Our Journey of Faith – Pt. 4

Ron Weinland

Nov. 21, 2009

Today, we’re going on with Part 4 of Our Journey of Faith.  We’re going to continue in this series and it’s going to be a rather long series from the looks of it which I’m always thankful for because I know exactly where it’s going; but it’s really exciting going back and looking at some of the history, where we’ve been...especially when you begin to put everything together like we’re doing in this series; especially beginning today in some of the things we’re going to go into because it shows what God’s been doing with us, how He’s been moulding and fashioning us, how He’s been leading us in things that we didn’t really know at the time of what was being worked out and you can go back and look at those things sometimes and understand then what God is doing with us, how He’s working with us, how He’s brought certain things to pass.  But at the time we really didn’t know.  We just followed by faith, our journey of faith like we’re doing right now.  There are things we’re doing where we’re following God in faith not knowing exactly why certain things are going the way they are at this moment in time.  Later on, we’re able to look back and understand perfectly what God has been doing and why He’s been doing it as He reveals these things to us in time.

Today, we don’t really need much review, but as a reminder last Sabbath I covered how Herbert W. Armstrong was an apostle of God, which in the Greek language means ‘one who is sent, one who is sent as a messenger’.  God has a specific message for that time or for His people that He has given to an apostle and so again, it carries the meaning of that.  We looked at scriptures that talked about how Jesus Christ is referred to as an apostle as well.  Of course He was ‘That Prophet’, the prophet spoken of by Moses that’s recorded in the book of Acts and all the other titles of course that Jesus Christ has, the Messiah and so forth.  But brought those things out to show that He was to proclaim what His job was, what His responsibility was.  He revealed to people that He was The Messiah.  He revealed to people that He was indeed one sent from God.  He had a message to proclaim and God told Him to do so.  Apostles were to tell what their job was and the reason I’m mentioning some of these things; because in the beginning when I started mentioning that I was a prophet, even within the body, within the Church some people were questioning: “Why do you have to tell people that you’re a prophet.  Shouldn’t God make that clear?  Shouldn’t God reveal that and you not have to say a thing about it.”  No, that’s not the case.  Prophets were sent and they were told when they were sent that they were to tell people they were prophets sent from God; that this was their job, and this was the message they were to deliver.  Same thing with apostles; they had a message to give.  Just like last week where Peter was sent out to different ones who were scattered in various areas and He told them right in the very beginning he was an apostle sent from God.  Paul always told people, the Gentiles, that he was an apostle sent by God.  That’s how he starts his letters, showing the authority that goes with the message that’s going to follow.

And so again, last Sabbath then as a part of those things that God has given me at this time to talk about, I spoke how that I am not just a prophet, I am also an apostle, explaining some of that whereas a few weeks before I’d given a sermon fully believing that I was not an apostle, that Mr. Armstrong was the last apostle.  I’ve believed that for years.  But God has shown that this is a time to talk about some of those things, to reveal that, “No, you’re an apostle as well.”  And being John’s counterpart, if you go back and read some of the things about the apostle John; John was also a prophet and being his counterpart, because of the things written in I John and so forth and the book of John and Revelation; being his counterpart in those things in that respect, I am both an apostle and a prophet just as John was.

And this has brought up a question then: Well, what about the job?  What about the responsibilities?  Some have wondered, “Well, what’s the difference between an apostle and a prophet and why the distinction?”  So I thought it’d be good to go back in the beginning here today just to mention this, Ephesians 2, and read this.  Talking about Jesus Christ first of all here and picking it up in verse 16 - And that He might reconcile both unto God, speaking of Jew and Gentile. It’s going through and discussing something very explicit here about what was going to be accomplished in and through Jesus Christ, both unto God in one body by the stake, the ‘stauros’ in the Greek.  So again, talking about how He was killed and it says, having slain the enmity thereby/therewith:  by what He went through, making both one and that being done through Jesus Christ because of the ability to be forgiven of sin, the ability to be of one mind with God through the power of God’s spirit that comes through Jesus Christ.  And then it goes on to say, speaking of Christ; And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them which were near.   So again here, that which was to continue on in time which is prophetic in part of itself.

It’s telling about a part of His job to preach to those who were near, speaking of the tribe of Judah, the Jewish people that still had things about the Sabbath and the Holy Days.  They didn’t have the truths of God; they weren’t given God’s spirit; they weren’t being brought to salvation yet, but it’s talking about – to those who are going to be preached to, to the Jew first – because that’s where the Church began in 31 AD, it began to go out to the Jewish people and then after that it began to go to the Gentiles, those who were afar off, those who didn’t have any knowledge, in essence, of things of Judaism, that they had as far as the Old Testament was concerned.

It goes on to say, verse 18 - For through Him, through Jesus Christ, we both have access by one spirit unto the Father.  So, something unique that Paul was teaching always to the Gentiles.  He was an apostle to the Gentiles as we read last Sabbath and he told them that as well; but that was his job that God gave him specifically here.  He’s making it clear here that everyone, through one spirit – God’s spirit, through the same calling, have the ability to go before God the Father through Jesus Christ because of the blessing of the forgiveness of sin.

Paul is restating some of these things, clarifying them.  He says, Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, with those that God has called.  And that’s an awesome thing to understand as well.  We continually talk about this.  I continually talk about this process of how God brings us into a fellowship, into a family and it’s unique because it’s filled with God’s spirit.  Everyone has been drawn and called by God’s spirit and that’s the bond we have; not something physical, not something of human relationships, but far more than that: it’s God’s spirit.  And by being able to visit with people, to talk with people who have the same mind, who have the same understanding of things and that are drawn in the same way – it’s a powerful thing because of the uniqueness of the oneness of God’s spirit and that’s what makes us a unique family...something you can recognize very quickly, very early on.  And that’s what he’s talking about, this special fellowship we have.  So we’re now, fellow citizens with the saints, those whom God has called, and of the household of God; making it very clear because this is God’s household, this is something that God is building.  It’s God’s family and that’s what makes it unique.

And he goes on to say, And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, that’s why I went through that series a few months back now, going through and showing that this is the only way that God has revealed truth to His people, through the prophets and through the apostles.  That’s the way God works – no other way within the body...not evangelists, not pastors, not preachers, not elders – that isn’t the way God works: not members, not people outside the Church.  In times past there were some ministers who went to people outside the Church because they’ve written commentaries, or because they had a Jewish background, to use them as authorities for the Church.  And you think, why do something like that?  They’re not even God’s people.  They don’t have the truth and God doesn’t reveal the truth that way to the Church.  He does it through the power of His spirit – that works through a process of government, through a process that God helps people to see – this is how I work, this is how I lead and guide and direct you.  And so God has always done this through time, as a whole, even through the Old Testament, over and over again.

But there is that which is given through prophets and apostles that is usually different, because the job of a prophet is distinct from a job of an apostle and vice versa.  There are only a few times that they have been combined – candidly I know of only two primary times of when they’ve been combined – that was the apostle John and that’s now as well.  Let me go on here where it says and being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, that’s how God says we’re built.  That’s how He’s building the Church, the body of Christ, the Church of God; that’s an awesome thing to understand; by what He reveals through prophets and through apostles.  And it says, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone; that’s why He carries so many more titles.  But He also has the title of apostle, of a prophet, of Messiah and on and on it goes.  And He is the chief cornerstone of the entirety of the building.  Everything is built upon Him, but then God the Father draws certain ones to serve in a specific capacity, through Jesus Christ to the Church.  So we serve Jesus Christ; we serve God the Father...all of us do.  But it says He is the chief cornerstone, speaking of Christ, in whom all the building, the whole Church – Mt. Zion... that’s how it’s built, the construction that God is doing is done in this fashion, in this manner: in whom all the building fitly framed together grows unto a holy temple in the Lord: I love the expression there because you can’t do it outside the Lord.  You have to be in the Lord, you have to be in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ has to be in you, dwelling in you or you can’t be a part of that construction.  It ceases just like what happened to the scattered body.  The Church was scattered; there are people out there that are going to be awakened some time in the future, but right now they’re not a part of the construction that’s going on – they’re just waiting – and once that starts again and that life of God begins living in them again, that’s when He’s working in them to mould and fashion to fit into the body somewhere, to the temple.

...fitly framed together grows unto a holy temple in the Lord: In whom you also are built together for a habitation of God through the spirit.  Beautiful scriptures because it’s saying you are being made/built as a habitation for God to dwell in, and that’s what God does...He moulds and fashions us.  What we have to do is yield ourselves to the process.  We make the choice; He gives us the choice, to yield ourselves to that process.  We desire it, not only desire it, we want it, not only wanting it we cry out to God for it, we ask of Him for blessings of being able to be forgiven of our sins so He’ll continue living, dwelling and coming within our life through the power of His holy spirit.

And so going back again through the matter of apostles and prophets... that’s how we’re built because God gives specific things.  Through apostles it has been primarily a matter of doctrine.  Not doctrine through prophets as a whole – prophecy comes through a prophet.  That’s what it’s about.  Doctrine as a whole has come through apostles.  In other words, if you go back in time and you look at the original apostles, you go and look at all that they wrote – what Paul wrote, what the other apostles wrote, what John wrote, what Peter wrote – all the books, you put them all together and you see doctrine in a very powerful way that God delivered to the Church.  That doctrine then is how we’re built upon that which was given.  Before that, in the Old Testament, there wasn’t near the knowledge nor the understanding of God’s plan and purpose until God established the Church.  And then you start reading things in the book of Acts, and then Romans, and you go on with what God gave to Paul and other apostles and so forth to write, and God began building the Church then upon those things that He revealed nearly 2000 years ago.  But people didn’t have that knowledge; Abraham didn’t have that knowledge.  He didn’t know the things the apostles gave to the Church.  God worked with him in a very unique way, as He did with Moses, as He did with other prophets in times past and different people that He called: with David.  God worked with him in a very unique way but a tremendous amount was added later on – after the time of Christ.  All the things that Christ taught, all the doctrine that came through Him, they had never heard anything like it.  The apostles, when they were still disciples in the early stages and God was teaching them – all the things He was teaching them they didn’t understand, they didn’t get it.  It’s amazing.  And then on the Day of Pentecost, all of a sudden all those things that Christ had been teaching now had spiritual meaning to it; now it wasn’t just taken in a physical way, it was able to be taken in in a spiritual way and all because of God’s spirit.  Very powerful thing that took place in the Church then; and so that’s how we learn and that’s how we grow, but in the beginning so often their reaction was one that was physical because they couldn’t get it.  God gave them a little bit at a time, but not the whole thing.  But so much doctrine is given in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John of things that were given to Jesus Christ to give for later on – not for right then, but for later on.  He wrote in parables so that people wouldn’t understand Him, they couldn’t understand Him fully.  It wasn’t time for them to even have the knowledge in the world.  And then God began revealing those things in a greater way through the apostles giving the knowledge, but people still going into the Bible... look at all the religions that have come out of this.  Look at all the ideas that have come out of Romans and Corinthians and all the way through the Bible.  Incredible what’s taken place through time because people read into it their own understanding on a physical plane.  They think certain things are spiritual, but they are not.  Only in God’s Church is the truth able to be seen and all of the doctrine being given that was given to the apostles.

