The Blessing of a Second Life – Pt. 1

Ron Weinland

May 7, 2011

Last Sabbath I mentioned how the world would be so much better off if (as an example in the particular sermon there)... if Afghanistan were completely destroyed.  And that was in the context if they refused to repent, or refused to change to some other form of agriculture and away from planting their primary cash crop of the opium poppy farming that they have.

To some people, sometimes things like that sound horrible, cruel, harsh, heartless, and on and on it goes, for things that take place in this world, and it’s because people don’t know God.  They don’t understand God’s plan, they don’t understand God’s purpose, what God is doing and God’s judgment either.  And so there are a lot of feelings and emotions that come into some of those kinds of things. Here is another example, the death penalty for when someone has murdered someone else; it’s very obvious they’ve done so, all kinds of proof and so forth, there’s no question, no doubt whatsoever that a particular individual has done something.  The mind of man is such that there are many people, like in many countries, many nations, and states throughout this country, where people say that would be too harsh, too cruel, it’s better to put them into a prison the rest of their life and let them die a natural death.

No, God says kill them, put them to death, that is the merciful thing to do, it is the right thing to do.  And some people say, “Oh no, no, no, the death penalty is too cruel, it’s too harsh.”  And so what it comes down to is somehow man’s righteousness is better than God’s.   Man’s reasoning; that’s what man thinks.

The reason that people do that is because they think it’s too harsh, too cruel; and it’s because they don’t understand death and life, they don’t understand the process and understand what God is doing.  They don’t understand the possibilities of what it means that someone can be changed, that someone’s mind can change.  But the reality is, in the systems of our prisons or any prisons in the world people become worse, not better.  They’re not reformed, they’re not made better in those type of systems, instead they learn things, they have things become a part of them that become harder to conquer and overcome than if they were to die and just be resurrected later on and then be able to be worked with.  Their opportunity at that time, the possibilities of real change, of real repentance is multiplied so many times over it can’t even be compared with man’s world.

And so man has a type of ‘good’, ‘righteousness’, whereby he decides good and evil, right and wrong that is not according to God’s way and God’s law and God’s purpose.  And so to some people you’re better off not saying or making such comments, although I do in sermons and so forth; and people find fault with those and I understand that because they don’t understand.  They don’t comprehend God’s plan, they don’t understand God’s purpose.  And sometimes with us even in the Church, it’s a struggle. We sometimes struggle because some things seem difficult or hard to too harsh or too cruel. And that’s why sometimes, especially in the Protestant world, we have this difficulty with people looking at the Old Testament, because truly, so often because of things that God said to do, or things that God told Israel to do, or things He’s done at different times – to them it seems like He is a harsh God, He is not very merciful, He is very demanding of human beings.  Sad, pathetic, for human beings to feel that way.  They have no comprehension that it’s the same God in the Old and the New Testament, because see, they have the idea that the ‘God of the Old Testament’ and then His Son came along who is this one who has all this love, the love of Jeeesus (and they have to spread out that word), and make it sound like this different kind of being that is here now, one who is more compassionate; He’s more merciful.  And for some who don’t believe that He’s merciful enough, they have to go through Mary, because she’s more of a mother figure, not harsh like a man, and some of those kinds of things that sometimes people get involved in in their minds.  That’s too bad, sad.  They don’t comprehend that the one Almighty Eternal God has more love for all human beings than any human being could ever have to another human being; true love, the right kind of love, the right kind of caring kind of love – far surpasses anything that any of us can have, have ever experienced in life.

But human beings don’t tend to think that way because they don’t know and don’t care to know God.  What they do, it’s in a certain package.  And so it’s sad.  Thankfully God is getting ready to reveal Himself in a very powerful way as we go forward.  He has been more and more as we get closer and closer to the end of an age here, meaning the very end of it now and the beginning of a new period, the Millennial period.  And as we get closer to that, and when Jesus Christ returns with the 144,000 there will be incredible opportunities and knowledge that’s poured out upon the earth, ability to learn things about God for all mankind and things that we don’t know yet that are going to be given to us as well, far above and beyond.  And people are going to begin to learn about God and the love of God and the mercy of God and the patience of God.

And so with those things in mind then, we’re going to continue on in a new sermon series today; and since I only mentioned this briefly about Afghanistan as to why that would be good for the world, today we’re going to take a more in-depth look at the issues surrounding such a statement, because as we go into this sermon it’s going to affect many things, not just one country.  That was just said in passing, but as we come to understand certain things, as an example, about that one country, hopefully and prayerfully even within the Church we’ll come to a deeper appreciation of what God is doing and why God is doing it. And so even as we go through these things that we’re experiencing right now, God is still working with the Church, with us, so we can grow, so we can become more mature in understanding of the power of God, the purpose of God, and the love of God, and why He does what He does.

So we’re going to do this in the context of a sermon entitled The Blessing of a Second Life with this being Part 1.  And so at the beginning of this sermon which is going to last for a little while, I’m going to read a lot and comment a lot from what I have written here before we ever get into any scriptures; setting the stage for what we’re going to be discussing.

Traditional Christianity and all other religions of the world fail to understand God’s purpose and truth of life and death.  They don’t understand.  All these different strange ideas – it doesn’t matter where it is, where you look – Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, Christianity, total Traditional Christianity, Judaism, Islam, all these different ideas about what happens after death, ideas about what happens to ‘bad’ people, ideas about what happens to ‘good’ people, which is open to an incredibly wide interpretation.

At the beginning of this sermon I had contemplated, considered, until it was made clear to me that I didn’t need to go into all that, thought about talking about what different ones believe.  But even within Judaism there is an incredible vast difference in what people believe about what happens after death.  It’s incredible!  Even within just one small religion... because they don’t really have that large of a count as far as the world is concerned compared to some different groups of Traditional Christianity, as an example.  Judaism as a whole is relatively small as far as a world religion is concerned, but yet the differences of belief in this one area alone are incredibly vast!  I almost got a chuckle out of reading something one rabbi had said about it because his comment was that he had a difficult time explaining what happens after death to non-believers of Judaism and even believers of Judaism.  I got a tickle out of it because even within Judaism it’s a vague thing and there are many possibilities – even reincarnation for some of them.  And you think, “Man, how weird is this?!”  Absolute massive confusion in the world!  Incredible!

So the reality is, only those who are currently in or have been a part of God’s Church have any knowledge of what takes place after death.  The rest of the world is absolutely, totally, completely ignorant of the truth, of what happens when people die.  The concept of ‘Dante’s Inferno’, the concept that after death, even within Traditional Christianity, you go to this place if you’ve been bad and there are these little creatures running around with little pitchfork tails and they have hot pitchforks, they’re jabbing you in the rear end and you’re leaping from fire to fire (kind of like the cartoons depict sometimes), it’s just really hot there, it’s really miserable, life is made to be very, very miserable, but especially hot!  You think, “Now, if you’re a spirit being living eternity in ‘hell’, how do those things...?”  Well anyway, they don’t address any of that.  It’s like you’re still physical but you’re not, but you’re just in a lot of torment.  And somehow the Great God of the universe, who talks about love, would put people in a place like that for eternity.  How sadistic!  Traditional Christianity, the Catholic church, paints a very sadistic picture of what God is like and they don’t understand where it came from.  It came from a perverted mind, from Satan himself.   He is the author of it!  It’s not any pope that was the author of it, but some of those who were influenced by a spirit world who came up with those twisted, demented, sick, perverted ideas.  And so people in these different religions who believe that that’s what happens to you when you die, they’re perverted in that area of their thinking.

You think, “How can anyone believe in this book and read the pages of this Bible and then believe somehow that this is what God is going to do to human beings who live whatever it is that’s ‘bad’.”  Unless of course they have this somebody come around that throws a little water (that’s not spit), that’s water and does a little whatever it is, they wave around with their arms and attach this little thing around their neck, because they have to put this thing around their neck, they have to go through this ceremony, and somehow if you can have a death bed repentance even if you can’t speak, as long as the priest is there and he can wave through all this at least he might get you into purgatory!  Limbo- purgatory – same thing!  See, I wasn’t a Catholic and I’m glad I don’t know these things, because you have to unlearn a lot of things.

