Comfort in eternity is not something believers wait to receive after they die. In this message, the speaker teaches that eternity enters your life the moment you receive Jesus and His Word, and that this is where real comfort comes from in a confusing, fearful age. Drawing on John 17, 1 Peter 2 and the account of the rich man and Lazarus, he calls listeners to fight distraction, stand for truth and live now in the light of eternity.
Below you will find the full video, a structured summary of the sermon, the Scripture behind each point (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline, and practical steps you can take this week.
Sermon at a Glance
This message was preached by an NTC Ministries pastor at an outdoor service at the fairgrounds, an event he says he looks forward to each year, and it was posted on August 16, 2021. It runs about 36 minutes and was also carried online and on the radio. The speaker announces his title plainly: comfort in eternity.
He observes that many people know far more about the problems of this world than about eternity. Turn on the news, he says, and you would be convinced the sky is falling. His answer is to turn attention back to Jesus and His eternal Word, which brings eternity into a believer’s life right now and gives strength to rise above the corruption of the age.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Speaker | An NTC Ministries pastor (not named in the recording) |
| Series | Stand-alone message |
| Main text | John 17:1–3 and 15–17, with Luke 16:19–31 |
| Key theme | Eternal life begins when you believe; live now in light of eternity |
| Length | About 36 minutes, ending with a salvation prayer |
Wage War on Distraction
The speaker starts with a principle: anything you magnify in your life grows and bears fruit. Some believers, he says, are operating in “a self-induced spirit of heaviness” because they have allowed inferior voices from the political arena, the news media and the wider world to dictate their emotional and spiritual health. Many are suffering from what he calls chronic distraction.
He recalls advice from a minister named Clifford Rice in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Rice told him not to listen to the news, describing it as a Babylonian spirit whose purpose was to confuse people. The speaker says people today are distracted by darkness, by problems in their own lives, by outrage and by drama. You do not need a soap opera anymore, he adds; the news has become one.
Then he names a surprising distraction: doing good. There is nothing wrong with doing good, but in Luke 10:38–42 Martha was so busy serving that she missed what mattered most. She cared more about making lunch than about sitting at the feet of Jesus and hearing Him. Even good works can pull us away from the main thing.
His charge to believers and unbelievers alike is direct: in this season you have to wage war against anything and everything that would distract you from Christ and the Word of God. Isaiah 55:6–7 says, “Seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near,” and promises that He will abundantly pardon. However distracted we have been, we can come back and sit at His feet again.
The Word, he says, is a river of life. It washes us, the washing of water by the Word (Ephesians 5:26), cleansing us from the corruption of the world and from what he calls an epidemic of misery, fear and tragedy. No matter how much pressure is put on the church, we can still call on the name of the Lord, and He will be found.
When Good Is Called Evil
As a boy, the speaker heard that a day would come when good would be called evil and evil good (Isaiah 5:20). It seemed impossible to him then. Good was always good and evil always evil, like the good guy in the white hat and the bad guy in the black hat. Now, he says, he sees ideas that once would have been unthinkable presented as normal and taught to children.
He insists that real love never destroys another person, and that anything which does is not love at all. He also rejects any message that tells people they can never be free of guilt and must pay for it the rest of their lives. That, he says, sounds demonic, because Jesus says it does not matter what our sin is; He has redeemed us and given us life. There is redemption in Jesus Christ.
Behind much of the confusion, he teaches, is fear. “Power corrupts a few by greed but it’s weakness in people that corrupts the masses through fear.” Jesus came to destroy him who had the power of death and to release those who were subject to bondage through fear all their lifetime (Hebrews 2:14–15). Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18), and God, who is love, does not want His people intimidated by lies and deception.
He describes the present moment as being like sitting in a class on how to corrupt and oppress a people and hold them back from their dreams, goals and prosperity. But God has never withheld His promise. He is not a man that He should lie; what He has said He will do (Numbers 23:19). Today is the day to stop listening to the voices that bring confusion and fear, and to return to Jesus. Now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2).
Comfort in Eternity Begins Now
Giving your life to Jesus, the speaker says, does not remove you from this present corrupted world. It means you are “nestled within a sphere of god and his eternal word.” Some people think eternity is just a day in the future, but when you give your life to Jesus, His Word brings eternity into your life now.
Jesus said heaven and earth will pass away, but His words will by no means pass away (Matthew 24:35). His Word is eternal, so when we respond to it, eternity comes in. All of time was corrupted by Adam’s fall, but Jesus, who created time, invested Himself in time to bring us into eternity. God sent His Word and healed them (Psalm 107:20), and in the beginning was the Word, through whom all things were made (John 1:1–3).
