[Mr. Robert Dick] Well, last night, Dr. Frank Dunkle kicked things off, and I will continue on this first Holy Day. We begin eight days of celebration, and today we kick off the Feast of Tabernacles, picturing the coming of the Kingdom of God on this earth, so many aspects of that kingdom, so many aspects. When you look at them, the question in my mind is, which one do you desire most? And we've got a smorgasbord of things that Christ is going to bring, but of those, which do you desire most? What are you most looking forward to when the Kingdom of God comes?

And I realize if we did a raise your hand, give me yours, we'd have a collection. How high on your list is peace? I hope by the end of the sermon, that the peace which God promises to bring to this earth through Jesus Christ will be one of the greatest desires if it isn't already. To begin this afternoon's sermon, and to better understand peace, let's begin by reading three scriptures. You know, when I use the word peace, I realize there's a range of understanding in the room, that there's a range in depth. So, let's begin by looking at what it is that God and Christ are offering. Isaiah chapter 9 is the first of the three scriptures that we need to look at to set the stage for this afternoon's message. Isaiah chapter 9, the prophecy of the coming of Jesus Christ, both first and second.

Isaiah 9:6-7 "For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders. And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace, there will be no end."

If you would search the commentaries, you would find the comment on this particular verse of the increase of that peace, "There will be no end," refers to the fact that there will be no boundaries. There is nowhere, both directionally and nowhere in terms of altitude, that that peace is limited to, so it is boundless. Isaiah chapter 26, the second of the three stage-setter scriptures.

Isaiah 26:1-3 "In that day, this song will be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city. God will appoint salvation for walls and bulwarks. Open the gates that the righteous nation, which keeps the truth may enter in. You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You because he trusts in You."

The kingdom is offering us perfect peace, not partial peace, not some peace, but perfect peace. The third scripture I'd like you to move over to the New Testament to the writings of the Apostle Paul because Paul makes a comment, a very provocative comment about peace. In Paul's understanding of God, in Paul's understanding of how God, not only views peace, but what He's capable of delivering, the Apostle Paul says in Philippians 4:7, and it's breaking into the middle of a sentence, but all we need to capture is the phrase that is contained in verse 7.

Philippians 4:7 "And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

Paul says there is a peace that surpasses all understanding. I would dare say, brethren, there's not an individual in this room, and I definitely include myself, that has the capacity to comprehend peace at the level and at the fullness that God is capable of producing and will bring to this earth. So what do these three stage-setting scriptures have to say to us? One, the Kingdom of God will usher in a peace that has no boundaries. Two, it offers, not a partial, but a perfect peace. And three, scripture suggests that there is a level of peace that at this point in time in our lives as human beings is beyond our level of comprehension.

The normal modern view of peace is far, far too narrow. When we think of peace, we're like a horse with blinkers. We've got a very narrow path that the mind pictures. The Hebrews were far better off than we are. Even to this day in the Jewish community, the word shalom is a way of saying hello. And it's a way of saying goodbye, but it was their word for peace. And throughout the history of the use of that particular word, it has referred to peace at the level that we're speaking about.

You could pick any dictionary, Merriam-Webster, the Oxford. Wikipedia is the most common and easy if you're on the internet. So let's do Wikipedia. The definition of shalom, the Hebrew word for peace. In Hebrew, the word means peace. Simply one aspect of it. Harmony, the ability to get along, the ability to work with, to be neighbors to, to be communities adjacent to one another, and to coexist in a way that feels good to everyone, wholeness.

You know, in the world of medicine, you have all sorts of specialties. And then on the very opposite end, you have someone who says, "Well, I practice holistic medicine. Meaning I look at everything." Completeness. Are you totally at peace when you feel incomplete? No. Prosperity. You know, there's a level at which a person can say, "I don't have to worry about covering," and they name all the things that need to be covered. "I have a roof over my head. I have my utilities. I eat well. I can take care of my health. I can take care of this and that." The result is a tranquil mind. Welfare in all of its aspects, welfare, wellbeing.

And the last of all, I already referenced in regards to prosperity, and that is tranquility. That quality that every one of us feels at certain times when we've worked very hard, we sit down at the end of a day, there's nothing else that we have to worry about. We take a deep breath, maybe a pleasant evening this time of year, as the sun is going down and the world is good and everything is tranquil. Let me give you a statement that hopefully will encapsulate the essence of peace.