The deeper you are into some religions the harder it can be to conquer and overcome those.  That’s why in a new age when Jesus Christ returns it’s not going to be easy for different peoples to conquer and overcome some of their feelings and beliefs of things they’ve held dear for generation upon generation.  Islam?  It’s going to be a battle to turn away from all of that!  It’s going to be a battle for Southern Baptists, Church of Christ; you just go through the list - it’s going to be difficult for people.  The more they’re steeped in it, the more they believe it, the harder it is.  It’s very difficult sometimes for Pentecostals if they have experienced ‘the movement’; if you’ve experienced that and you’ve rolled around on the floor and you’ve screamed and hollered. You don’t necessarily know what you were saying, or you were able to interpret what somebody else was saying when they were screaming and hollering – because that’s what they believe.  They don’t understand they’ve been messing around with (God said it), a spirit world – demons!  They don’t understand the demons that are involved in it, that they like to take charge.  They like you to empty your mind because you want to ‘call down the holy spirit’, and so when people think this is from God they’re willing to give their mind over to such beings.  That’s what it is, nothing to be afraid of; but if you want to give your mind over to something and you want it bad enough and they’re around, they’ll oblige you, they’ll give you a ‘religious experience’.  Sick world!

I don’t know about you, but I am so thankful just in that one area alone, that Satan is about to be put away, that all the demons are about to be put away for a thousand years!  A thousand years!  Just in that one area I thank God, because they can’t mess with human beings any longer, they can’t deceive human beings any longer, they can’t mess with people’s minds any longer – because they broadcast and we are weak!  And so if we’re in a weak state, alcoholism, drug addiction, those are the kinds of things they like because they can influence you more; or if you want to give yourself over to some kind of a ‘religious experience’ they can influence you more, to deceive you into thinking this is coming from God.  And if you’ve experienced that it’s hard for people to conquer and overcome that and reject it and realize what it really was and say - because it’s pride - to be able to say, “None of those things were real, they were from beings who wanted to deceive and keep us in captivity.”  That’s what they do.

What a free world just with them gone, so much freer, so much better, it’s going to be cleaned up so much more when they’re not around to influence people, when they’re not around to influence leaders into making such horrible decisions to do such horrible things to other people.  Hitler and what he did was highly influenced if not possessed at the end.  The rants and the raves he went into was demonic.  But the world doesn’t understand those things because they don’t understand things about God and they’re not really too sure about that.  This Christmas thing, this Easter thing – they know there are lies involved in it, so it’s just not too real to them, but there’s that nagging thing there just in case some of that’s real, but they don’t know – just in case. And so the world’s just... people don’t understand and we have to understand that people are in captivity, and have a great desire to see people be freed of all this – just to be freed.

So when it comes to death and dying, human beings, mankind, people, whether they are old, middle aged or young children, all have fearful and/or unnerving ideas about it – death.  Because it’s not a friend.  God says that.  God makes it very clear, ‘Death is an enemy’.  When it happens to people it’s that unknown factor even though you’re an adult and you have a certain belief of what is true, there is still that which is unknown and that which is permanent.  We see things that are permanent, but it’s not.  But we still struggle with our human minds, with our human nature when it comes to such things, and it does hurt, it is painful, even when you know the truth, when you’re deeply, deeply convicted – it still hurts.

And so again, most of those ideas come from the fact that we can only deal with the here and the now, as a whole; everything else is a matter of faith.  And so we deal with the here and the now and things about the future and so forth that we haven’t yet experienced, things that we have never experienced are a matter of belief; and those things tend to try us – the physical.  That’s what we deal with, the here and now in the physical.

There are many fearful ideas that come from movies and TV, because we get a diet of those things in the world, and especially false religious ideas, let alone the difficulty of our minds being able to grasp death because it seems so permanent to our physical life.  So this is where God comes in and this is where we begin to become excited about God’s power and God’s plan for the blessing of a second life.

Let’s begin today by first considering the current conditions of the nation of Afghanistan. In the context of what we’re discussing we’re not focusing on cocaine and its production, but on heroin that comes from chemically altered morphine that is extracted from the opium poppy.  So there are two big drugs out there in the world in that respect, that which comes from Coca, it doesn’t come from the Poppy, only the heroin, the morphine comes from there.  But cocaine and heroin are gigantic problems worldwide to wreck lives, have unproductive lives, create broken families, a direct cause to the increases in severe violent and chronic crime and on and on and on it goes, and the cost to society in those who are homeless and homelessness, in treatment, in criminal activity that compounds costs of prosecution, prisons, insurance losses, property losses, death, and so much more is in the billions upon billions of dollars, pounds, euro’s, wherever you look – billions!  The cost is astronomical to society, the cost of suffering, especially when families are directly hit by these things.

Watch that program ‘The Inside Job’ and you’ll hear about the ones who are snorting one or the other or both, concoctions, mixtures.  People who work on Wall Street!  People in government!  Entertainment industry – rampant!  Music industry – rampant... incredibly rampant!  It’s a lifestyle with people!  Think, “How can that be?”  But it is!

So in speaking of heroin Afghanistan is currently the primary producer of the drug.  I’m going to give you a lot of statistics and different facts here and stuff just to give an overview.

[1] After regularly producing 70% of the world's opium, Afghanistan decreased production to 74 tons per year under a ban by the Taliban in 2000...

Incredible, such statistics!  They reduced it that much under the rule of the Taliban; but they allowed, or had certain amounts still going on.

...a move which cut production by 94 per cent [in 2000]. A year later, after American and British troops invaded Afghanistan and removed the Taliban and installed the Interim government... Afghanistan...[replaced] Burma to become the world's largest opium producer once more.

All statistics and facts that are readily found out there.

Opium production in that country has increased rapidly since [since our invasion], reaching an all-time high in 2006. According to DEA statistics, Afghanistan's production of oven-dried opium increased to 1,278 tons....

Insanity!  Tons – 2000 pounds times 1278 [2000lb X 1278] – that many pounds alone in the world in one area!

...to 1,278 tons in 2002, more than doubled by 2003, and nearly doubled again during 2004.

Doubling, doubling, doubling.... Incredible!

In late 2004, the U.S. government estimated that... (206,000 hectares were under poppy cultivation, 4.5% of the country's total cropland, and)... produced 4,200 metric tons of opium, 76% of the world's supply, yielding 60% of Afghanistan's gross domestic product.  In 2006, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimated production to have risen 59% to ...(407,000 acres (1,650 km^2) in cultivation,)... yielding 6,100 tons of opium, 82% of the world's supply.

They were better under Taliban rule.  Pathetic, sad, when it comes to opium.

[2] Afghanistan is, as of March, 2010, the greatest illicit opium producer in the world....

In 2007, 92% of the opiates on the world market originated in Afghanistan.

2007 – 92%....

...Afghanistan is also the largest producer of hashish in the world.

[3] Hashish is a sticky, thick, dark-colored resin (like sap) which is made from the cannabis plant. The cannabis plant's leaves and flowers contain a chemical or drug known as THC....  The two main drugs made from the cannabis plant are marijuana and hashish.  Hashish has much more of the chemical THC ... than marijuana.

And so they’re the primary producers of two such drugs in the world; greatest in the world – incredible!

(ii)Another obstacle to getting rid of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is the reluctant collaboration between US forces and Afghan warlords in hunting drug traffickers.

See, that’s not why we’re there, that’s not our objective.

In the absence of Taliban, the warlords largely control the opium trade but are also highly useful to the US forces in scouting, providing local intelligence, keeping their own territories clean from Al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents, and even taking part in military operations.

...In March 2010, NATO rejected Russian proposals for Afghan poppy spraying, citing concerns over income of Afghani people.

The United Nations concerned about the income of Afghani people – it’s better to let them continue to produce their great cash crop.  It’s the main source of income for Afghanistan, for that government, for the people.

There have also been allegations of American and European involvement in Afghanistan's drug trafficking with links to Taliban.

You suppose?  Imagine that!  I speak sarcastically because they are heavily involved.  These things don’t happen in the world without complicity, without help, without cooperation.  See why God’s going to do what He does?  This is just one country alone, but it reflects governments of Europe and this country and a mindset of people in this world that needs to change dramatically.  We’re just talking about one country.  What about Mexico?  What about Columbia?  What about Peru?  What about all these countries, Burma, all these places that they know these things are happening, where they know these things are being trafficked.  Mexico alone!  Even their military has problems dealing with people who are better armed than them oftentimes.

In 2010, Russia accused United States of supporting the opium production in Afghanistan. Presently with resurgence....

And that’s highly dismissed then in this country because that’s Russia!  Russia’s always been against us!  That’s just Russia, of course they’re going to say things like that and do things like that – the attitude in this country is it’s not true!

Presently with resurgence of high output production of opium and heroin in post-Taliban Afghanistan, there is an ongoing heroin addiction epidemic in Russia which is claiming 30,000 lives each year, mostly among young people.

Just in one country alone, 30,000 lives a year, young people.

There were two and half million heroin addicts in Russia by 2009.

That’s not even talking about the rest of Europe; we’re just talking about what’s flooding into Russia.

Multiple millions of people worldwide are addicted to Cocaine and Heroin.  The cost to the world is in the hundreds of billions of dollars but only a token gesture is taken by governments to give the illusion that a war is being waged against the illegal and immoral use of such drugs.