The heart of the message is John 17:1–3, the opening of what the speaker calls Jesus’ high priestly prayer. The Father has given the Son authority to give eternal life to all He has given Him, “and this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” To know the true and living God is eternal life. It is not a someday; it is now.
That is the comfort in eternity. “Eternity starts when you believe in jesus,” he says. Even though we are in this world, we are no longer of it. We are born again, new creations in Christ. He compares the body to a suit God gave us to move within this corrupted world, dealing with gravity and with one another. One day even that suit will change, because this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality (1 Corinthians 15:53).
He adds that when people say the kingdom is here or there, Jesus tells us not to go, because the kingdom is within you (Luke 17:20–21). Eternity lives within a believer’s own life, and we can draw comfort from what He has put inside us. Living “to get to heaven one day,” he says, is a religious ideology. The reality is that we live for eternity now by saying yes to what God says, not by demanding that He perform for us or else.
In the World, a Chosen Generation
In John 17:15–17, Jesus prays, “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one,” and asks the Father to sanctify them by His truth, because His Word is truth. The speaker explains that Jesus is asking the Father to set His people apart for His use and empower them by truth to rise above the corruption of this world.
His picture is a fish. A dead fish floats downstream with the sticks and debris. A living fish swims upstream to the place of growth, health and prosperity. The Word of God is what makes believers strong in the Lord and the power of His might, so they do not simply drift with the age.
He tells the congregation that they are honored and privileged, because God chose them for this time and this place, wherever they are listening from. God’s people are responsible to stand for truth, not to back away from it. Jesus said in Matthew 5:11–12 that we are blessed when people revile and persecute us for His sake, because great is our reward in heaven. There will be pressure to fit in, but believers are a peculiar people, precious in God’s sight.
1 Peter 2:6–10 calls Jesus the chief cornerstone, precious to those who believe but a stone of stumbling to those who are disobedient to the Word. The speaker says people become offended because they refuse to believe what God says. But to believers Peter writes, “You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people.”
The Greek word behind “generation,” he teaches, is genos, and he describes it as a new gene pool in this world. Believers are new creations that never existed before. The Spirit of God fills them, the love of God holds them, the peace of God flows through them and the grace of God empowers them as children of the Most High.
The Rich Man and Lazarus
To show what is at stake, the speaker turns to Luke 16:19–31. A rich man lived behind his gate, while a sick beggar named Lazarus lay outside, hoping for crumbs from his table. The beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died, and he lifted up his eyes in torment. The speaker draws several lessons from the account.
| What the account shows | How the speaker applies it |
|---|---|
| There is life after death | We pass into a conscious eternity immediately; there is no soul sleep |
| Only two destinations | A place of torment, or a place of comfort through the righteousness God gives |
| A great gulf is fixed | No limbo, no purgatory, no second chance and no coming back as something else |
| Torment of mind as well as body | The rich man suffers in the flame and grieves for his five brothers |
| “They have Moses and the prophets” | God’s Word is the witness everyone needs, more persuasive than a miracle |
The speaker notes that Abraham’s bosom was a place of comfort, located in the heart of the earth in the same region as the place of the ungodly, with a gulf fixed between. The rich man begged for Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool his tongue, but Abraham said no one could cross from one side to the other. Then he pleaded for someone to warn his five brothers.
Abraham’s answer is the point: “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” And if they will not hear them, they will not be persuaded even if one rises from the dead. The Word of God is not only for Christians, the speaker says; everyone God created is meant to live by it.
He remembers a man he met when he first came to Merrill, who said he would wait until the terrible end-time days, when people will seek death and not find it (Revelation 9:6), and give his life to the Lord then. “No you won’t,” the speaker told him, because then it would be too late. Hell, he explains, is torment not only in body but in thought, emotion, will and purpose, simply because a person would not trust Jesus. The gospel is the power of God to salvation (Romans 1:16), and the fact that our hearts long for something this earth cannot supply shows that heaven is our home.
Arise and Shine: Today Is the Day
The speaker says many people sense an uncomfortableness in this season. For Christians, he believes, it is because God is preparing to do something great in their lives. Isaiah 60:1–2 says, “Arise, shine; for your light has come!” Darkness will cover the earth, but the Lord will arise over His people and His glory will be seen upon them. For those who do not know Jesus, he says, that same uneasiness is a call to step out of fear and say yes to Him.
