God's Great Desire - Part 1

Ronald Weinland

October 16, 2019

Feast of Tabernacles Sermon – 2019

This fall holy day season is one that focuses upon the final phases of God’s great plan. It reveals those things that primarily become fulfilled in the final 1,100 years of the existence of mankind. It’s an awesome thing to contemplate, to think about where we are in time and what’s ahead of us. I think it’s even more awesome right now because that’s what I’m writing about in Chapter 6, some of the process and things that God is giving to us in a clearer fashion than ever before as far as what takes place once the events of the 7th Trumpet begin. It’s a little different and a little more intense and a little more thorough than what we’ve really grasped in times past. To me it’s a beautiful thing because God just continues to give us more and more and more. We have been so richly blessed as it is, but to be given more like this, to me it’s an incredible experience and an exciting one.

Matter of fact, woke up, I don’t know, 2:30 last night, something like that, Chapter 6 comes in my  mind and where I’m at and I can’t get to sleep so I went back out and started doing some more writing until I got a little sleepy. Anyway, it’s exciting going through this and I can’t wait until everyone has everything that’s there. To me this is far, far better, far, far richer than the other three combined by far, so it’s exciting where we are in time and what God’s giving to us, what He’s showing us.

We’re almost there whenever everything is in place. Primarily—to me that’s an awesome thing—it’s the Church first. That’s exciting, too, to realize that all through time in the past 6,000 years God’s primary focus above and beyond everything else has been those that He’s been working with, those whom He’s been working with, that He’s called out of the world, that He set apart from the world to train, to mold, and to fashion and if they make those choices and desire what He’s offering to them then to have a part of something that’s so incredible. That that’s been going on for nearly 6,000 years is awesome to understand.

To understand then where we are now and what’s getting ready to take place and the very thing that we’re picturing here at this Feast of Tabernacles and the Last Great Day and how all the holy days are tied together so incredibly so? We’ve been moved by different things that we’ve seen in time, understanding about Trumpets, and then on over to Pentecost and what that means and how that’s tied in, but also the wave loaves, talking about the wave loaves and Christ and some of those things, and just all of them so perfectly fit together in a complete picture. It’s incredible. It really is. It should be very moving and inspiring to everyone every time you go through it.

I couldn’t help but think about that in the sermon this morning, about those things that God gives to us, that we should reflect upon them regularly in our lives, not just once a year. But you see the wisdom in why God told a carnal physical nation to do that. They were carnal. They were physical. They did not have God’s spirit and He told them to go sit in a booth, make this booth, make this archway thing out of wood and so forth and told them how to do it, and a seat in the middle of that, put some fruit on there and remember where you came from, remember what God has given you, what God has blessed you with through your history and how you’re able to be where you are now.

They were carnal and they did that in a physical way that was a blessing to them, those who did it, to remember. Because God could work with them more effectively so even as a carnal physical nation if they had that attitude on a physical plane of being thankful. How much more spiritually for us that we have the ability to think about why we’re here at this Feast of Tabernacles, that we have the ability to think about the long journey that we’re on. And not just us, but those who have gone before us over 6,000 years and those whom God has worked with. To be a part of that out of all humanity? We really can’t grasp it to its fullest. We really can’t yet. It’s hard because it requires growth and God’s spirit. The more we grow in that the more we can come to appreciate more deeply what He has given to us, what we’re a part of.

So again, all of this that we’re talking about here and this Feast season that we’re in and this time period that’s in front of us, above all it reveals the fulfillment of God’s great desire that He has, that He has had before the creation ever began, before anything was ever started. To me that’s an awesome thing to understand as well, that first God created a spirit realm in which to create spirit beings. I don’t understand that. We can’t comprehend that. Our minds, we’re limited. They’re highly limited. We can’t grasp that. We believe it and we embrace it and it’s exciting to us. Then to understand that He created a vastness of space we don’t know what an end is or if it has one. We don’t know! Then to create the universe that we do know about more than what we heard this morning, of what David could see. He tried to count the different stars – on a real dark night if the moon wasn’t shining, might be able to get up 1,500 or so – and we understand so much more.

Again, we can’t comprehend the might, the power, the glory of God, and yet His focus is upon us. It’s upon us. It’s upon His Church. To understand, as I started to say a moment ago then (coming full circle), is to grasp then where we are in time and that throughout time God’s focus has been on those whom He has called. And so it is at the end, and until we’re ready, once we are ready, then when that’s complete, when the sealing is complete then He’s going to bring an end to everything. He’s going to bring an end to the age of mankind, going to stop human government, mankind from ruling himself because we’ve done a lousy job. We are destroying the earth, as we heard. We are! It’s shameful! It really is. All because of greed and money and politics and power and all the garbage that goes on in the world. It should sicken us to the core of our being what this world is like, what governments are like. It’s beyond sick, it really is.

God has an incredible great desire for His creation and what’s going to begin to be rebuilt and structured and made glorious once the Millennium begins. The title of the sermon today, it’s entitled here God’s Great Desire with this being Part 1. God’s Great Desire.

So we need to think about God. We need to think about what it is we can grasp because He wants us to understand that desire that’s deep, deep, deep. We can’t grasp the depth of it. To grasp that His plan was all set out before He started, before He ever created a spirit realm, incredible. Mankind, His Son, the first of the firstfruits, the need for a Passover, the time that was going to be allotted to accomplish the things He’s going to accomplish and fulfill in order to have a family, and the burning desire of what He’s been working at from the beginning…from the beginning.

So again, there is so very much that can be said about this subject but we’re going to focus on the high points revealed through time. This is truly a beautiful revelation that God has systematically unveiled to mankind over the Millennium, and the greatest part of it here toward the end-time. Because if we can receive nothing else today, just to grasp how much we have been given now compared to what everyone else before us, who’s come before us has had; they haven’t had anything close to what we have today because God has progressively revealed His purpose and plan through time.

Let’s turn over to Genesis 2. Although it is not at all grasped by those who might read the first record of this, as we’re going to do, God’s revealed the meaning to the Church. We understand what this is about. God gave Mr. Armstrong understanding of what this was about to a level and on a plane that I don’t believe the early apostles grasped—Okay?—to that depth.