Now...if you understand the history of the Church, you know what happened in time.  We came to a period of time toward the end of the 1800’s especially, on into the 1900’s when everything was dying out and the reason it was dying out in a very big way was because of Protestantism, because of the printing press, because of the ability for people to have their own Bibles.  In the beginning it wasn’t so.  Back in the 1500’s, 1600’s some of those things began, but not everybody in their house had a Bible; but finally in time, with the ability of faster travel and technology beginning to come on the scene and especially because of the printing press being able to mass produce literature, knowledge began to flourish more and because of that so did false churches.  And because of that wide spread ability to deceive, to send out things of different ideas and beliefs, it began to take a toll on the Church, it began to cause problems within God’s Church and it became weaker and weaker and weaker until it came to a point in time where God says, ‘You are dead.’  He told the Sardis Church in scripture ‘you are dead and what you have is dying.’  Three doctrines left by the time Mr. Armstrong came on the scene – awesome to understand our history!  The Sabbath, the name of the Church: The Church of God, not any other church – not Luther’s church, not a Catholic church, not that kind of a system, on and on it goes... it’s God’s Church.  They still had the name and they had tithing and the Sabbath.  That was it; and so God began to restore truth then to the Church that the Church had lost and began to give doctrine again through Mr. Armstrong and not only doctrine that was given to the earlier disciples and apostles, but even more.  God gave Mr. Armstrong more because of his 50 years of working with and moulding and fashioning him: by the time he wrote ‘Mystery of the Ages’, there are some things in there we understand now, because of an understanding about Jesus Christ not eternally existing.  Those changes have taken place, but understanding the plan of God, and putting it all together in a single book – that is a powerful book.  It’s awesome what God brought him to at that point in time to be able to publish and to print.  There’s more knowledge in that book than what the apostles had.  There are things in that book that Paul never understood, that Peter never understood, that John never understood – that God gave then to Mr. Armstrong.  Mr. Armstrong came to understand in time he was an apostle because of doctrine that was given to the Church – the Church is built upon the truth, the doctrine of God, that’s why it says, ‘upon the apostles and prophets.’

What makes a prophet different than an apostle – prophecy.  Some things of doctrine were given to Mr. Armstrong having to do with prophecy, but his purpose was not one of prophecy, not one of prophesying or giving things in that manner or even revealing more than had to do with doctrine because there was a framework that had to be given to show who God’s people are, who God has worked with through time – even physically.  What happened to the Israelites, where the Israelites were taken, what happened then in the migrations of peoples in the earth and also then through that process of showing what was going to happen toward the end-time about a final revival of the Holy Roman Empire one more time, and what would happen in Europe.  Those basics were given to Mr. Armstrong as a matter of doctrine more than a matter of prophecy.  We understand them as a matter of prophecy, but if you look at the things that were given prophetically out of Revelation – they didn’t fit.  The first 4 Seals were not about physical tribulation on the Earth.  It wasn’t given then because the job wasn’t one of a prophet and it wasn’t given to the Church, matters of prophecy above and beyond what was a matter of doctrine if you understand what I’m saying.  Prophecy is totally different – okay?  And so again, I’ll go through some of this story as we go along here but the process whereby God began to reveal to me that He was working with me on that plane, of a prophet – I didn’t understand it was one of apostle as well till a few weeks ago, but God also revealed doctrine – has added to things that have not been understood, that have not been understood by Philadelphia: matters of doctrine.  If you want to take the big one that was given in 2005, that was big: what God gave to the Church about Jesus Christ not eternally existing.  That hadn’t been given to the Church yet, that hadn’t been restored to the Church yet because the trinity still had an effect upon the Church – see?  And so, things about I John, if you want to look at I John, it’s amazing to me now as I look back at some of this and I realize what God has given about Jesus Christ coming in the flesh – that’s a major doctrine.  To understand how you’re able to be a part of the body of Christ, to understand what anti-Christ means...because there are many in the Church who never comprehended in any fashion or form during Philadelphia what anti-Christ was all about.

Do you know what anti-Christ was taught as in the past as a whole?  Same as the world, same as the protestant world: somebody that’s going to come up at the end, somebody out of Italy...he’s going to be the anti-Christ.  No!  He’s never been called into the Church. He can’t reject God because he’s never known God.  They are what they are – those in the world.  They don’t have understanding so they can’t fit into the category of what John explained is a matter of rejecting God’s spirit living in your life – he’s never been given that opportunity.  An incredible doctrine if you understand it.

If you go back through some of the 50 Truths, and you see the ones after Mr. Armstrong’s time, there are those in there that are a matter of doctrine and there are those in there that are a matter of prophecy.  And God builds us upon both of those because they both go along with our life, in that respect, of things we believe.

And so doctrine is a matter of something you grow in, the basics, that which is of the spirit, an understanding of that which is spiritual.

Prophecy has a lot to do with faith, what you live by.  We’re living by faith in a way that Philadelphia never had to.  We had to live by faith in Philadelphia too but not like this.  We knew that certain things were coming but not to the degree we know now because of what happened to the Church.  And then it was time for God to establish a prophet because of those things.

And so it’s an awesome thing if you can see the whole picture of what God has been doing.  I find it immensely inspiring because I haven’t known it until I’ve been able to look back – and even then God has to give me the vision, the ability to see what He did, as He does with all of us when He shows us truth.

I hope that clears things up a little bit for some who might wonder what the difference is between a prophet and an apostle, how they are used and how God describes that through time.

I think it’d be good if we go back a little bit and capture a some of what’s covered in

Matthew 24; so it’s easier to understand why God said that at the end that He would establish that there would be prophets... one primary prophet who would be a spokesman.  We understand an apostle, understanding the job that goes with that – why he is the spokesman and so forth and why God has established it that way and has given the things He has in the end, because this is the end; because prophetic things now happening that were given by all the prophets before.  If you go back and look at some of the prophets – so much of it has been about this time now, the end-time where we’re finally living in it, we’re going through it.

Matthew 24:21 – For then shall be great, or ‘megas’ as the word is in the Greek, mighty tribulation/great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time no nor ever shall be; and except those days should be shortened there should no flesh be saved.  But for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.  Now, God has taken us through different things at different times and one of the things He did with me and with the Church was to take us in kind of a whiplash fashion quickly away from a concept we had in the past concerning tribulation because everything in our minds in Matthew 24 was all physical.  Physical things that would happen at the end-time; physical things that would happen when Germany and Europe would arise again and the Holy Roman Empire and the end-time and that isn’t the case because later on when God began to re-establish us as His Church He began to reveal the first 4 Seals of Revelation are not about physical tribulation.  The beginning here as we go through Matthew 24 is not about physical tribulation, it’s about spiritual tribulation upon the Church of God and what would happen to us and what would happen as an example in verse 15 - when you therefore shall see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, (whoso read let him understand).  That’s the scripture that launched us into a new age.  Mr. Armstrong stopped at verse 14, about the gospel going out into all the world and then the end would come.  It wasn’t for his time. It was for our time.  And so, now those things have meaning for us, those verses that follow and talks about tribulation, those in the very beginning are specifically about the Church and they have nothing to do with the world.  There are some verses throughout Matthew that apply to the Church; there are some that are dual, that apply to the Church and the world; and there are some that apply to both, as we go through to the very end; because God’s always working with the Church.  He’s always moulding and fashioning the Church.  We’re first in God’s plan only in the context of what He’s doing with the Church.  He’s getting ready to call many more now into the Church, into the Age of the Church, because the Millennium is ‘The Age of the Church’.  It hasn’t been for the last 6000 years; the Church has been here on the earth but it hasn’t been God’s world.

Making it very clear here that it’s through the Church, because of the Church, that God is saving the world and that’s what these verses are about and even for the end-time, about a shorter period of time, a shortened period of time...it has more meaning to it – even physically for us now than what it did before – and God is revealing not only to the world through time, because they don’t understand it now, but even to us that if it didn’t go the way of exactly how God is doing it that there would be nothing left.  If ‘great’ physical tribulation had started on day 1260, man couldn’t make it through – if it went its normal course – truly.  Man could not survive on this earth – there would be too much as far as nuclear war is concerned and God is bringing it right down to the wire where there will not be any more than has to be there – but there has to be enough to accomplish exactly what He says is going to take place on the earth.  And that’s an awesome thing to know that God has such power and might to work with human beings on a massive scale throughout the world; to work with world events in the way that He does – to bring it right up to the very day of Megiddo, to the very last day to do the things He’s going to do when He pours out the 7 last Plagues.  An awesome thing to understand the might and the power of God Almighty and He will do exactly what He said He would do.  And that’s faith.  See, I believe that with all my being and I know you do.  We live our lives accordingly.

