The Rightful Place of Women, Pt. 1

Ron Weinland

January 7, 2017

As the beginning of today's service is so different from our norm and our history as God's Church, I'll begin right away by telling you what the sermon is entitled. It is The Rightful Place of Women, with this being Part 1.

And before we get into the heart of this subject matter there's a little history that needs to be reviewed, Church history specifically, and the reason for going into a little history is because today also begins a new approach to how we are now going to begin making weekly sermons available to all who want to hear what God is giving to His Church, which is indeed God's Church. And as you know, I like to jump right into sermons. I like to jump right into scriptures because I don't like to be tied to notes in any fashion or form. We don't have teleprompters, which would be a nice thing to have when you're actually doing a video, but we don't have that and I hate having my head down and reading, but there are some things in today's sermon especially that I have to do. So from time to time I am kind of confined to making certain that there are certain things that I do cover, and so this is going to be one of those sermons so I apologize up front for that.

This Sabbath begins the first video sermon being made available to God's Church, meaning last Sabbath's sermon was the first one now because of Australia, New Zealand, and Europe that had the ability to watch video sermons. That's a great step forward for us. It's a great opportunity, a great means of communicating things in a far more meaningful way. And again, for those areas of the world, until we're able to have live webcasts, this is great for God's Church and this will help a great deal in better communication to help people receive a greater impact and inspiration from what they hear, because when you just listen to something there are things you miss out on and when you're able to see expressions and some of the things that go with it, it's just another dimension in communication that is awesome to be able to have. So again, I'm excited about that, especially because of the time we're in and where we're headed.

So God's Church is nearing the end of this present age as it's about to enter a new age for all the world during the millennial reign of the Kingdom of God on earth. God's Church knows that it is in the end-time of man's self-rule on this earth. I'm amazed when I watch things on TV now, some of the things going on between nations, things that are stirred up, things that are taking place in this nation and so many others, because it's easier to see things coming together in a very unique and profound way and how certain things can happen so quickly because of how people are reacting and responding in the way that they do to things in this period of time.

So we know that we are about to enter a Third World War. It's not far away and that's just where the world is headed. And that's very sobering to understand, because God says certain things will take place on the earth before He establishes His Kingdom. We see certain things being set in place. And I am struck by, as well, how that this is different than before, what we're being prepared for, how we're thinking about these things is different than what it was before. So this is exciting in many respects to see how God brings things to pass, how He makes available to people, to the world, an opportunity, greater opportunity to be able to respond to Him as time goes along. And time will tell whether they listen or whether they won't.

So God has been preparing us for that final war that's about to be waged on earth. God and Jesus Christ revealed to this world that the final stage and countdown to the establishment of His Government on earth had begun 22 years ago. It was 22 years ago this time of year. Last Sabbath, this Sabbath, and next Sabbath parallel in a very powerful way with things that took place during the Apostasy. It is an incredible time. Actually, even the Sabbath before that, because it was a period of time that we happen to be hitting the same periods, the same date on the Roman calendar when you speak of the 17th, the 24th, and the 31st, and next week, January 7th. It means a lot more, obviously, to God's Church because of what took place 22 years ago.

Last week, again, marked exactly… Well, I should say the week before that because today is the 31st, so it was 24th, so it was the 17th. So it was two weeks ago. When I do my notes sometimes it puts me at a disadvantage because I'm thinking of the here and now. But anyway, 22 years ago, again, incredible what began, and that event of the Apostasy is what God told His Church would be the first sign to God's people, and to the world, candidly, but the world doesn't know God, doesn't know what God has said. And so it was the first sign, and God gave that as the first sign for Christ's timing for returning to this earth. So again, incredible to recognize the period of time we're in. Next week, the 7th of January, will mark, again, the 22nd year since the Apostasy went throughout the Church in a coordinated video message given by the man of sin, the son of perdition.

Now, the reason I'm going through a lot of this and reminding you of what took place 22 years ago at this exact time period, if you will, is because it's really quite profound when you think about where we are and what God is doing right now in His Church and what took place then at that time. So now, exactly 22 years later, a video message is once again going out to God's Church throughout the world, and now it will be to, in that respect, enhance and strengthen our relationship with God and those things that God is preparing for.

So we indeed live at a profound moment in history, and especially in the history of God's true Church.

So again, what a profound thing to think 22 years ago a man of sin was telling the Church you no longer have to live by the way of life that God and Jesus Christ gave to you. You no longer have to live by those things and so truths were being destroyed, and now we're at a point in time where one of the most important truths of all that God has given to His Church is being carried out. God is restoring truth to the Church in a very powerful way, and today is a big, big step moving forward in all of that. So I find that, again, incredibly exciting. And as I was working through this and thinking about this, I just thought of the one word. And now? WOW! WOW! God has not only re-established truth in His Church since that Apostasy 22 years ago, but He's multiplied it in a very powerful way since the Apostasy began long ago, and there have been many truths added to the knowledge and understanding of God's people, to God's Church since that time.

And two of the most important, two of the most important of these truths is for the sake of creating God's Family in a more profound and powerful manner and for the proper establishment of God's Kingdom to govern on this earth. God is setting things right in the world! Because they haven't been for 6,000 years! And this is one of the most important ones that has to be set right!

It's incredible what took place 6,000 years ago when Adam and Eve were first created and we're going to take time to review those again in this sermon series. (This will be a series. I don't know how long, but it'll be a series.) So again, it really is incredible to grasp what happened then and what man has suffered through for that period of time because of our nature, because of selfishness. Things have been so upside down! Incredible! So these two truths have to do with the rightful place of women in the world, in the family, in community, and in God's Church. And God is setting that right.

I'd like to read to you something. There are so many things, and even as I've been thinking about this particular series and what we're going to go into, I’ve been struck by certain things that God has given us at different times. Not a lot, because if He'd given a lot more it'd been a lot more obvious to God's Church how things should be, but it wasn't meant to be until this period of time, until this latter part of the end-time, candidly. It wasn't for Philadelphia to know it. It wasn't for Thyatira to know. It wasn't for any era of God's Church to know these things, and yet they're there. And that's the way it is with so much of what God has given to us, what He's recorded, that when it's His time to reveal it, He gives it. And some things are made purposely so, like Jesus Christ speaking in parables. It's not time for them yet. It's not time for the world yet. He spoke in parables for a great reason.

Much of scripture that follows is written in a manner that people can't piece it together. They can't make the old and the new fit in the way that God says it does, because it does. It fits hand in hand in a very powerful way. There's nothing that contradicts, but the world thinks that there is a lot that contradicts. Sad, but God has shown His purpose many different times, and He's only revealing those things now, or the past several years, if you will, He began the process, and it's taking us time. This change doesn't take place overnight. 6,000 years is not going to be reversed overnight. That's why I think about how Mr. Armstrong talked about three and four generations before things are where they really need to be. It takes a lot of time. And candidly, for families, for society, this is the biggest. This is the biggest. There is prejudice that is so deep in the human mind it takes a long time to get that reversed, to get that on a course that it's supposed to be going on. It doesn't happen right away and that has to do with all the laws of God and the ways of God, bringing things to an ability for man to be able to see those things, to put them together because it all goes together, because what happened 6,000 years ago was about God's way of life, and that was a spin-off of it. And so as long as this world lives by its own ways, that injustice, that bondage would always exist, and God is saying no more. He's changing it and He's starting with the Church.