Genesis 2:1—Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God (it’s Elohim), God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God (Elohim) blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because that in it He had rested from all His work which Elohim/God created and made. This is a beautiful thing here. You think people in the world are so deceived, so far away from the truth that they can’t even begin to grasp the importance of these words, that God wants us to grasp what He did. He wants us to understand the timing of what He did. Then He sanctified that specific day. How the human mind can conjure up and change that to think that something has changed to where we need to keep the first day of the week, or whatever it is, is mindboggling. It really is. But that’s the human mind and the power of a being that has deceived so many.

Verse 4—These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created. In the day that the Eternal, God (Yahweh Elohim), made the earth and the heavens. Now, that’s speaking of the atmosphere around the earth. It’s not talking about the universe. It’s talking about His work that was focused upon this earth for the purpose of the creation of mankind to fulfill His greater plan, the purpose of everything that’s ever been created.

So again, at this point it’s important to understand here that the name of Yahweh, which it says here, as it’s said in verse 4 here, “In the day that the Eternal (Yahweh) God (Elohim) made the earth and the heavens.” Now, you have to understand the writing of the book here, what he was inspired, Moses, as certain things that were written later on. All these things were brought together in the time of Moses, recorded, and so forth, but at this time here when these things began, when you have Adam and Eve, the first two on earth, they didn’t know His name was Yahweh. That hadn’t been given yet. This was written much, much later on.

So that name that He was known by, Moses knew the name so Moses wrote about who it was. But early on we have to understand that name wasn’t known. So what an incredible thing to think even in part of the revelation of who He is He didn’t reveal that fully until much, much later on, which the story flow will show as we go on here, which we’ve covered in times past, but it’s good to reflect upon those things to grasp, to try to grasp even more fully how incredibly blessed we are with everything that God has given to us that others have never had in times past. They didn’t even know things about His name and what it meant.

Genesis 2:7—And the Eternal (Yahweh Elohim) formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. It’s unfortunate word, how it’s been used in the English language and people think they have an immortal soul and all the garbage that goes with that. It has nothing to do with that whatsoever. It just means a living, breathing being, in essence, a breathing life form. That’s all the word is used for.

It’s used in Genesis of animals and some will say, “Well, animals maybe going to be resurrected…” or not resurrected but “go to heaven, too.” Some people feel that way. No, they don’t. Their purpose isn’t to continue on. It’s a great thing that people are able to have pets and animals and know of animals. I think of milk cows we used to have. We knew every one of them by name. I’ve known of people that had large dairies and they knew every one of the cows by name; they knew their habits and everything else. You get to know animals when you’re around them a lot and they have different kind of characteristics and so forth that are unique to that species that God has given them the ability to have to a point. Obviously, we’re different.

And the Eternal God (Yahweh Elohim) planted a garden eastward in Eden and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Eternal made to grow every… It’s the Eternal, again here, Yahweh Elohim, Eternal God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; and the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, metaphor? Symbolism? A literal tree? There are some things here that aren’t explained. Whether God picked out a particular species and said, “Don’t eat of that one,” we don’t know yet, or even if it was a tree. We’ll learn later on. God will show us everything that is meant by these things. The reality is they were told certain things you could partake of and certain things you couldn’t do, and the like, and so they made some choices along the way, obviously, and Satan was there to lead them astray.

Anyway, verse 15, jumping on down, And the Eternal God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden—What did we hear this morning?—to dress it and keep it. To cultivate, to plant, if you will. It’s “to foster growth” is what the word means, in essence, “to cultivate.” It’s like the part that comes first, the planting or the constructing of something, the building of something, and then you have to take care of it once you have worked with what God has given you, provided for you for your hands to do. There are those things that God has here that we’re able to take care of, we’re even to even add to it then by building things like this here that we’re able to meet in, whatever it might be, homes and the like, things we do in life, and then we have to take care of it.

You know, you can build a house and if you don’t have someone taking care of it, you don’t have someone living there, you know what happens? It’s crazy. If something is not lived in it’s not the same as someone living there, and just living there, even if they don’t take really good care of it. But anyway, God desires that of us, to participate, to be a part, to share in something and to grasp He put everything here to give us the ability to enjoy and have pleasure in life, fullness of life. It’s by the very things we heard this morning. Incredible.

…and to keep, in other words “to maintain and preserve or sustain it,” whatever it is, whether it’s already here and we leave it like that and keep good care of it or whether we work with it. You can take things of a garden, things of an area for around a house or around a building and trees that may already be growing but you can do things to help make them last longer, to beautify them even more. So God has given that. So it reveals that God has great purpose in creating mankind above all the other forms of life, obviously.

So backing up. Let’s see here. Let’s go back to Genesis 1 here. God began to reveal His greater purpose for mankind and He started out from the very beginning doing that but people haven’t understood it. But God’s given it to us to understand. It’s so clear to us. Only because of God’s spirit; that’s the only way you grasp and see things as clearly as you do. Because when God’s spirit is gone it’s incredible how fast people lose what they had, people who walked to God’s house side by side, counsel blended sweet, been a part of the Body of Christ, we’ve had fellowship with, and how quickly the mind loses it. It might have certain portions it remembers but uses more on a physical plane. It’s incredible what takes place and what people can really, truly lose.

Genesis 1:26—And God (Elohim) said; Let us make man in our image. Unfortunate translation because it sounds like He’s talking to someone else or about someone else, “Let us, all of us, make man in our image,” like there’s a whole bunch of them up there. No, it’s not like that at all. It’s just that they didn’t know how to translate this. How do you translate a uniplural word like “family”? They didn’t understand God. People who have translated these things haven’t understood God, that it’s a family that He’s talking about, and so because they haven’t understood that they don’t know how to translate these things in referring back to a uniplural word.

Again, these things, in one respect, are prophetic, if you will, about God Himself and what He’s doing. It’s about His plan and so He’s just revealing it here in the beginning what that plan and purpose is.

So again, making man in our image, after our likeness, after the likeness of Elohim because it’s going back and referring back to Elohim. Whatever this is, this family is, that’s why God made us, in order to become that. That’s what He’s showing here.

…and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every moving thing that moves upon the earth. So again, we heard about that this morning. Beautiful, why God placed us here, that everything’s been put under our feet, but not yet; not yet everything. Only under Christ’s feet.

