The Greatest Change

Ronald Weinland

October 18, 2019

Feast of Tabernacles Sermon – 2019

We are at a period of time in earth’s history that we’re about to experience the most incredible changes ever and these changes that will be made throughout the earth are well beyond our ability to grasp or even imagine them, and yet that’s God’s purpose and that’s God’s plan. We just happen to live at the end of 6,000 years; to me, exceedingly blessed to be able to do so, because there really isn’t a time throughout all of mankind that I would rather have lived than this, to experience this.

As we think of the possibilities of so many changes that are going to take place in the Millennium it’s good to consider how and why those changes will come about, how God is doing some of this. That’s important to grasp because then we can better deal with what’s going to take place, if we really see those things. So in some respects this is really quite simple, yet awesomely profound in others.

So this has everything to do with what the Church and all of us within the Church begin to live after God calls us. God calls us out of the world and we begin to change. But when working with an entire world, all nations all at one time, it’s different, vastly different, and yet the Great God is going to accomplish that awesomely so. His plan, His purpose is going to allow for, make possible the ability to have a great change from one period of time to another – and it could happen in absolutely no other way.

We learn a lot from God by how He does things.  We learn about the mind of God, the being of God, the wisdom of God by how He does things. It’s good then to ask why at times, why this, why that, because it can help you, lead you to answers if we question. Not to question God but to question why certain things are the way they are so that we can learn, so that we can understand knowing full well that God does everything in absolute perfection, far beyond our ability to grasp, so if He lets us begin to see some of those things that’s an awesome thing. God’s been doing a lot of that in recent time.

So, again here, we begin this process of change, a living change that takes place in our life, a lifelong change, if you will, but it begins in a (generally for most), in a particular way because there is a vast difference if you’re called out of the world and all of a sudden receive a way of life or told about a way of life and you have to make decisions as to what you’re going to do with it. It’s going to be a lot different though when this change takes place because it’s massive and it affects the whole world in a very profound way.

So this sermon today is entitled The Greatest Change.

So this period of time that we call the Millennium begins with great change as the world experiences what we will begin, which we will begin to produce, or it will begin to produce a real change in people’s thinking, and that’s important to understand, that because of how God is doing this what it’s doing is helping to produce a change in the way people think about things. That’s important because if they don’t begin to change their thinking then why would they change at all when Christ returns? So things have to be, for human beings, so bad that they will want to begin to think about something else.

It’s like after WWI. What did they try to do? League of Nations. They didn’t want another war like that. It was hideous; it was horrifying, the kinds of things that took place in the trenches. What a nightmare that was. If you’ve ever seen movies about it or documentaries about it, to have experienced that, to have lived that, and then the Spanish Flu that was right at that time period as well, that that helped to move around the world as well and kill more than the whole war did. It’s incredible what took place at that period of time. But it affected people’s thinking for a little while…not very long. That one didn’t work out.

I believe it was League of Nations right away, wasn’t it, right after that? Then WWII came along and what do they try to do? The United Nations so there are no other wars. How did that go? How does that work? How do nations work together like that? And you find out they can’t, they don’t. It’s really sick. But at least at the beginning there is an initial desire to do something in a different way and it takes something massive sometimes to cause people to stop and think, to address things, otherwise, they would rather not address it, they’d rather not get involved.

It’s just like the war when it began. There are nations that didn’t want to get involved. When we were in Jerusalem at one time we went through the Holocaust Museum and that was a very moving experience. When I first went into one section it was just filled with newspapers behind glass things throughout the area there. And I thought, man, this is going to be boring. Who wants to look at a bunch of newspapers hanging there? I didn’t understand the purpose at that point until I started reading some of the things that were there. A lot of it was filled with information, knowledge, things that were happening at a particular moment in time that revealed that there were a lot of people who knew what was happening. Nations knew what was happening to the Jewish people but they didn’t want to get involved; hundreds of thousands, millions being killed, slaughtered, and they didn’t care enough to get involved until basically it came to a point where they had to be forced into it.

What did it take the United States to finally get involved in it? Pearl Harbor. Finally, something happened that changed things and the thinking of Americans to finally step in and do something. But that’s the way it was with nation after nation. Some became conquered by the Germans and so forth, and the Japanese and things that they were doing. But as a whole, human nature is really vile. It really is. It’s so selfish. So it takes something drastic to change a people, to change a nation, to help them to focus or refocus on something different.

But now it’s going to be vastly different because it’s going to be so massive that finally when the truth is there in front of them it’s going to be a change that’s going to be able to be better dealt with. To me it’s a marvel to think about some of those things and why God is allowing mankind to come to a certain point. That’s why that point of one-third to me is profound too, because God allows a certain amount of destruction then He begins to intervene to stop it. That’s an amazing thing to understand. But He knows how far it has to go to really move people to a point where they will be humbled by what is taking place, to be so devastated and relying upon anything that they have ever thought about in times past. Religion? No one is there to save them. None of their prayers are helping them, yet God has a plan to step in and intervene at a point.

None of the nations are able to solve the problems and they’re just escalating the situation to where they’re getting ready for an all-out war. They’ve already started a massive nuclear war. It’s going to be a massive nuclear war. It’s the only way you can destroy a third of the earth. I don’t know if we can grasp that. That bomb I was talking about that Russia shot off in the late 60’s, blew up, it was so massive it destroyed buildings up to 35 miles away. Totally leveled them 35 miles away (if my memory serves me correctly). You put that in a middle of a place like Los Angeles or New York and most of it’s obliterated. I mean, totally obliterated.

We cannot grasp such things. What a horrifying thing that human beings have to experience something to that level to finally be humbled. It takes a lot to humble human beings. It takes a lot to humble us. We’re still fighting. We still have pride. We have pride here at the Feast of Tabernacles, because of what we are, that’s the way we are, and prayerfully, we’re all addressing it. Prayerfully, we’re all striving to change that when we see it. That’s the problem, sometimes we can’t see it. God is going to bring mankind to the point where he can see it powerfully so, mightily so, more than any other time in earth’s history.

