A Final Plea, With Judgment – Pt. 1

Ron Weinland

March 12, 2011

Today we’re going to begin a final sermon series before our Church-wide fast on the first weekend of April.  And as I began to work on this sermon a clear pattern became evident concerning the flow of sermons that began the very first of this year, and now this particular series that we’re getting ready to go into, coupled with knowing where sermons are going through the weekend of the fast and on past that through Passover.  This is a momentous year in time, more than we can grasp, truly.  Just this past week here ought to show you how quickly things can happen in this world...and that’s minor; minor, minor, minor compared to what’s going to take place.  That’s just a small little blurp compared to what’s coming.

So this is a momentous year, and it’s becoming very clear how God is proceeding forward; and that’ll become clearer as we go along.

That which is ahead of us is both ominous and foreboding in one respect, yet it’s encouraging and inspiring with meaningful fulfillment in God’s providence.  Because it’s about what God is doing, it’s about God’s purpose, it’s about God’s plan being fulfilled; and those things we’re going to see more and more as we go forward here.

We have covered the sermon series entitled ‘The Thunder of Judgment’ followed by the series ‘Pray for Judgment’, talking in the context of praying for God’s judgment to be executed on this earth. And I’ll probably have more to say about that today because there’s much to drink in about that for each and every one of us to be a part of this.

This new sermon series is entitled; A Final Plea, with Judgment – Part 1.  This sermon series is a plea to all who are currently listening right now and to those who will listen to this in the near future. Not speaking primarily of those of you who listen Sabbath by Sabbath who are a part of this Body, this organization, but speaking to all others who are listening and to those who are going to listen in the near future.  Because at some point, as God begins to draw people, they go back and they listen to previous sermons given and this will be one that they will come to most assuredly.  So again, it’s a plea for all of you who are listening.

First, this is directed to those who were at one time in fellowship with us in this organization of the Church but became separated from us perhaps of their own choice due to disagreement, perhaps because of disfellowshipment, or just because they simply drifted away.  This sermon series is directed to you.  Even though some of you may personally despise me, please know that I have no such feelings towards you, but on the contrary, there’s not a single one of you that if you were to return to fellowship that I wouldn’t be exceedingly happy to see and to welcome.

Next, this sermon series is directed to any and all with whom we were in fellowship together in the Worldwide Church of God before the apostasy, and any and all who have joined together with some of the splinter groups since the apostasy...and this’ll become more and more important to that group as we go forward.

This sermon series is also directed to any and all who are newly listening to this sermon, or these sermons, but are still uncommitted and simply curious or waiting to see what happens.

And this sermon series is directed to any and all who are listening but have the motive of simply finding fault or error (as they see it), or any who ‘think’ they’re helping others because they’re seeking to ‘protect’ them.

So again, pretty much says it all to everyone out there.  So, out of all that I’ve mentioned... there are going to be a lot of different reactions obviously and in different times.  Regrettably, some of you will only become more deeply entrenched in your disgust toward me and toward God’s Church, toward those who make up God’s Church, which for some of you means that you’ll become even further alienated (much further), from some of your own closest family members.

When Jesus Christ said He came to ‘send a sword to separate mother and father, sister and brother...’ and so forth, this time ahead of us is more that time than any other time in history as a specific consolidated amount of time is concerned, it truly is, because now is the time that these things are going to come to the surface far, far, far more powerfully than they ever have.  They’ve always come to the surface at different times, but now they’re going to be magnified because of what is taking place.  I think of the sermon series we went through concerning Pharaoh’s hardness and what happened to him.

Then, some from the scattered body will hear and respond, especially when the Fifth Thunder begins sounding within the scattered organizations...and this is nearly upon us.  I’m going to talk a little more about that when we get closer to the fast, perhaps on that Sabbath.

And then for some of you who are straddling the fence, or sitting on the fencepost (whatever expression you want to use), you’ll be moved to press forward and respond fully to God’s calling.  And that’s exciting when those things take place, when those things happen. And you don’t want to sit there very long, truly.  It would be refreshing right now if all who are listening could stop, pause in the midst of where they are right now, in considering the world around them – where they have been, where they are now, and where they’re planning on being as we go forward, or as time goes forward.  A lot of people don’t think about things like that until it’s forced upon them, until it comes upon them.  That’s generally how people take life – not generally planning ahead or thinking ahead really well.  And it would be really good then, refreshing, to consider the content of this particular sermon with open mindedness, seeking to evaluate, to judge (if you will) what they hear without prejudice.  That’s a tough thing for human beings to do; to judge without prejudice, to judge something in an open minded manner, to weigh what is presented on both sides.  Yes, as God often puts it, to reason together.

So, if I’m not a prophet I’ll reason with you accordingly and be open with you about it.  If I am a prophet then can you do the same?  Can you truly reason accordingly?

So often for those who do not believe that I’m a prophet, the question is asked, “What will you do if these things do not come to pass?”  And I’m going to answer that more fully in this particular sermon today.  BUT, what is not asked or considered by these people is the same question in reverse, “What will you do...IF... I am right and I am a prophet?”

I know what I’d do if these things do not come to pass, but do you if they do come to pass?  Do you really?  That’s a tough one for people.

God expresses this very thing concerning mankind, His desire to reason together and consider specific outcomes to where we’re heading and what we’re doing, back in Isaiah.  Let’s go to Isaiah 1. We’re going to be spending some time here as I go through some of this today depending on how far we get.  Even the context of some things mentioned in Isaiah 1, but let’s look at verse 18 beginning with this on this particular series.

Isaiah 1:18 – Come now and let us reason together, says the Eternal, though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow; in other words, forgiven; though they’re red like crimson they shall be as wool.  This is for those who are willing to consider the reality that there is one Almighty Eternal God who addresses us and tells us that our sins can be forgiven!  This is what this is all about!  But that’s where it has to begin, that someone has to consider in their own minds this is from God and this is what God says; that man’s sins (the sins of mankind) can be forgiven.  But there’s more said by God in the context and what has to be looked at in people’s lives.  If they’re willing to be open and honest about what they look at and what they consider.

First, a person must be of a mind that’s willing to acknowledge God, and then to acknowledge that they have sin and need to be forgiven.  That’s a toughie for human beings; to be able to just address the fact that they have sin and need to be forgiven, because if these basics cannot be acknowledged then there’s no reasoning together in any of this of what I’m talking about.  So at some point people are going to be brought to this in their life of having to address these things one way or another.  That’s what I believe as a prophet.

It’s a very basic thing, but it’s a very tough thing for any who cannot acknowledge that they have sin that must be forgiven...then there’s no reasoning, truly isn’t, because this reasoning together is very basic.  We all have sin but it has to be acknowledged; so very basic in a relationship with God.  And so I’d ask all those different groups and different ones, “What do you think about sin?  Do you believe that you have sin in your life that needs to be forgiven?”  Because people have a lot of different ideas about it, different religions and people who’ll come along at different points here have different ideas about sin and whether it needs to be forgiven.

Romans 2:28 – let’s pick up the context here of what is being covered by Paul, because there’s some awesome things here just to learn and to focus upon.  For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly; in other words due to physical lineage and appearance and so forth.  He’s going to show a spiritual principle here.  Being a Jew, Paul is saying, is not what it’s really all about.  This isn’t what is important in the scheme of things concerning God’s Church, because Paul is an apostle speaking to God’s Church in a new age.  So, one is not a Jew who is just one outwardly; neither is circumcision only outward and physical: so he’s bringing up two things here; first, being a Jew, and the other the matter of circumcision – in other words, circumcision is not about that which is done physically to the body.

Verse 29 - But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; spiritually, inside, in the mind, and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit, so he’s showing what’s more important here.  It’s not that which is physical, it’s that which is spiritual.  He’s saying there is that which is spiritual concerning that which is of a Jew inside in our being, in our response and our relationship to God, and so is circumcision of the heart – a matter of that which is spiritual and not in the letter; in other words, the letter of the law, the rites and the rituals, the ceremonies and so forth that Paul later made very clear in the book of Hebrews – those have been done away.

When people talk about doing away with the law they want to say it’s the 10 Commandments that are done away; and you nail them down and it’s really not all the law that they really don’t like.  Stealing – that’s a good law.  Not murdering – that’s a good law.  Adultery – well that depends on their lifestyle.  On and on it goes; people pick and chose what they think is right and wrong before God – sadly.  But when it comes down to the Sabbath, sometimes that is another matter; people begin to contest and begin to talk about....

Paul makes it very clear in the book of Hebrews (and not the purpose of this sermon to go through and talk about it at this point); he makes it very clear that it’s the sacrificial system, the rituals, of the ceremonies of those things that they did in Israel and the Jewish people and so forth, that have been done away with.