God has brought us back to a balance because He took us totally away from looking at any of that physically, to see only the Church in it, and now we have been brought back – brought back to a balance in that there is the Church AND the world involved in the things He’s saying here...to give us a full balance because we candidly didn’t have it; and we haven’t had it through time.  So again, God has revealed that all this is dual, both for the Church and the world and the previous verses, again, up to this point in time of verse 21 and 22 reveal some of that and then of course what follows...and I want to follow on here now.

Notice; verse 27 – awesome scriptures!  For as the lightning comes out of the east, and shines into the west; so shall the coming of the Son of man be.  Christ is setting the stage here and He’s saying, “Look, there are those things that have to do with the return of Christ and there’s that which happens in a storm concerning lightning and it shines from the east to the west and when you see it you know what to look for and He’s saying here that there are things you can know what to look for concerning the return of Jesus Christ – that we can see as much as lightning in the sky.  You can easily see something in the distance when you see lightning and its night time; you can see a storm coming from a long way.  You don’t have to see the clouds because it’s dark - you can’t: but you see the lightning and you see a storm coming.  And He’s giving an analogy here; there’s something you can see.  Now, who can see?  The Church.  The world can’t as a whole.  In time they’re going to begin to see some more things because of what happens physically, but for right now and as a whole, it’s still about the Church and what we can see.  That’s why it goes on in the next verse and gives what it gives...

For/therefore, how the word is used in the Greek language, wherever the carcass is, there’s what you can see, there will the eagles/the vultures be gathered together.  Wherever the body is.  It uses something here in a very negative term in the sense of something we see in the world and nature; a dead carcass and vultures, that’s where they go.  They’re not around the live ones, that which is in the world around them, but for us that analogy is given – wherever the vultures are gathered together, there’s where you’re going to find the Church.  It’s awesome to understand why things are happening the way they are, even at the end-time here.  Now that might not mean as much to you as it does to me; but when your name is out there like mine is, used as badly as it is in so many places, it means a lot to me because there are a lot of vultures out there, mockers, people who have had a bad experience in the past in the sense of their attitude and their response to God and the Church and being put out of the Church because of their sins; and they’re the ones out there who attack the Church – the people who have hatred towards God, toward God’s ministry, towards the Church; because of things that have happened in their past where they have rebelled against God.  And they can’t accept that.  They’re justified in their own minds for what they did back then, even back in the 80’s when Mr. Armstrong was here and now who do you pick on?  Well, they’re led to where the Church is... that’s what it’s talking about.  They’re led to what they see as the carcass, that which they can pick on and tear apart and rip apart and try to destroy but they can’t – amazing!

And going on than in verse 29: these things aren’t happening in other groups like this to this degree – not at all!  There are people that loathe us with an incredible loathing because of things that are said.  They hate what God has to say.  They hate the truth!  You tell the truth; you tell people what’s going to happen – man has never liked it.  The Israelites, the Jewish people, as a whole, they never liked it when a prophet was sent around.  “You know, why are you back here, you only bring bad news!  You never bring us good news!”  And then a desire to kill them.  Think of Elijah.  We’re going to have a sermon on that before long going through some of those things, because there are analogies that apply to this time, and even in the book that are brought out there of things that he went through on a physical plane that happened on a spiritual plane as well – but incredible what he went through and how that after all the things he’d done at times they were still out to kill him.  Jezebel didn’t give up; always pursuing him, wanting to destroy him: hated what he was doing, hated what he had to say, hated everything about him, hated everything about God.  You tell people certain churches are wrong… Some in the scattered church feel it’s okay if you say that about churches in the world, unless of course you’re in the world.  But when it’s the scattered church and you say things about different groups and what they’re doing and what they’ve done wrong – ah, the whiplash is pretty strong and so there’s a lot of that out there as well.

Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven shall be shaken:  So it leads up to a time and it says, “These things are going to come to pass.  These things are going to happen in the world in a very powerful way.”  And then... leading us all the way up to the end.  We can better understand some things, why some things aren’t going to happen till later on.  And then God says they’ll happen quickly.  It won’t be 3 ½ years of it, 2 ½ years of it – a lot less... and when it happens God says it’s going to happen quickly, swiftly and powerfully on the earth. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

There are so many things that man can’t even begin to comprehend and I feel for people when they try to understand things in scripture, things in Revelation: when people try and understand what’s written in the 5th Seal, or the 6th Seal – because it’s like it jumps ahead and it comes back... how can you jump clear to the end and then come back in time – and they don’t understand that.  They don’t understand that God has given some things like 9/11 as a prelude, prophetically so of something that will happen later on and so just as with that particular Seal, that it wasn’t about it happening then.  It can’t happen till later on: the 7th Seal and all the things that are described then, but it’s a prelude to what’s coming.  It’s symbolic; prophetically of what’s coming – Washington, the economy, Wall Street – you know?  ...the prosperity of a nation, all those things that were pictured in one day – powerful what took place.  But people can’t understand those things; only those with God’s spirit can understand what God is giving.  And so much of prophecy is written that way, and I’ll just tell you, so much of what’s written in the second book is also written that way. I go back now and I look at certain things that are written and I understand things in a way that I didn’t understand before because some of it is in prophetic language and you have to be very careful that you’re not trying to interpret it by your own means, by what you see physically...because I’ll just tell you, a lot of people have made a lot of errors doing exactly that.  You can’t do that because there is that which is still written there that is still prophetic in nature and everything said will come to pass.  Maybe not the way some people come to read it or think it or interpret it at the time, but when the time comes, it will happen exactly the way God said it will happen – see?

Verse 31 - and He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.  We know when that happens: on the last day.  Right up to the last day of the 1260 days, right up to the end of 980 days (because they’re all the same period of time – it comes to the same day) right when Pentecost begins: at that very moment, that’s when this happens here; God gathers together the elect, every one of the 144,000 are brought together and resurrected.

So again, tribulation is described as being about the Church; it’s also described as being about the world and it leads into things at the very end-time and the Church and the world are together toward the end here.  I think of some of the things written in some of the books – even in ‘2008’ as I mentioned here, ‘God’s Final Witness’ – it’s what I would term some of it as prophetic language, not literal.  There are some things that...just like in the book of Revelation, that in time become clearer, but it’s not for a specific moment.  It’s not meant always to be easily understood.  God hasn’t written everything to be easily understood by everyone because we still live by faith.  He’s still working with the Church and that’s why there are people out here that can be called and drawn, whomever He desires.  As He brings them to the Church, you know what?  They understand and see these things.  They understand the 50th Truth.  It’s clear to them.  They understand the alteration of time there and what God revealed about returning on Pentecost and not Trumpets; a change from 2011 close to the middle part to 2012.  They understand; that’s not a hard thing for them, they accept it for what they read.  They see it, just like you read the book of Acts.  It’s always inspiring to my wife and myself that people can read things, like the book of Acts and know it’s true... see it as a truth.  They can read this and see its true, by things that are happening in the world.  But sometimes when you live through it you experience different things, you have different desires; we have different interpretations and especially if you go back in time with those who were a part of the body long before.  We have a lot of different interpretations that God in time here has had to mould and fashion and correct and change because we had a lot of different thinking back in Philadelphia during that age.

Even some of you have entertained doubt about what has been said in interviews, or has been written, and again, granted, there have been some things that have changed somewhat because of the timing and a result of the 50th Truth which I’ve explained in times past and I don’t think everyone always has grasped and understood some of the things that I’ve said in some of those sermons.  But anyway, that’s okay as long as we continue to go forward and seek to understand and ask God for help to understand because God has to give it.  I can’t give this to anyone. It is always about your own relationship between you and God, it truly is, and that’s how He works with us.  But I just want to reiterate here that all that is written, that’s prophetic, is true.  It’s true – every bit of it.  I’ve heard some make comments – they can go back and look and say, “Well...” You have to be careful of your thoughts and what you entertain and understand that God will make it clear in time.  God will reveal things in His time.  And you have to be careful you don’t lump some of these things into a belief or a mistake that, “well, he’s only human.”  This isn’t about me.  This is not about me.  This is about God.  This is about what God gives, what God has given; what God gives to the Church.

And so again there are two ways of looking at things sometimes which I’ve found to be a blessing to me in times past that God gave very early on.  As I was going through college and things/battles that were out here... sometimes we don’t instantly always understand something or see something, and yet in time... because you know it’s the truth, you look for the truth, you search for the truth.  What is the truth in this?  How does the hand fit in the glove to where it fits perfectly.  Not where does it not fit, why is it not fitting...  Sometimes there are two different kinds of mindsets and we have to be careful of that because I saw that in the Church through time; of how sometimes people would pick up on something Mr. Armstrong would say and would take it in a physical way if you will or jump to a conclusion rashly and quickly so without saying, “I must give it time.  I must pray about it.  If I know that this is God’s Church, and that’s God’s apostle, then I have to pray about it in the vein...Father help me to see and understand what You’re giving to the Church.”  Not listening to other people out here and what they were saying because if you go back in time to when Mr. Armstrong was alive, back in the 70’s, back in the 80’s; I never knew a time that there weren’t people out here bashing him and what he had to say,  even in sermons.  I remember one occasion where I used to ride with a family about a hundred miles away to go to Sabbath services and I’d ride back and forth with them and after the sermon, you know, there was this term that was used in the Church: roast minister.  And that’s all I ever had – the diet – of a mother and father in the front of the car who were talking about the things they heard in sermons, or the things they heard about Mr. Armstrong and what he’d said, and they’d tear it apart!  Blew my mind!  I didn’t understand it.  I was quite young – I hadn’t gone to college yet, hadn’t been to Ambassador yet and I was new in the Church and yet I knew it wasn’t right, it isn’t a right spirit, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

Over and over again ...I remember the occasion in this one Church area that I was in where Mr. Armstrong had a desire, as he likened it somewhat to King David who had a desire for the temple of God to be built, to build something physical in Jerusalem, and Mr. Armstrong had this desire to build what was called the ‘house of God’, the ‘house for God’ where the Church there at headquarters could come together in a location here of architecture that was beautiful, of something that was a little more elaborate in its building – not just something ordinary and plain.  That’s something I’ve always appreciated about Mr. Armstrong. He taught quality.  Everything is God’s, but there’s quality in life.  I don’t care what it is.  Things of quality.  How many of you have heard Mr. Armstrong talk about quality?  Some of you that have been around for a long time, you know what I mean.  I don’t care what it’s in.  We get what we pay for.  But he emphasised this concept of quality and you could see it in Ambassador College; but people criticised him for that.  They tore him apart for that because quality costs more.  But it’s all God’s.  It was the appreciation of something better.  It’s just like workmanship today – that’s why I love things I see in Europe and different areas of the world when I see architecture and the work that went into it – hard work!  The workmanship, the craftsmanship of things as a whole today – you don’t see it.  There are things of art, things that are lost out here as far as the ability to do it.  Things like thatched roofs that were common at one time throughout Great Britain and over here as well.  That’s kind of an art; in many places it’s been lost.  It costs a whole lot more to build something like that and the people that do it... but they’re beautiful!  They’re unique!  I love them!  It’s amazing when I see something of that quality and the work that went into it – when I see things in stone and the ability of masons and some of the things they put together; I am truly in awe oftentimes of things that I see.  We went through a town here the other day, 150,000 - 160,000 people where Willem was born and grew up.  Some of the architecture was beautiful there and the work of the masons.  I appreciate things like that because I’ve done things in building and I know what it’s like when you see something that takes more time and more effort that is put into it.  Quality!  It lasts longer, it’s better.  And the things that God is building in us – it’s a matter of quality.  It’s not something just to get by, you know, like Laodicea was.