I remember mentioning that when we first started addressing this subject matter. Right now it is only for God's Church, and it's going to take time for God's Church, and we're not there, but we're getting there. And today is a good example of that, indeed.

I think it'd be good to read a couple of scriptures. Matthew 22, first of all, because there are places in scripture where God's purpose for His Family and how things really should be are really clear, but until He reveals it and makes it clear on a spiritual plane it isn't clear to the world. But it is for us. We're getting there in these areas of life.

Matthew 22:23—It says, The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him, came to Jesus Christ, and asked him… So there was this conflict between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They were so far off base already. I think about that. 2,000 years ago the religious world, Judaism, if you will, or the Jewish beliefs in God were “off the wall.” They were all messed up. They were wrong. They were in error. They were teaching their own things just as what's happening in the world of Traditional Christianity today.

I was thinking about videos and maybe making smaller ones here and there if I have the time and the ability. I was thinking about one of the first ones I'd like to do is talking about this one here, you know, where Christ's hands are up on a pole. You think how simple it is! How simple it is! But for the world, what do they do? What do you do when you've been teaching for 2,000 years that his hands were out on a cross? And you came along and you tell them, "That's a lie! It didn't happen that way. It's nonsensical. It doesn't even go along with what the scriptures say. He didn't die that way! His hands were above his head. One nail going through the hands on top of a pole. One nail with both feet together at the bottom." So two nails total, spikes, if you will, to a pole, and even the Greek word, it's about a pole or a stake, and yet they have to make a cross out of it. And there are others words that mean "cross" and that word does not mean a cross! So two poles – didn't say that – criss-crossed. It's amazing (it really is), how human beings think, but in time they are going to learn where all this came from and where their authority, where their beliefs, where their ideas have come from.

Just like this time of year that I hate with all my being! I think, what a horrible thing! But it's hard for the human mind to not think, or to think, if you will, that they've got to take a stand and be able to say within their family, "Yep. Santa Claus is just a big, fat lie, just as fat as he is. You know, a big, fat lie." Incredible! And Easter bunny? And you want to teach them that rabbits lay eggs. You think, "Well, that's just a nice, sweet, innocent type of thing that we do and it's a custom and it doesn't mean anything. And later on we'll tell them the truth." You don't realize what you do to a mind, what you begin programming in the human mind at such a young age. If we understood the value and the importance of the human mind, that that's what it's all about. It's about what goes into here that makes us what we are later on in life! We don't grasp that as human beings, we don't treasure it for what it is, and we don't realize how we can pollute it, corrupt it, as God says. Yet that's what people do, they corrupt the human mind and a lot of it begins at a very young age because of lies: "Oh, they're innocent." Well, who told you they're innocent? Huh, it's that same little snake in the Garden of Eden. He's the one. He's the one who's told you the lie and you sucked it up. So anyway, sorry I got off on that, but can't help myself sometimes when I start thinking about some of these things in the world and where the world is today and how hard it is for them to receive the truth.

So what an incredible thing to understand – and it's not that incredible – the Pharisees and Sadducees were all messed up. Religion at that time was just religion, but it wasn't of God. It wasn't God's. It wasn't God's. Now, there were certain things they were supposed to do and there was still a temple. There were certain things that had to be fulfilled, but they weren't living God's way at all and they weren't teaching the truth. They weren't teaching what had been given to them and what do you think has happened to Judaism in the last 2,000 years since that time? Gotten better? Hardly. No more than Traditional Christianity has gotten better. It’s just more confusing, more churches, more ideas, more beliefs. That's why there are so many that just keep scattering and splintering off on different churches and you get the mega-churches and the multi-mega and things that people go through and what they do. Awesome!

So here it is, already having disputes, misunderstanding, not understanding God's truth and God's way of life. "Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection," and today, Traditional Christianity says there is a resurrection and there's also a change that comes right away when you're dead. Before your burial ever takes place, before the funeral, you're up there. You're up there in heaven, and then they talk about a resurrection. Really? What do you believe? Do you know what the word "resurrection" means? If you're talking about a resurrection and the need for a resurrection and what a resurrection is and you're talking in the same confounded way that somehow they're already up there in heaven fishing, or whatever it is they like to do: Ignorance. Confusion. I feel sorry for them. Confusion because of incredible lies that have been perpetuated.

So here it is, Pharisees thought differently, and so they came to Jesus Christ saying, Teacher, Moses said if a man die having no children his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. Now, this was the custom within the nations of Israel. It had to do with those things that are passed down, certain things, names and so forth, and lands and possessions and the division of territories and everything else as a part of this. And so God gave them a system that they could live by to govern life, to govern the affairs of life.

So they're asking here, that if a man die having no children his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were with us seven brothers, and the first when he had married a wife, died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh. Then last of all, the woman died also. Now, we read through this part of the story, but it's the next part of the story that has the greatest of meaning, if we understand what God is saying about a plan that He has for mankind. Therefore, in the resurrection whose wife of the seven shall she be? For they all had her. Jesus answered and said unto them, You are mistaken. In other words, "You're in error. You don't know what you're saying." …not knowing the scriptures. "You don't know the truth," nor the power of God, and what God has planned for mankind. "You don't know!" For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage. In God's Family. That's the resurrection he's talking about. It's not talking about the Great White Throne. It's talking about a resurrection, the one that they desired above all in time, that which people look to, whether it be heaven or whatever it might be and some of those things that were infecting the minds of the Sadducees at that particular time. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as, just means "like," the angels of God in heaven. Now, it didn't mean they would be angels, but he's showing something here. He's saying something very specific here. No one is given in marriage in God's Kingdom, in Elohim, in the Family of God. There is no marriage. No marriage exists, because, in that respect, we're more like angels. They don't have sex, in the sense of different sex. I should have said that differently! Anyway, that too! But, anyway, there's a difference because there is no male and female. Okay? There are no sexes in that respect. There is no male and female. There isn't with the angelic realm!

I want to read what it says in Luke 20:36, states it a little differently. In verse 36—neither can they die anymore for they are… There in the Old King James it uses the word "equal." It doesn't mean that because they didn't understand. That's how they translated it because they didn't grasp the plan of God. They didn't know the scriptures either, did they? So it's the word, again, "like." There is a likeness here only in that respect that angels are not male and female. That's the likeness. Not in power. Not equal. It has nothing to do with equality. It's not a Greek word that has to do anything with equality, because we understand the Family of God is so far above, just as it talks about in Hebrews, what God gave to the angels. For they are like unto the angels and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. So again here, just stating it a little differently, but the point being, no male and female.