Let’s read the verse again; But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit; and not of the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.  It’s not a matter of what you do to yourself physically, that you receive recognition from others as being a part of a group, or what your lineage is, that somehow because you’re of a certain lineage that you receive praise of others who are the same lineage and so forth.  That’s not what it’s about.  It’s a matter of a relationship with God and God receiving and accepting an individual.  And as one translation captures this ending even more accurately when speaking of what makes a true Jew before God and what constitutes true circumcision before God.  And therefore as this other translation clarifies, the true circumcision as translated is this: “And does not result in the approval of man,” just because you’re Jewish other Jews will accept you, “or just because you’re circumcised that others will accept you.”  Because if you’re not, you’re not a part.  “And does not result in the approval of man, but in the approval of God.”  That really captures it better.  It’s about God’s approval that people should be concerned with, not of other people.  And if people have the approval of God then they’ll accept one another, those who have the same approval.

Romans 3:1 – Then what advantage then does the Jew have? Speaking in this context here over Gentiles or foreigners who don’t know about God and speaking of this period of time especially.  What advantage does a Jew have? ...or what profit is there in circumcision? He says, Much in every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. So what is important here is where this all came from.  The oracles of God were given to the Jewish people, which for everyone to understand, it has to do with the Old Testament as an example, it has to do with counting of time as well, but primarily the written Old Testament.

A lot of people don’t understand that the Jewish people were given a responsibility to copy the Old Testament and pass it down generation to generation to generation.  They are so incredibly meticulous about it that they have a profound system of numbering, of counting and so forth to make sure.... Because Jesus Christ used that example, ‘there wouldn’t be one jot or one tittle be taken out of the law....’ they are meticulous to make sure that there isn’t the slightest thing omitted from the copying of the texts in Hebrew.  They have done it incredibly zealously, they truly have.  And so this is a part of what it’s talking about.  It’s talking about that which has been passed down generation by generation by generation for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.  They’re been meticulous about that, and what they do obey in all of this they’re going to be blessed, as with clean and unclean meats.

And this is what he’s talking about here, they have this, and so because they have this they have a closer relationship to things that are said.  They’re not in everything... they don’t do everything that’s there, obviously, but there are things that they are prone to do; one thing as an example is clean and unclean foods.  They’re quite meticulous about some of those things, more so than they are about other things that God has written.

And so that analogy is used throughout what Paul is talking about here, and other things as well, but these things stand out.  Also, so often in God’s Church sometimes people who have left, or whatever, one thing they seem to have a bit of a pride about, bit of pride about or at least what they’ve learned is that pork is not good for you.  They may go back to Christmas or Sunday church attendance, but pork is not good for you and so they won’t eat pork or unclean things out of the ocean and so forth.  Amazing!  So physical!

And so it goes on to say in verse 3 - For what if some didn’t believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? In other words, there are certain things written there and because they’ve been given those oracles and they’re very meticulous about writing them down, the scrolls and so forth and letter by letter and every jot and tittle and so forth (like an apostrophe or a comma in our usage), what if they don’t believe?  Does that affect anything to do with God and a relationship with God?  ...will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect?  In other words, God keeps His word, man doesn’t.  And so he’s showing that: Absolutely not:  some translations say, “God forbid” but that’s not what’s translated, ‘God’s’ not even written there, but it just means, “Absolutely not, it doesn’t affect it at all.”

Yes, let God be true, but every man a liar; in other words, first and foremost God is true, and it’s difficult for human beings to come to understand that we’re the ones that need help.  Let God be true, but every man a liar; if people really believed that, if they truly believed that God is true and that we have things that need to be corrected in our life and we need to come into unity and oneness with God, and we truly had a right awe and fear and respect toward God Almighty, it’d solve a lot of problems.  But mankind doesn’t because we judge and choose; and that’s why we have so many religions out there.  Thousands of different religious ideas and beliefs called Christianity even, within Christianity of people who don’t agree with each other.

That’s why the Baptist’s don’t go to the Catholic church; that’s why the Catholics don’t go to the Church of Christ; that’s why the Church of Christ won’t go across to the Lutheran church...and they don’t get along, they truly don’t!  Don’t let anybody kid you!  Some of them hate each other, some of them fight with each other, some of them have deep rooted feelings towards each other, some of them have gone to war in times past because of those differences in beliefs.  They’ve killed each other because of these religious differences.  Incredible!

Let God be true...and that’s quite a spirit to have, but every man a liar; as it’s written, That you might be justified in your sayings, in other words, when you speak; and might overcome/prevail when you are judged.  In other words, God is right and the more you are at one with God, the more you live by or repeat what God has given and you judge things according to what God has given you’re going to be better off, by far, because God is right – we’re not.  If it disagrees with something that God says then we’re a liar!  That’s what he’s saying.

But if our righteousness commends/demonstrates/magnifies the righteousness of God, what do we say? In other word, how do we respond? Paul is talking in a kind of a tough way in what he’s saying and English doesn’t really capture this too well, but he’s talking to a unique group of people too so it makes it a little bit harder to grasp the full thrust of what he’s saying here, but we’ll talk about this and bring it out.  He says, Then is God unrighteous because He takes vengeance? In other words, ‘executes judgment’.  We’ve just gone through that in the sermon series talking about God executing judgment.  And so he is discussing that if people have problems and every man is a liar and God is true, and he’s talking about some of the foolish reasoning of people then that will follow statements like this, scriptures in the Old Testament that are written like this.  And he’s responding to this now how sometimes people reason and respond and he goes on to say then,  Then is God unrighteous because He takes vengeance/executes judgment?  He says, (I speak as a man).  In other words, ‘foolishly’; how people sometimes reason and think.  Absolutely not!  Again, not the words, ‘God forbid’ because God’s not there in the Greek language, it’s just words that mean, ‘absolutely not’ and that’s again asking the question, “is God unrighteous to execute judgment because man is sinful by nature?”  That’s what he’s asking.

Otherwise, how is God to judge the world? In other words, “What right would God have?”  For if the truth of God has more abounded through my lie unto His glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?  Another translation: ‘For if the truth of God is glorified more due to my lying,’ in other words, being false or being wrong... in other words, we are wrong, man is a liar, we are lying; so he’s reasoning as a human being in how sometimes people respond.  He says, “So if God is glorified because of my lying, then maybe I should just lie more because it’ll glorify God more!”  Paul is saying its foolish talk basically.

Paul is reasoning with Gentiles and with the Jews because they have not understood the Church and what is truly being taught, and that’s the problem here.  There were people who followed Paul, both Jews and Gentiles, but primarily and even some who were partially in the Church, who left the Church, who followed and caused problems and said things that Paul was saying that Paul wasn’t saying at all.  So a lot of information that gets out there sometimes is because people haven’t understood.  So Jews have said things coming out of Jerusalem about Paul and about Paul’s teachings and he said, “They don’t tell the story properly; they don’t explain because they don’t understand the Church.”

And so Paul is trying to reason together with them about a most basic principle; exactly what it talks about back in Isaiah.  He’s trying to reason with people, with the Gentiles first and foremost; human reasoning here in part with the truth of God, and he’s trying to get them to reason together about why things are misunderstood out here, what people are saying and why that is so foolish.

Verse 8 – he begins  to summarize; Even as it is being slanderously reported, and as some declare what we’re saying here is ‘Let us do evil so that good may come?’  Their damnation/judgment is just. In other words there are some who come along and pervert and distort things so much they’re saying that what Paul is telling everyone is basically that if you just do more evil and more wrong than that’s better because good will come out of it, God’s way of life, God’s mercy, God’s grace.  They didn’t understand what God’s grace was.

So again here, things that are sometimes difficult to understand what’s being said but he’s trying to use some reasoning with those people at that time.  We don’t have those same things in society as a whole today.

This might be a good place to interject what some say about us, because you may not understand and grasp the full thrust of what Paul is saying to this point, but basically he’s trying to reason with them, he’s doing what it says back in Isaiah, ‘Let us reason together...’ because there are some who are slanderously saying things out here, twisting and distorting what I’m saying – that’s what Paul is saying that they were doing to him. And he said their judgment is coming because of what they’re doing. Because if something is repeated it should be repeated for what it is and if people find fault with that then so be it, fine, good.  They have to answer to that too as to whether Paul is really an apostle of God or not.

So, I thought I would interject some things here, primarily about me, of what some say and so forth.  Some can’t wait until May 27, 2012.  There are some who just can’t wait!  That’s what they say, because they want to see me squirm, or to be completely shamed and to make excuse as to why things didn’t happen as they did, or as they would, and so forth.  So let me in this sermon here be open and candid and truthful with the question about, “What if nothing happens as I have said.”  But as I do, I ask you, “Can you do the same?”  I know what I would do if....  What would you do if....?  And before I go into this I must first establish where I stand.