1 John 2:15–17 warns not to love the world or the things in it, because the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life are passing away, but “he who does the will of God abides forever.” When you give up your will for His, the speaker says, eternity fills your heart and this world becomes a place you are passing through. Jesus gave Himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age (Galatians 1:4), so believers do not have to be troubled by the times.
Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength and mount up with wings like eagles (Isaiah 40:31). The corruption of the world, he says, will have no part in them even while they live in it.
How do you know if God is drawing you? The speaker compares it to fishing. You cannot see, hear or smell the fish, but you feel the tug on the line. In the same way you feel a tug in your heart, and God is saying come. One of the last verses in the Bible says, “the Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!'” (Revelation 22:17).
He invites people to raise their hands publicly, because Jesus said He will confess before the Father those who confess Him before men (Matthew 10:32–33). He then leads a prayer asking forgiveness, receiving Jesus as Lord and Savior, asking God to keep the world from distracting them any longer, and asking to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Living in the Light of Eternity
Here are practical steps drawn from this message on comfort in eternity:
- Audit what you magnify. Notice which voices shape your mood each day, and turn down the ones that leave you heavy and afraid.
- Choose Mary’s place. Before you serve, sit at Jesus’ feet and hear His Word, as Luke 10 describes.
- Let the Word wash you. Read Scripture daily so it cleanses away the fear and misery the world pours in.
- Live eternity now. Pray John 17:3 and spend time getting to know God, since knowing Him is eternal life.
- Stand where you are planted. Accept that God chose you for this time and place, and stand for truth with love.
- Answer the tug. If you sense God drawing you, do not wait for a better moment; today is the day of salvation.
Timestamped Outline
- 0:00 Welcome at the fairgrounds; the title
- 1:11 Chronic distraction and a Babylonian spirit
- 2:29 Distracted by darkness, outrage and drama
- 3:42 Martha and Isaiah 55: seek the Lord
- 4:54 Washed by the Word; good called evil
- 7:17 Redemption, fear and perfect love
- 11:34 God will perform His Word; today is the day
- 12:58 His Word brings eternity into your life
- 14:12 John 17: keep them from the evil one
- 15:18 Living now in light of eternity
- 16:26 This is eternal life: to know God
- 17:34 The kingdom within; chosen for this time
- 18:50 Matthew 5: blessed when persecuted
- 21:23 1 Peter 2: a chosen generation
- 22:35 Luke 16: the rich man and Lazarus
- 25:08 Abraham’s bosom and the great gulf
- 26:28 They have Moses and the prophets
- 27:34 The man who wanted to wait
- 30:04 Isaiah 60 and 1 John 2: arise, shine
- 32:29 Feeling the tug on the line
- 34:25 Prayer of salvation
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the speaker say Christians should ignore what is happening in the world?
No. He does not tell believers to withdraw. He points to John 17, where Jesus asks the Father not to take His people out of the world but to keep them from the evil one and sanctify them by truth. His concern is what we magnify. Believers live in this world, stand for truth in it and even face persecution, but they refuse to let fear-driven voices dictate their emotional and spiritual health.
Is there a second chance after death?
According to the speaker’s reading of Luke 16, no. He teaches that the account shows a conscious eternity immediately after death, only two destinations, and a great gulf fixed between them. He rules out soul sleep, limbo, purgatory and reincarnation. That is why he urges people not to put off receiving Jesus, as the man he met in Merrill planned to do.
How can I tell if God is drawing me?
The speaker uses a fishing picture. You cannot see the fish under the water, but you feel the tug on your line and know it is there. In the same way, you may feel an impression or pull in your heart, and that is God saying come. He encourages anyone who feels that tug to respond today and to confess Jesus openly.
Scripture References
All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:
- John 17:1–3 — this is eternal life
- John 17:15–17 — sanctify them by Your truth
- Luke 10:38–42 — Martha and Mary
- Isaiah 55:6–7 — seek the Lord while He may be found
- Matthew 5:11–12 — blessed when persecuted
- 1 Peter 2:6–10 — a chosen generation
- Luke 16:19–31 — the rich man and Lazarus
- Isaiah 60:1–2 — arise, shine
- 1 John 2:15–17 — he who does the will of God abides forever
How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.
Watch More Messages
If this message brought you comfort, there are hundreds more teachings from NTC Ministries waiting for you. Browse the full sermon archive and keep living in the light of eternity.