Laodicea was the attitude of just getting by and just doing the minimum and kind of lukewarm and forget about the quality of life!  Through the 70’s and the 80’s... but those that continue to go forward and had, you know, if you’re asking God for help to understand and see things you know what?  (Snap, snap, snap)  God was always there.  It might not be instant, but in time God would show you where you didn’t understand.  He would give you the understanding so you could appreciate what was being said and therein was the life and the excitement of what God gave to Mr. Armstrong.  But I’ll tell you, there were not a few, as we went on through time into the 70’s and 80’s.  The numbers of people became more and more and more who were not afraid to speak against Mr. Armstrong.  To me, that thought struck fear in me.  To speak against God’s apostle?  To be speaking so directly against God, because I believed who he was and what he was doing and what God had given then to the Church.  And then thinking...”Where is the fear of God?”  Do we not think about, well, if God has given something to someone, if I don’t understand it right now I will pray for help to understand it because I know this is God’s Church and I know he’s God’s apostle – then I know in time God’ll give it to me.  Same thing with things in the book...and if we’re not careful we can listen to what people say out here or what someone has read off the internet and told someone else and then they come to you and say something about, “Well, what about this that’s being said...?  Where is the truth in that?  That’s gone and that’s past – that’s already gone by.”  How do you know it’s gone by?  How do you know?  How do you know what God is saying there?  You know?!  Amazing!

I want to read something that someone wrote here a while back.  When I think about some of the narrow mindedness and blindness of what people say sometimes in what they write: this is what an individual wrote where he believed there was a failed prophecy...  it says...

According to God's Church minister Ronald Weinland, the end times are upon us-- again.

It shows an attitude and spirit here, but you have to be careful that you don’t have a diet of this kind of ... like to call it what it is.  I’ll use feces, I’ll use that word.  You have to be careful because sometimes that comes through other people.  It can come through a relative because a relative has gone to a site and read something and then maybe they come to you for an answer, “Well what about this?  Because this didn’t happen!  And here’s a prophecy ”again...”  You know?  “For later, it’s been changed.”  Don’t let those things bother you.  Have confidence in what God does.  Have confidence that things will come through.  Look at what’s taking place, look at what’s happening in the world still.  Look at the Thunders that continue to go on.  Great Britain... talking the other day here about wherever we travel there are bad things that happen and Great Britain right now is going through some bad stuff again; flooding, and they’re talking about flooding... 320 cm in a 24 hour period of rain and the flooding that’s taken place there.  They’re talking about this one bridge they built that they planned for flooding and it was finished not too long ago to where it would go through any hundred year flood...but they said not a thousand year flood!  Since records have been kept there’s nothing like this that’s ever happened in all of Great Britain.  And they have history going back a long way where records were kept.  The point being is that things continue to happen and things continue to happen in the world as far as the economy of the world is concerned and nothing is changing and we’re going down the toilet!  ...as far as our economy is concerned and the world is hinged to the dollar.  It is!  I don’t care what people try to do, it’s still hinged to the dollar; but it’s going down the toilet.

So anyway, this individual says... these

are upon us-- again. His 2006 book "2008: God's Final Witness" states that hundreds of millions of people will die, and by the end of 2006, "there will be a maximum time of two years remaining before the world will be plunged into the worst time of all human history...”

So see, it hasn’t happened...  BULL! We are in the worst time of human history, as soon as the 1290 days, as soon as the 1260 days began.  It’s just that people aren’t aware of it yet!!  It’s already started!  What’s happening to the economy of the world, what’s happening in the United States – it’s already started!!  It’s just sometimes you don’t see the evidence right away.  Sometimes, things take a little time before it fully fits into place.  But God took His blessings away from the U.S. and He is allowing it to go it’s course, for things to happen in a timely fashion, and it will all happen – see?  But people like to say things like this because it’s like... “well, see this didn’t happen so what about other things in the book... and what... he can’t be a prophet – see?!”  Bull! Bull! Bull!  It doesn’t change a thing.  This is true, amazing!  So it has started.  The countdown began with 1290 days.  It’s already started: United States has already been plunged into a decline, it just doesn’t know it yet.  It still thinks it can come out of it.  It still tells the world something vastly different though.  You get certain people up there and they tell this story about how the economy is recovering and what we’re doing that’s good!  ...and they don’t want you to know other things like how much money we’re printing back here as fast as we can and some of these things that are destroying the economy of the world.  Everything they do is destroying, not saving – everything!  Every decision they make from that point forward is a matter of destroying what’s there – it truly is.  Everything will work against them – that’s God’s promise.  That’s what God says.  It’s just you don’t see the evidence immediately.  Why?  Because He’s allowing things to be taught, allowing things to be learned, that He, God, has done through time – that man never listens to God – never listens.  And that just because something is said doesn’t mean that it happens right then and there exactly like that – things that are prophetic, they will come to pass.  They will happen exactly the way that God says, but  generally not the way man says they have to be in order to believe it – see?  So there are things that God is still teaching mankind.  That it’s going to benefit those in the Millennium and Great White Throne... but it’s really not benefitting many right now except those that God calls, and those who God calls into the Church.

Anyway, this individual goes on to say...

“...By...” (quoting here): “By the fall of 2008, the United States will have collapsed as a world power, and no longer exist as an independent nation."

So people can look at that and say, “Oh it didn’t collapse, it’s still functioning.  It’s still there as an independent nation.”  No it’s not.  Not it isn’t!  What do you believe?  Really?!  Do we understand what God is showing?  ...what God is revealing?  We’re an independent nation...  BULL!  We’re dependent upon other nations in a very great way.  We’re dependent upon what China does or doesn’t do.  The dollar, the plunge... but they won’t do it because right now it still benefits them.  Certain nations are making decisions because they don’t want to see it destroyed yet, because what does that mean?  It’s going to be really hard on them!  But we’re not independent!  Independent means we don’t need anybody else.  Independent means we can survive without anybody else!  ...on our own.  We don’t need the world!  In this case the U.S. needs the world and the decisions that are made by other governments in the world.  That’s why they send out these ambassadors to different areas and try to smooth things over, because they don’t want the rug pulled out from underneath them, because they know what it’ll mean not only for the U.S. but for the rest of the world.  Who wants to go through something like that?  Do we comprehend how scared people were at the very end of one administration of the United States... when they saw what was happening; they believed with all their being... they were scared to death of what was getting ready to happen.  They saw an absolute collapse that was getting ready to happen worldwide of the economy.  They saw it.  They believed it with all their being...and then what’s happened with a little bit of time, a little bit of hope, people saying certain things and it’s like... “Well, we’re going to get it back; things are looking up; things are getting better.”  Tell that to people who are still losing their jobs.  Tell that to people who’ve been out of jobs for a long time in the U.S. - see?  Things aren’t the same over here in Europe as they are over there.  What we’re experiencing over there is far worse in some of that area of life, as far as what the economy is concerned, as far as the United States is concerned.  Obviously you have troubles in certain areas but there’s a lot more over there, a lot more taking place, more than anyplace else.

So anyway, what is your interpretation sometimes when people read things.  So again...

“...By the fall of 2008, the United States will have collapsed as a world power, and no longer exist as an independent nation."

What can we do as a world power?  Look at what we’re able to do in Afghanistan.  What can we do?  We can’t bring peace to those people.  We can’t bring it to Iraq.  We can’t deal with Iran.  We’re so far spread out all over already and because of the economy what can we pump into it – so they’ve got quite a quandary.  How do you deal with all these things?  How do you address them?  And every decision they make is a bad decision – it just makes it worse and worse and worse.

Interesting the other day reading about how the Federal Reserve is buying up Euros and buying up the Yuan, Chinese dollar, and they’re buying up those on scales far, far greater than ever before.  Of course the Euro hasn’t been out since 2001... so when the Euro came out in 2001 the U.S. purchased certain amount of Euros and had a habit of buying a certain amount of Euros as a balance and so forth and different currencies in the world, the Yen and the Yuan and so forth, but now we have a much larger amount, percentage wise, of buying of the Yuan and of the Euro.  Great confidence!  We’re independent aren’t we...  as a nation.  We don’t need anybody else.  Well?!  BULL!  Incredible!

Anyway, it goes on to say...

As the book notes, "Ronald Weinland places his reputation on the line as the end-time prophet of God."[1]

Well, I believe what I believe and that’s why I do what I do.  We believe what we believe and we continue to go forward without hesitation. Matter of fact, we just get stronger and stronger.