So are men better in the resurrection? Are men superior to women in the resurrection? Is there a difference in the resurrection? Is there a difference now? That's the question. That's something people need to understand and strive to grasp and comprehend what God is showing about the importance, about the role, about the place in His Family for men and women. Incredible! You think, "Well, that doesn't fit that." Oh, yes it does. It shows God's purpose, and as we go along in this sermon series some of those things are going to be talked about as well as we go along here.

So again, God has a purpose for a family, and it's not that we remain as male and female. Now, there is order and there is government, and God allowed for a certain establishment of that because of what happened in the Garden of Eden. There are things He has given to mankind to live by because of some of those things that took place back then. Not that it was God's purpose, but because of our selfish, evil nature He did it, to help mankind have a semblance of government. So there was a way that was even established within the Church for nearly the past 2,000 years and only of recent time have we begun to address the more important matter of government is God's spirit. The more important matter of government is the flow of God's spirit and how God's spirit works. Not something on a physical plane that has to govern life, but something on a spiritual plane that we yield ourselves to as a matter of government, because of how God's spirit flows.

Just as we're learning of how God has worked with the Church, of how God has fed His Church, of how that if we really understood that back in Philadelphia the things that happened as ministers began to be lifted up by what they felt they saw above and beyond an apostle of God, if they really understood the flow of God's spirit and how God's spirit flows they would never have done those things. They would never have come to a point in time where they began to think their ideas are to be established and that they are to split off and somehow take God's Church with them, that somehow God's Church was supposed to follow them. Man ruling God? Mankind ruling God's Church and not understanding how God rules within His Church, how He leads and guides and directs His Church, how He builds His Church, how He gives truth to His Church? They're very basic things, but human beings have a way of twisting and distorting some very basic things that God has given through time and that happened throughout Philadelphia. It happened in Laodicea in a more profound way until we had an Apostasy where someone came along and said, "You don't have to do any of it. Every day is a good day to worship God." Amazing! Then why did you pick that day? "Well, it's easier because that's when the world does it." Stupid!

Anyway, we're going to look at a lot of different scriptures that go along, but I just wanted to hit that one here at the beginning because it really shows God's purpose. It really does reveal in a very powerful way God's ultimate purpose to be in His family. No male and female. And we won't question any of those things. There will be order, but it'll be because of God's spirit and because of where God has placed people within the temple. There won't be any question about that. There'll never be a question about who the High Priest is. There'll never be a question through time about who the High Priest is. It's set and all whom God sets under that as a matter of order, there'll never be a question about those things. Whenever Abraham is placed where he is, where Moses is placed where he is, and on and on it goes, Sarah, different ones through time, whoever, God will take care of those things. The apostles? I'm talking about the twelve. Not even Paul. Because God says there is a specific place, in essence.

And we don't understand all of that, but when we're there we're not going to question it. It's just the way things work. So in God's Church we're learning more and more how God works, how God's spirit works even on a human plane, let alone the spiritual plane. So, slowly but surely God is leading us into a new age a little at a time.

So as time moves forward from here, and we now have video sermons being posted on YouTube, new people will begin to be drawn at whatever point God draws them, whatever time that is, to what God is telling this world. Many of those people will need to grasp a bit of history, because they're going to have a lot of different messages on YouTube by that time that they can view, that they can watch, and so it's good to go back in that context, to realize what people are like. They are not going to go back and listen to a lot of audio. They want to be able to see and as long as they have that ability this is going to be one of the first ones up there – actually the second, but it'll be one of the first of the beginning of a new subject, and it's going to have an impact just because of the subject matter alone because there is a desire in this world that God's going to stir up more and more and help people to be drawn to more and more.

So there is a need to grasp some history, and some of the history of the Church, but also history of the world. In this case they'll need to have a better grasp of why women have been so oppressed for the past 6,000 years. Because women have been. Now, we've gone through different periods of time. It kind of started around WWII and the need as different ones began to go off to war and different ones working in a technology that was new to the world and factories and so forth that hadn't existed in times past, and women who had obtained jobs and the kind of work they did in those factories and so forth to keep a war machine going when the men were sent away, and the mentality began to change even in the world around us about women working – not just in a home, which is work, but now outside the home.

And because of technology coming along and all the things and the pulls and finances and everything else as we went through even periods in God's Church, a need, as time went along, to survive better, to provide better for a family, people found themselves in a position oftentimes of two working, two striving to work to bring in income into a home. So there has been this struggle all along the way, and even in God's Church, how to address these things. How do we? Because of certain things in our mind, certain things that are in scripture, or that we think are in scripture because of interpretation, and so there's been a bit of a struggle with some of that because of what happened 6,000 years ago.

So there's going to be a need again to go back again and talk about again what happened with Adam and Eve. Now, sadly so much of the world doesn't believe that that's where human life began in the first place. They'd rather believe that somehow we kind of crawled out of the slime and after millions and millions of years after thinking about it for so long we're able to evolve into something a little bit better. Thinking about it. Just think about that! Duh! I mean, you talk about the stupidity of science in that area, it is so dumb. It really is so ignorant to believe that things could evolve like that after millions and millions of years and after millions and millions of failures and it just kept dying off, and then finally one day I guess someone had a better idea and they made it. The first one that flew, "Look what I'm doing, Joe! Whooo-hoo!" Or, "My offspring! I was able to lay an egg! Look what came out of this one!" Stupid! And so life has been like that and we'd rather think that we were dragging our knuckles on the ground rather than the fact that there's a Great God of the universe who created everything, who put us here for a purpose. Why would we fight against that one so much? And yet the world has! It's incredible how much the world has fought against that! Because there's a being out there that has stirred it up and moved them to fight against that as he's always done.

So there's a need to better grasp what happened 6,000 years ago. Oppression, and I am talking about harsh oppression. What's really sick to me in all of that, too, is that it's just a part of society. Women have been molded and fashioned into something else that God never intended, too, because of that. It's almost like, "Well, this is the way it has to be." Oh yeah? Really? You have to do that, huh? You have to put up with that, huh? You have to live with that, huh? You're going to allow for that, huh? You're going to stay in that marriage and be beaten to a pulp? You think you have to do that out of some kind of obligation? People have lived through things like that and think you have to live life like that. They feel like they're what? They're bound to that, imprisoned to that. They can't get away from it and so many things in society and everything is structured to that, candidly, to make it hard to get away, hard to be saved from something like that. That's just been the mentality of life because of certain differences in male and female. One is stronger than the other physically.

That's where a lot of it comes from. It really is because of the way society was set up in the sense of things that were different because of commerce, because of agriculture and things that took place. Both men and women worked in fields and did various things, but when it came to dealing with the world it was men with men and so much of that was because of how harsh the world can be in those areas, how harsh men can be in those areas in the world, and so it was almost like war and battling. And frankly, sometimes it was! You read the stories about Abraham, he had a lot of servants, but they were able to be militarized, in a sense. They were able to go to battle. To move product, to trade because of the world around them they had to be able to do that and so the women weren't involved in that part. If something evolved through time, that's something that did evolve, you know, the oppression of women. It just got worse and worse and worse. Sick. Sick. Sick.