A token. What would it mean if all Afghanistan were destroyed?  How much better off would the world be?  And I’m not talking about nuclear war, because I’m just talking about ‘what if’ it was just gone’?  ...if everyone died quickly.  Better yet, let’s multiply that and add that to every producer, every family involved in the production, every criminal or criminal organization involved in distribution, illegal use, or complicity of its existence including every government and military ‘winking of the eye’.  What if it were all destroyed overnight?  How much better off would this world be if you could stop that kind of trafficking overnight?  The world would dramatically improve overnight, just because of that, it truly would.  But sadly, most large government agencies and officials wouldn’t be alive any longer.

Do you think people don’t know what’s going on?  Do you think people don’t know what’s going on the borders of Mexico with the United States?  Do you think people don’t know what’s going on in Columbia?  Sad world, really is, and there are many, many things that could be done to stop it.

So it’s a tough, tough thing.  That’s why, again, if we can begin to see in a deeper way, it makes it easier to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name.  Your Kingdom come.”  Do you sigh and cry like it said about Lot when he saw what was going on in his own hometown?  ...to be hurt in spirit because of all the evil that exists in the world?   ...and that you long and desire with all of your being to see these things erased?  We’re just talking about one little problem – it’s a giant problem in the world, and compound that so many times over with everything else that’s going on.  And with God’s plan, with what God’s doing and how God’s doing it – very merciful, very loving, from a very compassionate God.

But people don’t want that taken away from them.  The United Nations doesn’t want to see the income of families change.  You know what?  It would be so much cheaper just to pay every family what they’re making from it.  It’d be much cheaper if one nation in Europe, for the expense they have because of what’s going on with that trade, if they would pay that money that’s costing them, they could easily pay for it – easily!  Tell them, “Plant corn.  Plant wheat and we’ll pay you a hundred times what it’s worth, but you’ve got to work to get the money, but we’ll pay you those high prices.  We won’t give this to any other country but we’ll make it for you.  Will you change your crop?”  It’d be much cheaper for them if they’d do it.

Afghanistan is only one problem in the world.  So the great lesson from all this is that mankind cannot govern himself.  The United Nations is a joke! It’s a joke and most countries of the world really, they know.  They may not say that out loud but people know; leaders know that it doesn’t work.  People know that it’s a sounding board for different groups, different ones out here that maybe can’t be heard at different times so they can get up there and make their speeches. Ahmadinejad can get up there, have his euphoria of this thing he sees around him and all these experiences he has, which ought to tell you where that comes from, of when he speaks and how he feels and thinks that everyone is just so tied into what he’s saying, they’re enthralled with his words.  No, he’s a nut case!  That’s how most people see him, truth be known.

Mankind is corrupt and filled with greed and lust for power – it’s not just in other places in the world but in this country too.  It’s the way of the world.  It’s the way of government; and that’s why God is going to destroy every government of this earth and make the world such a much better place to be in – just with every system destroyed because they’re all wrong and they’re all corrupt, they all have these back room deals that take place.  And that’s why, again, ‘The Inside Job’, showing you what’s happening on Wall Street alone.

So people hear something like this in the world, if they hear this they think, “Man, he’s a raving lunatic – a raving lunatic – mad!”  You get a little mad sometimes when you see how people are mistreated in the world.  Sad!  But people don’t care. It’s sad that during World War II every government in the West knew what was taking place with the Jewish people – wouldn’t lift a hand because it wasn’t the popular thing to do.  Sad when different countries in Africa have the problems they do and we don’t lift a finger to help them.  And nation after nation after nation – when hundreds of thousands – hundreds of thousands at times have been wiped out and destroyed!  Right now there are movements of people throughout Africa because of wars that are going on, killing that is going on indiscriminately.  People in Nigeria on the move, people in the Ivory Coast on the move, people in Morocco on the move, people in Libya on the move, people on the move across the world –refugees into the millions right now in different parts of the world, but it doesn’t affect us.

It’s kind of like the tornados down south, after a while they don’t even have it on the news and it doesn’t affect us so what’s the big deal?  It’s a part of humanity, it’s a part of mankind; and look what we do.  Makes me want to cry, it truly does.  When you see things like that, the injustice in this earth, the injustice of mankind, how mankind treats mankind, it makes you want to cry.  How corrupt!  How two-faced mankind can be!  Knowing that things are going on and if it’s not popular or it’s not politically expedient – because after all, you don’t want to hurt your party, after all you don’t want to hurt your own chances of being re-elected if you’ve been in the senate all your life, you’ve been there 60 years. Just how evil is the world truly?  I live in this world but I thank God that I am an ambassador of a different one.  God’s Church is scattered throughout the world, we live in different nations, but we are ambassadors of a different world, of a different government, and it’s not popular.

Just like Jesus Christ when He came along, we’re no different in the sense of how we’re treated by the world.  All the flak He got for things being said about being a King; He told Pilate, “Yes, for that purpose I was born in the world, but My Kingdom’s not of this age, it’s not of this time.”  Incredible!  And then the Jews used that against Him.

So I’m glad when I read scriptures that talks about us being ambassadors.  We are!  We represent a different world, we represent a different government.  We’re to be good citizens wherever we live because we live by God’s laws. That’s why we make good citizens wherever we live.  We’re told to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s but to God what is God’s – and so we live by that, we do those things wherever we live in the world because it’s a matter of obedience to God first and foremost because of who we are.  Incredible!

I’m thankful it’s getting so close to finally being here after all this time.  I say ‘all this time’ because it’s been my life since 1969 when I came in the Church at age 19.  Different ones of us have been around for different lengths of time.

So what happens if a nation of unrepentant people were to die overnight?  Because you see, that’s going to happen.  Peoples in different places of the world, unrepentant – that’s what God says happens at the end-time here even within the scattered nations of Israel.  And that’s a horrifying thing – death – in such a massive way.  But there’s an incredible blessing of a second life that people don’t consider so often, and they don’t understand the mercy and the love of God.  And we have different concepts about death.  If somebody can’t continue to live on into that millennial period, what a shame, what a horrible, terrifying thing!  No it isn’t.  In God’s plan it is not ugly and it’s not fearful, it is not something to be afraid of in any manner.  This is an evil world, it truly is.

It would be good to look more deeply into the lives of people in Afghanistan who are in spiritual Egypt; and if you can look at people and recognize what they’re in and that people are being saved out of Egypt.  You realize people who die are being saved out of spiritual Egypt?  When you die there’s no memory of anything anymore.  But that next waking moment; it’s like going to sleep one night and the next day you wake up to a different age, a different world – not the hard, cruel world that we live in today.

But the sad thing is in the United States so often we don’t think about this as being a harsh, cruel world because we have it so good.  We have it so good!  People aren’t as blessed or as fortunate where they live in different parts of the world, like Afghanistan, like places throughout South America, like some of the large cities down there where there are so many young people without families, without homes, who strive to live.  Places throughout India.  I don’t care what nation you look at on the earth in some of these areas of the world, in South America, Central America, Africa, Asia; there are a lot of suffering in the world that we are ignorant of, that we don’t realize that goes on day after day after day.  And so to one day go to sleep and wake up in a different age.

I remember an individual that sent an email in one time many years ago, I don’t even remember how long it was, but he was from an area in South America and I don’t remember exactly where, might have been Peru or somewhere like that.  But the comment went something like this, his response was that after reading what was going to take place, whether he was going to be able to be a part of this or not, or be a part of the Church at that particular time, basically he was talking about how he had such peace.  Even though he was having it difficult in his life and in this world and where he was at the time from what I remember, the context was to the effect that he had such a mind of peace right now because to think that there’s a world coming where there’s going to be equality, where there’s going to be peace, where there’s going to be abundance...and he said just that knowledge alone because of his life and where he grew up and what he’s seen in the world, it gave him such a peace and a calm in his mind, in his being, to think about the possibility that that is indeed true.  Awesome!

We don’t tend to think that way here.  We can flip on a switch and life is so easy for us compared to people who lived 150 and 200 years ago and all the way back in time.  The kind of life we have today we live like kings and queens, we truly do.  They didn’t have it nearly as good as we do.  You see the castles in Europe? They didn’t have it nearly as good as we do.  They didn’t have commodes you could sit on and flush it and water would take it all away and dispense of it and not be in your front yard or outside the castle wall or somewhere else that just stunk.

All of London at different times, when it started getting bigger and bigger, you read some of the stories before the plague came along and other things that wiped out people – it wasn’t a place to visit, it wasn’t fun.  If you lived in the country and you went to the city your attitude was, “Please give me the country, the smell alone is horrifying!”  Because of all the feces.  How do you dispose of that?  They didn’t have what we have today.  And the castles and the kings and the queens and the princes and the princesses, they didn’t have it nearly as good as any one of you in God’s Church have it physically by any measure!  They would have been so excited to have what you have.  “Oh please!  Tell me more! You do what?  You push a button and food gets heated up for you?  You what?  You turn on a tap and instant hot water?  You have a bath every day?  What kind of people are you?”  They didn’t have things like that.  They didn’t take a bath every day.  Things didn’t smell so good.