Let’s turn over to Isaiah 2 here. I do want to read a few things just before that though. This period that we call the Millennium begins, again, that is going to cause a change in thinking, a new kind of thinking for mankind that will affect how technology is used. That, to me, is going to be an awesome thing. I mean, there are questions I have. I don’t know how we’re going to do it. I don’t know what we’re going to do. God’s going to have to show us. Christ is going to have to show us how to do what we need to accomplish to properly use the technology we have because mankind just doesn’t know, doesn’t know how to handle this now.

It’s going to affect how businesses function, how people live during the week and during the weekend. Everything is going to change. This is a drastic change from one way to another, whether people like it or not. You know, human beings resist change. They do. Human beings do not like change. Books…I think of one in particular that was really a good one (no, I won’t mention it), but there are massive changes that take place in life. Changes in companies, someone buys out a corporation and they come in with different changes and people resist it. People don’t want things to change. There are groups out here and spend millions and billions of dollars to lobby (lobbyists) because they don’t want things to change. Oh, well, I take that back. They do. They want it to become better for them. But they don’t want anything to move away from what they have become accustomed to. They would like to have more, oh, yes.

That’s the way human beings are. We’re really sick. But we’ve got to live through this to learn what we need to learn, to be able to receive what God is offering us. We have to be able to come to that point where we can see the need for what God is doing in our lives and embrace it.

It’s going to effect change in sports and sporting events. That’s not going to bother me too much. I don’t follow sports as a whole. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it’s just that I don’t follow it. But there are going to be some things that are going to be changed drastically in sports, some things that some people like and want. To what degree? I don’t know. I don’t have to worry about that. It’s not my job. (Probably will be now.)

Change in advertizing. Incredible! Fashion? That’s why sometimes I tell people we are the ones establishing the way it should be – in God’s Church. It’s not the world. We’re not to follow the way of the world. We don’t need to. But within moderation.

Entertainment. Some people are going to have some whiplashes on that one because that’s going to change…that’s going to change mightily.

Education. It needs to change mightily.

Housing, social media, the internet, it goes on and on and on. I so look forward to it. It’s going to effect change in all facets of food industry. There’ll be some big changes that need to be. So the list goes on and on.

So it’s a marvel that we’re able to see the only way that such a change can come upon the world and why it’s so needed. We’re blessed; God’s sharing that with us to understand. The world has no idea what’s coming. Well, some know that there’s going to be a war eventually. They know it’s inevitable, that there is a third world war. They know that there is going to be a time when nuclear weapons are going to be used. But people don’t want to dwell upon that, they don’t want to think about that. But there are governments; there are people who know that it’s coming.

God is bringing about the only way that such a change can come upon carnal, selfish human beings. Change from man’s way of doing things, man’s government—mankind’s government, I should say, because it includes men and women—mankind’s government, a total change, to God’s government.

It starts talking about some of this in Isaiah 2:1—The word of Isaiah, the son of Amos, what he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. Again, I love that word “Jerusalem.” It’s a compound word meaning that it’s "founded by God" and the other word "peace." So again, it’s “the City of Peace,” but it’s basically even more so something that God has founded; God established it and it’s something that comes from God. We as human beings ought to understand that because we try to accomplish some kind of peace, whatever that is in our definition, like the United Nations, and it doesn’t work and we can’t seem to learn from that. Even if you understood it you can’t get others to do it because they don’t want to, whatever produces peace. But again, it comes from God. God is the founder of it. He’s the one who establishes it. It only comes from His way of life, period.

So to me that’s a beautiful word “Jerusalem.” It means a lot. It’s something that should move us when we think about it, what God is bringing us.

Now, it shall come to pass in the last days… And so here is something, it’s just as we talked about yesterday, 3,300 years after Adam and Eve were put on the earth, give or take, right in that area – that long – and now much more is being given though they didn’t grasp it all. But they understood a certain aspect of it, that things are going to change in time, there is a Messiah coming, and there are going to be sweeping changes in time. Now, in most cases they could only see in their geographical area. There wasn’t this concept of something worldwide. But today, look at what the world has become.

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Eternal’s house shall be established, to be made firm, on the top of the mountains. Whether they grasped that this had something to do with government, as to how much, we don’t know. But we grasp that, God has given it to us to understand prophetically that the mountains have to do with governments, and it shows that God’s is going to be established above all, in essence. That’s what it’s talking about here.

…the mountain of the Eternal’s house shall be established on top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.  It’s going to be enforced, in that respect, because God’s taking charge of government. Christ and the 144,000 are taking control of all government on the earth. There is not going to be the option of any nation having their own government. Any who get together and try to do things on their own and they won’t listen to what they’re being told, well, they’re going to learn. It’s not going to take a long time and they’re going to learn that this isn’t going to be allowed, God isn’t going to tolerate it at all, period, whether human beings like it or not.

That’s what I marvel about in some of this. Sometimes it’s like, “Well, I don’t like that,” or whatever. You think, “Who cares what you like. You’re selfish. No wonder you don’t like it, you want something else for yourself, so get wise.”

That’s why I think about the Millennium and the Great White Throne. We’ve had this concept too much in times past that has even carried over into PKG at the beginning—I believe most of that is gone now—this utopia kind of world in the Millennium and the Great White Throne. It is not a utopian world. A utopian world isn’t real anyway. It’s a fake. It’s make-believe. It’s this fuzzy good feeling thing. You see people who do movies like that and you think, “Oh, this just makes me want to gag.” It’s like they’re just robotic and they have no feelings and no emotion and there is just all this love, “I love nature and… Oh, look at the butterfly.” I’m sorry. The world isn’t like that. Human beings aren’t like that and we’re not meant to be like that.