So God (Elohim) created man in His image, in His form and likeness. Again, this is a beginning stage. Because you have to understand, this is the beginning of a creation. The creation is going on. The creation since everything was created, ever since mankind was put on the earth, creation didn’t stop. It was just starting. What God is doing, what God is creating was just starting. Mankind in a physical body is just the starting of it.

So different ones He began to work with and He continued with His creation of Elohim. That’s what it’s all about. He worked with different ones. He has for 6,000 years. As He’s been working with them the creation goes on, this transforming of the mind up here, this spirit essence that God has placed in our minds, in all human beings, and when combined with God’s holy spirit the thinking of the mind can actually change. It can be changed. You can start thinking differently than what you did when God first called you and started working with you. So it was with all the prophets and all the people of old who have been faithful to God.

Abraham came along after the flood. God worked with Him. Noah, obviously, well before that, different ones that we know of through scripture. God separated them from the world for a purpose, cut them off from the world as the word is in Revelation, separated them from the world and began to work in them and to transform their thinking. Ongoing creation. That’s the greatest part of creation yet because when God made physical human beings, Adam and Eve, wham, brought it together, physical body, breathed into it life and there it is right there in that one day, two beings. Wow. Can’t do that with Elohim. You can’t do that with someone begotten of God’s holy spirit. It takes a lifetime. It takes a lifetime of spirit growth and development for a person to come to a point where at a certain point in time it’s done, and like God said to Abraham, “Now I know you,” we become sealed, and that individual then can be resurrected into a spirit life, can actually be born then into God’s Family. Awesome that we understand all these things and to understand the process.

But that’s ongoing creation. So for 6,000 years the creation has been ongoing from the very first one, Abel, and on; God has been working with different ones, transforming the mind and the way people have been thinking in His creation of Elohim, the biggest of His creation. It’s the greatest of His creation. He can’t create anything greater! That is the height of all creation. It is the purposes of all creation. That’s awesome to understand.

What an incredible thing to grasp and comprehend, and to understand why it’s so incredible what He’s doing with us. Because we fight, we resist, we have a resistance all the way until the end. You have a carnality, a selfishness that’s in you and will remain in you as long as you’re a physical human being and so God works with that. He works with that mind; patience, love, grace, mercy, patience and more patience because He sees something at the end, He knows what He’s doing. He knows what He is creating. As long as we’ll yield to that process He keeps working with us. Then one day in time, in His time, we’ll become born into His Family. Finally, the achievement of what He’s been working for.

Now, to grasp all this? We can’t. To strive to appreciate it? We can. He wants us to. He wants us to understand His great desire is for that family and that has been His focus for 6,000 years. It hasn’t been the rest of the world. He hasn’t loved the rest of the world yet. He loves them, don’t misunderstand me, but He hasn’t been able to share with them His love yet because you have to be called into a spirit relationship to have the ability to receive of mercy, of kindness, of love, of grace, the kind that you’re able to have once you’re able to have the Passover sacrifice in your stead. A creation. So awesome!

So in the image of God (Elohim) He created him; as male and female He created them. So that’s the beginning; that’s just the start. But the purpose is Elohim. He’s saying it over and over again here. That’s the image that he’s going to be able to be created in. That’s the image He’s creating. We’re not there yet but that’s what He’s working toward and He started out with physical life forms, physical human bodies. That’s what it’s about. That image is not something that we are now. That is something that’s coming. That’s something in the future. That’s something that’s in the God Family that He’s talking about here. That’s what He is creating us in.

So some people as a whole in times past, and even in the Church, we stopped with Adam and Eve and physical human beings and we’re made to look like God, and that’s not what this is about. This is about something far beyond that. It’s about that which is spirit in life, spirit beings given everlasting life in the God Family, Elohim, a part of His Family. Beautiful.

Let’s turn over to Romans 8. So we know, in essence, that the creation of mankind in the image of God is an ongoing creation. You can’t stop thinking at the physical part. That’s not it. That’s just partway there – not too far, frankly. Again, it wasn’t completed then when man was created, mankind was created. We weren’t made in that image! We were not made, physical human beings, yet, in that image. We’re not there! But it’s a beginning of a creation that in time will be there and that’s what God reveals.

Romans 8:18—For I reckon/consider, in other words, realize that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. If only we could always hold on to that in every time of trial and hardship in our life when maybe we feel down or overburdened or whatever it might be, and hopefully not thinking, “Well, this isn’t fair,” because I’ve heard that in times past, in ages past. It’s not fair? In other words, you deserve more? Hmmm. We don’t. God’s being merciful and we have to understand how merciful He really is.

To understand that no matter what we go through what can be compared? That’s why I talk about and refer to sometimes that I wouldn’t change any hardship I’ve ever gone through for anything because I wouldn’t be where I am today without having gone through everything that I’ve gone through. And that’s the way we need to see the trials and the hardship and the fire that we go through, that it’s part of a process, and to be thankful for it! That’s why Paul talked the way he did in times in ways that sometimes are hard to understand. To rejoice in your sufferings? Oh, sure. If you really see the overall picture, yes, because you know that when God is working with you, when you’re in God’s hands and you’re going through things around you that it is working to the good. There are things He’s doing in your being, in your mind to change your thinking in a way that if you didn’t go through them couldn’t happen.

So what do you want? The easy way and the slow way and “This is just too hard so don’t move too fast, let me catch up a little bit; let me get used to this.”? No, “Bring it on! Bring it on, whatever it is!” Better be careful. But it’s true, you know, to embrace it and to make the most of it, really.

…it is not worthy to be compared with the glory that should be revealed in us. Just like we heard this morning here, you know, think about time. Everything is like a vapor. It’s here and then it’s gone and you don’t know it until you’re almost there. I mean, I’ve knocked on the door a few times. I know. It’s like, where did it go? Okay, I’m going to go under, not sure I’m coming out, and if I don’t, hey, things are going to go on. God’s Church is God’s Church! God’s in charge! It goes on. He doesn’t need any of us! But we’re thankful that we’re able to be a part and continue to share in various things and whatever that might be.

So it’s like, “What happened to that time?” I don’t remember if it was Trumpets or Atonement when I was talking about the amount of time that’s gone by and you think about how long it’s been since (and I don’t know if I ever got that right), since the Apostasy. This December, I think, is 25 years, if I’m right.