We just don’t know what we have; it’s our life, it’s what we’re accustomed to, and we’re spoiled!  And we don’t understand what the rest of the world has lived like.  All the people who’ve lived and died. That second life is going to be so incredibly awesome when they’re brought back to life in a new world, no matter what age they are.  They’re going to be so dumbfounded!  Such peace!  Such peace of spirit!  From the mind going to sleep one moment, [snap’s finger] and waking up the next, because that’s all it’s like with God.  It’s like God turns off and on a switch.  One individual used an example like that to his daughter here recently explaining that God has the power, using a physical thing to show that God has the power to bring somebody back into a new body just by a command, just by His thoughts.  It’s hard for us to grasp those things – to all of a sudden have life again but now in a totally healthy body!  Whatever health problems you have, whatever weaknesses you have, you have none of those!  If you were one and you had a problem at birth – one month old, one day old – and you had a problem of why you died, that problem doesn’t exist anymore.  If you’re eighty, ninety, hundred, or six hundred, or nine hundred and all the aches and pains and the weaknesses of a body – God gives you a spry healthy body, better than you’ve ever had!  Same mind; so what you knew before throughout your life you will know but your body will be different.  And it’s hard for us to grasp those kinds of things.

A second physical life?  You know, you tell people that sometimes it’s like, “Riiiight!”  They like the idea of going to hell or going to heaven, because in their mind they don’t really think they’re going to go to hell, and I don’t think they really think they’re going to go to heaven – don’t really think a whole lot about it.  It’s like people don’t think a whole lot sometimes when they’re young about insurance and their future.  Don’t want to put that kind of money into it, it’s kind of a waste of money until you get up around forty, fifty, then you kind of begin thinking about some of those things, a possibility of needing to take care of others or do other things... not that we have to worry about those things; we know where we are now.

A perspective of the world that we need to have to see what God sees, to see what God has been dealing with right at 6,000 years now on this earth.  People who are in spiritual Egypt; how much do you want to see them freed?  I do with all my being!  Women alone; been pretty tough for 6,000 years, very oppressed for 6,000 years, taken advantage of for 6,000 years.  God says He made them a weaker vessel for a purpose, by design.  Weaker - not mentally - physically!  Made man to have a different physical body and because of that mankind has oppressed women in heinous, hideous, perverted, sick ways.

I’ve counselled a lot of people in God’s Church – women – who’ve been so abused in their lives, regardless of their age, whether they’re... I think of different ones here I’ll just mention; whether they’re around thirty, mid-forties, fifties, sixties, seventies – who just in a sexual manner alone have been abused by others because they were weaker in physical strength, sometimes in age.  How filthy is human nature?  How filthy, how sick is this world?  Because you see, all these people in all these ages at these different times are still battling with, still trying to deal with, still trying to... how do you say it?  Deal with the problems of life, deal with the hurt and the pain of suffering of life.

And so from area to area throughout time I’ve experienced those things as a minister, as people have poured out their hearts, as they’re cut to the core of their being because of their life and the lives they’ve lived.  When we’re called all of us have different things we battle.  People who battle because they’ve been in wars; it’s a horrifying thing for a human to kill people and be told you’ve done a noble thing.  “It’s been a noble thing!  Our wars are always noble!”  They’re never about oil, they’re never about politics, they’re always righteous and they’re always noble – and yet you experience some of the things that people have been told to do by their commanders and you realize there’s nothing glamorous and glorious and noble about war.  And the ability to so easily excuse the killing of women and children – nothing noble about it at all as far as mankind is concerned.  If God does it, if God allows or takes life... I should say if He takes it Himself, or says it’s to be taken, then it’s for a purpose and for a reason.  That’s the only time it is truly done righteously for the right reasons and the right purpose.  And then in that it’s a matter of God’s mercy, love and kindness, and what He has planned for them at another time.

So I hope we have our bellies full of this world and the corruption that’s in this world, and the filth that’s in this world, and the hurt and pain and suffering that people have gone through.  And just by talking about some of these things it brings things back up into your mind that you’ve tried to put out or that you want to put out or you don’t ever want to think about.  There are things at the back of my mind that have been done to me in times past that I’ve put out of my mind and don’t ever want to think about.  That’s how you deal with things, you put them out.  You strive to forgive, and forget, things that happen.  You strive to live right before God when you come into God’s Church.  But those things made us who we are, the things you’ve experienced throughout your life, and this human life in this world is not pleasant.

I want to read some more about spiritual Egypt in one country alone, in Afghanistan.

[4] Malnutrition runs rampant in Afghanistan. Fourteen children die every half hour from preventable causes.

These are statistics that are out there.

Afghanistan's children are hit the hardest with hunger. Their mothers are often underfed too, so they are unable to supply infants with enough breast milk.

In one article on conditions in Afghanistan an Afghan proverb is quoted, [5] “When poverty walks in through the door, happiness flies out through the window.”  An Afghan proverb, because life is so hard; they understand they don’t have the happiness there in their own country, in their own people, because of poverty. And so indeed, because there is so much poverty happiness has flown out the window, that’s what they’re saying, that’s the proverb.  That article went on to mention some achievements that have taken place in Afghanistan which are not really achievements at all, but anyway....

In spite of these achievements, what is surprising is that according to a recent report released by the United Nations Development program February 12, 2005, Afghanistan ranks 175 among 177 nations on the Human Poverty Index (HPI).

It’s a very poor country, taken advantage of by a lot of people, by a lot of governments.

This report thoroughly discusses the predicament of Afghans in the context of human insecurity, social injustice, economic disparity, scarcity of opportunity, the lack of basic human needs, and the critically dysfunctional state of the education system.  It clearly demonstrates that Afghanistan is in fact one of the poorest nations on the international arena.

... The report paints a vivid picture of the severity of the socio-economic conditions in Afghanistan by comparing the life expectancy of Afghans (44.5 years at birth)....

Sounds like the old west.  I don’t think it was even that long ago, was it?  The old west in the 30’s, late 30’s?  You know, sometimes we don’t realize things that happened in this country back in the old west, what they call the old west; and people didn’t live, as a whole, into their forties and fifties and sixties.  Their life expectancy wasn’t that long.

...(44.5 years at birth) with that of its neighbors as well as other least developed countries of the world.  Life expectancy in Afghanistan, where 50 percent of the population is poor, remains "at least 20 years lower than all of its neighboring countries . . . and 6.1 years lower than the average of the least developed countries."

Incredible!  Life expectancy is very short over there.

In a society where “One out of five children dies before the age of five, and one woman dies from pregnancy related causes every thirty minutes,” life expectancy at such low level could only be viewed as predictable outcome of these sad realities.

The facts presented above clearly exhibit that the Afghans are an extremely poor nation.  Unfortunately, as in many underdeveloped countries, the plight of poverty has the greatest impact on women and children in this country.

But we in the United States have food on the table any time we basically want it.  As a whole, very comfortable, very well off – doesn’t mean there aren’t the exceptions – but overall we are incredibly blessed, well taken care of because of the blessings that God just gave to this part of the world; not because of who we are, but because of God’s promises that He fulfilled.  But other people in the world suffer, suffer a lot. You don’t have to go very far to find suffering in different parts of the world, standard of living in different parts of the world, hardships, pain and suffering and evil in different parts of the world.

[6] The types of labor done by children... include transporting goods, collecting garbage and firewood, assisting in shops and begging. Because children are seen as less conspicuous, adult traders use them to smuggle illegal commodities like explosives or flour (the export of which Pakistan has forbidden due to its peak price) both in and out of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As smugglers, children face tremendous risks. They are abused by police, threatened by traders or killed by explosive devices. They are also defenceless against exploitation and are paid extremely low wages – ...around $1 to $2 a day.

An article states that in one border area alone...

According to an assessment - by the non-governmental organization Terre des Hommes and UNICEF in 2006 - over 1,000 children are involved in child labour in the border area around Torkham, Afghanistan. This is around 80 percent of all local children between 10 and 18-years-old.

And they quote...

[7] Out of every 1,000 babies born in Afghanistan, 142 die before reaching their first birthday.

Sick, sick world and we know what’s going on.  United Nations knows it’s going on.  Every country in Europe knows it’s going on.

Lastly, there’s an article published on the internet by a group calling themselves ‘the Salaam’ (website), and they state that:

The Salaam web site is a Muslim community portal launched in 1997 with the mission to serve as the leading trusted source of information of relevance to the British Muslim community.

So, here is the article...