Many people shall come and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Eternal, to the house of God, the God of Jacob. Now, it doesn’t say how many, but there are going to be many compared to now in the world. There aren’t very many who care at all about hearing what God has to say, obviously, but in that world it’s going to be different. People are going to be sobered at the beginning especially, and listen. There are going to be many who see something that they want to hear more about, and as they begin to learn.

But I’ll tell you what, what we need to understand is there are going to be a whole lot of people throughout the Millennium who really don’t want God’s way of life. That may be hard for you to grasp and you to believe and you to latch on to. They’ll conform, many will conform, and there are going to be some who won’t conform and they’re going to resist it and God’s going to destroy them. During the Millennium there are going to be people who are going to be just flat destroyed because they don’t want this. God’s not going to allow rebellion. He’s not going to allow certain nations to have their own way for very long. If they don’t want to come up and obey God and do what God says He’ll give them some time and He’ll do some things to them in their own nations, in their own regions where they’re living, and if they don’t learn from that then He says He’s going to destroy them. Okay?

So do we think that it’s going to be this kind of utopia where everybody just walks around and just loves each other automatically? Not going to be. Human beings are human beings. People still aren’t going to get along. They’re still going to have arguments. They’re still going to have disputes. That’s not going to change. Do you know why I know that? Because we have it in God’s Church. Even with God’s spirit we can have disputes, we can have arguments, we can get our feelings hurt, we can be jealous, we can be envious, we can get mad at someone, we can get upset – all those stupid things that human beings do because of selfishness, because of these little funny feelings we have of self. Hope you understand what I’m saying.

And if we could see ourselves that way… See, I try to see myself that way, and any of those things, the more I can see that kind of attitude coming out then the more I’m going to fight it because I don’t want to be that way. I don’t want to be that way. It’s bad. It’s ugly. It stinks. I don’t want to be that way. So the more repulsed we are by that kind of thing the more we’re going to run away from it and strive to hold on to what God offers us.

So this concept, again, of the Millennium, to understand we’ve got our work cut out for us. We really do. There is going to be a lot of work.

So they’re going to go up to the house of Jacob. He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths. So masses, compared to now. I mean, there is no comparison to today and calling that people have and the fact that people’s ears are totally shut off. Because they can’t help it. They can’t come into the Church. They can’t come along anyway and they really can’t hear because they don’t have the ability to. Unless God draws them, does something to move people to hear. God has to do that and He has to work with an individual to draw them. But in the Millennium, in this great change that’s taking place, He’s going to be able to do that in a greater way at the beginning.

For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Eternal from Jerusalem. I so look forward to that. In writing some of this, I don’t know why, but this time around writing some of these things it just drives the point home even more so what this world is like and the change that has to take place and where we are in time. All the lies and the deception that exists out there – to know that there is coming a time pretty soon here now that all that’s going to be exposed for what it is. It’s going to be exposed. It’s so ugly, it really is. All the deceptions that are out there?

I think of the word “Jesus” alone; such a deception. It’s had a hold on God’s Church for a long, long time. But the more I see about it, the more I understand where it came from, the more I understand what some people did down there in the region of Rome in that part of the world, what they did with Latin and what they did with Greek. They messed around with both and they changed a lot of things. They had a purpose behind it. To see some of those things that took place and understand why, to understand this last kingdom, this last part of the statue of Nebuchadnezzar and what has happened for over 2,000 years. It’s been more than 2,000 years, that power that’s existed.

That last part of the statue from the legs on down to the feet and all the things that have happened and how it got its beginning, and some of the words that are used. The very name of Europe screams and cries out Babylon, Babylon, Babylon. It does. It screams out Babylon. You live here, I understand. Don’t be offended. I don’t care where we live. There is nothing great about that over there either. They’re all corrupt. They’re all bad. But there is a deep, deep, deep history here and it’s Babylon on steroids. But people don’t have any idea about it. They don’t understand what’s been passed down.

Like that snake on a pole. Something so simple that can be passed down through time that people hold on to. They don’t know where it came from. There are so many things within Europe that people don’t know where it came from. They don’t know how it got started and yet there is a power behind it. There’s been a power from the beginning behind it that has been nothing but that which is deception. It’s about deception and deceiving people and keeping people in darkness and blind to what’s true.

So to me I think what an awesome truth that God has given to us right at the end here now, to get that one cleaned up, to be freed of it. I truly feel so free of that, especially the more you know what it means and where it came from.

So again, we understand such a change in attitude and approach toward God does not come easily. It’s a difficult thing. We’re all different. I had to have a 4x4 smashed up the side of my head several times in a row within a few months time to help me come to a point where I’d be of a humble enough spirit to hear what God was going to give to me later on. It was not a fun time. It was hard to go through. If it hadn’t been I would not have listened.

Because I had heard Garner Ted Armstrong. I’d heard Herbert W. Armstrong on a radio. When I worked, going through college, I heard him in a grocery store where I worked for a while part-time to pay my way into college. Anyway, I heard that. Then when I went to the Laundromat (I don’t know what you call it over here, if you have such a thing, ever), but it’s where you can go and you have a washer and dryer, several of them in a place and you put your money in and you can go and do your own clothes. Plain Truth magazines all over the place. So whoever was there they had subscription to The Plain Truth magazines and there were a bunch of old ones. I’d pick it up and read it and think there are some sensible things here. But it didn’t move me. If I’d known there was religion behind it I wouldn’t have read it. At that time I wouldn’t have touched it. I wouldn’t have read it. I wouldn’t have cared. I did hate religion. I didn’t want anything to do with it, basically. I’d gotten to a point in time, had discussions with different people who felt they were religious and that wasn’t me. It wasn’t because I was living good. It was because I was living bad, okay? Spirit and so forth that I had, I just wasn’t going to have anything to do with it and so God knew how to work with me, how to get my attention. Just like He knows how to work with this whole world.