But you think, where did that time go? My wife wasn’t even forty yet. I look at others who are in that age bracket now and I think, wow, that’s when it happened? We were that young and we experienced the worst time that ever happened to God’s Church in 2,000 years? I’m thankful. I’m not thankful for the Apostasy but I’m thankful I have the experience of the Apostasy. I’m thankful that I experienced the things that I did. I am thankful that we went through times that were so hard that I can’t describe it, how it hit people and what it did when you see a third of the Church just going back to something that they were called out of. And you think, how is that possible? Nearly a third of all the Church is going back to Sunday worship? What’s going on? How can this happen overnight?

Another third just kind of went by the wayside because they were just so disillusioned, because if this isn’t God’s Church then God must not exist; it’s nowhere then and they just gave up. I understand that. I understand that! And then a third that wanted to try to hold on to something that we’d been given, and that was in shambles and chaos and confusion. Whew! I’ll tell you, I can see, I’m seeing things, well, I’m not seeing things but flashbacks in my mind of all the things we went through in that short length of time and for, well, that three and a half years…that three and a half years…

Because when it happened, it wasn’t over with. We had three and a half more years of hardship as different ones and the battles that were still going on out here and the repercussions of what had taken place and people trying to decide on their own what they should do and how the Church should go. What do I say? …this building of bridges that people wanted to do. “You can believe in Pentecost, of something different than what I believe, as long as I can maybe try to help you to understand Passover was on the 15th,” you know, and try to build these two together to have some kind of a bridge. And I think, what kind of a dumb bridge is that? Just by what you’re saying you ought to understand that’s not going to work. Such a bridge, where’s the construction in it? I have to be careful.

Riles me up to think what we went through, and yet God brought us through it and it caused us to reach down so deep inside. God blessed us with understanding of certain things, He molded and fashioned certain things within us that are unique to us that others in other times have things unique to them because God is placing us in different places within the temple. So there are some who had to experience that to be placed within certain places of the temple for whatever is awaiting them. God does the building; the one who created the universe, the one who created a spirit realm wherein angels could dwell once He created them, and then created space in a physical universe so He could put a physical universe. We can’t grasp it. What a powerful being. Almighty God. The word’s don’t justify what’s said because we don’t grasp them, how great God is, how powerful. And to understand His love? We have a lot to grow in.

For the earnest expectation of the creation, not “creature” as some translations have it. It’s a word for “the creation.” The earnest expectation of the creation waits for the manifestation (the revealing) of the sons of God. That’s what it’s about. It’s about Elohim. Everything was constructed to accomplish it. Everything was brought into being to plan, to prepare, to mold and fashion, and to one day have an incredible family, a God Family.

For the creation was made subject to vanity… So in the beginning we read that in Genesis. People were made physical, subject to vanity by design. We were made subject to, well, because of the way we are “lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” Some can look at that and say, “Well, God’s not fair. He made me this way to have selfish human nature. Where’s the fairness in that?” Blind. Ignorant. Without understanding. The more we grow in understanding the more we realize that’s the only way to create Elohim, that you have to have this first.

Once you have this and learn what it’s like and then with God’s spirit, and He begins to work with you and call you and you begin to understand that’s ugly. That really is ugly in how people are and the way the world is and the way people treat each other and the way nations are, and the way politics, everything else, and all the drama of life that human beings create. It’s ugly! And you start to experience certain things of peace and think, “That’s what I want. That’s the life I want,” and so you begin to battle with it, you begin to work with God’s spirit in your life, to make changes. Incredible what takes place as that creation begins to work within us, but we had to be made this way first.

Because God is going to show that there cannot be anything of the mind of Satan, when it’s all said and done, in His Family. He’s not going to allow it. He’s not going to allow it. Anyone that chooses the way of self, of selfishness just isn’t going to be there. It’s not owed to them. There may be billions who choose that way.

That’s hard for us to understand. We think that hundred years is going to be hunky dory, peachy keen, beautiful. Well, you know what? There are going to be human beings resurrected who were so steeped in Babylon, religious Babylon, and especially in that church who were a part of all that, who are going to be resurrected to life, and who have been a large part of that and all the daughters of it. Do you think that once they’re resurrected they’re just going to jump up for joy and say, “Oh, this is wonderful!” They’re still who they are. They still have the same minds, but they’re going to be in a different world and they’re going to begin to be able to make choices. It’s going to be one in which God ensures life and it’s going to be one in which there are laws that are enforced in a very powerful way.

But that doesn’t mean that people don’t kind of go into hiding and conform, because they will. Thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands, and yes, most likely billions who are going to conform for a time but their heart does not want God. When it says they’re as the sand of the sea at the end, those who do what they do and come to that point in time, it means what it says. Large, large numbers. If a third of the angelic realm who were all spirit beings turned against God over time do you think that carnal, starting out with carnality, selfish human beings are somehow going to do better than them? We’ve had a lot of misconceptions about what’s ahead of us. There is a lot of work ahead, there truly is.

That’s why God has such an incredible plan of so many by the end of the Millennium who can help serve in that new age, in that new time. But you can’t force the choice of God’s way. And if it’s not genuine you know what it is? It’s the opposite of genuine. It’s false. It’s fake. It’s put on. Just like somehow within the Body of Christ over 2,000 years we’ve had a lot of people come and go. People have come along and been around the people, enjoyed the friendship, but not convicted, not a part of them. Just not convicted in doing what God says. Hmmm. Interesting. We have so much, so much before us.

For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope, because the creation itself will also be delivered from the bondage of corruption. That’s what people are in. We still have some of that in our lives; we’re not totally free yet. We’ve started the process of coming out of Egypt but we’re not out of it yet. There are still things in the mind. There are still things in our nature, and until we’re finally dead or changed it will always be there. But we’re to become refined more and more, to become more in unity and oneness with God the farther we go along here. That’s an incredible process of a creation that’s ongoing in our lives.

…because the creation itself will also be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Then once we’re there as the children of God, born into God’s Family, whew, all that’s past. We can take a big sigh, a big breath finally, finally after all that that battle has come to an end. Now we can be on about God’s work in a very powerful way, no longer having pulls of carnal selfish human nature. Free of that; totally removed from that kind of a bondage.