These are my truthful beliefs and feelings in the matter and I am genuinely sincere, but as Mr. Armstrong used to say, “Some are sincere, but they’re sincerely wrong.”  So let’s consider it.  In other words, what I’m saying is, what I believe and what I teach to the deepest part of my core of my being is what I believe with all my being, and fully sincere about it.  But just throwing that out there for those individuals that say, “Yes, but...”  Some can be sincerely wrong – that’s absolutely true.

So again, some cannot wait for me to say that I am not a prophet, or to say that I am a false prophet.  Indeed, no one has long to wait do they?  Isn’t that amazing?  May 27, 2012 is not too far away and if Europe hasn’t risen by early 2012 and if China does not begin destroying the earth before that date, then the reality would be manifest much sooner, obviously.  You don’t have to wait until 2012.

As far as the question they ask; what would I do?  Well, first I’d repent before God and the Church.  I’d acknowledge my sin and pray that God have mercy upon me for being so horribly presumptuous.  Candidly (and some are going to really hate hearing this), I’d deeply repent of all those things that concern prophecies that I have given in the office of a prophet BUT I’d seek to hold fast to all that I believe with all my being to be true concerning the word of God.  I would begin to go back through all 57 Truths (and I’d hope others would do exactly the same thing), IF...  just to be open about it.  I’d go back through all 57 Truths and eliminate those that are shown to be untrue, repenting as I did so; but I would hold fast to all that I believed to be true.  That would quickly take me through the first 21 Truths, through the time of Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong.  Then after that I would pray and seek guidance on the rest, because I know the truth of many without those that are prophetic given through the office of a prophet.  In other words, there is that which God made clear to me at one point, not too long ago, and that concerned how I came to see and believe what I do was given as an apostle.  Some are really going to like that one.  Candidly, that wouldn’t change.  That would be my mind, my spirit, my heart.

There are too many truths that testify to the reality.  There are things that others cannot accept in some of the scattered groups and so forth that I believe with all my being, that I know are true.  So, that’s candidly what I would do...not necessarily what people want to hear.  But candidly, that’s what I would do.

And if all this came to pass – all I can do is respond to what I see and believe about God.  I would be true to what I believe regardless of what anyone else did.  Perhaps I would be by myself, or only a few others, but I’ve been there before.  But one has no integrity at all if they don’t act in an unwavering manner toward what they believe to be true.  Sadly, a lot of people just don’t do that.  They will do things for different reasons, because their parents have done it, or because a friend has done it, or whatever...  But you have to act upon what you believe to be true.  Indeed, I would strive to reason with the Church – not to get them to follow me - as I do now because I teach that they should follow me as I follow Jesus Christ. IF... I would still believe the same, I just would realize I was not a prophet and I would seek God’s mercy and forgiveness in the matter.  I would strive to reason with the Church, not to get them to follow me, but to encourage them to follow the same process of going through those 57 Truths honestly before God.

I know how discouraged and distraught people were when the apostasy occurred and due to that I would encourage people to examine their lives during the past several years.  I would ask, “Was it in vain?”  You know, some of you sitting here today – you need to ask that yourself.  What would you do?  How would you respond before God?  I’ve seen what’s happened in the Church when they’ve been scattered at different times.  What would you do honestly, truthfully, between yourself and God?  Go back to ‘United’?  Go back to ‘Philadelphia’?  What would you do, truly, before God?  Because you need to know in your heart and mind.... because I know what I would do: I’d throw myself at the mercy seat of God.  Be a fool not to!  I know God’s merciful, filled with love, has a plan; even if it were in the Great White Throne – so be it!

So asking all – even within the Church – did you maintain a sense of urgency through that time?  However how long you’ve been in God’s Church – have you maintained a sense of urgency?  I’ll tell you what, that’s one thing Mr. Armstrong had – always had a sense of urgency!  Because if you ever lose that sense then that’s when you fall asleep spiritually, that’s when you don’t have a chance.  When Jesus Christ is 25 years or 100 years away, as some teach out there who are splintered and scattered, that He may not return for a hundred years.  What do you think that does to people?  When everything that Mr. Armstrong taught, pointed to the reality that we’re in the end-time.  How can people ignore what’s happening in Europe and Russia and China, and all these things?  That even if that’s all anyone had.... amazing!

So where would you be today if you didn’t have the sense of urgency over the past many years?  Or year?  Or two years?  I would ask, “What scattered group could you have gone with and done better in your relationship or your belief with God?”  Some who don’t believe an apostasy has occurred?  That’s insanity!  Some who don’t acknowledge some of those kinds of things, what happened to the Church, the fact that we all fell asleep, the fact that we were all spewed out of God’s mouth?

I would ask, “What value do you place on fellowship that you’ve experienced over the past years with people of the same mind?  How important was the fellowship to your maintaining a spiritual watchfulness and being on-guard?”

That’s what I would plead, truly.

There is more I would seek to encourage people in doing because even if the timing were all wrong there are certain things most assuredly coming to pass, rapidly so, concerning the end of the age and the coming of God’s Kingdom to this earth.  Simply, as I said, the rising in power of Europe and Asia, the growing demise and the diminishing power of the United States and the dollar and everything else that’s taking place that testify to the proximity of Christ’s return.

So, yes, I would most assuredly acknowledge that I was not a prophet IF these things do not come to pass over the next year...but conscientiously I would seek to hold fast to all the truths that I know, believe to be true, and I would seek God’s mercy; but I would also seek to accept whatever punishment He saw fitting to pour out upon me.  Who could do less?  God is merciful and God is righteous.  We can see and understand no more than what God gives to us.  We are but clay before God and He’ll mould and fashion us according to His will if we yield ourselves to Him.

I choose, and have done so since age 19, to yield myself to God’s will.  God is love!  So even in, if the judgment were for the Great White Throne as I’ve said, I know that God would forgive me because I believed these things about God, regardless of what took place.

So I think its fair at this point here just to mention a couple things.  I know some out there hate what I just said, but I’m being honest and truthful, “What if....?  What would you do if....” because I’m asked that; and I’m asking the same thing of you.  “What are you going to do IF what I’m telling you is true?  And what IF what I’m telling you is right?”

Here’s a good article...

Should We Be Alarmed That The Biggest Bond Fund In The World Has Dumped All Of Their U.S. Treasury Bonds?[1]

By Michael Snyder

The Economic Collapse

March 09, 2011 7:55 PM

Some people don’t think that’s important.  It’s important!  There is a process going on here that’s happening faster and faster and faster before your eyes – it screams out!  Here is some of the article:

Bill Gross, the manager of the biggest bond fund in the world, has forgotten more about bonds than most of us will ever learn. That is why the big move that PIMCO has just made is so unsettling.  At one time PIMCO held more U.S. government debt than any other bond fund on the globe, but now news has come out that they have gotten rid of all their U.S. government-related securities.  So should we be alarmed?  For months Gross has been warning that the bull market in bonds is coming to an end, and now it looks like he is putting his words into action.  Gross has often publicly decried the rampant government spending that has been going on over the last several years, and apparently he has seen enough.  He is taking his ball and he is going home.  This really is a stunning move by PIMCO.  Gross must really believe that something fundamental has shifted.    Gross didn't get to where he is today by being stupid.  But so far world financial markets are taking this news in stride.  Nobody seems all that alarmed that the largest bond fund in the world has dumped all of their U.S. Treasuries.  But with world financial markets in such a state of chaos right now, shouldn't we all take note when one of the biggest players in the game makes such a bold move?

And then farther down in the article it says.... talking about some of these things and something that Gross had written about.  He said....

But the truth is that the Ponzi Scheme of the U.S. Treasury issuing bonds and the Federal Reserve buying them up cannot last forever as Gross noted in his March newsletter....

Amazing how he’s talking; someone that’s held the most and now he’s dumping them and talking about this Ponzi Scheme of the U.S. Treasury.  This is what he wrote....

"Basically, the recent game plan is as simple as the Ohio State Buckeyes’ “three yards and a cloud of dust” in the 1960s. When applied to the Treasury market it translates to this: The Treasury issues bonds and the Fed buys them. What could be simpler, and who’s to worry? This Sammy Scheme as I’ve described it in recent Outlooks [his publication] is as foolproof as Ponzi and Madoff until… until… well, until it isn’t." ....

And let’s see here, this week, incredible!  This is from the Seattle Times.  It says....

Subduction zone quake could also hit Northwest [2]

Northwesterners should pay close attention to the tragedy unfolding in Japan, because the same thing is headed our way, scientists say.

By SANDI DOUGHTON

The Seattle Times

Northwesterners should pay close attention to the tragedy unfolding in Japan, because the same thing is headed our way, scientists say.

The massive earthquake that struck Thursday night, followed within minutes by tsunami waves 20 feet high or more, [some said they were 30 feet high] is almost identical to what the coast of the Pacific Northwest will see when the offshore fault called the Cascadia subduction zone ruptures.