So if He has a purpose in calling us and something He’s going to do in us He’s going to do it if we’ll continue to listen, if we’ll embrace it. God knows how to do those things. Amazing. Sometimes it just takes a lot to get our attention so that we’ll start to listen when He’s ready to have us listen.

Isaiah 2:7. So before that change can take place God describes the condition of mankind that precedes this, the condition of the world today, obviously. Verse 7—Their land also is full of silver and gold. People can read that physically and say, well, no gold and silver out there. Well, I do too, so we have some silver and gold in here. But it’s talking about great wealth, symbolism for great wealth. Incredible wealth, especially toward the end-time, especially in the western world. Incredible wealth. If we could be transported back in time, any time all the way up through, and frankly even go to some other nations today, we would see how great of wealth we really have, how blessed we really are. Sometimes it’s hard for us to grasp that.

We live greater than any king ever lived in the Old Testament. You live a more plush life than any king ever lived in the Old Testament. Okay? If they wanted to go someplace very far they didn’t have air conditioning, they didn’t have heating in their vehicle. They didn’t have glass to keep the dust from coming in. They didn’t have anything to protect them, as a whole, from the smell that came in from what was pulling them, you know, on occasion when they would, you know. We do. We have horses – horsepower – and we don’t have all the bad stuff that goes with it. Incredible, how blessed we are.

But do we really see that? Do we really grasp that? Are we appreciative? How do we think about such things? Do we grasp how incredibly blessed we are? Because generally we tend to think we need more to take care of certain things, certain bills, and so forth, and yes, that’s what makes the world goes around, to pay your electricity and everything else. But within that how incredibly blessed are we that we have even the ability to do that and have it?

A room like this? Lighting? They didn’t have this! How do you think they lived? You just go visit a palace…not a palace but an old castle somewhere and you realize this wasn’t very comfortable. They didn’t have “My Pillow.” For those of you in the States you know what that is. There is a pillow that this fellow that’s out in Minnesota, he’s sold all over the United States, and it’s called “My Pillow.” So I have “My Pillow.” Laura has “My Pillow,” too. Not mine, hers, but it’s called “My Pillow.” We roll them up and we put them in our suitcase because they can roll up and tight and you can stick it in your suitcase, band it together, get where you’re going, fluff it out, man, and it holds its place. So it helps our sleep.

So sometimes little things, big things, it doesn’t matter. To get in a jet? I remember reading Mr. Armstrong’s autobiography and talking about how excited he was when he was able to go from California to New York. Took a long time, several stops along the way to fly like that, but it was so exciting to them at that time. I think today if we had to do that, if I had to go out there. I don’t even like a layover I’m so spoiled. I really didn’t like it when Cincinnati was the hub for Delta and they merged with Northwest and then it wasn’t a hub anymore. They took it elsewhere. So have to go elsewhere now to get that second flight sometimes for long distances. Spoiled!

So to do what we do today, it’s incredible. People from Australia here, South Africa, from all over the world, and you think, how incredible it is we can do something like this. The world has never known such a thing. So “their land is full of silver and gold”…and a lot of it. Sometimes we need to understand that so that we’ll appreciate it more and thank God for the age we live in. I, candidly, wouldn’t want to have lived in the 1500’s or any time.

…and there is no end to their treasures. Technology. Corporations. Travel. Cities. Industry. Especially in the western world there are treasures. Wow, there is so much.

…their land is also full of horses, used symbolically of power, of work. Full of it everywhere you look. Incredible. …neither is there any end of their chariots. Autos, trucks, trains, construction equipment, planes, on and on it goes. A marvel.

…their land is also full of idols. Some of those are the idols of mankind depending on how they think. But sadly, they can become that. “Their land is full of idols.” It has more to do with man’s ways, what man has built, what man worships. Amazing. They worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made. It’s what we do. We marvel at ourselves. All you have to do is give someone a stick and put a camera on the end of it. “I marvel! Look at me! I want to go home and look at me some more, because that’s why I’m doing all this. Because I marvel at myself. Whooo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” I’m sorry, but I can’t help that.

But every once in a while you see someone, and someone was telling me the other day how someone was doing that. In an airport. Someone nudged someone else to look at it, but this woman came up and put some stuff on the bar beside them, bar area. They were just getting a drink, okay, and this woman backs up and she starts doing these poses with the camera there, that’s there, and just doing all kinds of poses. There wasn’t even a good background to it all! In the Cincinnati airport! They said if they’d moved over just a little bit at least they’d have this skeleton of a whatever it was. There are some prehistoric type of skeletons all the way through that, the Cincinnati airport, replicas of things. They said if they just moved over at least they’d have that in the background you know, but they didn’t even have a good background. She didn’t need one because she’s good. Who’s going to look at the background with her? Seriously! That’s how people think.

That’s just exaggerated then in everything else we do in life. We love ourselves. We love what we do and we worship it. The mind is sick. It truly is.

…that which their own fingers have made, and the mean/average person, just the normal person, bows down, and the great men, those who have power and means, humble themselves, in other words, before them, before what they have done, therefore, do not forgive them. Because they’re not seeking repentance. They’re just living at the height of their haughtiness and pride and they will not listen to God. It doesn’t matter what God does.

That’s why I love some of the things that God says in scripture over and over again, some of the parables. You know, God sent some of His prophets, and how did they treat them? Horrible! A lot of them were killed, imprisoned. I think of one that was put in a pit, you know, with water in it, whatever it was, for a period of time, maybe worse, for a long, long time. You think, the hideous things that human beings can do to other human beings.