POVERTY IN AFGHANISTAN

"Whoever saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of all humanity."

<Qur'an-Maida 5:32>

And there’s a reason why they quote that and I’ll come back to that toward the end.  In the article it says....

Sadly, once again the ordinary, destitute Afghans find themselves in the middle of an international crossfire. It appears that the nightmare called "life in Afghanistan" which has now gone on for 23 years is entering a new dimension. Up to 8 million people face severe food shortages or starvation. The reality is that the end of this "nightmare" is nowhere in sight. Afghans are starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan, a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. Journalists witness scenes of utter tragedy, virtually every wall, every building, every landmark had been hit by shells in the big cities. One would be shocked and in disbelief over the magnitude of the devastation. One in every ten land mines in the world is littered in Afghanistan, claiming an average of 25 victims a day.

Incredible!  Sick, sick world!  How do they live?  To die one day and have life in a beautiful world, a world that is even hard for us in God’s Church to comprehend, to understand, after the thousand years of working with this world to beautify it, to prepare it for that great resurrection because that’s what is taking place for the thousand years.  It’s all about the final hundred years, as well as those who are going to be saved during the thousand years who are going to have an opportunity to be in God’s Kingdom when that hundred years begins.  Billions who have an opportunity to be added to the 144,000 to help humanity in their second life.  What an awesome thing!

We can’t comprehend the world that God has planned.  Night and day isn’t even a good comparison between what human beings have had for the last 6,000 years, what human beings have today, that when their day comes that they fall asleep, that they’re blessed to live in that world.  Incredible that they get to learn what is true, that they get to experience one government in their life that treats them rightly and fairly in every way, to live in a world where ... well, we’ll get to some of those scriptures later.  Awesome the difference!  Again, night and day to me is not adequate enough to express the awesomeness of a person’s life, what it will be like not living in this world any longer but all of a sudden being in that age.  It’s incredible!  Beyond our wildest imaginations!  Beyond anything you’ve ever seen in the most incredibly produced movie by Walt Disney.  You want to talk about a fairy tale?  You want to talk about an abundance and beauty of life?  The craziest, wildest fairy tale of all?  God beats mankind hands down with what is true and what is real in people’s lives and what they’re going to have the opportunity for, the blessing of a second life.

Going on in this article here...it repeats some things and some of these are different statistics from different years and so you’ll notice that some are different, if you caught them.  It’s hard when you’re reading through something like this, I know.

In Afghanistan death is a constant reminder. The total lack of international attention has left this brave and forsaken people to die a sad and lonely death.

Just like they have in Rwanda, Uganda, the Ivory Coast; over and over again, it doesn’t matter where it is in the world.  Cambodia, Vietnam... Politics, politics, politics!  Whenever I think about it, it just makes me want to vomit!

No wonder the UN Development Index ranks this as 169 out of 174 poorest countries in the world. The average Afghan man, woman and child die as a result of simple curable diseases like diarrhea, and fever. 1 in every 4 children in Afghanistan does not make it to the age of 5 and the life expectancy is only 40. The Afghans have accepted death as a way of life: "Life without struggle & effort is like dying before death".

Pretty miserable life there. Pretty dim outlook on life.

In all this misery, people long for peace and stability.

You know, when you live in those conditions people want peace and stability.  People are alike throughout the world – just to have peace, just to have peace from their own governments, or fighting governments.  Just to have peace, what an awesome blessing.  There hasn’t been a lot of it on this earth for 6,000 years.

It seems that it will be a future full of darkness, full of disappointment, full of tragedies and catastrophes. An entire generation has been sacrificed to war. The young innocent children know the word war before peace, the word weapon, before pen.

Well written article.

Orphans are crying wanting their parents. Widows are crying wanting their husbands. Who is going to wipe the tears of the innocent children? Who is going to wipe the tears of the oppressed widows? May Allah (swt) be witness of the injustice that Afghans suffer, and maybe bring peace to their country.

They don’t understand what God’s planning.  He is bringing peace.  Incredible!  Just like that quote again ‘Whoever saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of all humanity.’  God is saving the life of all humanity, not just ‘a’ life.  And what an incredible blessing that people have the opportunity of living in a second life and being saved out of this world.  Now there are different things that have to take place, because of all the sermons and all we’ve gone through and addressed about what God is doing, and indeed there are those who are going to have opportunity to be the pilgrims, if you will, of a new age, those who help to establish a new age.  It’s not going to be a picnic, it’s going to be a lot of hard work; but what an awesome thing to begin being a part that, being a part of one government, being a part of one Church and people coming in to be able to be a part of that one, because that’s what’s going to lie in front of them – a choice to make, and to begin building up a new world.

And those who die?  Say, “Well, what if they could live?”  Well the problem is they can’t because of mankind, because of the way the world is in order to have that world come.  There’s going to be a lot that’s not pleasant take place.  But they’re blessed.  They’re blessed!  Sometimes I think if we’re not careful we can think, “They don’t get to live in that new age!!”  Let me tell you, those who live in that other age will have it better...better than any who have to start with the new age.  Those who live in the beginning of that period, they’re brought back to life, it’s like they go to sleep one night and they wake up in the morning... that’s what happens in the mind.  You don’t know it!  And you’re in a different body, a healthy body, and all of a sudden you’re taken from one period of time... you don’t know that time has passed, you don’t know the thousand years has passed, or the five thousand, or six thousand years have passed, or that nearly seven thousand years have passed when you’re brought back to life.  But you’re brought back into a world that’s been worked on and prepared for a thousand years.

How incredible is that?  I hope you’re dumbfounded by that!  I hope you’re stirred by that!  To realize the benefit, the opportunity, the blessings that everyone who goes to sleep (because that’s what happens as far as the mind is concerned), who dies (because that physical body ceases to exist), that body – there’s nothing there and it just waits, that spirit essence that was in them that returns to God that He can put back into another Body at any time He chooses, and He does so and they’re in a beautiful world that’s been worked on for one thousand years!  A world that’s so far beyond the world that you have opportunity to live on into and work – because that’s just the beginning of the building of it, the beginning of the construction of it.

That’s why Mr. Armstrong talked about how there’d be three or four generations before some of this garbage is able to be weeded out of people’s minds in their lives. Because see, the weaknesses we have, the bad experiences we’ve had, the things that we drag with us into a new world, the human nature because of what we lived in the world, is still going to be passed down from generation to generation for a while until finally about four or five generations in people have overcome and conquered to where that next generation is free of that which is passed along.  You can’t help it; you can’t help it in the Church of God! Because you have God’s spirit doesn’t mean that all of a sudden you’re healed in your mind, that all of a sudden you don’t have weaknesses and problems that are still a part of this cesspool of this age, because they still pass along in generations because of your experiences and judgments of things....  and we learn slowly and so over a period of time the world is made better.  Night and day, the difference between the beginning of the Millennium and The Great White Throne during that hundred years is so incredibly different – a beautiful awesome world.  Any child resurrected in that world is awesomely blessed... awesomely blessed!

We think in a short span of time because we’re physical.  It’s difficult for us to grasp, because it’s just a matter of faith, it’s a matter of belief.  It’s difficult to grasp something that has never existed, that has never been, that we have never experienced.  So everything you have is a matter of faith and belief of what God is doing. And as we come to understand what God is doing we can come to appreciate and value it more; but for all ages to grasp that and what we’re going through and what we’re getting ready to go through?  Yeah, it’s horrifying, it’s horrible to contemplate, something that must come to pass, but how blessed are we and how prepared are we even?  I don’t care what age you are, or what age your children are, to know, to be prepared for, more prepared for what’s coming from the world that just has it sprung on them all of a sudden?  We’re so blessed, we truly are, and the love and the mercy that God has for those of a second life, it’s a beautiful thing.  It’s a beautiful thing, more than you can begin to comprehend.  But you can ask God to help you to grasp it more fully, to appreciate it more fully, to be thankful, to be grateful, to understand what’s going to take place in people’s lives.

The reality is that God Almighty does see all the suffering of mankind which is caused by the inhumanity of mankind toward mankind.  It’s indeed God’s purpose to save all humanity.

So which is more loving and caring?  Which is more merciful?  Is it to leave Afghanistan as it is?  ...to continue on in such horrible conditions generation after generation?  ...to leave this world in the condition it’s in generation after generation?  Is it merciful to ‘wink the eye’ at such conditions?  Is it merciful and with love that allows such conditions to continue on when things could be done to change it?  We deceive ourselves into thinking there’s a certain way to solve certain problems; that’d be a sermon in itself.

Again, all this is just a product of man’s inhumanity toward mankind, it truly is.  So what is more merciful?  What is more loving?  God’s way.  If God were to say overnight that all mankind were to die, that this world would just be wiped clear of any existence and then resurrect people later, at whatever time, into a different world, a world not under control by man any longer, what a blessing, what an awesome blessing.  But we’re selfish and there are things we want to hold onto that we don’t grasp about what God offers us.