"It's the best example of what we're going to have, and I'm sure Japan is more prepared than we are," said John Vidale, head of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the University of Washington. The Cascadia fault last ruptured in 1700, generating a magnitude 9 earthquake and a tsunami that may have been bigger than the one that battered Japan.

They have found some evidence in some of the areas in Oregon where if what they have found is true from some of those tsunami’s that have come ashore from that particular area there, have gone many times higher, many times higher than what hit Japan.

Major earthquakes on the Cascadia fault occur every 400 to 500 years, though some new evidence suggest they could be much more frequent.

The magnitude 8.9 Japan quake was preceded by a series of magnitude 7 foreshocks that scientists will be studying closely, Vidale said.

So it goes on in talking about some of those things.  That just goes along a little bit with saying that this is exactly what’s stirred up right now.  I thought it’d be good to read some of this about what happened about two weeks ago.

Christchurch, February 22 – it was a 6.3 and it did the damage it did because it was right there on the spot.  Before this big earthquake in Japan, it talks about the 7 there, but it was a 7.2 quake that struck the region followed by....

It’s absolutely astounding what’s taking place in that region.  There have been 205 quakes of 5.0 magnitudes and higher that started with the 7.2 a few days ago, two days before the big quake.  Generally when you have a quake of 7 or anything of that nature, generally they start subsiding and going down.  This built up until the 8.9.  The point is that things aren’t happening in normal ways anymore and they’re not going to continue happening in normal ways and they’re going to continue on.

30 of those quakes were 6.0 and higher, 15 of these were equal to or higher than the one that struck Christchurch.  And what’s amazing, if you’re watching some of these, is they’re getting closer and closer to the country itself where this one was some 250 km out from land; and they’re getting closer and closer and closer to even Tokyo.  These are not small quakes.... and they have all kinds of problems.

I hope that by going along with some of the things we’ve covered in the recent series here that you understand that this is small and it isn’t nearly enough.  Do you think that anyone in Japan today, because of what’s happened, would listen to any truth about God?  ...about the Sabbath?  ...about the Holy Days?  ...that I am a prophet?  Not in the slightest.  There has to be one after another, after another event, zeroing in on every country in this world for these things to happen.  That’s why God is doing things the way He is, but primarily it’s about the United States and when things start here.  And there will be things happen in the United States equivalent to and greater than what has happened in Japan by far.  Things are coming.  Things are getting heated up.

But I hope that by what happened there that you can see even why in this country that things have to happen again and again and again, Thunders (plural), Trumpets (plural), to accomplish what has to be accomplished.  It’s too bad!  It’s a horrifying thing, but there is no other way that people are ever going to start listening to the truth or to whom God sends unless it happens exactly as we’ve talked about.

I want to continue on in the sermon here.  I’ve tried to be as open and truthful about ‘what if’ because I don’t believe the ‘what if’ in the slightest way!  I don’t believe it.  I don’t give it the teeniest, teeniest, teeniest thought and credibility; but I’m just trying to be open and honest about ‘what if’ and I’m asking others now, “What are you going to do IF I am God’s prophet?  What are you going to do?  What are you going to do as these things continue to happen in the United States...Thunders and then Trumpets?  And then around the world, Thunders that continue to happen?  What are some of you going to do in some of the scattered groups when Thunder #5 begins to be unleashed...because it hasn’t yet.  Thunder #5 hasn’t been unleashed yet; hasn’t happened but we’re getting really, really close...and candidly it’s going to be a great part of the focus of our fast on the first weekend of April as we go into, after that weekend, the final ‘Time and a Half a Time’.

We call it ‘Time, Times and a Half a Time’.  God is going to show us in time there’s a greater significance in ‘Times, Time and a Half a Time’ of events taking place on this earth.

Everything that’s been held back in time is starting to come together in a very powerful way and you haven’t seen anything.  It’s hard to watch.  It’s hard to watch waves come into a city and rip every house off its foundation, to see them floating out into the ocean, to see cars and trucks being tossed around so powerfully, so mightily by such forces.  And yet to understand that’s nothing compared to what has to happen.  And there are problems with what’s going on with those reactors.  They had another earthquake a little while ago before services, right where the reactor is, I think it was 6.4.  What if they just keep moving a little more inland, a little more inland with greater power?

I thought it was interesting that they were talking to one ‘expert’ on TV here last night and he was asked, “Do you suppose what happened down in Christchurch has any connection up here, because it’s so far away.”  His opinion was it couldn’t have any connection.  People do not understand the earth that God made, how delicate it is.  How delicate this earth is, and that things that happen in different places have an effect on other places around the earth.  It’s an awesome thing!

Man has messed around and has done things he shouldn’t have done with the earth.  We’re going to find out one day that a lot of what’s taking place right now is a result of what man has already done in messing around with things farther into the earth, the experimentation and things that they do, things that they’re monkeying around with trying to, in one day, trying to gain energy or control or to do things that they’re trying to do.  Going to find out one day how much we messed up something that God basically told us we were supposed to take care of. But man is greedy and he does all kinds of weird and stupid things.

Some people out here don’t have to wait too long before they begin to see some of these things take place.

So again, some can find fault with everything I say and that’s their choice, but I would hope and do desire that those whom I have addressed at the beginning of this sermon in all those different categories would reason together in what’s being said here and that’s covered in this particular series.  And for so many, God’s going to bring them to that, because it’s a calling, it’s a calling that God gives.  Because my hope for every one of you is not that you be proven wrong in a harsh manner, that you have to grovel, that you have to squirm and hurt with pain for your error.  I’ll not take joy or vengeful satisfaction from any of that kind of suffering, but I know you’re going to suffer.

Again I ask, “What if I’m right?  Can you honestly and truthfully address what you will do if what I have said begins to powerfully unfold before your very eyes, so that God can reason with you in all this?  What will you do if great devastation begins to strike this country with massive loss of life?  What will you do?  Will you still resist?  ...still say, “No, there’s no way you can be.” Or will you at that time seek God’s forgiveness for your resistance to His word?  ...because your resistance and wrong judgment toward me...it’s not toward me, it’s toward God.

Some have already wanted me to acknowledge that I am a false prophet because they want to hold to what they insist on believing or what others have said about the timing of end-time events becoming manifest, but they don’t want to hear why.  That’s an amazing thing to me...well, it isn’t amazing, it’s human nature.  But they don’t want to hear why matters of time have changed in the manifestation of prophecies, timing for their revelation has changed, as I’ve said in times past; but the prophecies haven’t changed, they’re still going to come to pass.  The revelation of the Trumpets, especially 2, 3 and 4 are really very near now.

The 50 Truth that was only in God’s power to reveal did alter and reveal more about the coming of Jesus Christ.  That’s where I’ve talked about in times past there was a period of time between six and nine months that wasn’t clear and God clarified it.  And I was thinking as I was going through this, if there is fault to blame, of which a person would be a great fool to blame God, it would indeed be God’s; because there is no fault to when and how God chooses to reveal His will, His truths to mankind.  I think of Pentecost that was given to Mr. Armstrong.  That was in God’s control, and the Church kept it up until 1974 on the wrong day, and God honoured it.  Amazing!

And the two day fast of the Church in 2009 – it was real in what it did and it did alter by two years the manifestation of God’s executing end-time judgment contained in the prophecies that I’ve written.

Let’s continue; and I hope that we can reason together about some very basic matters and not about whether or not at this point that I’m a prophet or not.  The challenge before you is if we can go through this and look at these things open-mindedly.

I’d ask people in the scattered church, because you see when things begin to happen to them, personally, in a greater way (and so many of them already know some of the things that have been said), I would hope that they could do as Mr. Armstrong did when his wife challenged him about the Sabbath.  He did it open-mindedly.  He went to the library day after day, night after night studying.  He fully believed his wife was up the creek.  He fully believed that Sunday was the right day to worship God.  He didn’t believe Saturday was the Sabbath.  He studied book after book after book and came to the conclusion because of being open-minded about it, and the process that he used, that she was right, and that began a process where God began to....  He brought him to that anyway, but began to work through him in a very powerful way.

I think about the scattered groups.  Where do you think things are right now?  Is Jesus Christ returning 25 years from now?  10 years from now?  What are your plans?  What are you thinking about wherever you are, whether you’re in ‘Living’ or ‘United’ or whatever the splinter groups are called? (I don’t even try to keep up with all of the names of them anymore.)  What do you think about the two end-time witnesses and where are they going to come from?  There was a time in the Church when people used to speculate who it might be – Mr. Armstrong and Garner Ted.  That was the belief for a long, long time; that they were going to be the two end-time witnesses and two prophets of God at the end-time.  And so people talked about those things.