Then on it goes and then it goes on with the story, “And then I sent My own Son. Surely they’ll listen to him.” What did they do? It’s just the way of the world, isn’t it? What a sad, sad thing. All people, the Jewish people who knew that a Messiah was coming, and to see someone who was doing some of the things that he was, healing people, even raising from the dead, and you think surely in a carnal world someone would take note that no one has that power unless it comes from God, so surely they must be from God. But no, that’s how great pride is. That’s how deep pride is embedded in us.

Verse 10—Enter into the rock, and hide in the dust for fear of the Eternal and for the glory of His majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled. I love that. That is so needed. The haughtiness that’s in this world, the haughtiness in government, the haughtiness in industry, and on and on it goes, the haughtiness of people to do the things they do for the sake of self and wealth and to pollute the planet like they are.

This planet, it’s horrible, as we heard earlier on, what mankind is doing to this earth without blowing up some nuclear weapons. We are slowly destroying it anyway and if this didn’t speed up the process we would destroy ourselves.

The lofty looks of mankind shall be humbled and the haughtiness of mankind shall be bowed down, and the Eternal alone shall be exalted in that day. God is going to see to it, finally, whether people like it or not, and many aren’t. Who cares! We don’t deserve the life we have but a loving God gave it to us. He did! What rights do we have? Only what God gives to us. The right to live. So how are we going to use it, our way or God’s way? Well, we use it our way.

For the day of the Eternal of hosts shall come upon every one who is proud and lofty. It won’t come upon God’s Church because that change has already taken place. That process of battling against haughtiness and pride has already begun. It’s already in the works. God will intervene and help people in His Church to come through the things that are ahead. But others in the world, not so, because they’re going to be humbled. …and upon every one who is lifted up; and they shall be brought low, really low.

So the process of humbling mankind is a time of worldwide sorrow, worldwide, of suffering. There is not a nation that’s going to escape what’s coming. Not one nation. I don’t care where it is in the world, doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Every nation in the world is going to be affected by what takes place. Suffering very great tribulation for the period it lasts. And thank God it isn’t going to be all that long. Thankfully it’s going to be for, indeed, a short time.

Some of this as we’ve looked at in times past, speaking of the Day of the Lord or the Eternal when God intervenes. And indeed, there are going to be things that God is going to do, but not on the same plane that we’d thought. Some of these things that we had thought in times past, it’s just like what we used to think about certain things going to happen in the Millennium and ideas about the Millennium that really applied to the Great White Throne period when people are resurrected, the guarantee of safety and life and a child being able to put its hand down into a hole of a snake, a poisonous snake, and not have to worry. A parent doesn’t have to worry. They’re going to be protected. On and on it goes.

There were times when we applied those things to the Millennium. And not so. So we have learned that there is a separation of what God is doing from the time of the Millennium and how He deals with it and how He deals with and works with things in the Great White Throne. There is another period of time coming that is, indeed, in the Last Great Day when He gives mankind an opportunity to learn and grow.

But at the end of the Last Great Day? I marvel at that one. Because you think of all who are resurrected, the billions who are resurrected in the Great White Throne. It says when Satan is let loose he gathers together to battle. They won’t be able to have a battle because God’s never going to allow war, a battle, every to exist again after what happens when Christ returns.

But that’s his purpose, to round them up, to gather them together, and it says they’re as the sand of the sea in number. They lived during the Great White Throne, during that hundred year period and some may have lived during the Millennium, too, who are given opportunity in the Great White Throne.

God has also made it clear that He is not revealing the length of time of this period, how long it’ll last, and so we really don’t know. Again, when I did the sermon it was before writing some of the book, and so there are just some things we don’t know that God hasn’t fully shown. He’s shown a lot of things leading up to this period of time and what is going to happen during the Millennium, but I’ve made comment about this many, many a time, that I know there has to be, and there is, a lot in this book about that last hundred years that hasn’t been revealed yet. We don’t know it yet because it’s not God’s purpose. That’s not the focus right now.

He gives us a little bit more understanding so we can piece everything together and make a distinction between the Millennium and the Great White Throne and the order of some things and to better understand some of the things that are going to happen as Christ returns that we haven’t fully grasped. God is being merciful to us and helping to reveal some of those things in a clearer way, but there is a huge distinction between the two periods of time.

But to grasp that there are going to be possibly billions of people, as the sand of the sea, who don’t want God’s way of life after one hundred years? …who are going to be destroyed? We think it’s going to be a utopia? Not everyone wants God’s way of life. They don’t want it. We’ve had many people in God’s Church who get to a point where they really don’t want that. They deceive themselves into thinking that, well, I believe something else or I don’t think that should be there so I’m going to go over here. I think of the one person one time (this pictures it all), when it came out that not everyone was going to be able to be a part of the 144,000 that was in the Church at that point in time and it was more than he could take. “I’m going to go over to this group over here. I can be,” in that group, “I can be a part of the 144,000, okay?!” You think, how insane.

That’s the way we are as human beings. Because we’ve had a lot of people leave God’s Church over time. If a third of the angelic realm who were spirit, composed of spirit, could turn against God, do you think carnal, selfish, already selfish human beings are all going to accept God when Christ returns? Do you think they’re all going to choose God once they’re resurrected? All those who have lived deep in Babylon, deep in a certain kind of religion or others kinds of religion, certain ideas that people have, do you think they’re automatically going to embrace something that has been so deeply embedded in them all their life and all of a sudden say, “Oh, yeah, I love that change. I love that truth!” They aren’t! They’re going to choose they don’t want it.

