder what our parents and grandparents would think if they were alive today with all of the advancements made in the last 100 years.
Also, what about all of those who were killed in the Flood which was, according to a number of sources, around 1,656 years after creation. And after the Flood, from a new start, the billions that have been born since then. They would have been used only in an agrarian-type society with none of the wonderful advances in the last 100 years or so in technology, transport, space exploration, in the medical profession, with the worldwide web, television, smartphones and a whole range of modern electronic devices. They would be staggered.
But those who are dead and in their graves, none of whom have ascended to heaven, will open their eyes in the next second of their consciousness to a whole new world well beyond their immediate understanding. Those from biblical times and our forebears will, in their next second of life when resurrected, be greeted with a world totally different, in most cases, from the one they were used to.
The next second of their life will be a time when those who are then already members of the God Family will be able to help all those in the Great White Throne Judgement to come to terms with the marvellous opportunity that God will give them, together with a world that is totally different from what they experienced in their previous life. To use an old English humorous slang expression: “Their eyes will stick out like chapel hat-pegs” – meaning to their considerable amazement!
The next second for them will be a time of wonderment and excitement, and let us all hope and pray that the vast, overwhelming majority will take full advantage of their one and only opportunity!