And surely some in the scattered groups out there are talking about some of those things – because if you aren’t then God must be a long, long way off in your mind.  Surely a little bit of panic’s going to start setting in as events continue to increase in this country and the world.  Who are the two-witnesses?  When are they going to come on the scene?  What do you think?  What do you believe?  What are you being taught by those who teach you?  When your leaders die what are you going to do?  Because we’re getting closer and closer to those events.  Those leaders are going to die.  Some think that’s a really harsh thing.  Can’t help that.  Some probably thought it was a very harsh thing with what Elijah did too.  It wasn’t.

Romans 3:9 – Paul asked, What then? Are we better than them? Speaking of the Jews and those who find fault.  No, in no wise: when speaking of having sin, in other words. For we have proven that both Jews and Gentiles are all under sin. It doesn’t matter who people are.  People shouldn’t look down on others.  Sometimes people think because I say what I do about some of the scattered groups or whatever that I’m doing that but I’m not looking down on anyone, I truly am not; and we all have sin that needs to be forgiven, we truly do.  But it has to do with our attitude toward them.  I have certain beliefs about where they are and in God’s time all these things will come out.

Verse 10 - As it’s written, there is none righteous, no, not one: So do you believe that about yourself?  Whoever you are that’s listening today?  How about any of you in this Body?  There is none righteous, no, not one.  Do we see ourselves that way?  It’s God that’s righteous, and because we’re a part of the Body, and because we’re a part of the Church that that righteousness can be in our life – but we still have sin!  We realize that we’re going to have sin until we die and there are battles we have to fight; but fight them we must!  And we have to acknowledge it day by day what our sins are before God.  That helps us a lot in how we judge others, that we’re not harsh on people and looking down upon anyone.  We have a desire that everyone is able to have a right relationship with God.

So he said, As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one; in other words, apart from God, because it’s about God.

Verse 11 - There is none who understands, that’s why I made the comment a while ago – every one of us is dependent upon God for everything that we know, for everything that we understand.  There’s not a thing that you can know and understand that’s true without God being in it, truly.  God has to give it to you.  I know that!  I believe you know that about yourself!  And the reality is it’s a very scary thing because we saw it so much after the apostasy and the scattering took place, of all the different groups that were out there and all the stumbling around in the dark by so many people.  The reality is until God gives you the truth you can’t have it.  And the truth that different ones had, we saw them lose it quickly.  That’s scary!

You can’t even hold onto the truth save that you have a relationship with God and God blesses you to hold onto it and hold fast to it.  You can lose it.  You can just go through the motions after a while on a physical plane like the Jews did.  That’s all they ever did really, because that’s all they really understood – things about clean and unclean meats or whatever, but it was far more than that at different times for them because they had the Sabbath, and many have held onto it through time, and the Holy Days, and even Passover for a period of time until the time of Christ when it began to be watered down so badly.  And it wasn’t too long after that they began to change even the timing of Passover and the observance of Passover; and they got farther and farther away from it to where they couldn’t grasp the connection between what Jesus Christ did and the meaning of Passover... and so they rejected Christ.

And so again, it’s a fearful thing to let down spiritually, because then you lose the truth and you can only hold onto certain basic physical things that come across more physically – the Sabbath, the Holy Days. You can have a routine of tithing as different people have because it becomes embedded in them; but what you see and what you believe about the truth disappears.

There is none who understands apart from God.  God has to be in it or you can’t understand the truth.  There is none who seeks after God. Apart from a relationship with God, unless God’s in it. They have all gone out of the way; they have altogether become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one. Apart from God you can’t know what good is, you can’t know how to live your life.

So again, it’s talking about in the context here ‘apart from God’.  And we realize we don’t want to be apart from God, we want God to dwell in us, to strengthen us and we in God – because that’s how we’re able to maintain and continue on and hold onto what we have and grow in what we have and to live right and better toward one another.  You can’t do it on your own power.  You can’t love each other on your own power. It just becomes like Philadelphia and the name, a philia love; that’s the best you can have in an organization without God’s spirit.  There are a lot of groups out there who have philia.  It’s a fellowship, it’s a fraternity, a fraternal type of love, it’s not God’s love.

Verse 13 – He goes on to explain this, ‘apart from God’; Their throat is an open sepulchre; for with their tongues they have used deceit; In other words manipulation, lying, deceiving people, especially about who they truly are.  Human beings are pretty good about that – appearing one way before people, but at home something totally different.  And if we’re not careful in God’s Church we can do the same thing. We can come together on the Sabbath in fellowships across the country, around the world, and we can treat each other a certain way and put on our best behaviour at that time (which we should strive to put on better behaviour at that time than other times), but sometimes we can launch into a different person altogether from what we picture on the Sabbath.  And we’re not supposed to do that because that’s lying, it’s hypocritical, it’s not yielding to the spirit of God.

And so when a lot of people read something like this, they think, “I’m not guilty of this, ‘throat is an open sepulchre... a grave, an open grave.’”  That sounds pretty nasty doesn’t it? And with their tongues they’ve used deceit. Most people think, “I never do that.”  Any time... well, we’ll go on with the rest of it.  And the poison of asps is in/under their lips: Do you know what it’s talking about?  It’s talking about whether we live this way of life or not and to what degree we live this way of life or not, what degree is God within us or not within us, what degree are we yielding our self to God being in us and dwelling within us?  Because you see.... and it happens all the time even in the midst of God’s Church...that the poison of asps can be under our lips in how we talk about somebody and what we say to somebody. It happens all the time.  It shouldn’t happen, but it happens.  It’s how much we need God’s spirit all the time so we can treat each other in a right way, in God’s love; because it’s wrong to not treat each other in a godly fashion, in a godly manner, with mercy, with love, with care, with consideration, being loving, giving, forgiving.  And sometimes people aren’t forgiving.

Sometimes people will say something to each other and have a blow out and have a fight and not treat each other well and hold onto resentment and bitterness for a long time; sometimes reacting in different ways, sometimes clamming up and not saying anything, making the other person suffer.  That’s how the mind thinks sometimes.  “I’m going to show them!  They hurt me so I’m not going to talk to them!”  And you think we would grow up.  We see little children do things like that sometimes, but we think, “Whoa!”  We do the same things as adults sometimes.  Or sometimes people will just lash out and be extremely bitter, extremely bitter to one another.  That’s why I hate those things whenever they happen in God’s Church.  I hate them when they happen!  The deep hurt feelings that last for days and days and days and sometimes people can’t even work through them.  And here we are approaching Passover, something that everyone needs to look at even within the Church, within the Body, to make sure that we are repenting and striving to live right and that these things aren’t a part of us.

Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:  Can we acknowledge this is a part of our human nature?  ...and do we truly battle it?  ...‘cursing and bitterness’? Because if we’re not in agreement with God all the time, then when are we out of agreement?  What have we said?  What have we done toward someone else?  What is our feeling toward someone else?  I don’t care if it’s as simple as (I’ve mentioned this in times past), about driving.  If you have a wrong attitude toward someone on the highway, you’ve got something in your heart that’s wrong toward someone you don’t even know.  I don’t care what they’ve done to you.  Leave them alone, back away, back off, whatever, pass them if you have to, but get away.  Don’t let it build up in your heart to where you sin in your spirit.  And if we do that I can tell you what, it happens a lot, too often in life in the closest of relationships, it truly does.

Their feet, swift to shed blood: That’s just the way of human nature.  It’s just the way of human nature!  See, we don’t talk like this, we don’t think this way about ourselves.  We think, “I would never kill somebody, stab somebody?  ...cause them to bleed? This is a horrible thing – ‘their feet swift to shed blood.’” And yet God wants us to understand how bad things are that we do as human beings, because He calls it what it is, that if you hurt someone, that if you say something in a wrong way to someone, this is the spirit, it’s a spirit of murder.  That’s why I love the book of John, speaking of 1st John.  I love all of it, but I’m talking about when it talks about this in context, especially in 1st John and he goes through and talks about godly love and what truly constitutes sin and especially in relationships and that this is the way we are as human beings and if we know how to love someone and we fail to love them God just calls it what it is.  If we know how to love someone and we fail to do it, it’s murder.  That’s what God says.  ‘...swift to shed blood.’  So do we know how to love? ...to show love?  ...to tell someone I’m sorry?  ...to calm the waters and accept the guilt, the blame, the error of the way; that things could have been done better?  Even if you’re right about a particular matter!  That’s not what’s important.  It’s the relationship and whether or not we’re willing to suffer for the benefit of loving someone else.

We don’t tend to think ourselves this way, feet swift to shed blood... But we’re so quick to judge, we’re so quick for something to come out of our mouth, we truly are, about someone else.  Something can happen, we can hear a story and oh how quick sometimes we are to pass the story along!  We’re quick to pass along the story about something bad and negative about somebody else.  That’s the same thing, ‘feet swift to shed blood.’  We just can’t wait sometimes!  It’s our human nature and if we can acknowledge that then we know where the battle is.  It’s up here in our mind, in our being and how we think toward each other and how we treat each other and how we talk about each other.  And to what degree do we really love each other and what suffering are we willing to go to in order to love someone else?

