It has been of great interest to me to note the practical bent of many of the messages I have heard at the Feast this year. If there has been an idea in the eyes of many people that the return of Jesus Christ flips a magic wand that makes people all of the sudden lose their problematic and negative aspects of human nature, the speakers this Feast (myself included) have made it a point to drive home quite the opposite, and I think that is for the best. We need to have a realistic understanding of the world to come and what will be expected of us in it. I think that all too often people have neglected the importance of such logistical matters and then relied upon unrealistic expectations to present a case that fails to account for what it is that will make things different now and then.

What are these logistics? And how do we know they matter? Well, one of the ways that we know they matter is that the Bible is full of people dealing with logistical matters. My sermonette during the Feast, for example, and at least one of the other messages, discussed Ezekiel 40-48, which is a section of the Bible that is rich in the logistics of the third temple system, ranging from the land that is given to tribes, to the priests, and to the prince, to the logistics of the revival of the Dead Sea into a living one thanks to the living waters that come from the third temple to the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. The millennium is not just about a world as perfect as it can be with human beings in it, but it is about how this takes place. The Bible deals with this logistics in a rather pointed way, and a rather subtle way, so subtle that it is easy to overlook it.

How is this so? Let us briefly discuss at least a few of the logistics angles involved with the Millennium. Shall we look at the change of the land to be more fruitful and productive? Shall we then look at how the land is apportioned to tribes and then to individual property that is protected with a high degree of ferocity by the laws of Ezekiel 45 and 46, for example, and why it is stated so insistently that everyone will have their own vine and fig tree in the millennium. Or perhaps one can examine why it is so important that resurrected believers be made rulers over specific numbers of cities, cities whose identity it has become quite fond for people to speculate. And then there is the matter of the specificity of offerings to be given as well as even the direction that people move through the temple as they worship. Details, very specific details, and a great deal of focus on order as well as the aspects of life that are vital to ordinary people.

And because logistics deals with things that matter to ordinary human beings, those people who wish to have a practical effect on the lives of others must pay attention to logistics. As I write this the next early afternoon after having written the preceding, it is interesting to note that logistics mattered even in the messages today, discussing the number of people who will be resurrected at the Great White Throne Judgment, and how it is that church is a hospital for sick and broken souls in need of healing, all of which deals with matters of logistics and how it is that those souls are to receive care and how it is that the people who are judged are to come to a knowledge and obedience of the truth in however much time that they have left.