And so we have a product of that in society today in a very profound way and it's hard to break from it. It's hard to change. It's hard for men to change; it's hard for women to change.

So again, those of you in God's Church know what that history is, the history of the Church, as a whole. Those of you who have been in longer, obviously, you know certain things, but the world doesn't know that, let alone the fact of what happened since Adam and Eve. It's good that we are able to reflect upon some of that knowledge or some of that understanding in this particular series and come to understand more deeply how God intends, how God is going to work with families, with men and women for the next 1,100 years because it's not going to be like the last 6,000. It's going to be mightily different. Society has to be structured different. Families have to be structured different. Marriage, how people think about each other, has to all be structured differently than what it is now in the sense of the thinking that people have toward it and that will help to change all those other things in a very powerful way.

So for the benefit of all, especially any who might be new to listening to these messages, we need to begin with what has happened here today. Within God's own Church over the past nearly 2,000 years now women almost have been completely kept silent within the operation and functioning of the Church throughout all the eras of God's Church. 2,000 years. As a whole women have never had a direct role within the ministry of the Church until 2008. Then that began to change. Women were not ordained, but they did help alongside their husbands who were ordained, when you talk about the ministry, especially during Philadelphia and so forth. Again, after 2008 that began to change, and God had to take us through step by step to reveal certain things to us, just like we went through in the Apostasy, to begin to realize, well, this affects other things, and then God began to help us see and understand those things in scripture that we otherwise couldn't have seen. But He used certain events, certain things that took place to help us to begin then to see, when it was His time to see what needed to be addressed.

So again, how things were and what has taken place will be explained more fully as we go along here or later perhaps in some of the other parts of this series, but right now it needs to be stated that within this sermon series we're going to learn more about where God is leading His Church as we get closer to the coming of Jesus Christ to establish 1,100 years of God's government on this earth over every nation on this earth.

Today is an important step in that direction. Frankly, right now, even though you've been experiencing this a little bit, you can take this back and think about it, meditate upon it somewhat and pray about it, and the impact is going to hit you more and more and more with today. This is a very big occasion for God's Church! It truly is. It's powerful. It's profound. Far bigger than what you can grasp right now and only through time and prayer will you come to "see" it on a spiritual plane more and more and more, in the sense of being in awe of what God is doing and what is changing and what is taking place to prepare us for a new world, a new time, a new age.

So today is an important step in that direction, in the sense of what's going to take place over the next 1,100 years for women, for families, for the world, for society, and for the Church of God. Today is the second step in bringing women into the actual service of God's Church. It's a small step in one respect, if you think about it, in the scheme and what will follow in time; but it's a big step, and it is the second great step that God has given to us. It's one of the most momentous steps ever in God's Church for being more fully prepared for the establishment of God's Kingdom on earth and the coming of Jesus Christ to reign. I want you to think about that particular sentence. One to pray about because there's a lot in it that you can't "see" at first, that takes time to really come to "see." I'm going to read it again: It is one of the most momentous steps ever, ever, in God's Church for being more fully prepared for the establishment of God's Kingdom on earth and the coming of Jesus Christ to reign.

Now, during our senior ministerial meetings this past month, of all the senior ministers around the world, this second step was introduced to the ministers. Candidly, I wasn't really planning it. We just came to it and it was time. And it was that women can most certainly open God's Sabbath services in prayer. To think otherwise, what does that say? What does it say? To understand that, to understand why something we haven't known and understood, something so little like that in one respect, but so huge hasn't happened for nearly 2,000 years now is rather dumbfounding. Why not? Well, because of certain things that are up here, especially for those back in Worldwide days and on up through the period of time that even followed some of that.

But anyway, during that senior ministers meeting we had a second woman, Beth, to become ordained as a pastor in God's Church. The second. So the second woman to be raised to a pastor level within the Church will be remembered in a unique way for the next big step forward in the rightful place of women. It's part of history. Its part of history that's taking place, just as the first pastor was ordained, and the second who did something as basic as open a Sabbath service in prayer is profound and will be remembered for a long, long time. So she opened the service today in prayer. What an incredible thing!

Some will jump to the next step: Well, what about speaking? In God's time, whatever that is. Right now we're not geared for training different ones very much. We're kind of backing away. I'm doing more speaking. We have a couple of evangelists, one that's so busy doing other things he can't even help that much in getting ready, doing different sermons. I’d like to be able to give him more to do, but, again, it's where we are in time, but I know bigger things are coming, in that respect, and it's going to be done the way God desires it to be done, and it's not hard to see what that is. But, anyway.

Also, I have been referring to this as the second step. Well, the first was when God made it clear that women should be ordained in service to Him within the Church. That was a big step, and all the scattered Churches, they've known for a long time we're nuts. They know it more deeply now. That's why it's going to be so hard for them to accept so much that God has given since the Apostasy. They're in a time warp in the sense of stuck. I should say they're stuck in time and they can't get past that until God starts giving them the ability and then because of pride it's going to be a very difficult thing. Two of the largest things for them to accept: 1) That Jesus Christ has not eternally existed, and 2) that women are ordained and being used by God in service, in any kind of service. We have a woman who's going to conduct a funeral service, in that respect, as far as a graveside service here this next week. Awesome! There's no reason why not. And on and on it goes. Where does it stop?

So this is big, very big for God's true Church and for the world to come. So again, there's a need to consider a little history within God's own Church, because it does reflect much upon what has also existed within the world because so much of what is in the world, we're coming out of it, but God takes us out according to His pace, according to His purpose and according to whatever He reveals to us, and we live by whatever it is at that time. And we have our plate full, as it is, just with the Sabbath and the Holy Days in a very large way, but for the end-time here, because of what we're preparing for, there is much more. There is much more because we're unique and there is a need to prepare His Church to be able to be prepared for what's coming, so that things are set, ready to go, just move right on from where we are. That in itself is profound.

So the reason God's Church has not had women be any part of a Sabbath services, let alone to be ordained, is because of some things written by the apostle Paul, who stated very directly that women should keep silent within the Church. They were not to speak within the Church. He had some very strong things to say about that. Now, we'll come back to that in some of those things stated by Paul in this series, because they need to be addressed and it's awesome when we understand what God is doing and how He's doing it. But we'll come back to that. It won't be today.

Within God's Church women have not led services in prayer. They have not conducted any portion of actual services on the Sabbath. They've been involved in special music or choirs. For some of us who have been a part of Worldwide, we know that. There was even debate as to whether or not a woman should be the choir director ever in God's Church, but they could sing. Right now, because of what I know, I just shake my head and think, well, we didn't know and God hadn't given it to us yet. But again, never to be considered for prayers, for or before a congregation, if you will, because basically whoever who gets up here and opens a prayer, it's for the congregation, before the congregation and that's why we all say "Amen," because we're in agreement with what's being said. So they're doing it in place or for the congregation to God Almighty in service to Him. And so, as a whole, they've not been allowed to speak.