Anyway, I think about; ‘by the fall of 2008’…  The stability of the economy in the United States did collapse and our answer has been to print more money, as much as needed, and it is just making it worse and worse and worse and this time there’s no way out.  It is a part of a process of a total collapse when it finally takes place.  It just doesn’t happen immediately.  But people want to see things immediately and if it doesn’t happen that way they say, “Oh see!  You’re wrong!  You were wrong!”  No, not at all.

There are a lot of things written in the... in ‘2008: God’s Final Witness’ that are written in what I would refer to as a prophetic language if you will and not something that’s going to be instantly understood.

I want to go back to some of this history of what we’ve been going through and talking about how it’s  exciting to go back now and look at some of our history like it talks about in Revelation 12:14 where God said He would give a ‘time, times and a half a time’ for the Church, for His people to be protected from Satan and how that the Church was scattered and in that first period of time of 280 days – still 1260 total, but the first 280 days of a period there that God revealed to us and started showing later on what the importance of that was; that it was a matter of judgement upon the Church and upon Mr. Tkach; that the Church was spewed out of God’s mouth; that Mr. Tkach died at the end of that period of time for what he did 40 Sabbaths prior.  And so, again, God revealing the importance of those things and then the following 980 days that led up to Pentecost of 1998 – God was re-establishing His Church.  He was protecting us from that being, from Satan because we were not strong enough to resist him.  So God had to give us special protection so that by the time that He’d re-established the Church in 1998 we could once again stand as the people of God – strong in spirit!  Made stronger in spirit; so that we could stand against, as what scripture talks about, the wiles, the strategies of the devil, of Satan, that he would throw at us.  Now we would be strong enough to do as we’re doing now – to stand against all that Satan, or this world, would throw at us, or what people throw at us.  We don’t care!  I could care less of what they do!  They’re fighting and resisting God!  ...but they don’t understand that and I understand that.  But that doesn’t slow me down one iota!  Just makes me stronger the closer we get.  And things that people don’t understand in the world – things that Satan has never understood about God and the power of God’s spirit in our lives; that because of the trials we go through we get stronger.  He doesn’t get it!  He doesn’t know that the very things he does works against him!  ...that what he wants to destroy is actually working to our benefit because of God’s spirit and what God does in our lives and going through those trials and living by faith God actually makes us stronger so we can stand more firmly against that power and any other power that exists that’s against the Church.  It’s an awesome thing.

There were some things that began to happen before Pentecost of 1998, before we were firmly established and some of you don’t know some of the history of this but we had a publication called ‘News Watch for the Church of God’ and it first came out in January of 1998.  Now the Church hadn’t been re-established but God was already making us stronger; I had already resigned from one of the largest of the organizations that was out there.  I actually resigned on Pentecost of 1997 – one year before God had re-established the Church... but God was working with us still to help us become stronger and we look at that history of what we went through, talked about how I couldn’t set up a Feast for that year because I felt it was presumptuous to do so. I didn’t know what to do.  We didn’t know what to do and not until ’98 after God re-established us did we finally have a Feast of Tabernacles, and that one in Niagara Falls, the first one we had.  God had re-established His Church.  But it’s awesome as I go back because I am not a writer!  I have loathed English even though I’m supposed to speak it!  I have loathed it as a class in school.  In Ambassador College they had what they’d called ‘dum-dum English’.  I was in it because I wasn’t good with the English language.  The structure of a sentence, I wasn’t good at it.  I grew up handling the English language in a very sloppy way in Kansas, in the schools I was in.  Now, I loved math, I loved physics, I loved chemistry – I learned chemistry so well in high school that when I got to college I didn’t even have to open the book because I had it in my mind I loved it so much.  But English...ptht... write a sentence, write a paragraph, write an essay – please, please, please... it’s going to be as short as it has to be and no longer and it’s going to be pretty bad because I hate to write with a passion.  And God brought me to a time when I started writing, not because I liked it, but because I knew something had to be done.  God brought me to a point in time that something had to be written to be sent out to the Church to help people who were scattered out here so that they could read something and if God’s going to be working with them, to help them through what we were going through.  This type of writing went on for a couple of years, until the 4th quarter of 2002 and then we finally came out with a booklet called ‘Time Is Running Out’ in the midst of all this, because it had some of the same information into it.  And then a little bit later ‘Time Has Run Out’ speaking of the ministry in the Church and a witness against the ministry in the Church.  And little did I know what was coming behind that – a book.

If somebody had told me, back in Worldwide, or back at some point here even at this point in time when this started, “you’re going to write a book “.  I’d say, “What are you smoking?  You’re about as loony as loony can be because I loathe writing and I’m never going to write a book.”  I would have said that.  Told my father-in-law – he read the first book – he was in Global at that time, before Global had split right?  Or was it in Living?  It wasn’t still Global I think, anyway... I lose track of time here when people have their splits – having trouble keeping track of our own splits... But, anyway, he was an elder in the Church down there, a long time member, and I was really tickled when he read the book and he saw so much of what was in there.  He loved this book... this thing would come out – he didn’t come together with us, but he said basically, that I had to keep writing, that I should keep writing this.  He didn’t like it when I stopped writing this because he said, “You have a job.  ...a mission to the Laodicean Church.”  Little did I know at that time that I did.  But he said, “You have a mission...”.  He still had this concept that he was a Philadelphian living in the time of Laodicea, like so many did, but I think he came to understand later on.   When he finally came to the book and he read ‘The Prophesied End-Time’ he loved it.  He agreed as a whole what was written in there, and he got liver cancer a little bit later and because of how the enzymes enter into your system and they affect his thinking, his mind, and so he had a tough time of what he went through there with some of that but he let Laura know that... that I need to write another book.  “You can’t stop now, you’ve got to write another book.”  At that particular time there, when he told us that, I said, “I’m not writing another book!”  You know, that was the last one!  Famous last words... “That’s was the last one!” ...and then just before he died is when I knew that I was going to be writing the second book and actually we were going to go down there and Laura was going to tell her father that, “he is going to write that second book.”  And he also said that, “Well, if you’re not going to write it, you should at least do so because I’m your father-in-law and I’ve told you you should!”  Anyway... our history – things we go back in in time that I’m in awe of.

I started writing News Watch in January of 1998, before the Church had been re-established but we were being made stronger so we could stand on our own, stand firm and strong in the power of God’s spirit living and dwelling within us again.  Anyway, I just want to read a few things out of here quickly.  It says...

News Watch will be geared to providing you with the kind of material that will aid you in being spiritually sobered and alert to the dangerous times in which we live.

See, we knew we were in dangerous times upon the Church.  1998, we’re still in dangerous times because the scattering didn’t stop; we saw evidence that it was still continuing on.  We didn’t fully understand yet the Seals, that the 4th Seal was a matter of something that was going to continue on let alone the two before that, of what was happening in the ministry; that that was all prophetic and that it was tribulation upon the Church.  But we hurt.  I hurt inside.  Those of you who were with us at that time, you hurt inside because of the Church.  We spoke of the book of Lamentations at times.  I’ve never given sermons out of the book of Lamentations until this period of time because now it came alive.  Much of Lamentations was about the Church of God and what we went through.  That which God inspired to be written that was for us, and the heartache and the pain and the suffering of seeing so many in God’s Church go by the wayside.  People you’ve gone to God’s house side by side with, council blended sweet as the song says, and then they turn against you and turn against God and they go back to what they were called out of, or just quit altogether...it hurt.  I can’t describe the kind of pain and the kind of hurt inside.  But anyway, it was a desire to help those as it says here...

... being spiritually sobered and alert to the dangerous times in which we live. There is a greater need than ever to be physically and spiritually watchful.

God was showing that we weren’t being spiritually watchful, that’s why we were spewed out of God’s mouth.  Going on here under the heading here...

HWA’s Sense of Urgency

Herbert W. Armstrong had a gift of being able to stir a sense of urgency in God’s people.  Such a sense of urgency is spiritually healthy.  We cannot afford to become complacent!  Yet today, the fastest growing attitude and spirit within the church and in our society is COMPLACENCY!  And now, of all times, we have nothing to be complacent about!

This was a message to the Church at that time because of what we were going through, and if we didn’t become spiritually stirred up we weren’t going to be able to continue going forward and the whole Church was going to be scattered; because by this point in time there were splinters after splinters, people going off and doing their own thing and the apostasy and the things that had happened because the scattering hadn’t stopped.  It was still ongoing.

Far too many people in God’s Church are asleep to the events in this world and the events in the church that are increasingly crying out, “the bridegroom is coming.”

God was showing us that we have to have a sense of urgency.  Jesus Christ is returning and the time is urgent upon us and we didn’t know how urgent the time.  We didn’t know exact... at this time we were still thinking as Mr. Armstrong had taught, to plan 5 and 10 years in advance – so in our thinking we were just that.  Going on...

Are you ready?  Are you preparing yourself by getting ready?  Getting ready means you are willing to look honestly at the conditions you see in God’s scattered church and in your own life.

And you’d think that’d be a given, but people couldn’t do that.  People in God’s Church that was scattered couldn’t look at, in an honest fashion, what they were experiencing.  They couldn’t acknowledge, they wouldn’t acknowledge in so many of the groups – that a third had quit; that a third had gone back to Protestantism; that a third had been scattered all over the place.  And they couldn’t acknowledge that this was a fulfillment of something written of in Ezekiel.   They couldn’t acknowledge that; they couldn’t be truthful with what we were experiencing.  Some were teaching that they have to become large again, that they didn’t even believe an apostasy had taken place.  You think...”How can we be so blind, to not believe an apostasy had taken place in the Church?”  And so some were actually starting to teach and believe that the Church had to become larger than 150,000 people worldwide, which is still small in the world’s eyes; but it has to become much, much larger in order for that prophecy to sometime be fulfilled in the future.  And yet they’re not growing, and they haven’t grown since this time...continually being whittled down, up and down, back and forth a little bit, but very stagnant as a whole.  So going on here...

This publication is written for people who want help.

You know why?  Because you can’t help people who don’t want help.  If you already have the answers you’re not going to read something like this; you’re not going to listen to the truth.  If you already have the answers, well, you don’t need anyone else to tell you.

It is for those who are willing to look at their own condition and repent.