Destruction and misery are in their ways: or unhappiness.  If someone lives like that that’s exactly what happens, those things can happen in life, ‘destruction and misery.’

And so those of you listening out there, these things a part of your life? What’s your home like?  What are your friends like with you?  How do you treat others around you? Think of the person that’s your greatest enemy....  Why are they your enemy?  Think of the person you have the greatest disgust toward, which for some of you, it’s me.  Why?  Where is that coming from?  What do you want to see?  Be happier if I die tomorrow?  ...die today?  Will that give you any kind of satisfaction and fullness?  Because you see, there does come a time when it makes a lot of people happy, so happy they give gifts to each other.  That’s hard to imagine.  I see that more and more all the time.  Because of what’s taking place now... you haven’t seen or heard anything yet because of what’s coming and what’s going to be said.  You think Pharaoh got upset with Moses?  Powerfully so by the end.  That’s why we went through that.  Powerfully, powerfully so by the end because of what he said.  So much so he said, “If you see my face again you’re a dead man.”  That’s basically what he told him.  He said, “Get out of here because the next time you see my face you’re dead!”  Deep, deep feelings that came to the surface.  And that’s the way too many in this world are going to become as we go forward.

But out of the midst of all that God is going to be calling people and giving the opportunity to change, to repent.  Awesome what’s getting ready to take place!  Because right now we’re at the doorstep of all this.  This is the time.  It’s already started this year.

Little over two weeks from Christchurch to Japan just in earthquakes alone; tsunami.  Short time.  Not talking about what’s taking place in the Middle East, not talking about what’s taking place in Europe that’s constant right now, that’s constant with Germany, that’s constant with the European Union, that’s constant because of the nagging little things, and Spain, and Portugal, and Greece, and Ireland... all these little nagging things and this talk about different ones, that maybe at some point a part of the solution may be that Greece won’t stay in with the Euro.  Wouldn’t that be a shock to us if they didn’t?  I speak ‘foolishly’. We’re getting so close to ten nations agreeing, “We’re going to do this together and the rest aren’t going to be with us.  We’re going to be a union!”  And they’re going to do some horrible things when that happens, right then when they agree, and right after they start doing it they’re going to regret they started it.  But they can’t undo what they began.  But ten of them!  And we can see more and more and more how close that’s getting and it’s getting close.

What’s happening in the Middle East?  It’s about Europe and oil.  That’s what it’s about.  That’s why the ‘king of the north and the king of the south’ become so important.  It’s because it’s about what makes the car go and what makes the plane fly and what makes life easier for people in maintaining a status quo.

Reminds me of the stupidity of the stock market and some of the things the other day.  Because of the earthquake and because of Japan not using cars right now oil went down.  There’s not going to be as much demand.  I’ll tell you what, it’s just insane the things that are going on out here.  We’ll get to some of those things a little bit later here.

Destruction and misery are in their ways; I feel for people who are like this. There are people you come across in the world who are like this, whose lives are unhappy, they’re eaten up inside, they torture themselves and they don’t understand why, they don’t understand where their misery and unhappiness comes from.  And sometimes that happens within the Church, that people can become unhappy and torn up inside because they know they’re not yielding to what they’re supposed to be doing.

And the way of peace they have not known: thank God that’s what He’s showing us, the way of peace.  Thank God He’s having us focus on that more and more and more.  I think of just this past year, what God has given to us in the meaning of Jerusalem, to grasp more fully even the meaning of Babylon and why the two are opposed to each other and why only one comes out of all this; because the rest has to be destroyed.

There is no fear of God before their eyes. The more that we have a healthy fear to sin, a fear to disobey, a fear to talk about someone else, a fear to put someone else in a bad light, a fear to slander someone else; the more that we have that because we recognize how much sin is involved in that, that’s healthy, that’s good for us.  We want to have a right respect, awe, and fear toward God, to obey God; and our lives are richer and better for it when we yield ourselves in such a way.

And so Paul is trying to reason with them about these very basic things about human nature, trying to help people to come to see that we all have sin, we all have battles.  We all have battles!  And yet that’s one of the hardest things sometimes for people to come to acknowledge, that ‘if’ there is a God - that crazy ‘IF’, that dumb ‘IF’, that stupid ‘IF’; that some people live their lives like that.  There is a God and there are things He requires of us as human beings, and until human beings are brought to that point they don’t really grasp the necessity, the importance of changing their life, of repenting.  Incredible!  And so how can you even reason with people if they can’t come to acknowledge that they have sin.

What are you?  Catholic? Lutheran? Baptist?  Do you have sins that you have to be repenting of on a constant basis?  What takes away your sins?  The beads?  So many ‘Hail Mary’s’?  What takes away your sin?  I’m not trying to be facetious; I’m just trying to be honest and reasoning with you.  What takes away your sin?  Baptists; what takes away your sin?  What takes away your sin when you sin during the week?  What are your sins?  What are your sins that you need to be forgiven of, if you acknowledge those things?

Some of you in the scattered groups; what are your sins?  Could it be where you are is a sin?  Could it be choices you’ve made to end up where you are?  ...that that’s your sin?  Could it be because you’re not being open and honest and truthful with God?  Is that your sin?  Is your sin possibly one of not acknowledging that there was an apostasy?  Is a part of your sin perhaps because you won’t acknowledge that you were spewed out of God’s mouth?  ...vomited out of God’s mouth... and that somehow you just continued on a Philadelphian?  Is that your sin?  Or have you accepted your responsibility that the scattering was a result of everyone’s sin and that’s why God spewed us out of His mouth?  Do you believe what it says to the Church of Laodicea?  ...or not?  Amazing!  What is it you need to repent of?

Do you need to repent of not slandering your father or your mother or your sister or your brother?  Do you need to repent of that?  ...or is it okay for you to do that?  Amazing!

Verse 19 - Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to them who are under the law; an expression used by Paul about being under the ‘penalty of the law’.  There’s a penalty to the law.  It’s not about being under the 10 Commandments, it’s about being under the penalty of the law, that’s the terminology that Paul uses on a constant basis.  So what the law says, it says to them who are under the law: and yes, ‘under the law’ if you will, in the sense of we are to obey God’s law; but if we don’t then we have these penalties and the reality is he’s talking about sin and everybody has sin and so we need to be able to be forgiven of sin because we all have sin.

...that every mouth may be stopped, and that all the world may be guilty before God.  So we all have sin!  That’s what he’s talking about here.  We all have sin, and if you understand that then what Paul is showing is that we’re all under the same penalty; it’s the death penalty.  But who believes that out there?  Basically only this Body and those who are scattered.  There aren’t many people out there, many organizations and many peoples, and what they call themselves, ‘Traditional Christianity’, that believe that they are under the death penalty for the breaking of certain laws and they have to be forgiven of those.

Therefore by the deeds/doing of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: in other words, he’s talking about the Jews here and this concept here about doing the law.  That isn’t what saves you, by how well you keep God’s law, because he goes on to say, basically, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. So that’s how we learn what sin is – is by God’s laws, otherwise you wouldn’t even know what sin was.  But now the righteousness of God without (and the Greek word means ‘apart’) apart from the law is made manifest, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by/through faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all who believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned...So Paul has taken a long time here to reason with the Jews and the Gentiles, basically at that time, saying that everybody has sin.  And sometimes different ones out here – that’s a tough thing for them to come to acknowledge that they have sin.  It’s tough for some in ‘Living’.  It’s tough for some in ‘United’.  It’s tough for some in different groups to acknowledge they have sin, but again here, it depends on what you see as sin, what you believe is sin.

So even most of those will acknowledge that there is sin, that there are things they need to be forgiven of.  But as I said before, is it possible that there are other sins you’re guilty of as well because of where you are?  ...because of what you believe?  ...about why you stayed where you are?  ...or why you chose to go where you went?

Verse 24 - Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that’s in Christ Jesus: Whom God has set forth to be the propitiation/payment through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission/forgiveness of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; In other words, because Jesus Christ is God’s Passover that’s given to us so that we can be forgiven.

So I think of different ones in different places in different times and I think of people who listen, and some who are going to be Jewish who don’t acknowledge, but will have to come to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and He was the Passover.  He’s the one who died so you can have your sins forgiven.  What do any who are Jewish out there believe about this? How do you have your sins forgiven you?  How are they taken care of?  Incredible!

Verse 26 – To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness, in other words God’s righteousness, that He might be just, and the justifier of him who believes in Jesus.  In other words, we come to understand that Jesus Christ is our Passover and because we believe in those things and we rely upon those things, we trust in those things, that it’s through Him that we’re able to have the propitiation, or if you will, payment of sin; then it is about God’s righteousness and not ours.