Now God is slowly but progressively been addressing some of these things for His Church as we are being prepared for a new era of time for mankind, for the millennial reign of Jesus Christ on earth, and God is continuing the process of changing some important things within His Church just before we are to enter into the new age for mankind in the Millennium. So at the beginning it was mentioned how that it has been 22 years since the Apostasy when the attempt by Satan was to totally destroy God's own Church by leading it completely away from truths of God to the doctrines of this world and it's churches. Now 22 years later God is continuing to add to our understanding of what He has been restoring of truth to His Church – far above that of 22 years ago.

Today marks another unique period of time, which I really was dumbfounded by. I had no idea until I started going through some of these things and some things came along and understood and saw something in a deeper way. Today is the last Sabbath of this particular year on the Roman calendar. It was exactly seven years ago, on the last Sabbath of 2009 that God inspired a most important sermon to be given to His Church. That sermon was entitled, Restoring All Things, which was given on December the 26th of 2009.

It would be good to have a bit of a review of what was mentioned in that particular sermon as part of our history, and being reminded of how God has been revealing great understanding to us. Now, I don't know about you, but seven, and seven years has great meaning. It should have great meaning to us. I mean, just to think about what was given on that day (and what God is giving today), without planning, without thinking about it in any fashion or form. As a matter of fact, last week going down to Florida, Johnny was on the schedule to speak, but I felt a strong urgency to finish the last series, or the series, the two part series of the sermon last week so that today when I was here we could begin with this series, not knowing what had happened seven years ago, not thinking about it at all. And now for this to happen? Pshew! I'm moved by that! I'm incredibly encouraged by that. I am dumbfounded by that, and then I'm not, because God does these things over and over and over again in our lives and we learn about them later, most of the time. We see how He guides and directs the Church, how Jesus Christ guides, directs and leads us within the Church.

Finished that sermon, and now to think about that sermon, Restoring All Things. So it'd be good to do a little bit of a review of what was covered in that sermon as a part of our history, as I mentioned. There are some specific sections in that sermon that I would like to begin quoting. And again, I'm going to do a lot of reading and so I'm going to be stuck to my notes, but that's just the way it is.

So toward the beginning here, says:

I have to say today that this sermon here is akin to the sermon series I gave in 2005 at the Feast of Tabernacles regarding the truer identity and understanding of Jesus Christ and God the Father. And I'll come back to that in a moment. I'll give you the title of the sermon today first of all. It's entitled, Restoring All Things. Restoring All Things... and asking the question: What does that mean for the end-time?

A little bit farther:

Today another big step. It's an incredible step. So today, for a beginning here, let's first look at the term "to restore all things."

So went through and discussed some of that. A little farther into the sermon I began to quote from the post that had been put on a couple of days earlier on December 24th that was entitled, The Elijah to Come. So it was that connection there in restoring all things and God giving us more, and He's given us more understanding of this since that time, obviously, and the other as well. But I'm going to read part of that introduction, but also quote another sentence from that particular post. That particular post at the very beginning says:

The “ELIJAH TO COME”

The Church of God – PKG has indeed been “Preparing for the Kingdom of God.”

Then the sentence that wasn't there in the sermon:

Beginning this Sabbath, the Church will take another big step forward in doing that commission given to it in this end-time.

What we're experiencing here today is a big part of that. It's just a continuation of that in a very profound and powerful way.

Then about half way into the sermon I began to introduce some of the new kind of structure that we would begin using as a structure within the ministry. This is when it took place, began to address some of these things. So it says:

Right now we're going to begin this new phase of ordaining elders, but the specific job title of most will be different, and it will be contained in the title that will make that distinction. Right now we have elders, but they are organized as senior elders and elders. It's for the sake of organization. Mr. Armstrong instituted different things during the time of Philadelphia for the sake of organization, not things that you read about in Ephesians.

And yet that structure is there, but tweaked it for the sake of the Church during Philadelphia. Going on:

It's not there. Part of it is. We understand from apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, but there is a wide variety in there in the sense of how it can be done to perform, to accomplish a specific purpose at any particular time. Things that Mr. Armstrong did were quite unique. Things that had to do with Ambassador College and the raising up of churches was quite unique in how God worked with the Church during Philadelphia. We're not in those times anymore. We're in a different time. And how God works with us is different for a different purpose, but we're leading into something far greater than Philadelphia ever experienced in a new world, a new age. But sometimes some people have made the mistake of holding Philadelphia as the epitome, as the best example of it all, and it is not. Quite candidly, God has shown it, just as He did with Israel. You know what the example of Israel was? Without God's spirit you can't serve God. You cannot keep the ways and the laws of God. God has shown through the Church – even with God's spirit look what you can have – an Apostasy starting with the ministry. Because they're the ones that were first and foremost responsible for the Apostasy. See? Amazing!

Just reading what I had.

Was Philadelphia the example of how things are going to be in the World Tomorrow? No! No, no, no, no, no, they are not! That's why God's Family has to be here, see? That's why the structure has to come out of God's Family who will be here to work with the Church and those individuals. 144,000, they're going to know quite quickly when there is a minister out here who is not faithfully teaching the truth of God to the flock!

That's what happened during Philadelphia and on in to Laodicea, ministers that did not faithfully teach what they were given through God's apostle but came up with their own teaching and their own ideas. A couple of paragraphs later, going on:

God' going to do it – and we're so close.

Course, back then we thought we were similar to where we are now. Anyway.

Amazing! It's not far away now – all that takes place. We know the day! Amazing!

Well, we were humbled by that one.

And so God is blessing us incredibly so with what's coming. So again, different organization at different times, and we've had the structure then of using elders and senior elders for the sake of organization and structure. This makes a distinction in their job as far as the organization of the government, if you will, of God, at work in the Church to accomplish the work that God has given us.

We're going to use associate elders.

So again, introduction to some of these things and how we're functioning.

That’s going to be another that’s going to be added. An elder, a ministerial elder is the fullest form of ordination. An elder is an elder.

But then we broke that into three segments – associate, elder, senior elder – for the sake of structure and organization. And that's continually being tweaked, and by the way, for all of you, because this sermon is now being given, hopefully, maybe sometime next week we'll get the first of the lectures on the EMC so you can begin going through those because I've scrapped all the others and we've refined everything. Going on, as it states here:

The rest of it is just a matter of the structure and what we're doing and how we're doing it. It's the way it's being accomplished. So we're now going to ordain elders, but nearly all will carry the title of associate elder; and again, with the definition I'm going to give. An associate in the sense of joined with others, with equal or nearly equal status.

So again here, it's going through at the beginning here explaining some of this before we even knew what we were fully doing, but we knew we had to break these things apart in that regard and have a place to begin. Most would come in, in that respect then, as associate elders. That's how someone would be ordained, an elder but with the job function of associate in the beginning. Going on:

There's not much difference, in other words, but there is as far as organization is concerned as to how it's going to be accomplished. That's the difference primarily and that will be given then in distinction. So it's a matter of government. It's a matter of order and how things work. God's Church has to have that. We have to have that. We function in that way and God has given us the basis to begin to work with and to add to this in a very powerful way.