It will be as the sand of the sea just like God said. So when we think it’s going to be hunky dory, peachy keen, a utopia, it’s not. God is going to enforce government and He’s going to enforce protection and so forth, but there are going to be people who are really bad who don’t want to change and when Satan is let loose and that deception goes out with the power that he has, that we do not grasp, to destroy, to destruction, to feeling this isn’t fair, this isn’t right, God isn’t fair, I deserve something better, I deserve something else, and just like a great big vacuum cleaner to get them altogether, clean it all up finally. Then when that’s done all that exists is Elohim and the angelic realm that’s been faithful to God for ever how long – billions of years. Awesome plan that God has!

So I’m glad that God continues to help refine things and helps us to have a better balance of things, to see things for what they are, to get rid of things that sometimes were just nonsensical, this concept without thinking it through, of going up and tapping someone on the shoulder in the Millennium and saying, “No, this is not the way. Here, this is the way, walk you in it.” It’s just so unreal and so fake, so Protestant in thought. That kind of a mind we have to get rid of because it’s false, it’s not true, it’s not right, it’s not sound.

Isaiah 13:6—Says, Cry out, as to wail, crying out in pain and agony, for the day of the Eternal is at hand; it will come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore, all hands will be feeble (weak), every one’s heart will melt. So it’s going to be an awesome… not an awesome, but an incredible time of… I don’t even know how to describe it. Horrifying time, if you will, but massive in what takes place. …they will be afraid, “dismayed” is what the word means; much pain and agony will take hold of them. Because you think of how spoiled the western world is and what it’s going to be like.

What’s it going to be like when the first nation begins to experience some of these things? The U.S. – it’s the first to fall. It’s the first to fall. To understand that there are going to be nuclear weapons used. It will be a result of nuclear weapons. It’s not going to be a result of some kind of famine or volcanoes or anything else. It’s going to be what man has done to himself, and when certain things begin to happen and whether it be one EMP or two or three across the U.S., no electricity. Most cars won’t drive. Most vehicles won’t drive. Planes won’t fly. Trains won’t run. Water won’t run. You can’t get gas and you don’t have a car unless you have one of those that won’t be affected by it. But where would you go anyway? Incredible how God’s going to humble people.

Can you imagine? I think of the one thing alone – when people can’t use social media. I’m serious. We can laugh a little bit at it, but seriously, there are going to be some people who just kind of crack up when they just can’t have their social media anymore and they can’t share things anymore and they can’t spend all that time you know, just in this kind of a daze and glued to something. You think, get a life! How sad. How pathetic to be so glued to something you have to be a prisoner to it.

Even our cell phones today, it’s like we’re prisoner to the thing. It goes off and it goes off at any time and you have to have controls in it so it doesn’t go off while you’re sleeping, and different things that have to take place. I don’t want email notifications while I’m sleeping. All these things you have to do to regulate this electronic media type of life we live in.

When people are totally cut off from that there’s going to be some suffering in the mind. You think people today have a hard thing when in universities they have to have these rooms to go to because they can’t deal with life. Seriously! How sick is that that people can’t even deal with normal things in life they’re so frail! Why? Where does that come from that people can’t function right, they can’t think right and are so messed up by different things that happen around them? It’s a powerful world that we live in and what’s taken place and what Satan has done with technology.

So, absolutely, when people can’t have telephone calls coming in anymore? Because that’s going to go as soon as those things go off. No towers, no ability. Probably fried itself anyway and not able to use it if they do get the cell towers back. All these things are going to cripple for a period of time, whatever that period is, until something else happens. How are people going to react to that?

There’s a younger generation, college age on down, they’re going to have a horrifying fit. They’re not going to know what to do. To talk to others? What a novel idea! To have conversation in a different kind of way?

So it’s incredible the age we live in and how dependant the world has become to certain things and how much of a shock this is going to be when it takes place. No groceries to be had. There is nothing there. How do you get back and forth? If you live a long way away you can’t take the train, you can’t take the bus, you can’t take the car unless you have one of these old ones with a solenoid and some of those things that might work, you know, the old spark plug and solenoid thing and whatever. Some of those may work but most modern technology and everything?

“Cry out” is to wail. Well, they’re going to be the first to wail. Some of them are going to be the first to wail the loudest because they just can’t take it. What do we do? Can’t go anywhere. I’ll tell you what, to know fear to that level? The world had never experienced it. The world has never been so pampered and blessed with so much. So when something like that happens and it’s all gone, taken away, it’s harder on the mind to deal with it. People in third world countries that don’t have it, it’s not going to hurt them. It’s not going to hurt their thinking. It doesn’t affect their life too much. They don’t have supermarkets in a lot of places like that anyway. That isn’t how they gather their food in a lot of places, how they go about it. They’re going to do far better off than some in western world at that time for a period.

…therefore, all hands will be feeble (weak), everyone’s heart will melt. And they will be dismayed or afraid…and both, frankly; much pain and agony will take hold of them. See, it’s in the mind. A lot of pain and agony in the mind. If you can’t deal with things in life right now on a social plane and you have to have these safe rooms to go to, and all these animals now they’re carrying on planes, and all these things that are taking place, how are you going to function when this happens? It’s going to be hard.

…they will be in pain discomfort. This is a word that means “to writhe,” like twisting and moving in the way someone may be in labor and it just hurts and you can’t get comfortable, you can’t get away from it, it’s just there. That’s what this is going to be like, as it says, as a woman in childbirth.

…they will look aghast at one another; their faces will be like flames, or the faces of flame is how the word is translated here for whatever that means, and I’m not sure.

Behold, the day of the Eternal does come, and it is cruel to endure with both fury and burning fierceness as it lays the land desolate. Well, again, to understand that most of this is what God allows. God just says okay; let it be, let it happen. It’s going to happen eventually, but God’s controlling the timing of it.

Please understand that the world going into WWIII is going to happen no matter what happens on earth. If God didn’t intervene, if God didn’t do anything with timing, if God just left hands off there is going to be a third world war and it would be cataclysmic. Okay? That’s coming. Just because of human beings. That’s our nature. That’s the way we are.