From God's perspective, peace is the absence of everything that can rob us of it and the presence of everything that can contribute to it. You know what, when we talk about peace, it requires some things coming in, and it requires some things going out. From God's perspective, peace is the absence of everything that would take it away from us. And at the same time, it is the presence of everything that would contribute to it. Let's take a step-by-step look at the peace that Christ is going to bring along with His kingdom, and that you and I are going to have the opportunity, not just to see, you and I will have the opportunity to administer.

We're not just observers when that peace comes. We're a part of making it happen. When I use the word peace in the beginning, I expect that for most minds, the first thing that came to mind would be, like, word association. I'll give you a word, you give me the antonym. You give me the opposite. So I say, war...I say peace. Well, you'd say war. War, peace. Micah chapter 4 tells us in regards to war and the threat of war. This is what God is going to offer. Micah chapter 4. I think those of you that listen and study each year regarding the Feast of Tabernacles or prophecy of this time of year, are well aware of the fact that there are certain promises that are given in multiple locations verbatim. This is one of those. I'll read it to you from Micah. You could go over to Isaiah, read exactly the same thing.

Micah 4:3 "He shall judge between many peoples and rebuke strong nations of far off. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."

You know, there are levels of peace. There is the absence... There is the absence of actual combat. We've had periods of time where there was an absence of combat. And we referred to some of them as cold war. Was anybody fighting? No. Was anybody at peace? No. They weren't fighting, but nobody was at peace either.

Well, he went way, way beyond that. He said, "Neither will they learn war anymore." Won't even learn how to. We don't often speak of David as a prophet, even though we all know there are some powerful prophecies in the writings of David. Let's go back to Psalm 46, and we'll look at one of the prophecies in the Book of Psalms.

Psalm 46:8-9 says, "Come, behold the works of the Lord who has made desolation in the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow. He cuts the spear in two. He burns the chariot in the fire."

So in the simple statement of, "Neither will they learn any war anymore," David says the day is coming where every single solitary piece of war material will simply be scrapped. It won't be there. It has no use, it has no purpose, it has nothing to contribute to the world that Christ is going to rule over and that we will rule with Him over. As a result, we will simply take all of those things that are even used for such purpose, and they will cease to exist.

You know what? Here's an area in life where most of us are numb. We can't stop wars, so we simply become numb. We can't do anything about it. Anyone here stop the saber-rattling in North Korea? Anyone here who can deal with Iran? Anyone here who has the power to withdraw troops from Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else in the world where they currently are based? Anyone here stop cold war with the former Soviet Union now, Russia? Anyone here capable of stopping terrorism in our soil, in Europe, or in anywhere else in the world where terrorism?

The answer is no, no, no, no, no. Just an endless string of no's. And so what do we do? You know, for survival's sake, most of us become numb to one degree or another. If you can't solve it, you shrug your shoulders and get on with those things in life that you can handle. Are you happy about it? No. Can you do anything about it? No. God is promising a world where not only will it cease, the materials to perform it will no longer exist, and the education on how to do it will not even be there. It's hard, if not impossible to imagine a world with no Armys, no Navys, no Air Forces, no military academies, absolutely nothing that would contribute to, produce, or create war.

So, I took the most obvious first, because like I said, if I say to you, Jesus Christ is going to bring back perfect peace, the first thing we think of is what's on the news every evening at 6:00 and every day in the newspaper if you subscribe to a newspaper. There is an element of peace that God is offering that has been mentioned last night. It's been mentioned quite eloquently in the hymn, "It Won't Be Long Now." That's an element in Isaiah chapter 11.

I have been in the church of God since childhood, and so I understand coming to the feast as a youth and looking at the component parts that make up the feast, and through the youth eye view, looking at what I'd like to see. Isaiah 8:6-8. Did I say Isaiah 11? Okay. Didn't sound right to my own ear. Isaiah 11:6-8. We just sang it in "It Won't Be Long Now,"

Isaiah 11:6-8 "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with a young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together. A Little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear will graze and their little one shall lie then together, the lion shall eat straw with the ox and the nursing child shall play at the cobra's hole. And the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper's den."