So, would you want your children, or your family, to live in such conditions as in Afghanistan, or like it is in different parts of Africa, or different parts of South America, or different parts of Mexico right now?  I understand why people want to go to a better land.  I understand why people will break laws and climb fences and do whatever they’ve got to do for their family, to give them a better life.  I understand that!  Who doesn’t want that?  We already have it. We don’t really grasp what we already have.  Obviously there are other people in the world who would love to have more and have a better life for their families and not have to worry about terrorism or gangs or cartels and all the other things that are going on in this world that we put up with.  I get so upset when I see what people are doing and how people are treated, I truly do; the injustice, the inhumanity, the lies.

For all, everyone, God offers a new world where only truth exists, where only one righteous government exists, where only one true religion exists; and that one true religion is not the Catholic church nor any of her daughters, those of Traditional Protestant Christianity.  It is not Judaism, it is not Islam, it is not Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hari Krishna, Krishnaism, whatever they call it, nor any other ‘isms’.  People just love to hear such things.  You know what?  God doesn’t care what they want to hear and don’t want to hear, He wants them to hear the truth and He wants them to respond to the truth knowing full well that the overwhelming majority won’t.  And so they have to answer.

What an incredible thing that we know what the immediate future holds just a tad over a year from now, that the world is going to have the opportunity to begin changing – a true world order that’s coming to this world.  Not one that people think up or dream up or think that is being done or brought about or people are working at or whatever it might be; no, one that’s true.  Truly a change coming.  A world without evil present.

So again, people find it difficult to imagine such a world.  (I want to read through some more of this I have written down here...)  ...without poverty, without rampant crime, without human inequality, without oppression of children or oppression of women, without oppression of a race, a world without heavy taxation, without hunger, without armies, without large numbers of hospitals, legal firms, tax offices, insurance companies, etc...etc...etc...  All this garbage – not in God’s world, thank God.  Thank God!

But instead, God is giving us a world with full employment for all who want work, a world with very little illness.  There is still going to be some illness, but again, those are personal things between each individual and God and how God intervenes and so forth, but healing, of things that God is going to do – again, on a personal plane in a personal manner with individuals. Powerful! Mighty!  Blessings of good health.  A world with great safety and great protection from danger, abundance of food, clean water and clean air.  How are you going to deal with that?

A world with no urban blight, no squalor.  Wow!  No shanty towns, no tent cities!  I think of some of the large cities in the world and what they’re like.  No refugees, no crammed apartment communities or overcrowded cities. In God’s mercy and love He’s bringing an end to suffering of mankind that’s caused by mankind.  And so, millions are going to have an opportunity to live on into an awesome world, but billions will die – but they have a second life.  Beautiful what’s ahead of them, for them.

Let’s turn over to Revelation 20 and go through that.  So people die both young and old.  What does it mean?  We know a lot about the Millennium but we need to see more deeply, in God’s Church, the beauty and merciful love that God has concerning the blessing of a second life.  It truly is an awesome thing; and the longer we’re in God’s Church, the longer I’m in God’s Church, the more awesome and the more beautiful this becomes, it truly does.

Revelation 20:1 - And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, just means ‘a place of restraint, the abyss’.  Some people don’t know what these things are.  When these things are translated so long ago, especially if you go back to the time of this here, Old King James English, and some of the things that took place in the world at that time – it was a much different world than we have today; the way of life, the way people lived and the ideas that people had about God and so forth.  And so how to translate things and you try to find words to describe something you think it’s talking about – and God gave them a certain ability but limited in a very powerful way because the primary thing was certain preservation of things that were to continue on and be given to different people’s through time.  But all the truth wasn’t given there and the ability to grasp and comprehend it wasn’t given there, just as when Christ spoke in parables.  It wasn’t there until they had the holy spirit.  The disciples did not understand what He was talking about until they had the holy spirit, and then they began to comprehend and understand.  And so it is here in things like this ‘the bottomless pit’... abyss, different definitions they had.  How do you describe something like this, a place of restraint, spiritually what does this mean for spirit beings.  So they had some strange ideas about heaven and hell.

It says...and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold of the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil/the Slanderer, is what this means, it’s what he’s talking about here, the slanderer, always slandering God’s people, always slandering what God is doing, always finding fault.

...and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, I applaud that day!  I’m excited about that day!  I can’t tell you enough of how excited I am!  I can’t tell you how excited I am that God has blessed me to be able to speak about such things because a few years ago I would not have touched that one, period, in any fashion or form. There are some things you don’t say; there are some things you don’t do, that we don’t have the right or the authority to do because it’s a matter of what God has established when it comes to government and order and how things are to be done.  That’s why I’ve given warning over and over again in the Church – be careful what you say when it comes to this being.  But God has given me a purpose and a responsibility to indeed speak some things and I have been elated to do so, truly!  To be able to tell people, to explain to God’s Church what kind of a being he was, how perverted his mind is, how sick his mind is, what he’s done for millions, perhaps billions of years.  We don’t know how long he’s done these things, trying to thwart God’s plan, distorting those who followed him, their minds even more, as his mind became more and more distorted, can’t think right, can’t understand because there’s no comprehension of God’s plan and excitement of it.

He can’t begin to grasp why the angelic beings who are loyal and faithful to God are more deeply loyal and faithful to God than ever before – because of what they’ve seen him do.  They grew.  They grew in righteousness.  They grew in understanding.  They grew in greater appreciation of God and God’s plan and God’s purpose in what God was doing, because of what they saw that being do and all the others who followed him who became demons.  They truly did!  Much stronger!  And Satan doesn’t understand that.  He thinks they’re buffoons, foolish, for following God, he truly does.  He looks down upon them.  Smug, arrogant, filled with pride!  So thankful His end is coming soon and that he gets to see through a little window what God does over a thousand years.  He can’t touch it.  He can’t affect it.  He can’t communicate to it.  He can’t broadcast to it anymore.  He can’t broadcast to a single human being for a thousand years!  What a beautiful thing!

And all those demons who follow him, they can’t broadcast for a thousand years; they’re restrained from doing so, power’s taken away from them.  They don’t understand that fully yet.  There are some things they believe about God and about what God will do, but they don’t get that yet because they’ve never experienced that yet.  There are some things they think they might be able to do or can somehow work out, just like human beings do; just like when a typhoon comes along or just like when a tsunami comes along and wipes out thousands of people and people... What do they do?  They think they can work it out and things will be okay again before long – and if time were going to go on their lives might be able to be worked out that way but.... anyway, selfish human nature tends to think that way, pride tends to think that way.  “We will rebuild. We will remake. We can do this. We’re a great people. We are this... We are that...  I’ve been here all my life, I’m not leaving, I’m going to rebuild.”  Get’s destroyed again.  “I’ve been here all my life, I’ve been washed out twice and I’ve rebuilt both times, I’m going to rebuild again, I’m staying here, nothing is going to move me!”  Okay....  That’s the way human beings think.

It’s the way this being thinks; that’s why he thought all along with his perverted and distorted thinking, thinking he could still destroy God’s plan when the Son of God was born.  Jesus Christ had to be taken down into Egypt for a while to get away from people that Satan could influence to kill Him. Because he went out and he killed lots of babies, a lot of young children all the way up to two years old because in his perverted mind he still thought and still tried to move a government, a people, to destroy God’s plan, because that’s the only way he could do it.  He can’t do it himself, but he can work with human beings to work with other human beings to do certain things to make life miserable for other human beings.  That’s how he works; that’s how he functions.  He just doesn’t get it.

He hasn’t gotten God’s Church for 2,000 years.  He doesn’t get it that by the trials and the things that he does and the hardships he’s caused on the Church, that people actually become stronger, closer to God, stronger spiritually, more desirous of God and His ways.  He doesn’t understand that!  What a beautiful thing he gets to witness it for a thousand years.  That’s his torment; he can’t stand it.  He can’t stand to see the world that God is going to build and so when he’s released for a little while in his own little demented perverted thinking he goes out to try to do it again thinking that somehow he’s going to be able to thwart God’s plan.  And God has told him what He’s going to do at different stages, and he still tries to thwart God’s plan.  He’s just used again to suck up evil like a big vacuum cleaner.

Verse 3 - And cast him into the abyss/the bottomless pit/the place of restraint and shut him up... See, through time he’s had different powers taken away from him.  He has experienced being lessened in power and glory and might from when he was first created.  He has experienced those things at different ages and different times; for the past 6,000 years relatively the same through time but at different times he’s been allowed to do different things, and given the opportunity or the ability (the blessing, in his mind) to do those things; the seven resurrections of the Holy Roman Empire, as an example, to influence people, other times kept away that he couldn’t do those things, and other times allowed to do certain things.  But now that power is going to be taken and stripped from him.  That’s what the restraint is; the power that they used to have that they no longer have and they are restrained, unable to do and perform as they are able to today as spirit beings.  And then they experience it again for a little while and then finally dealt with.