It’s amazing, going on back and looking at some of these things; that that’s the key.  That was the key to Laodicea.  That’s what God told Laodicea: that you have to repent.  If you want the condition to change, you have to be zealous therefore as it says, and repent.  Zealous toward God and zealous toward repentance and because that’s the change that has to come about in your life if God’s going to work with you.  And repentance means being able to see your sins; being able to see that you are the cause for what’s taking place.  So many in the Church couldn’t do that...they still believed they were Philadelphian.  They couldn’t believe they were Laodicean because Laodicean was always looked down upon in the Church.  They couldn’t acknowledge that they’d been scattered, that they were part of a scattering, or much less, that they were the cause of the scattering – and every one of us was the cause of the scattering.  That’s why God says, the entire Church, in that respect, had to be vomited out – not one stone would be left on another.  Going on...

There is much for which God’s people must repent.  Our woes and troubles are not the result of having done well and lived righteously before our God.

And that’s the way it is in life.  When something like this happens in the Church in a massive scale like this, the only answer – we weren’t pleasing God, we weren’t obeying God, otherwise this wouldn’t have happened to us; it couldn’t happen to us, but it did... so why?  Us.  Each one of us.  Going on down...

We are now in greater need than ever of God’s help.  We need spiritual sound mindedness and sober realism.

But the reality is there were different organizations out here that were in full swing of doing their own thing.  Global became Living, split... United continued on, doing their own thing and not believing that they needed any help, not believing they needed to repent, not believing that they’d caused anything having to do with the apostasy – on the contrary.  Going on...again...

We need spiritual sound mindedness and sober realism. God tells us that if we are willing to look at our lives and truly repent, He will be there for us.

It’s true to this day, isn’t it?  But that meant so much more back then because of our condition.

He has been correcting us over and over for the past 25 years plus.

Mr. Armstrong, what a job, because he saw that spirit coming.  I think of the period... I was called into the Church in 1969, and previous to that time there hadn’t been any great rumblings and any great shakings of the Church in the sense of congregations and large masses of people leaving...little things here and there, in individual’s lives, but nothing massive.  And then by about 1972, about the time I went to Bricketwood to College – at that time Mr. Armstrong began to come out writing a book talking about how there’s a spirit in man.  And some ministers began to say, “Oh, he’s teaching we have an immortal soul!”  There’s a big difference between having an immortal soul and understanding that there’s a spirit in man and what that means to us.  And so some ministers and some members left at that point in time because they couldn’t accept that truth...and just to let you know there was something already happening that was wrong in their lives already, or they would have been able to see the truth of that.  If you’re close to God you’ll always be able to see, maybe not instantly, but you will be able to see the truth of a matter.  You’ll be able to see a spirit of a matter, but if our relationship isn’t right with God; if we’re tolerating certain sin in our life; if we’re moving away from God; if we’re letting down spiritual; if we’re becoming complacent and lukewarm; if we’re just going through the motions – we will lose it.  There’ll come a time when we can’t receive something that God’s giving us and that’s been the history of God’s Church through time, but much more toward the end-time.

And so in 1974 Mr. Armstrong began to consider the doctrine of when Pentecost was and not Pentecost itself, because all the Holy Days had been in motion for some time, but God began to reveal that it wasn’t on a Monday, but rather that it was on a Sunday.  Oh, the Church went through a lot at that time – masses of people started leaving in certain areas – that’s when I talk about Washington, D.C. and Hawaii and some of the different areas where the entire congregation left, congregation after congregation, minister after minister.  Even in the mid-70’s things were starting to get worse in the environment of the Church.  Mr. Armstrong was pretty much by himself in one respect; Loma his wife had died, and Mr. Armstrong always acknowledged that those around him – that Loma could always see and God gave it to Loma to be able to see when they were using a whitewash brush and trying to butter up to him and telling him what you think he wants to hear, not telling him the truth of what might be happening in certain departments or certain areas of the Church.  Loma could pick up on those things.  Loma would know when somebody was doing that and she would tell her husband and then it would help him to be able to see a matter better to deal with it.  After she died, that wasn’t there any longer and God was allowing something to happen starting back then in the Church in the later part of the 80’s and on into the 90’s of allowing things to start taking their course of what happens through time, of what happens to people who are given various kinds of roles and responsibilities and He let it go it’s natural course through time.  And slowly but surely this attitude of Laodicea began to creep into the Church – that’s why Mr. Armstrong began to say, “I wonder if 50% of you really get it.”  And he would talk about Laodicea.  And then toward the end of his life in 1986 he said, “I wonder if 10% of you even get it.”  And it was true because we were there.  Laodicea was at our door.  We just didn’t know it.

Anyway, always this willingness to repent.  And so for 25 years plus as I said here, rumbling after rumbling and it’s just getting worse and worse... it got so bad that, well, Bricketwood was closed down first but not because of what was happening there, but because of financial considerations of the gospel going into all the world.  He felt that it needed to be zeroed in on just two campuses and then eventually even the College had to be closed because of the bad conditions of the people, the students and what was happening and in the church areas and what was happening in the ministry and with the teachers.  It was horrible what we experienced and what we went through... and you’d think – in God’s Church?  In God’s Church!  It’s an amazing thing.  That’s why the Millennium and what’s going to happen at the end – I can understand far more clearly today than I used to be able to because I’ve lived it.  I’ve lived through it.  I know the spirit.  I know the attitude and I know what’s going to happen then.  And it’s hard for us to look at something like that and say, “How could that happen?”  But see, it can happen to anyone at anytime.  You always have to be spiritually watchful and alert.  That’s why we’re taking the time to go through some of this history; because there are lessons here that never die; they’re just more needful at certain times in our life.  And the time you need it the most is when you’re not doing it.  The time you need to be watchful and spiritually alert is when you’re letting down.  It goes on to say...

But as God says in Amos, “Yet you have not returned to me”.

God began to show us some prophecy here a little bit at a time, that certain things were being fulfilled in prophecy; an attitude of mind; of a refusal to repent and you think, “How could that be in God’s Church that people would refuse to repent?!”  But it happens.  Going on...

As we repent and turn more to God, He will lead us through the troubling time that are directly ahead of us.  He tells us that He will deliver us.  He will save us.

So it’s a matter of relying on God, always looking to God.  Going on down here in the same January article in a section that says...

1260 Days at Pentecost

In 1998 God did reveal that there was going to be 1260 days to Pentecost.  God led me to believe that it’s an important time but I didn’t know fully what it meant.  I didn’t know that it meant the Church was re-established at that point in time.  So under this heading it says...

Is it another coincidence, that on the Sabbath before Pentecost this year, a prophetic 1260 day period will have been completed?

And we understand now that it’s made up of 280 and then the 980.  We understand that more now, but back then it was still 1260 days; it’s still the same period of time, it’s just divided up differently and has different meaning in it because of what we understand now.

This 1260 days is counted from the single most significant event that caused the greatest portion of this current day apostasy to begin.

That date may prove to be even more significant with a further fulfilling of prophetic events.

More than I even knew at that point in time when writing it.  Didn’t have any concept of how much this meant.

If so, we will begin seeing far greater events begin to unfold speedily before our eyes.  These are sobering times.  We can’t afford to ignore them.

And then under a section here called...

False Teachers

Jesus warned of false teachers.  But this has often been applied only to minsters outside the church.  But these warnings were about ministers within the church too. God’s ministry still has much for which to repent.  We have become filled with pride.  There has been a greater concern for security than for God’s people.

In other words, people wanting to feel secure more than being concerned with what God says.

Ezekiel 34 is for today. And the cause of the church being scattered is because of the shepherds.

That wasn’t a popular thing to say to the Church, that it’s because of the shepherds, the ministers.  We’re always first to blame, that’s what God says – whatever is taught, those who are put in those positions, if they are not giving because of a close relationship with God, if they’re not giving what God is giving to them, if they’re not faithful stewards of the word of God, then first and foremost they carry the greatest blame and the greatest guilt and the greatest punishment, if you will, of what’s going to take place.  And so the repentance has to start there.

Security, power…

To have a job, some ministers made a change from one organization to another because of paycheques.  Some of you know them, I see one shaking his head back there because he knows certain ones.  I know certain ones by name who made choices like that because they could go from one organization…once it finally got established and they were guaranteed they had a job, then they would make the change.  You don’t do that in God’s Church.  I don’t care who we are; if something is wrong and you live through a period of time like that, like we did in the Church; you do it because it’s right before God – even if you’re the only person that does it.  If you follow God, you follow God and if that means you don’t stay in a certain place and you flee, you do it.  Not because of a job...

Security, (in this case), power, pride, control and many more sinful attitudes have made the ministry weak.  Leadership is faint hearted.  Decisiveness and sound judgement is slow in coming or even nonexistent.  Excitement, inspiration, and zeal toward God’s Word and the times in which we live is lacking.  The cause is sin.

That’s why Mr. Armstrong always had a sense of urgency.  You never saw Mr. Armstrong get on stage and start giving a sermon that was boring, or that didn’t have life in it, that he wasn’t excited about what he was saying.  He came alive.  There were times you’d see him walk across the stage in Pasadena, because of his age you weren’t sure if he’s going to make it, he was that feeble when he got into his nineties and his hands, they’d have a close up of the television camera and all you could see were bones.  And he would get up there and he’d bang on tables, on his desk when he was talking and I mean… just that strong.  And you’d think that hand’s going to shatter being of that age and the looks of it and everything.  He came alive, he was excited about God’s word and he always had a sense of urgency about where we were in time and the reality is that if you ever lose a sense of urgency, something’s wrong spiritually.  And if you ever lose a time when God’s word isn’t exciting, something is wrong spiritually.  That’s why especially on High Days, the Holy Days, I become far more excited at that time because God’s giving more of His spirit at that time and more life comes into it because God gives more life and that’s the way it is in our lives.  And it’s the way it has to be and if it’s not that way something is wrong.  And that’s what was happening – people weren’t being given things that were spiritually moving and motivating because God wasn’t in it anymore.  The word of God only comes alive because of God’s spirit, not just by how you say it.  That’s not what I’m talking about.   There’s a life that comes into it because of what you’re hearing, because it stirs you up spiritually and that excitement you have about what you’re hearing, about what God is revealing to you and that becomes moving and motivating and inspiring to you but we were living through a time in the Church that was prophesied in Amos as a time of famine.  We lived through a time of famine and that has to do with that which is spiritual because what was being given was not from God.  Somebody can read out of the Bible; we ought to know; and it doesn’t mean it’s from God, you know?  A protestant minister can get up and read through the verses, word for word, but give something totally different that has no life in it whatsoever.  And so it’s been in God’s Church that ministers got up and gave sermons that had no life in it because God’s spirit is what gives life…to us as we listen, and to the ministry as they speak and if God’s spirit isn’t in what is being spoken, there’s no life there.  And when there’s no life how can the people be fed?  How can the people grow?  And that’s what happened.  People ceased to grow because there was no life in the food.