Nobody's hurt. I would expect for the younger children in this room, as would be true, probably every year at the Feast of Tabernacles, if the question were asked, what element of peace would I most like to see? It would be, "I would like to be able to approach whatever animal I am most fascinated by and know that I will suffer no injury." I think a Belgian tiger... A Bengal tiger, excuse me, wrong part of the world. A Bengal tiger is one of the most beautiful animals on the planet. And they're the kind of animal you just look at and say, you know, I'd like to walk right up at the height they are, I just be able to put my arm around them, scratch the top of their head with their round ears.

But, you know, with a yellow tooth about that long on each side, that's a little bit intimidating until the Kingdom of God comes. I think everybody's fascinated by certain animals that instinctively look either by their countenance or by the way they conduct themselves, they look to be very easy for people to approach. The koala bear is an automatic. A Panda bear, for some reason, just simply looks like you could go in and sit down with it and feed it bamboo shoots and have a good time. But to know that there's not a single solitary animal that you have to fear is a level of peace that I think all of us would like to see, but children, especially.

Over the last many years, my wife and I have been to New Zealand for the feast twice. And because they're on the opposite end of the world, it's lambing season. So, the countryside is absolutely covered with newborn lambs. But I've said to the audience in New Zealand, I said, "You know, you have the most millennial spot on this planet that I have been privileged to attend for a feast." Because they have no poisonous snakes. In terms of what is indigenous to the land, no poisonous snakes, no poisonous spiders, no predatory animals.

And you drive through the countryside, you see the lambs resting on hillside, and you realize, you don't even need a shepherd for the purpose of protecting them because there's nothing that's going to harm them. You may have to have a shepherd to take care of, you know, their own inherent weaknesses as an animal, but not to protect them as you would in the part of the country that I grew up in where bears and wolves and coyotes, and several other things would make a meal of a lamb.

Hosea chapter 2. Hosea chapter 2, this is how God puts it. We saw the beauty of just simply how it will look, “The child will be able to sit down at the mouth of the den of a Cobra." I don't know about you. I'm not wild about being around snakes even when I know they're not poisonous. Just a snake is not an animal I like to be around. Where my son lives they have coachwhip snakes, eight or nine feet long. It's the fastest moving snake in North America. And it's just intimidating to see an eight-foot-long snake take off at a speed that you didn't know snakes could move and hoping it was going away from you rather than towards you, even though you know it's not poisonous.

Hosea 2:18 says, "In that day, I will make a covenant for them with the beast of the field, with the birds of the air, and with the creeping things of the ground. Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth to make them lie down safely." He says, "I'm going to make a covenant. Draw up a contract between animals and man." You know, only God can make that kind of contract. A dumb animal as we refer to can't change its nature, it works instinctively.

And as much as you'd like to walk up to a bear... You know, my grandson, when he found out there were bears, he said, "I'd really like to see a bear." And in the tone of the voice was, "I'd like to see a bear that I could actually get close to." I said, "No, if you see the bear a good distance." Right now I'd like to see the elk, but I know what season of the year it is, and I'd like to see the elk at a very healthy distance because right now, elk are not too happy about seeing us up close. You know, the Scotts have a phrase or they have a two-word descriptor that I've always...it's always tickled me. The Scotts can do some interesting things with our language, with their language.

But when we think of freedom of fear from wild beasts, we think of lions and tigers and sharks, we think of polar bears, we think of huge animals. There's a portion of the animal world that the Scotts referred to as “wee beasties”. You know, right now, there's one category of “wee beasties” that takes more lives than all the snakes and all the sharks in the world per year, and that's the mosquito. More people die from mosquito-borne diseases on this planet every year than die from snake bites, shark bites.

Between ticks and mosquitoes, there are places all over this world that you simply don't feel at peace going. Every time my wife and I have gone to a developing country, we pull up the CDC alert for that country to ask which malaria is now the one that needs to be taken so that you don't bring home malaria from that part of the country. And it's a constantly rotating series because they become immune to the effect. And so, they have to play rotation with them, but you can't go there without those things.