Colossians 1:12—giving thanks unto the Father, who has made us meet, some translate this as “qualified” but the Greek is more to do with “fit or sufficient,” to be/become partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. So we’re never there to where we deserve it. Some of these words aren’t the best. But God brings us to a point where He will work with us and it’s up to our choices how much and whether we can continue on being worked with. We come to that point where we desire to be baptized, we want our sins forgiven us, and that’s just the beginning of a process that can become a lifelong process if we will continue to fight to the end. If you want it enough. You’ve really got to want what God gives, what He offers. You’ve got to see the value of it. You’ve got to have with all of your being “This is it!” “I don’t care what happens this is it!” “I don’t care what we go through, this is it! There is nothing else.”

Verse 13—Who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has… it says “translated” but removed us, in that respect, into the kingdom of His dear Son. In other words, we have a beginning process where we’ve been taken out of this world, removed or separated out of this world, to begin having a work done in us, a transformation of the mind that begins to take place and being partakers of a creation of God now that He’s intended from the beginning for His people, whenever that is. It might be for some, obviously, in the Great White Throne, others able to live on in the Millennium, and some that He’s called out during the past 6,000 years.

…into the kingdom of His dear Son, through whom we have redemption through his blood and the forgiveness of sins, who is the image of the invisible God. Who is? …who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. So we begin to focus upon the life of Christ, the first of the firstfruits, the first born from among mankind, and he is in the image of the invisible God. He has gone the full route, through physical, human life and then changed to spirit life and is in Elohim. That’s the creation. That is what God is talking about back in Genesis 1. That’s the image that He desires for us. The physical part, the physical body, the physical look and so forth is only a meager beginning in the process.

Going back to Romans 8. This has been mentioned already as well but following up now in Romans 8:28—And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. If we know those things, if we understand our calling, if we see it for what it is, then we embrace it, we love it, we fight for it, we want to keep fighting for it, we’re in this for keeps, we’re going to keep running and we’re not going to stop. That’s the attitude of mind you have to have. “I want this way of life. I don’t want anything else that could interfere with it, to stop that process.” Choices, choices, choices, choices.

So if we know those things and we know how God works then we know whatever it is we’re going through –self-inflicted most of the time – that we bring upon ourselves, things that happen in our lives, the fiery trials we go through, but our willingness to go through whatever it is that God can use to mold and fashion our thinking, to help us come to repentance, to help us to come to that point where we see various things and want to conquer them, it’s a beautiful process. But we have to participate in it, don’t we? Just like we heard this morning, you have to participate in the work and then be blessed. It’s a sharing in a work that God is doing and so we’re blessed to do that. That synergy, the need for God’s spirit in our lives because we can’t do it by ourselves, a fellowship that we’re able to have with one another and what we see in one another, it all works together for the same purpose.

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did, not “predestinate.” It’s not that old concept, English concept, but He also did predetermine or planned ahead. So we understand that, God predetermined from the beginning of time His Family, Elohim.

…to be conformed to the image of His Son. It goes beyond being made in that image of Elohim, but now we see His Son. We see the one who was born of God, the Word of God, the Word of God that became flesh and that life as it was physical coming out of the womb of Mary, his mother. To be able to read about that life, to see the things that were taught, to understand those things on a spiritual plane is a marvel, and yet we’re able to grasp those things and to understand he’s our High Priest now and to know what that means in our life. We want to attain to that. We want to share in that inheritance because he’s the first to receive it and we’re able to achieve that as well to where all things are under our feet, in that respect.

…to be conformed to the image of His Son. That’s why so often we talk about various things that he said. We went through a series here recently then about judging and about judgment and how we judge and we think about the things Christ said, “What I see the Father… I do.” “What I see.” Spiritual. What we see Christ did and how he spoke about these things, we strive to do, because this is what it’s talking about, a desire to be conformed to the image of His Son.

…that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He did predetermine them He also called. So we see the process. God calls us first. How blessed are we, each one of us? Some were talking the other day about loving to hear the stories about people and how they were brought into the Church, how they came into the Church. Those are awesome stories because it shows something that God was doing in people’s lives to bring them in because God has to bring us along. God has to open up our minds and begin to give us understanding of various things and then we make choices along the way.

Moreover, whom He did predetermine them He also called, and whom He called… Predetermined in the sense that He had 144,000. So for those blessed to be called to be a part of that, words can’t express what that means. To understand what it means then to be called, to be the first, a foundation of the Church that’s going to continue on in the Millennium, the same thing. How can you describe the honor, the glory, the beauty of such a thing, of what God is willing to share with us?

Those who have that opportunity, it’s hard to grasp what that means right now. It’s hard to grasp what you’ve really been offered. It’s just hard. Because you really can’t. You can see a picture, a glimmer of it here and there, and you hold on to it. Before long you’re going to have it and then it’s going to mean more to you what you were offered, because then you’re going to experience it in ways… You just have to experience it. It can only be understood by the experience.

Moreover, whom He predetermined them He also called. And whom He called them He also justified. And whom He justified, them He also glorified. So He’s constantly justifying us. How? Because we see our stupidity, our foolishness, our mistakes, our sins, you know, the drama, drama, drama in our lives, and we repent of it. And we ask God, “Father, forgive me.” We see the wrong attitudes that come into our thinking sometimes or the wrong things that come out of our mouth or our wrong response to something and, you know, “I’m unhappy because…” Why? Well, self isn’t getting its way. If you can take it all the way through and see what’s in the mind, “Self isn’t getting its way. That’s why you’re unhappy you fool!” and then you can repent of that. You should be smiling about that because we all have it. We all have a big dose of selfishness. When you can see it, it’s pretty stupid. But we have it and we do it and we do it day in and day out and day in and day out. But we continue to go before God and we repent.

Every time we do we’re growing in character and growing in strength because every time we do it we’re acknowledging to God, “You are right. I am wrong. I hate what this is. I love what You’re offering me. I want that. I desire that. I love what You’ve revealed and I love You because it’s You.”

Everything, every truth that God has given to us, that is God. It’s the mind of God that He’s giving to us. His purpose, His plan that is so beautiful, it’s God. It reveals who He is. Everything that comes out of self reveals what’s in the mind. Everything! Every action we have reveals what’s in this mind. Every truth that God has given to us reveals everything about God and that’s why we learn to love Him as we do, especially starting with the Passover, an ability to be forgiven of sin, the ability to come out of sin and to walk away knowing when you get up from that prayer you’re free.