And so that’s what this is crying out about: 1998, January, of what we were living through in the Church – people were still leaving, people were getting weaker.  Incredible!  Going on here…

Leadership is faint hearted.  Decisiveness and sound judgement is slow in coming or even nonexistent.  Excitement, inspiration, and zeal toward God’s Word and the times in which we live is lacking.  The cause is sin.

Going on here, another admonition in that same time period…

Be careful (watchful) of what you digest.  Only you can WATCH what you put in your mind.

It’s true still to this day, you have to be careful of what you allow into your mind.

Be alert to a growing trend that is polluting God’s precious truths.  These things are coming from sources that should shock and sober you.

Because it was the ministry.  As ministers began to teach their own ideas the farther they were from God… that’s all you can teach.  You can’t hold onto the truth anymore.  If you don’t have God’s spirit what you will give is going to become twisted and distorted and that’s what God’s Church began to experience.

When you find ministers that are holding firm and faithful to God’s Word, who have a shepherding spirit (not sheriffing and controlling), whose messages are moving and inspiring, hold on to them!  But continue to prove them.  Such ministers are becoming fewer and harder to find.

So this was happening in the Church.  At that point in time, well, I didn’t fully see even what was happening then, God didn’t show it fully at that point in time.  We can look back and see but I felt there were still some out there that were still giving that which was true and right.  Going on…

This is not a time to rest and feel secure…

If you ever do that, you’re in danger.  If you ever feel at rest and secure... if you’re not alert, on guard and watchful, something is wrong spiritually.

…you may believe you have seen the worst from false teachers and complacent ministers but the prophecy shows that it’s far from over.

See, again, prophecy started coming along.  Didn’t understand where it was going, didn’t understand where God was leading.  Going on…

That is why you must stay alert and be on the watch for such things.

And then in the same article, talking about conditions in the world under…

Financial Crisis

One of the first things that will most certainly affect God’s people is the financial crisis that is looming on the horizon.  This will deliver one of the most crushing blows through events that are going to begin unfolding in the near future.

An economic collapse is imminent.  It is not a question of whether it will happen, but when...

So again, certain things that we’ve always looked to as far as God’s Church is concerned and where God was leading us but here now, by the time of March and April, just a couple of months ahead and even before that, again, talking about dangerous times… went through a section about Lamentations, what was happening in the Church, the emotion, the feeling of seeing things take place.  But amazing, before the Church had been re-established as God’s Church again; by March and April, if you know what that time period is of the year – Passover.  God blessed us in an article about Passover in a very powerful way.  It was so significant for God’s Church because before this period of time God was leading and guiding and directing things having to do about Passover because within the large organization that I was in at that time, United, it was guesstimated by looking at a cross-section of all the ministry that about ½ of all the ministry believed in 14/15th Passover – still do – but nothing was ever done about them.  They weren’t corrected, weren’t put out of the Church.  That’s grounds in God’s Church to have that happen.  If a minister were to come along and preach a false doctrine about something so damnable and so hurting to God’s people… it’s like the Protestant world believing that 3 days and 3 nights all happened in a day and a half, you know?  So for the Church of God to teach that in the Old Testament God’s people started keeping Passover later, on the evening of the 14th, the beginning of the 15th, as toward the end of the 14th beginning of the 15th – that’s a lie.  It’s a perverted, sick lie and so God blessed us with the ability to see and understand certain things about the Hebrew that we hadn’t understood before: and that’s why at that point in time God was re-establishing us.  You know where we always start?  …every one of us?  Passover.  See, it’s where it all begins.  You can’t go into the Holy Days; you can’t go into the plan of God without Passover.  You start at Passover.

So isn’t it amazing, as God is re-establishing us as His Church that He makes us stronger in a doctrine that we must be deeply set in, standing firm in every way, and it was this doctrine.  It started with Passover.  And so in this particular issue, a…

SPECIAL EDITION

The subject of Passover will be addressed in this edition.  Some brethren have become confused about the correct timing of Passover.  The controversy over the 14th and 15th has been growing in the past two years.

The following article will define terms that have been misunderstood or misapplied.  Once you understand these Bible interpretations and the timing of these events, the entire story of Passover will become more inspiring and exciting.

God hadn’t really given that to the Church yet.  We didn’t understand that until this point in time; we truly didn’t.  God gave more than what we even had in Philadelphia.  That’s doctrine; it has to do with doctrine, not prophecy.  Things about Passover that we came to understand, that not just in the evening… there was confusion about the going down of the sun and what some of these terms meant at the end of a particular point in time and the beginning of another and the Passover lamb.  There was not the understanding that everything on the Passover, not just that night, but the entire daytime period had great significance in the fulfillment of Passover.  There were things we didn’t understand about why Jesus Christ died in the afternoon on the Passover day!  And yet they fit into things that have to do with what God gave about the meaning of Passover that we didn’t understand in the Philadelphian era, but we came to understand that it’s the entire day that has great meaning and revelation for God’s Church.  It’s awesome.

God gave that to us.  He helped us to understand words like ‘ereb’ and ‘ba ereb’ and ‘ma ereb’ and ‘ben ha arbayim’ which is ‘between the two evenings’.  We hadn’t understood that in the Church before.  It’s talking about 2 moments in time, one full day.  You know, we always kept the Sabbath on one full day, one sunset to another.  Atonement, God’s very specific about the day you start counting and the day you end – one full day.  We understand that but we didn’t get it for Passover – amazing!  God gave it to us in this particular article.  I want to go through one thing here just to show you how things have affected God’s people.

There was a period of time in God’s Church, starting back in the late 70’s where Garner Ted Armstrong and some others came up with this program called STP.  They used this term STP which stood for Systematic Theological Program and they set it up where they started delving into theology.  It’s like, we’re going to study… and you think… what about God’s spirit?  How has God led the Church in the past through Mr. Armstrong?  And the idea is they wanted to get away from that and set up a doctrinal committee to establish doctrine for the Church.  No, no, no… God will inspire Mr. Armstrong what to give to the Church – that’s the doctrinal committee!  God through Jesus Christ through Mr. Armstrong.  They lost that and so they wanted to do something else.  Dr. Hoeh got involved in it, and some of the things that they started…that they wanted to do at that time was this 14/15th Passover.  Garner Ted was a great promoter of this concept of 14/15th Passover, of this teaching that in the Old Testament in time, that the Israelites began to observe Passover later in the day, keeping Passover later until it finally got into the things of what the Jews believe is actually being kept on the 15th.  That’s a big, fat, ugly, perverted, distorted, sickening, disgusting lie!  But ministers and evangelists started teaching it in the Church.

Anyway, Mr. Armstrong dealt with the STP a little bit later.  Mr. Armstrong was very sickly toward that period of time – he had a heart attack, he about died in the late 70’s there and God restored him, strengthened him.  He came back with more power, more zeal, more drive than ever before and from that moment on until the time he died the common expression he used for the Church was, “getting the Church back on the right track…” That was his motivation, because he knew the Church had gone off track.  These evangelists and different ones were trying to promote something different of how God works in the Church.  So he dealt with STP, he eventually dealt with his own son – putting him out of the Church, which was a very hard thing for him to do, plus all the other things that happened because God comes first and so he stood that ground and God gave him great power to do so.  And so STP went by the wayside.

As soon as Mr. Armstrong died it wasn’t very long… by about 1987-88, in through there, we had what we’d call in the church, the ‘DELL’s Meeting’ which was Deacon and Elders Meetings, and things would be sent out from headquarters to teach the ministry, to teach the local congregations, the elders and the deacons within the Church, those things that God was giving to the Church.  One of the things that came out at that point in time was a lecture from Dr. Hoeh who some today still uphold and esteem – but he caused more troubles with false doctrine in the Church of God than most evangelists did.  But anyway, Dr. Hoeh came out with this concept of trying to understand why the Jews observe Passover, the Seder and so forth, beginning at the end of the 14th start of the 15th and it was kind of under the auspice’s of we need to try to understand what the Jews did and why they do it the way they do it because there’s something to learn from all this: when his motive in all that was to teach 14/15th to the Church, to put it back into the Church again.  They tried to do it in STP in the late 70’s; Dr. Hoeh tried to do it in the Church again under Mr. Tkach in the 80’s of pushing this thing about Passover being on 14/15th and it started coming back into the Church again.  That’s why there’s so many ministers who believe it and teach it.

Again Mr. Armstrong came back and fought against those things and so God established firmly in our lives how He works.  But I want to read you something here that just shows you the kind of thinking.  At that time people like Dr. Hoeh and others tried to go back and understand things that the Jews teach, the Rabbi’s teach.  I hope you understand that’s a false premise, a false thing to do.  You don’t use commentaries that are written by Protestant ministers to understand the Bible.  You don’t go back and study Rabbi’s and what they have written to understand the Old Testament – big mistake!  Because they’re teaching doctrine, they’re teaching beliefs and their beliefs are all wrong; they’re not sound, they’re not right – they’re all wrong!  The Protestant world is all wrong!  They may get one thing right every once in a while, like baptism: baptising means you immerse under water so whoop tee doo, let’s build a whole church around it and call it the Baptist church – we got one doctrine right, you know?  But they’re not being worked with by God.