About three or eight years ago, my wife had gone to Texas to babysit our two grandchildren. We live in Portland, Oregon. I was sitting outside, a beautiful August day. I was sitting on the patio. It was about 9:00 or so in the morning. I had a cup of tea. I was sitting at the patio table, looking at the flowers, just simply enjoying the beauty of a morning. And out of the corner of my eye, peripheral vision, all I noticed was movement. You know how things happen just bam, bam, bam.

And that fast, literally, bam, bam, bam, I sensed movement. I felt pat, pat, and I saw a bat move down toward the ground, then swoop back up and go around the corner of the house. And I put my tea down. I thought I felt just the slightest little tap, tap on my cheek. Called my chiropractor. He's a good...not only a chiropractor but a friend. I said, "Hey." And I described everything. And I said, "Can I ignore it?" He said, "You shouldn't."

I went around the house. I looked under all the eves. I looked under everything a bat could hang under, so I could go in and get my pellet gun and bring him down and take him somewhere where they could look him over. I don't know where he went. He didn't go to any of the eves. So I ended up in the emergency room taking, for the next couple of weeks, the entire rabies series, because as the doctor said, "This one, if he just went pat, pat, and that was all, and he was well, you don't have anything to worry about. If he went pat, pat," and he said, "If he bit you, you'd never know it. The teeth are so small, they don't even draw blood. And if he had rabies, then you're dead. So take your pick. You can ignore it." It wasn't much of a take-your-pick option.

There's peace internally or within the land. When I use the word internally, I would say within the land. And when I look at those offers of peace that God gives us within our land, my favorite has been in Zechariah chapter 8 for many years. I sit with Zechariah chapter 8, and I imagine what it will be like because, in my childhood, I had this and I long for the time when all the children and the old people of the world will have this as a given.

Zechariah 8:3-6 it says, "Thus says the Lord, 'I will return to Zion and dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. Jerusalem shall be called the City of Truth, the mountain of the Lord of hosts, the Holy Mountain.' Thus says the Lord of hosts, 'Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each one with his stuff in his hand because of great age. The streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets. 'If this is marvelous in the eyes of the remnant of these people in these days, will it also be marvelous in my eyes? Says the Lord of hosts.'" It will be marvelous.

I'm sure in this room, there are people that still live in rural areas where they are capable of going where they want any time of day or night without the fear of being harmed or injured by someone else. But there are also people sitting in this room who live in cities that know that in those cities, there are areas that you don't go after dark. And if your city's big enough, there's some areas it's not wise to go even when it's not dark.

I grew up either in total wilderness, part of my childhood, or in a farming situation. And the ability to simply say to mom and dad, "The other kids and I are going to go out and play. And we'll be back when it gets to be dark." And not need to say where, not get a lecture on now, "Avoid this and watch out for this. And don't do this and be careful about that, and if you see that, run." And to know that there was no worry among the adults. To know the day is coming where our children can simply say, "Mom and dad, we're going to go out with our cousins and we're going to play in the park, and what time is bedtime?" And say bedtime is an hour after sunset. "Well, we'd be back in time for bedtime." And you're not worried about, "Well, it's getting dark. I don't know where they are." You simply say, "Fine, we'll see you at bedtime."

It hasn't been as much an issue, but it's more of an issue that if you're older and you don't move very fast, you think about where you go in certain cities. I remember years, even when I was younger, not too many years ago, going into a city on the way to the feast where there was some historic monuments and thinking that the whole area is safe, parking the car and looking around and saying, "You know, there are historic buildings in this area, and I'm not even sure I want to get out of the car and walk between the first one, the second one and the third one and the fourth one because of the way the streets look."

God is saying, "I'll give peace to all elements, the young and the old, the cities, the parks, the streets, they'll all be safe." I want to transition here. These three categories that I've given you so far all speak to external peace. You know, I said to you earlier, when I gave you an overall definition that peace is the absence of everything that can rob us of it. And it's the presence of everything that can contribute to it. As an individual, you look around you and...whether you think about it or not, you look around yourself and you are conscious of those things around you that can rob you of peace.

That's why you don't go into certain areas of town. You don't go certain places after dark. You take precautions because you say, "These external things can take it away from me." So we've dealt with the external. If you never had to worry about anything or anyone doing you harm, if I could guarantee you right now, “Mr. So-And-So, Mrs. So-And-So, Billy, Susie, I can guarantee you right now, no one will ever harm you again.” And I could carry out my promise, would you be at peace? Only partially.