You don’t have to beat yourself up like what sometimes happens in the world where I’ve seen people on concrete beating themselves on their back as they’re crawling along the ground. Their knees are bloody because they think they have to do this to please a god. I think, what kind of a god would want somebody to whip themselves on the back to where blood is coming out and your knees are bloody and that somehow this is righteous, it’s what “God” wants. You think, let me die for eternity then because I don’t want a God like that. I wouldn’t serve a God like that. Would you? Do we know God? Well, God helps us to learn to know Him, what He’s like, who He is. He’s not like that at all.

That’s why so many words I try to explain and try to show, like “the wrath of God,” it’s not like what we think of wrath, the anger. It’s not the word for anger. There are words that have to be used to express certain things but it all has to do with God’s righteous judgment, of things that are right and just that are needed and necessary out of love for the Body and for the rest of His creation.

“Whom He justified,” because we continue to repent. So just never stop repenting. Because I’ve known a lot of people who just quit repenting. They just quit fighting. They quit looking at themselves. They came to a point where they really weren’t that bad, you know, and they saw others in the Church, they’re bad. This person shouldn’t be ordained and that person shouldn’t be ordained. Why are you doing things this way, and finding fault with how things are being done and not understanding how God works? Like I explained here not too long ago about having a bunch of people, went down in Florida to look for a Feast site and how well that went. Incredible, what we’ve gone through.

People end up stabbing you in the back, people who turn against God and they don’t understand what they’re doing. Because they just have a certain standard of what is righteous and they don’t understand what God is doing. They need to stand back and think, “Well, what is God doing? If this is God’s Church and I’ve proven it to myself and I know how the truth has come to me,” as Paul said, don’t ever forget how you learned it. If we know those things we’ve learned, we’ve grown in a confidence that has been given to us. Can’t give that to anyone, can you?

So how incredibly appropriate and inspiring it is to see how God began to reveal His very purpose for the creation of mankind from the very beginning. He did it right up front, right from the very beginning, but, you know, people just can’t see it unless God’s spirit is involved, unless He gives them the ability to see it. That’s an awesome thing to me.

So from the beginning of creation God began to reveal Himself as a God Family, and although this was recorded in this manner in Genesis 1 and 2 it was written this way well over 2,000 years later, because nearly 2,500 years passed before God began to truly reveal more about Himself. That is an incredible thing to understand. 2,500 years from the beginning to the time He really started revealing more about Himself, and that’s hard for us to grasp. A progressive revelation. Not everything up front, just enough to work with a very few, a very few in 2,500 years individually, one on one type of situation in their lives to mold and fashion things within them with what they were given. Again, to understand that, we can’t, but God knows how to work with the spirit that He gave to us, how to transform it, how to work with individuals, how to judge and so forth, powerfully so.

So this story, again, begins to unfold in the book of Exodus at a time when the children of Israel were captive in Egypt, so we’re going to go back there again. Exodus 2. Not again today but again as we have in times past to look at some of these things, to see how some of these things began to unfold. Because if you can really begin to grasp hold of the fact of how little has been known through time compared to what we have now you should be in awe of your Great God and what He has given you. You should be so moved by that spiritually, that you are so blessed to have what you have today far, far, far beyond anyone who has gone before you, far beyond anyone in Laodicea, far beyond anyone in Philadelphia, far beyond the early Church! Only because of where we are, not because of who we are or how special we are. We’re not! It’s just because of where we are in God’s plan just before His Son returns.

So it’s in that plan to reveal more, just as it was here, finally to begin revealing more about Himself to His creation 2,500 years after it began! Awesome, to understand this, when He began to reveal something about the very first Passover that was ever observed. There have been people in times past who thought, no, all the holy days were understood by all of them from the beginning of time. No, they didn’t know. It wasn’t time for those things to be revealed yet. They weren’t judged by those things. They were given basic things about life, how to treat people and so forth, how to think toward their Creator God, their God, and the like in their relationship with Him. God can judge those things very easily. He can judge by what you have at any moment in time, the present truth, and that’s what God has been doing for 6,000 years.

But He just keeps revealing more so here we are, Exodus 2:1—And a man of the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi. So the woman conceived and bore a son, and was so moved by his presence that she hid him for three months. But when she could no longer hide him she took a basket of papyrus for him, and plastered it with asphalt and pitch, put the child in it and laid it in the reeds by the river’s bank. In other words so it couldn’t go anywhere. It was right there being held by the reeds and yet the baby was protected because it wouldn’t sink and so the baby was going to stay alive. She knew where she was putting it and she had help. God had plan! This wasn’t by accident.

It wasn’t like, oh, that’s an amazing thing they came up with. What a novel thing. No, God moved her. He communicated with the mind what she should do! She just didn’t do this on her own! Please understand that! These things weren’t just an accident, Moses in that little thing there that she had made. This was all planned out and God put it in her mind what to do and how to do it. Awesome! Because He had a great purpose of taking the children of Israel out of Egypt and He was going to wait until this man was 80 years old to do that. Here he is a baby, and He had that planned? God has that kind of power, that kind of ability to work with a human mind if He has a purpose to separate someone from the world? Absolutely! What a marvel. What an incredible thing.

And his sister stood afar off. Accidental, or by design because it was a part of the purpose of what God said should be done because He put it in the mind? They didn’t understand all that but God did it. …to find out what would become of him, what would happen to him.

Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down. Wow, what an amazing fortunate thing! No, all by design. That’s where she went regularly. All by design. So much so that He also communicated things in her mind. She was prepared for this by God, otherwise, it’d have all fouled up, it wouldn’t have worked. Well, let’s see if this works. Let’s put this baby in some reeds and maybe she’ll come down there at that time. Maybe she will have compassion on it and maybe she’ll take it and raise it as her own, and maybe he’ll grow up next to Pharaoh in that house. Maybe? Maybe? Come on, give me a break. We know. We understand all by design. God’s in it. God’s in it all the way.

Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river; while her handmaids, female attendants, walked alongside the river. And when she saw the basket among the reeds, she sent a handmaiden to get it. And when she had opened it she saw the child, and, behold, the baby cried. So she had compassion on him. Now, we have to understand some of the story of how certain ones were supposed to be put to death, and so forth, because the Egyptians were starting to fear about the numbers and population of the people by this time. His mother didn’t want this to happen, obviously, and because of God putting something in here, in the mind in a very powerful way of what she could do and so she did it.