But anyway…

BETWEEN THE TWO EVENINGS

I want to read this, showing how this kind of crept into the Church.  Let’s just see how stupid intellectual thinking is…  I should take the time to tell a little bit more here.  History is good because we learn from our mistakes, we learn from things to see how people think, things that you don’t ever want to do, things you want to make sure don’t happen in the future in the Church, but I think of one particular time period once the Church had been scattered and I was at my father’s funeral, that a couple came up to us, my wife and I, and wanted to talk about Passover.  The wife was very concerned about her husband because he was wanting to keep Passover on the evening of the 15th that year.  At that time, it wasn’t the time or place to go into the doctrine of 14/15th Passover with her and so I told her that I felt there was an individual she could get a hold of and I would help her do so, in the church, in the United Church of God; that she could go to and get the help from.  His name was Mark Caplan.  He was a teacher, some of you know, at Ambassador College.  Growing up he was going to be a Rabbi at one time and teaching as far as his family was concerned.  He was called into the Church and he became an instructor at Ambassador College teaching Hebrew because he had the Hebrew background obviously, the teaching and so forth he’d received and so he was looked to as a scholar, as one who could understand Hebrew very well in the Old Testament.  So anyway, I put her in touch with him knowing full well that of all people he would understand 14/15 and be able to help her.  Boy, was I dumbfounded when I found out later on He believes in 14/15th and that he was teaching this and that he told her that basically that’s okay, you know, and so we had this conversation back and forth, Mark Kaplan and I did, and he sent me a whole list of verses saying, “this is my proof that the 14/15th teaching is true.”  And I wrote him back and said, “Mark, the very scriptures you sent me are the very scriptures I’d send to you to show you it’s the 14th Passover, not the 15th.”   So it’s what you see in your mind and what God gives to you.  He couldn’t see it.  It was so clear to me, but the other was so clear to him because of his false interpretations of what he’d learned from the Rabbi’s.  And this is a part of what I want to read to you.  And a matter of fact, he asked me in one phone conversation – he says, “Do you think that you know more about Hebrew than the Rabbi’s?”  And I said, “Mark, yes I do.  You know, they’re not God’s people.”  I want to read this to you…

Notice the interpretation of Exodus 12:6 by a renowned Jewish scholar in The Pentateuch and Rashi’s Commentary on page 102.

This is the writing of Rashi…

“At dusk—from six hours (after noon) and upwards is called ben ha arbayim,

Which is the expression we understand as meaning, ‘between the two evenings,’ but this is the Jewish interpretation and this is what ministers in the Church began to believe because they believed the Rabbi’s.

… and upwards is called ben ha arbayim, when the sun declines towards the place of its setting to be darkened.

I don’t want to go through all the things here, but you can read the article on Passover to understand what I’m talking about here more so.  But notice, he says…

And the expression ben ha arbayim appears in my sight

In other words, he’s saying as a Rabbi…

(to refer to) those hours between the ‘evening’ of the day, and the ‘evening’ of night;

Well, to make a long story short the word ‘ereb’ means ‘evening’.  It cannot be at any time during when the sun is shining, but this Rabbi… he’s using an interpretation in the Old Testament that talks about ‘the going down of the sun’.  And so his idea of the going down of the sun starts at noon because you see it in the sky… it’s going down.  As you look at it, it looks like it’s going down.  So he uses it as a Bible interpretation of what God is saying and God isn’t saying that.  He’s letting us know it’s from sundown – the going down of the sun.  The sun goes down – we use that term about the Sabbath.  You ask him about the Sabbath – he knows when the sun goes down, but not when it comes to Passover.  So this is his scholarly explanation of the ‘going down of the sun’.  I love the things written in the things about the Catholic Church too.  When you read their stuff, it’s such gobbledegook… I don’t know if you’ve ever bothered reading anything that the Catholic Church has written about the trinity – don’t bother yourself, but anyway… if you ever have you will see some of the most wishy washy back and forth and by the way the scholarly approach of writing something is so twisted and distorted… people are in awe of it and they think “it’s too scholarly for me to understand”… that’s what they want you to think.  It’s too scholarly for the common person to understand.  You’re too dumb to get it so just accept what we say as your priests.  And the point is it runs around in circles and that’s the way this guy is doing it.  He says…

And the expression ben ha arbayim appears in my sight (you know, in the daytime) to refer to those hours between the ‘evening’ of the day (at noon) and the ‘evening’ of night.  The ‘evening’ of day is at the beginning of the seventh hour [1 p.m.] from (the time that) ‘the shadows of evening are stretched out,’

I know that I probably lost ¾ of you in all this but if you go back and study what it means by the sun going down, that’s all you really have to understand.  When you can’t see the light from the sun anymore, it’s the Hebrew word ‘ereb’, it’s night, it’s evening and so you can have no event having to do with that word that would be in the daylight portion.  And so for a Rabbi to get up and say something so stupid; that the sun begins to go down, this ‘ben ha arbayim’ and all the thing when it talks about ‘ba ereb’ that is has to do with 7 – 6 hours – 4 hours, 5 hours in the afternoon that you have the sun going down.  That’s why they think then at the end of the 14th because the sun is going down, it goes down into the 15th and the Passover can be kept on the 15th because the sun starts going down on the 14th, on the 14th day for those last 5-6 hours and that isn’t what the Bible says.  God makes it very clear that Passover begins at sundown beginning with the 14th day and it ends at the beginning of the 15th day.  I don’t need to go through any more of that.

It’s interesting to me and I’m excited because I can look back and say, “Look at what God gave to us.”  And if you go through and study that article and you really come to understand what those words mean, it’s awesomely inspiring because till that point in time Mr. Armstrong only used… if you go back to his book about ‘God’s Holy Days or Pagan Holidays’ whatever the title was – it was something like that…if you go back and read that old book, on the section of Passover he even has a heading that says, ‘14th or 15th?’  He addressed that many, many year’s prior, but he had evangelists in the church who began to teach the opposite of what he taught.  That’s grounds for disfellowshipment in God’s Church, but ministers were allowed to stay around because others wouldn’t report them and they started teaching that garbage.  And when you start destroying the Passover and the truth of it, you begin to cut yourself off from the truth of God, you don’t have God’s spirit flowing through you anymore.  That’s why there were so many ministers out here… the moment they started teaching it was the moment God’s spirit was cut off from them and they never gave a sermon again that came from God.  That’s what happened to the Church going all the way back into the 70’s and through the 80’s and that made the Church weaker and weaker and weaker.  That was the primary doctrine that cut the ministry off and God’s people off from the Church.  Passover.  How important is that to God?  How important is the Messiah, the Christ, who came and gave His life in order to become, in time, the Messiah; that He first came as a Passover?  How important is that to God Almighty…the death of His Son?  And yet people minimized it and took away from the meaning of it by some of the false teachings they had.

So, not a small thing that happened in the environment of God’s Church.  And things we’re to guard against – false doctrine and some of you are being trained to guard against those things in the future, because even with God’s Family on earth there’ll be occasion when some come along with some hair brained ideas, just like this one here that we read about and want to teach something different than what is true.  And you’ll be alert to it and be able to put a stop to it.

Isn’t that exciting to see that God was getting us ready to stand on our own and so by March/April this article about Passover came out.  The point is:  Do we see how God works?  …because we had to become strong in that again in the very beginning of something that was being torn down in the Church since the 70’s – that God wanted to re-establish us in again – a major doctrine in the Church so that we could be strong.  Because if you’re strong in those doctrines about the Holy Days beginning with Passover, what happens when Satan comes along?  What happens when demons come along?  They can’t stand to be around the truth.  They can’t stand to be around someone who’s strong spiritually and God living and dwelling within them.  They won’t stay around.

I’ll just mention this in closing here today.  That’s why sometimes for some people who are new, who maybe have had different difficulties in times past with whatever it might be in life – whatever your struggles are in life, whatever your problems are in life, whatever it is your struggling with in life.  Sometimes… I don’t care, you can take the worst case scenario – perhaps things in a demonic world that have plagued you or things that have happened in your life as far as battles you have: as you continue to draw closer to God; as you continue to become stronger spiritually, those things will begin to become less and less.  They will begin to go by the wayside.  It doesn’t happen overnight; but as you draw closer to God, things that you may have had difficulties with or battles that are approaching you… I think of one case where an individual has had difficulties of things of demonism around them in their home… if you’re close to God demons won’t be around.  If you draw closer to God and you become more at one with God they can’t stand to be around you.  So that tells me something about some situations there that you need to continue to repent and you need to draw closer to God and that’s just one example.  That’s just an example that I think all of us can easily see quickly.  But I don’t care what it is you’re battling in your life; whatever it is you’re struggling with, it doesn’t mean the struggle disappears overnight, but in time you become stronger and stronger, closer and closer to God and the closer you are to God, the less those powers can bombard or harass you or hurt you.  Sometimes they manifest themselves in various forms and in different ways but they can also communicate to your mind and harass you.  All of you, all of us experience harassment at times by a world that’s out there, by broadcasting: because that’s how they work, they broadcast to the mind.  But the closer you are to God, the more they will flee and get away from you and not be in your environment.  Hope you understand what I’m saying.

Your protection, your blessings, your strength is in God – God being in you.  That’s why I read the scripture in I John so often: ‘because greater is He that’s in you than he that’s in the world.’  This world of Satan and the demons cannot stand to be around God’s people.  The closer you are to God, the more that God dwells within you, the more they will flee and get out from your presence, from anywhere around your environment.  And that comes with any kind of sin in life; whatever you’re struggling with, the more you seek to fight it and battle it… it doesn’t mean you’re not going to stumble and slip from time to time, but you quickly repent and you quickly seek God’s help and intervention and His dwelling within you so that you can be strong and stand just like He did with the Church.  By the time we came to Pentecost of 1998 we were strong; we were able to stand and be thrust back out in this world again without that special protection God gave the Church and we could continue on in the world with God dwelling within us and stand firm in God’s truth and God’s way of life.

~~~end

1. http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/091104-doomsday-predictions.html

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