If you walked away from this room knowing no one or no thing could ever harm you again, you may fool yourself to think you were leaving this room with perfect peace, and you would be fooling yourself because half of peace is from without and the other half is from within. We're in a society that is living longer, but longer lives are not necessarily peaceful lives. My mother-in-law lived to be 99 years old, and she said to my wife, and to me, we were both there. She said, "I'm not going to tell you what it's like to get old. You'll need to learn that for yourself." And we both knew exactly what she was saying.

I don't need to sit here and do the moans and the groans about what can happen. You'll eventually get there and you'll reach that place where, as you laughingly say, "If it don't hurt, it don't work." Instead, rather have it hurt and work than not hurt and not work. So, you get in those stages of life where you shake your head and you say, "This is life. This is the way it is." Living longer isn't necessarily living better. In fact, there are people who take a look at life and say, "You know what? If I have to go to all sorts of extraordinary measures just so I can continue to have a heart that pumps and lungs that breathe, and every element of life that has joy and peace and happiness has gone, why? Why?"

Here's an instance where rather than looking for a prophecy about the future, we need to go backward. We need to do as the old movie title said that we need to go "Back to the Future." There are some things that we don't always think prophetically, that if we want to look at the prophecies of where we're going, we need to go back in time rather than forward in time, because God made an agreement with ancient Israel that He still intends to carry out, they didn't.

But that didn't mean that His attitude changed, that His views changed, that His goals changed, that anything changed. Nothing changed with God. He just simply had non-compliant people. When the millennium comes, you and I have the joy of ruling over people who desire to be there. They want to be there. There will be humble contrite hearts that will rejoice in coming to the land. Then God can make that agreement all over again, and He'll have people that not only are listening, but they want it and they want the benefits. So, if you want to know what the millennium will look like, go back to the promises back in Deuteronomy. Let's look at Deuteronomy 7.

Deuteronomy 7:11-15 "Therefore you shall keep the commandments, the statutes, and the judgements, which I command you today to observe them. And then it shall come to pass because you listen to these judgements and keep and do them, that the Lord, your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy, which He swore to your fathers. And He will love you and bless you and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your land, your grain, your new wine, your oil, the increase of your cattle, and the offspring of your flock in the land of which He swore to your fathers to give you. You shall be, be blessed above all people. There shall not be male or female barren among you or among your livestock. And the Lord will take away from you all sickness and will afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of Egypt, which you have known, but will lay them on those who hate you."

As I said, if I could offer you freedom from any fear of anything harming you externally, if you're not 100% well, did I give you peace? A reasonable number of us in this room that we're not sitting around all day long, worrying about who's going to invade our home, who's going to injure us, who's going to harm us, we get up and say, "Oh, this doesn't work. Oh, I wish that pain would go away." We turn on a television. And all we see is an endless string of medical commercials that tell you, "This will remove this, but by the way, it may give you this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this. So you need to talk to your doctor. But you'll feel real good if it gives you what we want to give you and not the 10 other things that could kill you."

And so you sit there if you're not plagued by what they're offering to cure, and you say, "Why would anyone in a sane mind take that thing?" Until the biggest robber of peace in your life is the thing that they're offering the pill for. And that's why people will gamble with nine fatal symptoms to get relief from one problem they have. God says, "I will take away all sickness." I don't know what it's like to never be sick. I've had that contradictory joy of being well enough to never have to go to a hospital, but enough of the little nagging things to always be aware that it could be a whole lot better than it is. And so you say, "Really grateful for this. Wish I didn't have to deal with this and this and this and this."

They all take away peace, don't they? You know, the people that I have seen most traumatized by sickness, and I've only had a couple in my lifetime. Had one lady in the last 10 years said, "I have felt good all my life." And at the end of her life, she developed a fatal disease that didn't last too terribly long, but her sense of bewilderment, her sense of bewilderment of what it was like to have something that was painful and debilitating, that wouldn't go away, it was like, "I can't comprehend this. I've never had a sick day in my life. I've never missed a day of work. I don't know what it's like to get the flu. I've never had a cold, and now I have a fatal disease."