But there is a being that God is going to allow at a specific moment at time to do what he does best, and that’s like in the resurrections of the Roman Empire throughout time, and now the resurrection of Europe again one more time and the rest of the world is going to be allowed in a speedy fashion, in a timely fashion to do it then. It’s to speed up the process. It’s to help create a control, if you will, so it’s not out of control.

In other words, God has the control of it so that when 1/3 is gone then He intervenes, timely, exactly; everything is timed perfectly to exact days. We just don’t know exactly what they are yet. We know some of them; we just don’t know the year.

Again here, talking about these things that are going to come to pass and the land is going to be desolate. Mankind is doing that to himself, but God is allowing it and God is bringing it to a head for a purpose.

He shall destroy its sinners out of it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light. Well, why not? Because there are going to be nuclear weapons used and there will be that which is, to whatever degree in different parts of the world that begins to circle the earth just like a volcano does when it erupts and goes up in the atmosphere and that haze stays up there.

When Mount St. Helens went off, we lived in Houston, Texas at the time; we had ash, we had dust settle on vehicles, all over the cars everywhere there in the Houston, Texas area. That’s a long way away. What about nuclear weapons that are going to cast things even higher into the atmosphere, because they are, much higher, and how far they will carry and how long they will stay. It affects everything. It affects weather immediately. It affects temperatures immediately. Everything!

So when you can’t see through the atmosphere because of those things… I’m just telling you realistic things. They’re just realistic things that we have to face and understand this is going to happen. It helps us to be better prepared in our thinking. Because when it happens to the world their thinking is not being prepared for this. They’re not thinking about it.

Just like when the wars have always happened, WWII, people weren’t prepared for it. But when it happens they did it, they got involved, then they got involved. This one is much, much different because of its power and because of the speed of things happening. The reality of the ability to think about it or to deal with it up here is important.

For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light. Well, they’re giving light, and they will never stop giving their light, in that respect, as far as this earth is concerned right now, but you can’t see it. So they’re “not giving their light,” it’s not coming through. You can’t see the moon like you did before. You’re not going to be able to see the sun like you did before. Some light is going to come through in some areas more than others but some areas it’s going to be darker than others just because of what’s in the atmosphere and how it moves.

…the sun will be darkened in its rising, and the moon will not shine forth its light. I will punish the world for its evil. He could stop that third world war. He could prevent it from happening. But a loving God is not going to do that because there—this is something we have to understand with all of our being—there is no other way to most effectively change from one era to another than the very one and way that God is doing it. To be able to humble mankind so that they will finally start listening when God offers His spirit.

It’s like the four by four up against the forehead – you have to be hit again and again and again sometimes to finally say, “Okay. I’m ready to listen,” and when God pours out His spirit as He does that and He’s going to do on the earth then people are going to be able to see things and understand things in a way that they never could before. They never had the opportunity yet. But you have to become humbled first to receive God. God can’t work with pride and haughtiness. That’s why we have to be humbled first when we’re called. We have to come to a point where we’ll listen, and if we won’t listen then He can’t work with us no matter how we hear it, whether it be through a magazine, whether it be through a telecast, whether it be through whatever it might be.

So again, I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. I will put an end to the arrogance of the pride and lay low the haughtiness of the mighty. What a horrible thing that the world has to suffer so much to finally begin to acknowledge “I was created. I’m a created being. The Great God of the universe has placed me here. He’s given me every opportunity, every blessing of life just to experience a physical life, but He wants to give me more.” You know, just the blessing of physical life, whatever life you live, depending on how you live it, if you live it well, if you live it right, you’re exceedingly blessed. What an incredible thing that you had a moment in time and if there was no more. It could have been that way but that’s not the way God is. That’s not God’s purpose in His creation. It’s to give us age-lasting life, everlasting life in peace, in unity and harmony with Him.

So again, incredible changes that going to take place, the greatest changes ever known by mankind so that we can finally have real happiness, true ability to rejoice over things that are right and just and good, and not over the things that human beings tend to like and enjoy. You know, the tailgate parties. “Let’s go to the football game…” Now, some of you don’t know what this is. And all these vehicles out there and they spend, sometimes, a lot of money and they get their early. It’s pretty much a lot of different kinds of sports, it doesn’t matter. But it’s party time! Isn’t it that way here?

I mean, where were we? Eindhoven? There was some kind of game over there. Or maybe it was in Rotterdam on the way down here and these people going around… Was it Ireland? I figure with all the green and the way they were talking with this English. Now, I’m not picking on the Irish, they just happened to be in Rotterdam at the time. I want you to know they were partying, young and old alike, it doesn’t matter the age. What is it, so many sheets into the wind? Whatever it is type of expression, meaning they were having fun, drunker than drunk can be but they were having fun and obnoxious at times and obnoxious to some other people at times. I’m not picking on the Irish. They just happened to be there. It doesn’t matter what teams they are, people have these huge parties, incredible parties. It’s a time to party.

Someone was talking to me the other day about hockey. I don’t know how we got in the conversation, but somewhere that I was we were talking about hockey. I remember living up in Pennsylvania for a time and an individual invited me over to see the Sabres and the Pittsburg Penguins play a game, a match one time. They get pretty rowdy out there on the ice. They knock teeth out sometimes and worse. A lot of shoving up against the walls and the more people can fly up against the walls and be thrown up there against the glass and plastered, and so the more people like it, “Oh, ho, ho, yeah!” and others hate it if it happens, depending on who it is.

Then fights break out in the audience. Now, that, I was dumbfounded by that one. I had to fight against enjoying it a little bit, too. But anyway. I thought, this is typical human nature. Look at this. Those fools are down there beating each other up. How dumb can that be, you know?

At different places around the audience throughout the match there are people getting in brawls and fights with each other. Beer is flowing well in there. They sell a lot of beer at that time.