Then a little farther in the sermon again here:

[Quoting from the posting, "The Elijah to Come," subsection, “The Fulfillment of the ‘Elijah to Come.’”]

After Jesus Christ’s disciples asked about his coming, he prophesied that not one stone of the temple would be left on top of the other. It would be fully destroyed before His coming and that would be the sign that he was now going to return as the Messiah. Most of those who were scattered at the time of that prophetic fulfillment about the destruction of the temple do not believe what Jesus said.

It is because they refuse to believe what God said would happen to the Church that these same people refuse to believe how God is working today. These people not only refuse to believe whom God has sent to them, but they go so far as to mock, ridicule, and violently strike out at God’s true servants. They cannot acknowledge the truth that God has revealed through me to His Church. They cannot accept me being the spokesman of the final two end-time witnesses. They mock that God would use a woman, and more so mock that she should be my wife who is the second witness.

That's what God used as a very powerful tool to lead us into what we needed to come to see. That's how these truths, and the ability to "see" them were given; God began to bless us to see and to understand. He first revealed who the second witness was. Going on:

They ridicule that it is so convenient that she is my wife, or that God would ever dare to use a woman in such a position.

Isn't that amazing? But their minds are set. They can't help it until God opens their minds to see and to understand.

On Jesus’s last day of human life, these same people would have mocked and ridiculed Jesus Christ and cried out that he should be put to death. But such people would gasp at such a statement and they would declare that they are not like that at all, however they are, and the very ones who refuse God’s word through His apostle and end-time prophet.

Yes, as hard as it is for these people to stomach such thoughts, God has made my wife an end-time witness and prophet for this end-time. God does use both men and women in His great plan for mankind. There are two great occasions in history where God revealed this truth in a powerful way. One is in the example of Moses’s sister, Miriam, who was a prophet, and another is the example of a judge and the prophet of Israel, Deborah.

Yet the scattered organizations, who were once active in the Church of God, ridicule God’s choices and how He works in His Church.

And isn't that sad? But people don't understand if they don't understand and there are some big things that God is changing because of where we are in time and because of what we're getting ready to go into, because of how He wants the world to be from the point of time of Christ forward, how the Church must be from that point of time forward. Going on:

It is for this very reason that most will not be awakened spiritually to repentance in this age and they will not enter into the promised land of the beginning of the Millennium.

That's pretty strong, but I wanted to read this one here because that's changed. Isn't that awesome? This has changed. Because this was the judgment upon the scattered Church, that most were not going to be given the opportunity to live on into the Millennium. Going on:

They must wait until they are resurrected once again at the beginning of the Great White Throne and then at that time awakened spiritually so they can repent of their sins against God.

Just as everyone who is awakened has to repent of their sins against God because we were all guilty of the Apostasy. Every one of us who was baptized into God's Church before the Apostasy was guilty of what led to the Apostasy. Guilty because we had done exactly what it said Laodicea would do, fall asleep on a spiritual plane to where God had to separate Himself from the entirety of the Church. Awesome, what took place to fulfill prophecy exactly the way God had written it. Going on:

Prophecy does show…

And you know, again, I'm dumbfounded by that. God wrote those things, gave those things. We don't know how long ago… maybe before man was ever created. We don't know. He hasn't shown us that. But the things that Paul wrote about and the seven Church eras and what would happen throughout that time and what would happen to the last one, it would cover a span of 2,000 years. God had a purpose in every one of those eras and what they did and He had a purpose in the last one, to allow it, to know exactly what it would do when He gave so much truth to the period of Philadelphia. He knows human nature. He knows what human beings will do and He led and guided and directed and worked with, giving Mr. Armstrong those truths, and allowed the ministry to do what it did with time for a purpose.

And it's the very thing we have talked about so many times because it's one of the greatest lessons yet that mankind has to come to see, that just because you have God's spirit, just because you're baptized does not mean you will be in God's Kingdom, does not mean you'll be in God's family. Choices. Choices. Choices over decades of time that it takes for this mind to become transformed, and one must fight all the way until they're dead or until their change comes. That's just the way it is. There is no guarantee. There is no promise that once you're baptized you're going to be in God's Family. We have to change and we have to respond to God and we have to fight for this way of life and we have to live this way of life.

If we don't live it, we become hypocrites. If we don't exercise what God gives to us in sermons week after week, Holy Day to Holy Day, we get to the point where we're playing games out in the courtyard and not in the temple, and that's been with us ever since I've been in the Church. In Philadelphia it's been there, people out in the courtyard, not in the temple worshipping God. Definitely that way, powerfully so, during Laodicea, and it's continued on to this day, some messing around out in the courtyard, fooling around, playing around, doing their own thing, not living like they should, not obeying God, whatever it might be, Holy Day offerings, tithes. How anyone can be, not do those things? Blows my mind if you don't live this way of life, some of the most basic things that even Sardis didn't lose, in that respect, or to commit adultery, or to live with someone, or whatever people like to do out there to go against God. Blows my mind! And it doesn't blow my mind either.

Husbands and wives who can't get along, who both have God's spirit living in them! Blows my mind, and it doesn't too, because of human nature, but it does if we think we're in God's Church and that somehow we can't get along, work things out, love each other the way God says. If we can't love each other in a marriage, how on earth can we love anyone in the Body of Christ as we should? We deceive ourselves because it takes work to love one another. It takes work to love one another truly, the way God says. The work is living God's way and fighting against self to implement the things that God says we have to do. To love someone else means you have to enter into and engage in a fight against selfishness. That's what makes a marriage is that people have to fight against their own selfishness to be one… to be one! That's God's intent – to be of one mind, to be of one care, to be of one purpose in your lives of how you live your life – God being first and foremost in that. And how on earth could God be first and foremost if we don't practice getting along? I'm sorry. It wasn't a part of the sermon, but it just blows my mind. And a lot of that has to do with the very thing we're covering here today. There is a bondage that's still out there, that still exists, about how men think toward women and women think of themselves and think toward men that shouldn't be there, that people have to fight through and work through in life. And to have respect toward one another, to have love and desire toward one another, see each other, to want to see each other succeed. The more that two can succeed in life together the more the family is going to succeed in life, period. Something so simple, but seems to escape so many sometimes.

Going on with what it says here… So again, talking about those who must wait until the Great White Throne:

Prophecy does show that a few thousand such people will be brought to repentance as we progress forward in time into the blowing of the Trumpets of the Seventh Seal. These will accept God’s messengers and God’s message.

Well, thankfully that's changed in a very big way because there was a minimum that God gave that He would bring through because of a judgment that He also gave that the vast majority wouldn't even be given the opportunity. Now they can, to fulfill other prophecies and use them in a different way to fulfill His purpose and plan. Awesome!

So jumping ahead a little more it says here:

Going on just to finish up here a little bit more in this portion of the posting:

Prophecies Fast Coming to Pass:

God is continuing to “restore” many things on a greater scale as the world is being made ready for the millennial reign of Jesus Christ. This Sabbath God is beginning the process of restoring things that have been removed from mankind since the days of Adam and Eve.