Stop and think a moment. Can you imagine the peace of mind that comes from having no physical or mental ailments? No fear of having them. I love to see the children at every feast site. I love to see the teenagers, but I also am aware that there are a large number of people that look like me. And that there are more that look like me than don't, meaning they either have white hair or no hair and with varying degrees of wrinkles. So I say, okay, here we are. This is where we are in life.

We wonder if we arrive at those particular places, "Will I go from where I am right now till the last day of my life and still have all my mental faculties?" I'd never heard of the word Alzheimer's as a young man and now hear about it all the time. Have very dear friends, people that I have spent a lifetime with that now don't know who I am. Robs everybody of peace, doesn't it? Those that love them, those who care for them. So, as I said, stop and think a moment. Can you imagine the peace of mind that comes from having no physical or mental ailments? No fear of having them and no fear genetically of passing them on when you reach that time in life, that your greatest desire is to have children.

So it doesn't matter which end you're on. Doesn't matter whether you're on the front end, looking at a life ahead of you. Whether you're on the back end, looking at a life spent, these all rob peace, peace from within. So, as I said, if I could write you a guarantee that no one or no thing, no animal, no person would ever harm you, I still would've only touched half of what takes our peace away from us.

Everyone would like to grow old. And they'd like between the time that they leave home and they grow old, they'd like to have a job that they truly enjoy. They would like to have a job that would contribute a comfortable living. They'd like to know that if they had such a job, that they would keep it more than two or three years before the company ceased to exist, merged with somebody else. Those jobs went away. They were transported overseas or whatever else happens because we live in a day and time where, when I look at the young people of the 20s and 30s and their job world, it is so totally different than those of us who are in the 70s and 80s.

Those who are in their 80s, entered a job market, expecting...in jobs to enter it, stay there for a lifetime, and retire from the same company that they hired onto. Our young men and young women are in their 20s, if they get three years or four years or five years out of an employer before they move on, not from their choice, they move on because of something they can't control, that's doing all right. Everyone would like some form of job security. Everyone would like to know that when they can no longer work, that they are financially secure. All of those rob people of peace.

The statistics are absolutely daunting at times when you look at where our nation is in regards to the fears that come from not being provided for. Our 80 and 70-year-olds, many of them worked with companies with defined benefit pensions, which meant you had a pension. When you retired, you had it for life. Now you have a 403(b) or a 401(k) or you have an IRA and good luck, do the best you can. Deuteronomy 28. For one last time, we will go back to the future and take a look at the grand illustration. Deuteronomy 28, we're going to look at the first 12 verses, and wrap your mind around all the component pieces of peace that come when God offers this again to a people who will carry their end of the agreement.

Deuteronomy 28:1-2 "Now, it shall come to pass, if you will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you this day, that the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all the blessings shall come upon you and overtake you because you obey the voice of the Lord your God."

Can you wrap your mind around the concept of blessings overtaking you? You can't run fast enough to outrun the blessings that are running to catch up with you. Now, we're in a world that runs like mad to grab them, and we're always snatching and never quite getting them. He says, "You won't be able to outrun the blessings."

Deuteronomy 28:3-4 "Blessed shall you be in the city, blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds and the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flock."

You don't have to worry about, will your children be healthy? You don't have to worry about your livestock, whether they will produce.

Deuteronomy 28:5-12 "Blessed shall be your basket and your needing bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in and blessed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face. And they shall come against you one way and flee from you seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all of which you set your hands, and He will bless you in the land, which the Lord your God is giving you. The Lord will establish you as a holy people to himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and walk in His ways. Then all the people of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. And the Lord will grant you plenty of goods in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, in the produce of your grounds, in the land, in which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. The Lord will open to you His good treasure, the heavens to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hands. You shall lend to many, and you shall not borrow."

As I asked at the beginning, can you wrap your mind around the peace that God is offering? That's why I gave you the three stage-setter scripture so that you could understand that God says when His kingdom comes, He will begin to have a government that will move out from Jerusalem, progressively. So the offer begins with us today, the physical descendants of Israel then, and all the world, as they become an example of this way of life. Can you imagine how God will be able to sell this way of life to the world when they look at Israel in a covenant agreement with God enjoying boundless peace, perfect peace? God will remove every stress, every strain, every fear, every concern, every physical or mental robber of peace. And for the very first time in human history, man will begin to understand the peace of God, perfect peace.