So she had compassion on him and said, This is one of the Hebrew children. Could have had it put to death. Could have had it put to death. She didn’t.

Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter… Whew! Good thing she did this. No. Again, all by design. God was working with her. Shall I go and call for a nurse for you from the Hebrew women that she may nurse the child for you? Who do you think that was going to be? All planned out. And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Just fortuitously; just everything just worked out so great.

Verse 9—Then Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages. So this is really working out great, you know. Whew! So the woman took the child and nursed him. And the child grew and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. This is an amazing story. It’s a moving story of what God did. So she called his name Moses, literally means “drawn out,” saying, because I drew him out of the water. I wonder if that name was an accidental one too.

And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown (verse 11), that he went out to his people and looked upon their burdens. Now, a lot of time’s passed here, things have happened. There’s not a lot explained in the story flow of things.

There he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He knew who he was. He knew his background. He knew there was a difference. So he looked this way and that way, in other words, looked all around him (another way of saying that), and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand. Whew! Pretty bold. It just got to him; moved him. Hmmm, another one of those coincidences.

And when he went out the second day he saw two Hebrew men were fighting, and he said to the one who did the wrong, Why are you striking your companion?...in other words, “Your fellow kinsman.” And he said, Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? So they saw him. Again, accidental? Things just happened to work out this way? Really? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.

Now when Pharaoh heard of this matter he sought to kill Moses, but Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian: and he sat down by a well. This had to happen for him to get out of Egypt. This had to happen for him to learn the things that needed to be learned over the next 40 years of his life so that God could begin working with him and molding and fashioning things in him for a greater job.

Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and they filled troughs to water their father’s flocks. And when the shepherds came and drove them away: Moses stood… It talks about here how Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock. So when they returned to Reuel, their father, he said, How is it that you have come so soon today? This is quick. And they said, An Egyptian delivered us from the hand of the shepherds. So, again, because of how he was dressed and so forth they took him as an Egyptian. …and he also drew enough water for us and watered the flock.

So he said to his daughters, And where is he? Why is it that you have left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread. Then Moses was content to live with the man. And he gave Zipporah, his daughter, to Moses. So again here, all coincidence? No. God had a purpose and a design and a plan of things that were going to be worked out. And she bore him a son, and he called his name Gershom, literally, “a stranger there,” that’s what it means, for he said, I have been a stranger in a foreign land.

Verses 23—And in time the king of Egypt died. Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage and they cried out, and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. Basically, talking about here it was God’s time. The bondage, He began to shine a light on their situation. It was already all planned out. The timing, every bit of the timing was planned out to the very year. Please understand the story. To the very year here everything was planned out by God of how He was going to do this, when He was going to do it, and what was happening right here. Okay? So this is when He began to, in essence, began to perform a work of something that He’s just explaining here, “Now I hear their cry and this is what I’m going to do.”

So God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It’s not like God said, “Oh, I hear they’re crying and now I remember what I said!” It’s not like that. We tend to read it that way in physical ways and this is not the story. It’s kind of written that way by the translations of it, but it’s far more than that. It’s just showing that it’s God’s time, He’s going to intervene, “I now hear their cry and I am going to deliver them.” This is what the story is about in order to accomplish and fulfill His covenant, His agreement with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That’s what it’s saying.

Then God looked upon the children of Israel and God took knowledge, or began to acknowledge them. In other words, it’s like when we’re called God begins to acknowledge us. He begins to pour out His love toward us. He didn’t before but now He is because it’s time to begin. Whomever He chooses for whatever reasons, we don’t know, but God does it. It’s in His calling, His choosing.

Then there is the account of Moses going up to Mount Horeb (referred to as the Mountain of God), and this is the account of the burning bush and God speaking to him in Exodus 3:4—And when the Eternal saw that he turned aside to see, it says here, God/Elohim called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here I am. So here is that bush and he sees it and he’s curious and so, anyway, God calls him up. Again, all of this planned.

And He said, Draw near unto Me, or Draw near to here. Take the shoes off your feet, for the place whereon you stand is holy ground. In other words, this is of God. This is holy ground you’re on, take your shoes off. So if you hear something coming out of the bush what are you going to do? Nothing had ever happened like this before.

Moreover, he said, I am the God (Elohim) of your father, the God (Elohim) of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look upon God. Now, you can’t see God but he was afraid to look at what was before him, because to him that was the same kind of thought, “I can’t even look upon God.” We understand you can’t see God. A physical human being can’t see God. You can only see the manifestation of what it is. In this case it was a manifestation of a burning bush. To him, “This is God’s presence. I can’t look.”

Then we come to where God starts to reveal more of His plan to Moses after He began to send him to Pharaoh with a message to let the children of Israel go. Again, we’re just looking at things here where God is beginning to reveal more about Himself and He says, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” so he’s revealing this to Moses and He’s going to go farther than that in a little bit here.

Exodus 5:22—So Moses returned to the Eternal and said, Lord, why have you brought trouble upon this people? So this was a point in time when the Israelites were restricted from having straw and yet they were to make the same quantity of bricks and so forth, building blocks, whatever type of thing as they had been producing before. So they had to go out and gather it themselves and they weren’t provided it by the Egyptians. So some things have been going on here for a while back and forth and obviously, Pharaoh is not very happy with what’s taking place.

So Moses returned to the Eternal and said, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Why is it that You have sent me? Things aren’t going well. Things aren’t going right. Why did you pick me? Things are bad. How would you feel? We can’t understand what it would be like to be in that kind of a situation. Here it is you left because the Pharaoh wanted to kill you, put you to death, and now you’re coming back and what if some of that comes back and that history and why you ran away in the first place, and yet it’s there, and now you’ve told Israelites certain things and some of the leaders of the Israelites there and things aren’t working out well and things just seem to be getting worse, a lot worse.

For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done evil to this people. You’ve done nothing at all to deliver Your people. That’s pretty bold. That’s pretty bold but he’s just saying what he feels. He’s being honest with God. God already knows what he’s thinking, he’s just saying it, and he’s being truthful and honest, which we should always be. If you’re in error and wrong and in a wrong attitude God will show you. You’ll come through it if you have a right spirit toward God.

