(warm instrumental music)- Welcome back.

It's time for your questionsand honest answers.

Darla says, Pat, what are the new earth

and the new Heaven for?

Are we going to live in Heavenwhen we leave this earth?

I always thought we would live there,

but then Jesus will reign from Jerusalem.

Please set me straight.

- Well, I think the Biblesays behold, a new Heaven

and a new earth coming down from on high.

I think this is a very nice earth,

if people would stop killing themselves

and polluting this planet.

It's really a very nice, beautiful place.

We have lovely sunsets.

We have beautiful seasons.

We have delicious foodand crops and everything.

It's a nice earth.

But God's gonna make something better

and we're gonna be spiritual beings,

and so just keep in mind.

But the Bible does say anew Heaven and a new earth,

so wherein dwells righteousness.

Now maybe what the Bible is talking about

is cleansing the evil.

The devil is gonna be bound

and people will be loving eachother and living in harmony.

When people are nice to eachother and love each other

and live the way theLord wanted them to do,

this is a pretty niceplace to live, all right.

- Amen, well, Marie says, Hi, Pat.

Lately, I've seen a lot of questions

about the sin of divorce and remarriage.

Obviously, many arestruggling with this question.

Is divorce a greater sin than other sins

that people commit?

For instance, I never hear anyone ask

if God will forgive them if they had had

numerous sexual partners before marriage,

or if God will forgive them ifthey murdered several people.

- Yeah, I think our categorization of sin,

sin is sin and it doesn't matter.

You see, it's an offense

against the holiness of God if we sin.

Slander is probably worse

than any of the other things we do,

and yet, we slander on an ongoing basis

and people gossip all the time

and don't think anything about it.

And yet, you know, The ScarletLetter was one poor lady

that committed adultery,and man, she was marked

from then on out.

I have said before, and Ireally believe this is true,

the Church as a body,

the Lord said, "Whatever you bind on earth

"will be bound in Heaven;whatever you loose on earth

"will be loosed in Heaven."

And I think the church has the privilege

to loose some of these regulations.

I know the Lord said if anybodyis divorced and remarried

except for certain groundssuch as adultery, it's a sin,

but at the same time,there's so many unions

that are being split apartand there's so much pressure

and so many people are in these new unions

and they want to liveaccording to the Lord.

I just think the Churchneeds to deal with it

and I don't think theChurch has dealt with it.

And as a body, we oughta do it.

But as far as I'm concerned,divorce isn't one bit worse

than any of these otherthings that you mentioned.

I mean, you know, sin is sin,

and they're not categories of sin.

They're all bad or they're all...

- Some just have worse consequences.

- Well, I think the temporal consequences

of murder are pretty bad.

You go to jail, you mayget the electric chair.

That's the consequence.- Especially bad

for the person that got murdered.

- (chuckles) Except for the part, yeah.

- No, especially bad for her.- But as far divorce though,

I mean, the consequences are pretty bad.

You swear an oath until death do us part.

And once there's aseparation there is a death.

You're really, you're joined together

with a person that youlove and all of a sudden

that union is broken apart

and there is a suffering that goes on.

All right, what else?

- All right, Jessica says,

my brother has a hardtime believing in God.

He and I were having aconversation about God,

and in our discussion he says,

"Well, you say God is everything, right?

"So if He's everythingthen He's also evil."

In that moment I respondedwith, "No, God cannot be evil,

"evil comes from Satan."

Not knowing how else to respond,

I just left the conversation with,

"God is good all the time and loves us."

How can I explain this better

and correct my brother'sfeelings about God being evil?

- Well, if you take someof the Old Testament view

that God is responsible for everything,

that He causes the good, He makes the good

and He brings the woe andHe's in charge of everything,

then of course you blameHim for everything.

And they call certain things acts of God.

You know why?

They call it an accident,it's an act of God.

Well, God didn't do it,but I really believe

that He has allowed human will.

He has allowed evil mento proliferate on earth.

He's allowed the Stalins and the Hitlers

and the Pol Pots and all the rest of 'em

to do what they've done.

He could rot your tongue outevery time you say a curse word

but He doesn't do that.

He's giving us an opportunity

to exercise free moral judgment.

And so to blame God foreverything that happens

is a big, big mistake, butno, He does not do evil.

God is virtuous andthere is no sin in Him.

And the God of the Bible does not sin,

nor does He solicit sin.

So you tell your brotherthat you believe in a God

who's in charge of things,but the people do bad things

and Satan does do bad things.

And God has allowed evil in the world

as a test to try us tosee if we can be purified

as we move toward His finaltermination of this earth.

- Hopefully she was recording this

and she can play it for her brother.

- (laughs) Hopefully she did, all right.

- OK, Jim says, I've beenhearing various things lately

about what happens to abeliever immediately upon death.

I've always believed, basedon what I read in the Bible

and what I've heard,that we are immediately

in the presence of the Lord in Paradise.

What is your opinion, Pat?

Is our spirit there, our body?

Is there an intermediate place?

When do we receive our new bodies?

- All right, now, youremember when God formed Adam

he took a body out ofthe earth and he breathed

and it was just pneuma, the spirit,

and Adam became a living soul, a nephesh.

And so it's the combinationof spirit and body.

Now, when our body dies,what remains is a spirit.

Now where does that spirit go?

Jesus said to the thief on the cross,

"This day you will bewith me in paradise."

But the thief had said, "Lord, remember me

"when you come into your kingdom."

So he had confessed Christ.

I don't believe in purgatory.

I don't think there'san intermediate place,

but I do believe that the spirit

will go into another realm.

It'll either go to paradiseor it may go into Hades.

And so I think if somebody dies in sin

they're not gonna be heldin some intermediate state

to be purified, I thinkyou have your one shot

is while you're alive,and when that's over

don't look for an intermediateplace called purgatory.

I don't think the Bibleteaches that, all right.

- This day I will be with you in Paradise.

- Yeah, this day you willbe with me in Paradise.

- I love that.- But that was the thief

who said, "Lord, remember me

"when you come into YourKingdom," so he was confessing

for Christ.- Yeah.

- But the others, not necessarily.

OK, what else?- Well, Roe says,

I had always been a hotbeliever since childhood.

I still read my Bible daily,

but don't have the fervor I once had.

I've been enduring depressionand pain in my body

and wondering if God hasn'tspit me out of His mouth,

as the Scripture says.

I've been seeking Himfor the past four years,

but feel He's nowhere around.

Is there hope for me?

- Well, of course there is.

Look, what you need to do,and I wanna recommend this,

get off by yourself, takea piece of paper or a pad

and a pen or a pencil andyou think of the things

you've done wrong and write 'em down.

Write down everything you canthink about that you've done.

You've been disobedient to your parents.

You have been unfaithful to your spouse.

You've been angry with your employer.

You wanted to kill somebody,whatever you've done

write it down and say, Lord,I ask to you to forgive this.

And you take that andyou put a match to it

and you burn it up andyou say, all right Lord,

I receive your forgiveness andI'm now gonna live for you.

And from that moment on,take what God has said

that you would be freefrom a guilty conscience

so you serve the living God.

God doesn't want you underconviction, He wants you free,

so stop beating yourselfup because you're not happy

and so forth, do what I tell you.