Then piecing together here just a few more sentences here following:

Again, the next step we are taking is a very large one. It is being given through the office of an apostle. Some may have battles with this while others, most, will see and rejoice. It's exciting for the Church, but some are going to have some battles.

And right now today I hope there aren't any going to have any battles, but it could happen. I've seen things happen before. Choices. Choices. Choices. Going on:

I mentioned in this last posting that Laura is a prophet, which I’ve stated before, but I stressed the importance of this in the context of two other great prophets of God who were women. Miriam, the sister of Moses was a prophet of God. The other example is of Deborah.

It's always been there, but we haven't seen it for the value, for the importance of what it says. It wasn't time.

Then, finally, toward the end of that sermon seven years ago this is what was stated:

As God's end-time apostle and the Elijah to come (one of) and in the greater fulfillment of that commission that I am announcing today that woman are to be ordained as ministers in God's Church. This is not for the role of preaching or teaching in Sabbath services of the Church but for other ministerial duties that require ordination – primarily that of baptism with the laying on of hands – for that purpose.

See, that's all I could see and that's all I could give. I can only give what God gives to me to give because He has a process of how He's leading us and working with us to see greater things as we go along. It takes time. Going on:

We will have three categories of elders with the women, just as we do with the men. There will be and already are senior elders. There are three.

Anyway, going on here. I just think about some of these things that were given. So what came out of that, two great truths, #52, and #53. It's where it all came from. Yet it was already there, in one respect, because God made it clear there have been prophets before, women, and there is a prophet at the end, women, a woman. Well, there are women. Anyway, and pastor, we have two now, which is very unique in their service and how they're going to work with people, have been working with people. Incredible, what's been taking place, things that most of you have no knowledge of except for those being worked with directly in certain things in their life which requires a great deal of counselling, a great deal of working with, spending hours and hours and hours on the phone with people trying to help them in their life, to get their lives and certain things in their lives together.

So all this, incredible what we've gone through in seven years. It's been growing. Incredible how it's been growing and where we are now because what was stated then has obviously been changing. God has been showing, "Oh, I have a lot more planned. I have a lot more planned. This thing of the difference that man has had for 6,000 years between men and women, it's not going to exist for the next 1,100 years." God is cleaning it up across the board. So typical, the minds of human beings, of men toward woman, of feeling superior, of believing they have superiority, authority and superiority. God is showing, "Better think about that one again, because I haven't given it to you except in certain areas within the Church in the structure, and certain things within families for a period of time to fulfill certain things that needed to be fulfilled until we came to this moment in time." But it was not God's purpose from the beginning. It was not God's purpose and design from the beginning of what families should be and could be. But the first two, because of human nature, did exactly what all families would do anyway. It's just that it's affected and infected entire societies and things in the world and distorted people's minds.

I think of different ones. I especially feel for those who think that not only in family but in society and in religion they must cover their faces totally. I think what they have done to their minds. Not only what the men think, but what the women think about themselves and what they think they must do and they believe it. They think that's the way it has to be. That is not an easy healing project. That's going to take a lot of time to help people come to the point where they see and grasp and understand how unhealthy that is for society, for family, for people. Little children, boys and girls by the time they're six and seven they're set in a particular kind and pattern of thinking because they're seeing it everywhere. They see it in their family and they think that's the way life is.

Just like today, in much of the western world, people are inundated by so called "entertainment" in the world – movies, TV, and people actually think that's what life is like, what is portrayed there. And it isn't! Yet people try to mimic a lot of that. They try to live a lot of that. They have expectations of some of those things and they don't know how to receive what's right and good because their minds are distorted because of what's been programmed into it. Now, you want to talk about some deprogramming and getting your mind right, that's the transformation of the mind that God offers, that it talks about in Romans 12:1-2. Those verses speak about a transformation. That means a complete changing of how the mind thinks. When you think about mankind and how we live in families and society, that's huge! It really is.

To this day, in this age of technology, within corporations there is still a struggle! There's still the struggle, although others have proven themselves in so many situations to be far better than the men who are working in the corporation, that can do better. It doesn't mean that they are better, but in some situations they are! In some places they are! Just as some men are better at certain things than others in certain areas. We all have different kinds of abilities and education and things we do. But when it comes to the men and women, it's just a matter of a difference in male and female. That's it. The ability to accomplish various things? Superior? Better than? I'm just telling you that's how a lot of men think and a lot of women have succumbed to that in society, in family, in marriage. Disgusting. Sick. To me, it's disgusting and sick. I loathe it. I hate it because I see what happened from the beginning, from Adam and Eve, in the way God did not intend for man and woman to live together.

Marriage. What great success can it have? It can go so far in a physical world. People can only go so far depending on their minds and how they grew up and maybe how they grew up in their family with maybe sisters and different things, or whatever it might be that causes the different compassion and understanding that otherwise they're just totally blockheaded about and can't see “diddly squat” as men. Women who grow up and see certain things about how their mom was and how they gave in to certain things to an oppressive husband, or whatever it might be, and these things that are perpetuated. I don't know about you, but I am sickened by them. I loathe them! And it's time to change.

That's why I mentioned at the very beginning of all this that these things are going to take time within God's Church. I've seen people make some big changes, but I also see changes that aren't there yet because, you know what? You can't do it in one generation. And those of you who have had it longer in your life and lived that life longer like that, it just takes time to come to see the depth of it, men and women. But to me, it's a great freedom. And to me, it's exciting. Because you know what I see? The way family can become. The way families can become in the world. And that excites me! Because the way families can become in the world is how society will become in the world in time, everything through society and how people see each other. And that's an awesome thing, to begin to get rid of prejudices.

Some people think the greatest prejudices have to do with race. No, they don't. They have to do with male and female. That's the greatest prejudice of all then things about race and so forth that people have in life. Those things sicken me to the core of my being as well, but they exist depending on how people grew up and what they grew up around, things in how people are molded and fashioned into thinking, depending on what you experienced, you know, what period of time you experienced it. So many injustices in the world but it's about mankind, it's about the selfishness of mankind, and the only way to be healed is by the spirit of God and His way of life.

It's how we live toward each other, male and female, race to race, whatever it is in society. There are people in different areas of society that look down upon one another, not because of race and not just because of male and female. There are just all kinds of prejudices out there that Satan has stirred up and created in the world around us where people consider themselves better than others. The haughtiness and the pride! That's why God strikes out at haughtiness and pride to the degree He does because that's what has to be attacked first. That's what has to be conquered first. It's the haughtiness and pride and why people feel lifted up, proudful, better than others. It exists in God's Church. That's why we have problems when we have problems. That's why we have drama when we have drama because somebody, too many somebodies, too often have raised themselves up above what they should in pride and look down upon someone else, judges someone else in a way that they shouldn't judge them, and because of that, then, the relationship is not going to have the binding power that it should have, or the reconciling power, or the forgiving power that God wants in the matter of mercy and all those things combined that make for relationships in the right way that God wants them to be.