Then God responded with this in Exodus 6:1—Then the Eternal, Yahweh, the Self-existing One said unto Moses, Now You shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with/by, basically saying “by” and He’s talking about Himself, My strong hand shall he let them go, and by a strong hand shall he drive them out of this land.  And God spoke unto Moses and said unto him, I am the Eternal. “I am Yahweh.” It’s awesome. This is the first time He said to anyone who He was as Yahweh. He’s never told this to anyone before this. He said, And I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by the name of God Almighty, El Shaddai, but by My name Yahweh, you know, the Self-existing Eternal One, I was not known to them.

Now, this is moving. This is inspiring. This is an incredible thing, a progressive revelation that God is showing now to Moses because God’s going to show him a lot more as time goes along here. After so long a time, so long a time and God’s going to begin revealing more about Himself and His purpose.

Exodus 20. Once God had delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt God brought them to Mount Sinai and drove home the fact again that he was the Eternal, Yahweh, the Self-existing One.

Exodus 20:1—And God/Elohim spoke all these words, saying, I am Yahweh, “I am the Eternal Self-existing One,” your Elohim, your God, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. What beautiful symbolism – something so physical to teach those later on what it means spiritually. All this planned out. It’s going to be a long time again before He started showing the spirit of this and the purpose of this, to show why He did these things physically with the children of Israel, to give those examples on a physical plane that He was going to later on reveal the spiritual meaning of His purpose and plan. It was a long time before He did that, long, long time, another 1500 years nearly before He started revealing that.

You shall have no other gods (elohim) before Me. No other… You know, especially in Egypt and other cultures and so forth, a lot of the gods, they were like families you know, like Greek mythology and some of the different ones you look through in time and whatever culture they might be…they tended to be families. He’s talking about this along a particular term, you know. You shall have no other Elohim, plural, uniplural, before Me.

You shall not make unto yourself any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven… Now, they could only understand this in the most meager of physical ways. They understood nothing spiritually here at all about what was being said, see. Nothing at all spiritually; it’s all physical. You shall not make unto yourself any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, that is under the water of the earth, like all the other nations around you, like Egypt that you just came out of. Because they had all these things they made and they worshipped in front of and you’re not to do things like that, things that come up out of the water or things that are on the land or in the air and worship them as some kind of god or whatever.

You shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them: for I the Eternal, your Elohim am a zealous God, a zealous El. That’s the word “El.” A zealous God. …visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me; and showing mercy unto thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments.

You shall not take the name of the Eternal your God in vain; for the Eternal will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain. So again, this is all physical. And you know what, when we come into the Church, when we first come into the Church, that’s all the way we can see these things. We don’t see the spirit of it. You think, “Oh, got to quit cursing, got to quit swearing, got to quit taking Christ’s name in vain,” and if you’d known it was Joshua you’d said Joshua instead of, you know, Jesus or whatever, you know, and how people curse.

They curse and use God’s name right and left in the world. It’s on TV all the time. It amazes me how they’re more concerned about certain words that are slang for various sex acts and there are restrictions on movies and so forth for using that word but you can curse and use God’s name in vain and it doesn’t get any restriction. You think, boy, is this world sick and upside down, where God should be the first to be considered in all these things. But that’s not the world. Just shows how far this world is.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day, the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Eternal your Elohim. So what an incredible thing. They kept their first Passover, the first Passover ever observed, in Egypt. Never observed before that. Never known about before that. Never grasped the things that God was going to use later on about how quick they had to leave and the leavening and everything else. God had it all planned out; they’re going to leave so quickly they have to do this, they’re not going to have time to raise the bread. They don’t have time for yeast to work and they’re going to have to eat unleavened bread and everything else that followed with it.

So here they go off to Mount Sinai and God continues to teach them and work with them and reveal more things to them that they never knew. They never had the 10 Commandments. No one ever had the 10 Commandments. They weren’t codified and given to mankind before this. This is the first they were codified and given.

I know things have been written in times past where people tried to prove, oh yes, they were all in there. Well, there were certain things there that God gave to individuals but there were some lapses in time in between as well and it wasn’t a continuous smooth flow in the first 2500 years there of time. But God worked with different ones and He revealed various things to them and they were judged then according to what He gave to them, to whatever length that was. But it was nothing like this. Their understanding of certain things, it wasn’t there.

You know, later on here God starts giving things about Pentecost. He starts giving things about the holy days, Leviticus 23, and giving all these holy days. They didn’t have these things before, and even while they’re in the wilderness, we’ve come to learn, it’s been stressed so that when we come to this Feast we can even see that even more clearly, they didn’t observe Pentecost until they came over the river Jordan, until that point in time during the Days of Unleavened Bread, after that then, the 50 days later from the wave sheaf.

Because they’d never had a wave sheaf before. They didn’t have crops to go out and harvest before. That was the first time they were able to do that. That was the first. Because they had manna before that.

They didn’t have any wave sheaf for forty years in the wilderness, okay? They didn’t observe that, what God had gave them. He said, “When you come into the promised land, when you come into the land that I promised to your forefathers then you’re to do certain things.” So that’s exactly when it happened.

What a marvel to learn those things more deeply now than the Church has ever understood it before. Because it’s there so we will marvel at how God has progressively continued through time to give more and more and more. That’s to help you to understand far more deeply how richly blessed on a spiritual plane you are than any who have lived before you.

No one, no one who has lived before you to this time has been blessed to know what you know, to understand the things that God has given to His Church because of where we are in time. Just as no one before, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob didn’t know Yahweh. He didn’t know, they didn’t know about He’s the Self-existing Eternal God of all time. That’s who He is.

It’s moving. It’s moving to me. If it’s moving to me it better be moving to every one of us, okay? I am moved by understanding how God progressively has revealed His truth to us. It’s helped me to come to understand far more deeply how blessed we really are. It’s helped me to become far more grateful above and beyond what I was even two years ago to this point in time. So we just keep growing and God gives us more and more so that we can understand what He’s doing more and more, so we can be more excited.

You know what? God wants to share this with us. He’s wanting to share these things about His great desire. That should move you. Just the title, God’s Great Desire.

Who are you that you are so blessed to live and experience God’s great desire at this time, because the billions on earth over 6,000 years have to wait another thousand years?  Who are we? “Who am I?” How blessed are we? How rich are we?

We’ll stop there today and continue in Part 2, I believe, tomorrow.