...and cast him into the abyss and shut him up and set a seal upon him that he should deceive the nations no more, the seal from God, power from God Almighty.  See, God has the power to do anything He desires at any time.  He can stop any war; He can do anything at any moment in time.  He can stop all poverty on the earth, but that’s not His purpose now.  His purpose is the creation in our minds of what we can learn by what we experience as carnal human, selfish human beings filled with pride and haughtiness, ‘the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye’s and the pride of life’.  That’s why I’m telling you that sermon that was given at the Feast is the most incredible, one of the most powerful sermons God has ever blessed us to drink in of, of what God is doing with human beings, how He is creating our minds, why our minds are different from the angelic realm, why He must work with and mould and fashion us, and why we’re made physical as human beings having a physical brain with a spirit essence in it that makes us different from the angelic creation that God can mould and fashion and we can change and we can become something different when God’s spirit enters in by our free choice, that that’s what we want.

Truly, one of the most AWESOME and powerful sermons that God has let us have in this age, if we can grasp why we are created the way we are, why man must suffer the way he does.  Because it’s the only way with God’s spirit that holy righteous character and the mind of God can become our mind.  It is an awesomely beautiful thing!  But we get there through a lot of suffering and a lot of hardship and that’s the only way it can be created, because we have to do it by choice and we have to experience evil, carnal, pride filled human nature.  And it’s through this awesome thing of choice, of being free to choose.

Much to learn about it brethren, much more to learn about it, much more to see.  And the more we grow spiritually the more we’ll come to see it, embrace it, appreciate it, and thank God... thank God over and over again for the beauty, the marvel of His creation and what He’s doing in every life when He begins to deal with us through the power of His spirit and what He’s getting ready to offer us that’s so difficult for us as human beings to grasp.

So God set a seal upon him that he should deceive the nations no more until the thousand years are fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed/released for a little season....from his being bound up, from his inability.  So power is given back to him to do certain things.

And I saw thrones, and they who sat upon them, and judgment was given to them; and so now it’s getting to a point in time where this exciting part of where God is so close to now, of what His Family is so close to now, those who are dead and those He has longed for being able to continue in a relationship with – Noah, Moses, David – and everyone else who has been called at different stages throughout 6,000 years that are going to be resurrected finally.  See what happened to His Son happened quickly and in three days He was able to continue on in a relationship for the last 2,000 years, very powerfully in ways we cannot begin to comprehend.  But now, the firstfruits, Pentecost, is about to be accomplished.  It’s an awesome thing; it truly is beautiful what God is getting ready to do, and the eagerness, the anticipation. And this is what it’s talking about.  I saw thrones...that which God has prepared – Government, righteous Government.

See, we had to learn even within the Church of God, man can’t rule himself – NOT EVEN IN GOD’S CHURCH!  We’re incapable of it!  The larger we became, just like what happened in the angelic realm, in time it would happen, in time it would happen – an apostasy.  In time, because of the time and because of the structure, because of human nature... and just because you have God’s spirit in you, it’s still always a battle, it’s always a struggle, it’s always a choice to yield to, to strive to be at one with, to desire to be on guard, spiritually alert and close to God.  Choices, choices, choices.

So in time the Church became so large that one man who was so highly dedicated to God, who was so trained, who was so convicted, because of the life God blessed him to live and through whom God worked to give truth to the Church, to restore truth in the Church of God from the Sardis era on into the Philadelphia era, truth after truth.  50 plus years of moulding and fashioning his mind to reveal truth to give to the Church, to help the Church become strong.  That man, who lived those things, who experienced those things through time, battle upon battle, resistance upon resistance, even from within; and because of that zeal and that drive and that moulding and fashioning that God did through him...well, it was for him.

But others who came along saw him get older, maybe forgetful every once in a while here and there, “He’s becoming a little weaker...  One of us is going to take his place...”  Satan, the mind of Satan.  Power, rule.  “Who is going to be the next one?”  And so people, evangelists in God’s Church, began to take sides.  Who are they going to support?  Who is it going to be?  Pick and choose, politics started entering in.  The very men that he trained.  The very men he started Ambassador College with were the very ones who betrayed him.  It came to a point in time in the seventies where he couldn’t trust a one of them to be the treasurer of the Church.  He didn’t have that trust and confidence, not in a one of them.  He had to bring in another man, who happened to be at that time my pastor and my wife’s, Leroy Neff.  Had to bring in another man who he felt his conviction and his loyalties over the years were there and who would do his job faithfully.  Incredible what we lived through and didn’t even know what was happening; because you see what happens over time, people begin to go astray, people begin to do their own thing, begin to add their own ideas.

Just like one ‘great’ teacher. I say ‘great’ because that’s what they thought he was.  One individual at headquarters, one who considered himself to be ‘intellectual’, who began to bring in different ideas into his teachings in Ambassador and in the classrooms where ministers were being taught and trained to go out and teach God’s way of life.  And he began to teach some of his own ideas that were different from Mr. Armstrong’s.  Mr. Armstrong couldn’t be in every classroom.  Mr. Armstrong couldn’t be in every department head meeting.  Mr. Armstrong couldn’t be everywhere all the time!  And God let it happen.  We need to understand how those things happen, how things took place, why God’s Government has to be on this earth, why the Church of God itself has to be administered by the King of Kings, by the High Priest and by 144,000 under Him scattered throughout the earth.  Because that’s the only way that a righteous Church can prevail and exist.  It can’t with mankind by himself!  That’s an awesome thing to understand.

It’s an awesome learning experience I’ve had to go through and I thank God for it, as painful as it’s been.  But because of that process we’ve become more deeply convicted of the right way to govern.  It must come, indeed, from God Almighty through His Son, but not His Son in heaven, His Son on earth with 144,000 who’ve been trained, prepared to rule and administer, to teach in the Church of God, so that when anybody comes along, any minister, anybody comes along that might even think about teaching something that’s wrong; might begin to in any fashion or form with any kind of intellectualism begin to put a little spin on something that’s his own...because he came up with this idea and he thinks everybody needs to hear about it.  It’ll be squelched quickly by those over him who are spirit beings.

What a beautiful world!  What a beautiful world that we never have to experience something like an apostasy again. We don’t have to experience somebody like the minister who was in Washington, D.C., a regional pastor who messed up a lot of the other ministers in the region there and began to fill them with a bunch of garbage and a bunch of things that were false and not true.  And then after awhile, hundreds, thousands of people began to leave in different areas.  Won’t have any of that in the Millennial period!

I saw thrones, and they who sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them; it’s time for them to judge, time for them to work with human beings, with mankind, the God Family that can deal directly with mankind, the God Family that can be there to administer righteous government on the earth, to administer righteous things in the court systems that will be established on the earth.  Not like we have today, not like the sick, perverted, disgusting things that go on today because if you have enough money that you can buy a shyster that knows how to talk and wheel and deal and knows how to misuse or use or twist or distort or use the law to his advantage! I know not everybody’s a shyster and there are people out there who try to do the right thing – but they’re in a system that’s wrong.

And so people with a lot of money... there are people who get off and somebody who can’t afford anything and they get somebody that’s called a ‘court appointed lawyer’... What do they get?  Fair, equitable, just justice and judgment?  And because of people who they know?  A judge they know?  A prosecuting attorney they know and because of that friendship might get certain deals that a flyby that barely made it through law school, that has a hard time getting started and didn’t get connected with the right law firm and he’s a court appointed lawyer and he doesn’t have much going on in his life as far as the legal system is concerned....  So much injustice in this world because man’s government doesn’t work.

It takes God’s Government who knows all things, who knows what’s happened and what hasn’t happened, who knows right from wrong, who knows what took place, knows when somebody’s killed someone else, knows when somebody has stolen, knows what has truly happened...and righteous judgment is executed swiftly, not prolonged in the courts because of money and because of backlogs and because of everything else.  Do you long for those days?  I do!  When people are treated fairly and rightly, when people aren’t taken advantage of, when people aren’t done unjustly just because they don’t like the way a person looks or the way they talk or the colour of their skin, or whatever it might be that people have prejudices about in this world.  And they exist!  Community after community, place after place.  Amazing!

So whether it be the Church or whether it be government, it must be administered by God.  That’s the only thing that works.  Man can’t govern himself in a Church and man can’t govern himself in this world – righteously so.