Where is boasting then? Or pride? It is excluded. By what law? ...of works? In other words, Paul is going along here and saying, “Is it because of how well you keep God’s law that it counts?  No, because all of you have sin and so you’re under the death penalty; so you have to be forgiven of your sins.” No: but by the law of faith.  And so we’re able to be forgiven of our sins simply because we believe what God says about His Son Jesus Christ; that because He is our Passover that we can go before Him and ask for forgiveness and God forgives us.  How many times?  Day after day after day, if you want to stay close to God, that you go before God and ask Him for forgiveness of your sins.

Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without/apart from the deeds/doing of the law.  You should do the law. It doesn’t take away from that, but it’s a matter of faith because of Jesus Christ and the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses us from the sins caused by the breaking of those laws.

Is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not the God also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also.  Seeing it is one God who shall justify the circumcision by/through faith, and the uncircumcision; in other words, he brings it all together showing that whether you’re Jew or Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, it’s a matter of faith in Jesus Christ.  So he says, Do we make void the law through faith? Absolutely not, but we establish it.

And so we go back to the most basic of things in Isaiah 1 and the context of what’s being discussed here.  We went through that particular chapter because it goes back to this expression here in Isaiah 1:18 where it says, Come now and let us reason together.  You know, that’s what God’s desire has been for man all along, that man would just listen to Him and consider.  But we don’t tend to do those things.  But as things continue to take place this is exactly what every person has to be brought to.  And the basic, the beginning of it is the Sabbath; it’s about the Holy Days, it’s about the truth of God, it’s about the fact we all have sin.

And so back here in Isaiah 1:2 - Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Eternal has spoken; I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me. The ox knows his owner, and the donkey his master's crib: kind of interesting here.  The word ‘crib’ here is the Hebrew word that has to do with ‘the one who feeds you’ or ‘where your food comes from, where your food is going to be’ in other words.  I don’t know if you’ve ever been around a farm or not, but those of you who have, especially some animals, especially some that are young....  I remember certain lambs and whatever, when you gave them... you’d feed them little bottles to get them... because they didn’t have mothers, and you’d feed milk through a particular little device that had a nipple on the end.  And you’d hold these out there and they generally knew the time; they got to where they knew you and they would run to you because they knew that’s where they got their food.  And God uses that expression there to say, “My people don’t even know how they’re fed.”  They don’t know how they’re nourished, they don’t acknowledge it.

God has provided everything we have on this earth and we don’t acknowledge those things, as a whole, as human beings.  And so this is what He’s saying.  ...Israel does not know, My people don’t even consider it. In other words, consider, in the sense of what we’re talking about, of reasoning together, thinking it out, to acknowledge the most basic of things.

I think of evolution when I think of this, how people can believe in evolution in the world, but they do in the most ‘educated’ – supposedly - those who have the doctorate degrees and so forth and maybe several at that, can use such reasoning, to believe in something so foolish.  Because it doesn’t take a whole lot in thinking about and reasoning about something of that nature to come to grasp and to understand that you can’t have something from nothing over millions of years.  You think it out; think hard enough and you can change something?  Man’s never going to fly; something man would have loved to have done without having to build an airplane.  And I don’t care how many millions of years passed, it would never be, you’d never sprout wings, but they seem to think...  seriously, they seem to think that in time you can evolve into something supposedly better, or that we’re going to have bigger heads because we’ll be able to think better.  They’ve already proven you can’t even use what you have up there already, so what do we need a bigger head for?  But people will draw pictures of the future where they have these big ole’ skulls... it’s that’s insane how man thinks.

Ah sinful nation, a people filled/laden with iniquity/sins, a seed of evildoers, yet the world doesn’t think themselves this way and yet that’s exactly why things have to happen the way they do now.  ...children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Eternal, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, and that word is not the word for ‘anger’.  A lot of people get this concept and these ideas about God, that God is a God of anger.  That’s why there are people who have this concept about Jesus Christ; that He came along and brought love instead of anger.... That’s why so many in Traditional Christianity talk about ‘love’.  Jesus is love....His Father?!  That’s another story!  It’s like He’s this harsh God and exacting punishments and so forth with the things that He did.  And they don’t understand.  And so they think there’s a difference between God and Jesus Christ and the mind and what is there...and there isn’t.  Because this has to do with judgment: It’s a word that has to do with...like the term we used about ‘executing judgment’.

...and they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto judgment/executing judgment; that’s what it’s about because when people continue through time, Israel continued through time, there would come a time then when God would execute judgment.  It’s an awesome story – awesome story!

People don’t know where they came from!  Why can’t individuals (because they’re going to have to do this anyway), Seventh Day Adventists.... let’s back up here because they at least believe in the Sabbath.  Let’s pick on some others.  Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, Southern Baptists, Northern Baptist...Eastern Baptist and Western Baptist, all the Baptists and all the Catholics and different ones – Why can’t you acknowledge...?  Why can’t you look up...?  Why...?  Whether it be me or someone else, why get upset?  Why not go back and look,  (if you still have time, if you still can go back and have an internet connection, and if you can’t, look for an encyclopaedia someplace)... look up your religious beliefs, look up your religion and trace it back and see where it came from.  You’d think that’d be a simple thing for people to do reasoning together, just objectively looking at something and being honest about it.

Baptists:  Where did you get your start?  Where did you come from?  Do you know the history of your church?  If you believe something about God, what do you believe about your beliefs?  Where did they come from?  It’s simple to trace it back, it really is.  And you go back farther and farther and you finally get to Luther in Germany and what happened; and some others at that same time period.  And that takes you right back to the Catholic church, where they came out of.  Because people came from two places – they either came out of God’s true Church that has continued on from 31 AD or they came out of, as a whole, the Orthodox church; the Catholic church as a whole.  That’s where all churches have come from.

There are those who’ve gone back and studied even the true Church of God through time and there are those who believe that when the Church of God came over, first, in the 1600’s (I remember some of the story  here), that there are those who came over because of freedom of religion, coming out of Europe and so forth, getting away from the Catholic church, getting away from religious oppression and striving to live in a different world, that they could take the truth into a different world, at that particular time being the Sardis church, the beginnings of the Sardis Church at least at that time, from what’s believed in times past.

Some of those things of history are very tough to tie down, but if you go back through time and you see some of those things continuing on there is evidence that the Baptist church came out of what was called the Seventh Day Baptist church, that it didn’t just start out in the beginning as the Baptist church but came out of the Seventh Day Baptist church which came out of the Church of God just as much as the church that’s split today.

Look at all the scattered groups out there!  In time, if there was a lot of time those that could endure and continue on with their beliefs and so forth through time – and it would change into something else through time, as some have already done in having different names.  It’s just that what happened back then happened a lot slower.  Today it happened quickly, but if time were to go on a hundred years, two hundred years, there would be different groups come out of that as well. There would be different groups that would go back to (which they’ve already done), Sunday.

So that even happened in the Seventh Day Baptist church.  Eventually there were those who went to Sunday.  So whether it did or did not come out of the Church of God, the point being is that there have only been two churches through time that go back to and you can trace back farther into time going back into the 1500’s, 1400’, 1300’s and farther back in time.  And the farther you go back you have primarily one great big ole’ church out there and it is the Catholic church that’s known as ‘Traditional Christianity’ or ‘Christianity’ at that time.  And there’s that little, small Church that’s continued on through time – Church of God; small, never meant to be large, never meant to be big.  Something the world couldn’t understand because it wasn’t supposed to understand it. Because God wasn’t calling the world.

He was not trying to save the world back in the 1500’s or the 1200’s or 500’s.  He wasn’t trying to save the world.  Traditional Christianity thinks that God is desperately trying to save the world.  Too bad; He’s not.  If He was He’s a very weak God, He’s very, very powerless.

God is powerful!  That’s why we’re getting ready to go through what we’re going through, because God’s Kingdom is coming, 144,000 are coming with Jesus Christ, and God is going to take control.  There will be one world Government.  There’ll be one Church at that time.  When it becomes God’s time to save - He saves.  When it becomes God’s time for the Great White Throne – time to save, God will save.

Why get mad and upset at somebody?  Why not go back and do a little studying yourself?  Why do you go to church on Sunday?  Those of you listening right now?  Is that how you’re being saved?  ...by going to church on Sunday?  Go back in history and read about Sunday and see where it came from!  But people get mad.  Why get mad?  It’s in your encyclopaedias.  You go back through time and you see where it came from.  Sunday; Sunday worship is not a new thing!  It was being done long before Jesus Christ came long.

So everybody has to come to that point in time where they address one of the most basic things.  And people in this country here, that’s what they have to come to address; and they’re going to hear it over and over again, some of these little basic things just like what you’re hearing today.  And these are the very things that you in the Church of God are supposed to tell them.  Start with the most basic things.  Go to an encyclopaedia with them.  Don’t start with the Bible.  Have them acknowledge first where they came from.  Why do you believe what you believe?  Do you know where Easter came from?  Look it up.  Do you know where the mass of Christ, Christmas came from?  Do you know where it came from?  Look it up.  Start to see what’s wrong before you can see what’s right.  And then you start telling them about the Sabbath and what it pictures.