And so we've come a long way in God's Church because of things He's been revealing to us, but we still have farther to go, and that's why every once in a while we have sermons that come along that help us to look upon those things, and candidly, God has been putting greater teeth into, in one respect, about this matter of being in the temple and this matter of what's in the courtyard because of the hypocrisy and the lying and the pride because it's all about pride and those things that exist, and it's about selfishness.

And I just want to correct one thing here, make sure that people understand. When I said to think about the number 1, when you're talking about number 1, I mentioned the thing about selfishness. Please, don't put selfishness up there, but there is something that stems from that, which is pride and selfishness, that you're doing more in your life, probably in some relationship, above and beyond any other that you need to look at first and foremost. That needs to be number 1. I hope we understood that, but I know how some things happen, "Oh, now number 1 is going to be selfishness!" Well, you're going to be on your knees a lot on that one. You're not going to be able to get up! Because that's what we are. We're just selfish human beings. And with God's spirit we are able to begin to exercise, we're able to ask God for help to exercise a different way, to live a different way, to implement a different way, and that's how we grow.

So all these things, I, as a minister, marvel, because since the Apostasy God has given so much. I've been the beneficiary of the ability to receive certain blessings in life to share with others that I cannot describe enough what it has meant for me in my life to be able to share those with others, to share God's way of life with others, the excitement, just like a Holy Day. I don't care what Holy Day it is, if I'm going to speak about a certain Holy Day I get excited. When I focus on that particular Holy Day, whatever that Holy Day is, I am excited because it's about God and it's about God's plan, and you can't help that! And if God gives more in understanding I become more excited because God's way of life is exciting! And to share that with others and then we get to share it together? That's awesome! God just gives more and more and more and it doesn't stop! To me, that's exciting, awesomely exciting!

So I think about what He's revealing here, seven years later even adding to and giving us more understanding. So profound! So incredible to understand this is going to be spoken of a thousand years from now, a thousand and fifty years from now, a thousand and ninety years from now. There are certain things, certain stories, and certain names that God has written in this book for a purpose and there are things that He teaches because of that for a purpose. And you live in a profound time when things are written for a purpose, an age when things are written for a purpose, and what He's doing with the Church of God, preparing for the Kingdom of God at the end of an age – not one of the seven eras – is so awesomely profound. It is unique to God's Church because it's between a period of time that had to take place, of things that existed for the past 2,000 years that had to take place in God's Church and a transition of what the Church is to become over the next 1,100 years. You get to live that. That's why it's far more profound than what you can grasp and comprehend fully. But it's exciting; it's exciting to live it.

And so Truth #52:

52 (2) God is restoring knowledge concerning the rightful place of women in the family.

Just reading that I am excited inside. I, in my own thinking, rejoice in thinking about that because of what I see, because of what God has given us to see what this means for the future. This is what He's building the Millennium upon. You can't build it upon the garbage and the disgusting way that men and women have treated each other over the past 6,000 years that is false. That has to be corrected! And that has to be one of the first things that's corrected! You may think it's doctrine about certain things, as far as a trinity and so forth. Oh, those are important things, and it's important to understand the Great God who has eternally existed, but those are simple in one respect, once your mind is opened up to them, but to understand how we are to live life day by day, hour by hour, week by week, month by month, and year by year that goes into the future? That's another story! Because it's all about how we live that counts! That's what is meaningful! It's how you live your life! It's about the joys of life that God wants us to experience by living His way and mankind has only had a bit of that here and there in 6,000 years – not a lot, just a little bit.

And what He's getting ready to give to us is so far above and beyond, just because of His ways that will be able to be there. The biggest one, quite candidly, is what happened at the beginning between male and female, that not even the early apostles were given to see nor understand and they wrote accordingly, present truth because of where they were and because of 2,000 years that had to go by yet before God would reveal something greater and more powerful as a part of His plan and purpose of how family is supposed to be. That’s why it couldn't change at 4,000 years, and so we benefited by understanding certain things in life.

I think of Philadelphia, which reflected some beautiful things indeed in how people lived their lives and the changes they made when they came into the Church, but not yet totally free. Not by a long shot. Free from the bondage of the world and from false doctrines and from a being no longer being able to influence them if they yielded to God, but not the full riches of what God intends for marriage. Though people made change in their life that made marriage better, it wasn't what it was meant to be yet. It wasn't what could be attained to on a higher plane yet. Now we're at a point in time where we're able to see those things in a higher way, in a better way and the importance of that is it's to be implemented in a new age and we get to be the start of it all, and it has a long way to go. Still a long way to go to be totally free, to be totally free, and to think right in every respect without prejudice, and with respect and with love. It doesn't happen overnight.

52 (2) God is restoring knowledge concerning the rightful place of women in the family.

You can't have the Millennium without this. You cannot have the Millennium without this. You cannot have a right world, a right society without this. That's why God has allowed man for 6,000 years to experience this even in God's Church, to experience still much of the bondage of this in order to learn from it – that the Millennium that's coming is far greater, the 144,000 on this earth is far, far, far, FAR greater than Philadelphia ever was, though it was great as far as this world is concerned. It was not the Millennium. It was not that which is fully under the reign of Jesus Christ. It was not that which is under the reign and rule of 144,000 on this earth. So what we're getting ready to go into is so much greater. That's why it had to go on for 6,000 years until God revealed what happened at the very beginning with two people because of selfishness. Human beings are selfish without God's spirit until they're called.

So it says here under that truth:

This involves the start of the greater removal of the curse laid upon woman from the beginning which was the result of sin.

And so it's about getting rid of sin. It's about learning about God's law and how to live life toward one another. Not just the first four Commandments, but the last six. It's how to live life toward one another in spirit and in truth.

Then #53:

53 (3) The ordination of women in the Church. With the revelation of the 52nd Truth, God is continuing to reveal the rightful role of women with the 53rd truth by showing that God has and will continue to work with and through women to help prepare the path for the return of Jesus Christ and to fulfill a breaking of bonds for all humanity.

See, I hope we're there in a greater way today than what we were – and I know we are – farther along than we were seven years ago. How far have we come in seven years? How far have you come in seven years of breaking that bond? We all have work to do. We've come a long way, but we have a lot farther to go. There's a lot more work that needs to be done while we have the time to do it. There's incredible work ahead in the Millennium, obviously, at the beginning. Four generations before this one here can get turned around to the place it really needs to be. Truly! Generation by generation just getting better and better and better. Why? It's because of what these see as they're growing up. It's what they see at a very young age and as they're growing up. And they learn and then they are able to grow above and beyond what their parents were even able to have and receive as the mind is made better and better, transformed more fully, more given, more received generation by generation. It takes time.

So I'm excited about what God is giving to us and where we're going because of what it means for the world, and to understand there would be no Millennium – not the one God has said would come, not the kind God describes – unless this takes place from the very beginning. It's a beautiful thing.

Good place to stop. We'll stop there today; continue on with Part 2 next Sabbath.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1