...and I saw thrones and they who sat upon them and judgment was given to them; and I saw the souls/lives of them who were, it’s not ‘beheaded’... the translators at that time lived during a period when people were beheaded.  Not talking about a guillotine or the axe, or anything like that... it just means ‘cut off’ and so a word that means ‘cut off’ in the Greek, they translated as ‘beheaded’. So if you weren’t beheaded you’re not going to be able to be a part of the 144,000 I guess.  And that’s not what it’s talking about.  It means ‘cut off’, cut off from the world, made different.

What happens when you’re called into God’s Church?  You’re not the same anymore!  Sometimes when people come in the Church they go through a process where they begin to think, “Man, so and so used to be a close friend and now they’re really changing.”  My wife and I laugh about some of these and we’ve told others about some of these things.  You know, what happens is you’re the one changing, your mind is changing, you’re starting to see that person for the way they really always were, you’re starting to see things of the spirit that you didn’t see before and you begin to realize they’ve always been like that... you’re the one who’s changing the way you think, and what you do, and what you don’t do.  That’s what’s changing.  And so you’re cut off from the world because you’re not with this world anymore, you’re not a part of it anymore – at least you’re striving not to be.

...that were cut off for the witness of Jesus; you start living this way of life?  ...the witness of Jesus Christ?  ...and you know what it means?  It means the witness of Jesus Christ in your life, whether they grasp that or not. What people are to see in the world is a different person.  They’re to see a person who stands up for the Sabbath, who’s not working on it.  They see a person who doesn’t curse and cuss on the job anymore like they used to – taking God’s name on a regular basis because that’s just the way it is in certain areas of the world, the way people talk in society. And you don’t use that same language anymore and so they are a witness of you becoming a different person.  They don’t like what you believe, but there are some of them who do like what you’ve become, and there are others who don’t.  Some people in marriages, “You’re not the same person I married! You’re becoming nicer and better and you’re striving to live a better life, a more righteous life in every fashion in your life.”  And another person may... they like that other person that wasn’t as nice – believe that or not – isn’t that amazing?  “I liked that other person that would go out with me drinking at the bar all the time.  What happened to him?”  “What happened to her?  That’s who I married! That’s want I want!” Yeah, sad world.  You changed and so people are cut off oftentimes from other friends and other people because of God living in them and because of Christ living in you.  And so you are to reflect something different and you’re to be witness of that in your life.  Your life is to be witness of that.  If it isn’t then you won’t end up being a witness of it.  They’ll say, “Oh, that’s why he died and had to be resurrected later on.”

...and for the word of God, witness for these things; ‘and for the word of God’ – you live it, you strive to live it: the Sabbath, the Holy Days, this way of life and other people see it.  They don’t understand it but they’re supposed to see it.

...which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither received the mark in their foreheads, or in their hands; in Traditional Christianity, because they’re so blinded by certain things they think, “They’re going to do like they did during the holocaust! They’re going to have this number and it’s going to have the number 666 on it!” ...and then a bunch of other numbers behind it.  Why repeat the same number so many times?  I don’t get it.  You can save a lot of ink, a lot of tattooing, whatever it is....  But oh, people are going to have the 666 in there because people are so physical and they don’t understand what God is doing anyway.

The ‘mark’: the mark, the sign of God’s people has always been the same.  Mr. Tkach tried to change it to something else but the sign has always been the same – it’s the Sabbath, it’s the seventh day, it’s the Holy Days.  The sign of God’s people is the Sabbath, whether it be the weekly Sabbath and the annual Sabbaths, it’s all inclusive.  It’s not just the weekly Sabbath.  But it starts with the Sabbath, the weekly Sabbath; and that’s how God’s people are identified, because they keep it, they obey it.  And the Holy Days, the other Sabbaths, the annual Sabbaths in Leviticus 23 – that’s the mark, that’s the sign of God’s people.

And ‘in your forehead and in your hands’: because the forehead is the place where you think. And so the reason you choose the things you do is because of what’s in your mind and the spirit of God that’s in there working in that brain and your choices are to live that way of life so it’s a matter of your choices, the mark, what you believe.  The ‘mark of your hands’: of when you work and when you won’t work!

You know what the ‘mark of the beast’ is of this world?  ...of Satan is, in essence?  For Traditional Christianity it’s Sunday, that’s their ‘mark’; Sunday worship, Easter, Christmas.  That’s their identifying sign.  For others it might be Friday, or Monday, or whatever... but it’s not the Sabbath.

So it has to do with your work, always in the scriptures, productivity, your hands, when you work and when you don’t work.  That sign that’s in your mind, in your being as to why you work and don’t work at certain times.  So some didn’t know that who are new or freshly listening out there, you know where that comes from, what it is.

...and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. Talking about the 144,000 as it does in previous scriptures here and those who are resurrected and they live with, on this earth, and work with, and have judgment given to them, whether it be things that are going to be done as far as government is concerned or as far as the Church is concerned, or a part of both in some cases.  Wherever God has placed them in His administration, within His Family.  ...and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

And then it goes on to say, verse 5 - But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. The rest of the dead; the rest of all humanity.  It’s making a sweeping statement here of things that only those who know God’s plan, who understand Pentecost, who understand the Feast of Tabernacles, who understand The Last Great Day as far as High Days are concerned and festive periods of God and what they mean.

But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Again, referring back to those who will live and reign with Christ a thousand years that are now a part of the Kingdom of God.  And everyone else through time, through the previous 6,000 years, it’s not their time yet.  The only ones that are brought back to life, resurrected, at this point in time are those who are given judgment and rule and reign with Christ a thousand years, 144,000.  And what’s unique is we live in a time now where there are those who are going to live on into a new age.  They’re not being discussed here; it’s talking about people who’ve lived and died to this point in time, of those who are resurrected and so forth. There are very few within God’s Church today, who are alive today, who on that particular day when Jesus Christ is returning [snaps fingers] are alive physically and all of a sudden they’re changed to spirit. There aren’t too many in all the history of all human beings that get to experience that one – that never having to experience human death.  Incredible!  Jesus Christ experienced it, but there are some who have an opportunity to be a witness of something else that all of a sudden - it makes Star Trek look puny – all of a sudden they’re here and all of a sudden they’re up there and it’s like... Whoa...

Verse 6 - Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection: awesome thing, they don’t have to experience a second physical life.  What an awesome blessing!  And all of you who live on into the Millennial age, all of those who during that period of time are born and receive God’s way of life, they don’t have to experience a second physical life either.  There will be some who have to, but as a whole the overwhelming majority have the opportunity to be resurrected at the end of a thousand years into God’s Family, just like the 144,000.  Don’t have to live a second time; you’re going to learn what you need to learn in your lifetime.  That’s a great blessing!  I’m tickled pink that I don’t have to live in this body twice, although I understand the blessing of that second life for those who have never known the truth, never known God’s way of life.  An awesome, awesome blessing indeed!

Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection: on such the second death has no power. You know, anybody... the pope himself who is given such recognition in the world by leaders, who has their own representative, ambassadors to countries because they’re recognized as a nation!  (...being a little facetious in all this showing how foolish some things are.)  But not even he understands this second death.  To him it must be a misprint or something.  I would like to hear the answer to this one!  What do you mean a second death?  That’s kind of like how Nicodemus didn’t understand when Christ was telling him that you have to be born again.  “When you’re full grown?  How do you climb back into the womb and be born again?  It just doesn’t make sense!!”  And this doesn’t make sense to Traditional Christianity.

There isn’t a Southern Baptist person, there isn’t a Church of Christ person, there isn’t a Lutheran, an Episcopalian, a Protestant... a Presbyterian; I don’t care which one it is – any of those priests and ministers and ones that are out there.  There isn’t a Mormon alive that can tell you what this means. There isn’t a person in any religion out there, except someone who’s been a part of God’s Church, that could tell you what this is.  A second death; that... wow... the light... that must mean you must have to have two lives in order to have a second death!  Yeah, that’s exactly what it means, a second life.  What an amazing thing that the world doesn’t see this!  What an amazing thing that Traditional Christianity... not even the ‘great’ Catholic church... not even the popes... there isn’t a pope in history who’s understood this; that mankind lives twice in a physical body and can die twice.  Because that’s the only way you can die a second death, is because you have to live twice.  Instead they hold onto the belief, the ideas that no, no, no, no, no... when you die you’re either going to go up or down.  It’s either up or down... or it may not be down but whatever that place is that’s hot.  It’s got to be one of the two.  Amazing!  I like to make fun of those kinds of beliefs because they’re foolish.  It’s as stupid as evolution; the ideas of evolution!

And so indeed it says...on such the second death has no power, because they didn’t have to live a second time.  But there are some who do and it talks about them a little bit later.

...but they, those who are resurrected in the first great resurrection, those who represent Pentecost.  And what an awesome thing to find out and learn that indeed they’re resurrected on that day - Pentecost.

...shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.  Beautiful scripture, beautiful indeed.

~~~end

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