And if they can begin to acknowledge the error of what they’re doing, the error of Christmas, that rabbits don’t lay eggs....  What is it on TV here recently? I think they’re advertizing some kind of a movie coming out and they have this little rabbit and he stops and kind of squats and all these little jelly beans come out, eggs, and somebody comes along to eat them... “Don’t eat those!”  So they’re making a kind of a comedy thing out of the Easter thing and here these rabbits are out here laying eggs.  And that’s what kids are taught.  Where does that come from?  It doesn’t come out of the Bible.  You don’t read about any rabbits in the Bible doing that.  Amazing!

The reason I mention these things is because sometimes in the Church of God we may think them to be really simple for us, but that’s where people have to start.  A lot of people out here have to start there, especially when they don’t have the internet anymore and especially when they’re not able to hear things anymore; and you’re going to have opportunity to be in contact with different ones as time goes along and you’re going to be dumbfounded by how fast some of these things are going to spread when they start spreading.  And they can begin telling their friends, because they’re going to be more of an open mind because God’s preparing them to be of an open mind.

Just like people are beginning to understand, or beginning to talk about the end-time more and more and more.  Like some people... (I wish I could think of the comment that was made here... was it at breakfast?)  One individual talking about the earthquake in Japan (I hope I don’t get this story mixed up here); but at another table they’re reading the paper and say something to the effect... “Do you think God’s trying to tell us something.”  Was it from that one there?  It wasn’t that one?  Anyway... there was some conversation like that.  Anyway, you overhear these kinds of conversations every once in a while that people are making comments about things like that, or talking about things that are happening on the earth as not normal and so forth, and wondering why these things are happening as they are; and because they see something that’s a little different.

Well, God is a part of that in a lot of people’s minds, because they have to start somewhere.  And just like God called you.... What happened to you when you came long in the last year or two years or three years?  What began to happen to you that led you to looking something up or to be willing to talk about it with someone else?  God began to work with your mind.  You didn’t do it on your own.

That’s a tough thing sometimes for people to acknowledge.  We’ve had this in the Church of God where some people have come along and they said, “Well, I’ve been looking for Jesus Christ! I’ve been looking... I’ve been doing this... I’ve been studying all my life...”

“Yeah, but you’ve been studying the wrong thing – you believed in Sunday, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

It’s like they figured it out when they finally came to the Sabbath and the Holy Days.  No you didn’t!  If you came into God’s Church – GOD brought you here!  Because the other... you know what the other thing is?  It’s pride.  Human nature’s lifted up with pride; just like, “I figured this out.”  or “It’s just me and God and God showed me.”  Yeah, well God showed you but He brought you to His Church.  It’s always a matter of humility and meekness before God for God to teach, mould and fashion us.

A sinful nation, and even that word ‘Ah’ in the Hebrew... when you start breaking down words and you start seeing what they are, it’s like a plea.  It’s like the word ‘alas’ that’s used in places and it’s like a plea.  WHY such a sinful nation?  Look at yourself, see what you’re doing.  It’s like this nation...and a lot of this is directed, in Isaiah, to this nation.  And as we go through this book, this part of Isaiah here, it’s absolutely astounding.  It’s more for our time right now – right now – than it’s ever been.  There is so much of the Bible starting to come alive more powerfully right now because we’re there.  And the things that are written about different things that people are to address and look at in their lives is about right now because this is where we are.  It’s awesome, it truly is, where we are and how God’s going to open up the minds of individuals.  Because you know what?  Everyone who comes through these things out of the primary nations, as a whole out of Israel, out of the scattered nations of Israel (doesn’t matter your background, where you’re from, whether you’re from Asia, South America, Central America, Africa, places in Europe, Eastern Europe); it doesn’t matter where we’re from.  It’s where we are and where God’s working and He’s going to open up people’s minds, draw people to open up their minds to begin to repent and to begin to change.

And you’re going to experience awesome things.  Those of you who’ve had a little bit of a taste in dealing with and working with and being around anyone who is new... How many of you are new in the last three years?  Some are even less than a year old, right?  September, baptized.  Awesome!  Some of the places we go to and see what God is doing; you can look around an audience and you see what God is doing.  He’s giving us just a little bit of a taste but in comparison to what is coming you’ve tasted nothing yet!  This is going to be multiplied tens of thousands of times over and become awesomely exciting as we go through this!

I don’t know about you, but I’m excited!  I’m excited that we’re finally there, that God’s judgment can be executed on the earth, and I am praying for more of it.  Today I prayed that it be far, far greater and far quicker with the next thing that happens then the lapse of time of the last two weeks.  Because you know what happens to people?  They go back to their norm.  If this doesn’t keep happening and keep building, people will go back to exactly what we experienced in the last two years.  “We’re going to come out of this!  Now’s the time to reinvest! Now’s the time to get in on the bottom floor because it’s going to start shooting up and you’re going to make this much!  You’re going to multiply this many times over!  Now’s the time!  Look at where gold is!  Look at where silver is!”  $35 an ounce... I’m so glad I got some at $8.  Who cares!  After a while the most valuable thing is going to be a can of food in your home.

Do you think trains that have stopped in Japan...? They’ve got some in the city running through there right now, but there are places they cannot go right now.  Have you seen some of the highways?  There are places they can’t go right now and they can’t take their semis full of food to where it needs to go.  How difficult is this going to be for some people just to have food?  And what about the economic factor?  How difficult is this going to be?  What kind of a rippling effect?  They’re already talking about how this is going to have a worldwide rippling effect.  One Thunder after another are getting louder and louder because everything is so close on the brink anyway, it truly is.  And things like this just magnify it that much more.  Food becomes that much more scarce, that much more valuable.

The most valuable thing you’re going to have in time is food.  Not gold, not silver, not dollars, not euro’s, not the yuan and not the yen.  The yen’s going down the tubes fast!  That country is suffering mightily.  They’re not going to fair very well through everything that happens.  They’ve got a great big neighbour next door that would like to see them obliterated when it’s all said and done.  That’s the truth.

And so we look at this nation, Ah, a sinful nation of people filled with iniquity, a seed of evil doers; but who thinks that way in society?  Who sees?  Who hurts because of what they see in society, of what’s on TV and what’s taught to children, what’s in music and what’s taught children?  Who hurts?  Who really hurts?  Sometimes even us, if we’re not careful, we might think it’s not all that bad.  It’s sick!  It’s a sick, sick, sick world and it isn’t going God’s way at all.

They have forsaken the Eternal, this nation has – even what they know and understand, as thin as it is.  They have forsaken the Eternal, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto the execution of judgment; that’s the best translation for it, ‘to executing judgment’.  They have gone away backward. It’s just a continual ongoing process for people, but the evil’s gotten worse and worse.  You know why primarily?  Because of technology.  Man has so misused technology.  It’s an easier and quicker way to pollute minds, truly is, to lead people astray, to lead people farther and farther away from family and family life. That’s why I hurt because of things like Twitter, Facebook, all these things.  People don’t understand the grave danger of what it’s doing to young minds. You see it when you’re driving down a highway – texting or looking, constantly!  Where’s your life?  It’s in that machine!  It’s going out over the airwaves, whatever!  Where is their life?  And they get into relationships with people they don’t even know; people they don’t even know!

The numbers of marriages that are coming about by people that don’t even know each other!  They don’t know each other!  People start their relationships and they don’t even know each other!  They’ve got these dating sites and some of them are ‘christian’.  You can meet your ‘soul mate’; and people believe this stuff!  “Let us make your match.”  That’s what they do! Yeah, there’s greed in that too and they call themselves Christian and they want your money, that’s obvious.  But isn’t it a sick world where people are losing the ability to communicate.  Families are drifting farther apart.

You know where a lot of it started?  With that little tube that’s gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and nicer and contains more in it and people live in it.  And now they don’t just live in that part; if they want to create their own world they get these little boxes where they can play these games and they can lose their lives in there by the games they play; and they don’t have social abilities and social skills and family life.  And parents and children drift farther and farther apart from each other.

You think that’s going to change in a new age, in a new world where God is going to correct some things to where it goes back to the basic importance of family, because it’s all about family.  Satan relishes, he loves what’s taking place!  And yet who is crying out in pain about these things in this world.  It’s not happening; it’s just getting worse and worse and going down the cesspool fast!

I hope you’re seeing more and more, and I hope your prayers are reflecting it more and more.  It’s time for God’s judgment to be executed in a far greater way, a far greater way.  When I’m praying about these matters, I’ll just let you know, I’m asking that God multiply it ten-fold.  I asked that about the Christchurch thing – ten-fold over!  Ten-fold over ten-fold over in places!  You need to pray in that way, in that regard, you truly do!

~~~end

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