So, anyway, the point being is think about the way we are as human beings and the way we do things and how people party and rejoice in the things they rejoice in. It’s going to have to change, isn’t it? Because the attitude of people is going to change. They’re going to realize that no, there is a certain limit of drinks in a day or even in an evening that a person can enjoy, and beyond that you shouldn’t do it.

There are some things that just aren’t good for the human body let alone the human mind. They really aren’t. There are just some things that aren’t good for us as human beings and they tend to loosen this tongue thing too much and people will say and do things that are really bad when they’re “free” to do so. Because they might have had a measure of holding back to that point, but at that point in time they just let it out, you know, “Who cares…” and they don’t have any control of themselves. They will say things and do things to others. And you think, in God’s way of life, in the Church you can’t do that and so the world is going to change and be shown how to change in those things.

So the same things we teach in the Church will be obviously taught in the world later. But you know what? There are going to be people who do their own thing. They are. There are going to be people who just want to do their own thing: “Eh, what day is it?”

Zechariah 14. Can you imagine the world finally being taught—not that everyone is going to do it…no more than the Church has always done it. There have always been problems and difficulties in God’s Church because of carnal human nature. There will be in the Millennium as well. But for the majority, the vast majority to receive and accept and embrace God’s way of life, the world is going to be so changed.

That’s where the, if you want to call it peer pressure, what people think, because they tend to think that way, they’re going to be able to more easily conform now to something good because they’re going to want to because just like what happens in the Body. But for the world to do that that’s going to be an awesome thing. Because it’s going to be a much more pleasant world, obviously, much better world.

Zechariah 14:16—And it shall come to pass, that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Eternal of hosts, and keep the Feast of Tabernacles. Beautiful! So again here, talking about what’s going to be, the truth that’s going to be out there and nations are going to come up. In other words, all peoples around the world, they’re going to begin to learn and people are going to keep, learn how to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. Like we do, coming together around the world. Can’t imagine that. Awesome!

And it shall be, that whoever will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King… This doesn’t mean the city itself, okay? It’s wherever, we understand, God has placed His name, where God’s government is, where holy Jerusalem will be, Mount Zion will be, because they will be in these different areas, okay, the 144,000 as a whole, throughout the world. That’s how God does things. That’s how He’s going to do things.

It’s not going to be left to mankind to do how they want to do it. They’re going to be shown this is where we’re going to do it. People aren’t going to come up with their own ideas how something should be done. No, it’s going to have to be done a certain way.

And it shall be that whosoever will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the Eternal of hosts, even unto them there shall be no rain. Think it’s going to happen? Absolutely. That’s why He says it. He knows what human beings are like. He knows what people will do. There will be people who won’t obey. There will be people who want to hold on to their past or to something else, whatever it is.

And if the family of Egypt will not go up, and they won’t come up to worship at the Feast of Tabernacles, who have no rain, there shall be the plague. Okay, you want to keep being stubborn and still not come up? So another year has passed, another two years has passed and they still don’t want to come up? Okay. This is a word used in association with death, to destroy, okay, in Hebrew. So when it talks about a plague this isn’t just catching the measles or the chicken pox or something like that. It’s something that can kill and destroy. It’s what it’s about.

...so there shall be the plague, wherewith the Eternal will smite/strike down the heathen who don’t come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt… Now, “Egypt,” the term “Egypt” is being used not because it’s that location but because it symbolizes something, of what Egypt was like and an attitude and a spirit. Just like “Assyria” we’ve talked about and “Babylon” and so forth. These all have symbolism and meaning. It’s not a specific location.

This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all nations who do not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. So, it’s your choice but you’re going to have repercussions of it.

That’s why I marvel as I’m going through some of these things right now and focusing upon, writing right at this point here, when Satan is let loose for one more time at the end of the hundred years and what he does, and how as the sand of the sea people are gathered together, and in a perverted, distorted way, to think that they can battle against God.

But they’ve all been told through a period of time “If you don’t choose God’s way of life,” what is going to be taught? “…you die. You’re not going to have age-lasting life, everlasting life given to you. If you don’t choose My way then this is it. The second life, if that’s all you want, then so be it, if you want your way so much.” So they’re going to have heard these things over and over again throughout the hundred years and they’re still going to do it.

That’s hard to grasp sometimes, the depth of the haughtiness and pride of human beings. What goes on in the mind that thinks that way? Well, you can’t understand that because it’s not sound.

It’s like psychologists trying to understand why people do dumb, and stupid, and weird, and crazy, and insane things. “And well, maybe it was when they were first born and they were given a bottle right away. They didn’t have the proper love, and affection, and help of nurturing…” I’m sorry, but there are dumb things like that out there in this world.

Isaiah 65. I want to read something I put in my notes here: So after having looked at something like this, again, what will now be stated has been mentioned in the past, but we need to understand that the Millennium, again, is not a utopia. I’ve said that over and over again. So we need to understand why. The more we can think about this in this respect and pause and consider it the better we’re going to understand why things have to happen in this end-time the way they do. It’s all about haughtiness and pride. It’s all about human nature and how deep it really is embedded in the human mind. That’s why it’s such an incredible battle for us to fight unless we really, really hate it. The more we hate it, the less of it you will have.

So the nature of man doesn’t change throughout the Millennium. It doesn’t change throughout the Great White Throne. But there is a change in beginning of attitudes so that God can work with people in a massive way. That’s what’s needed, just like the desire to have a United Nations, except this is going to make that look puny.

There is going to be a desire to never, ever, ever, ever see or experience anything like this ever again on earth. To understand what mankind can do to himself, to be shocked into that reality, though you should be able to see it ahead of time, that they couldn’t but now it’s all around them, death everywhere. A third? Third of families…or more…or less in some places, but we’re talking about a third around the world.

So we have this period of time, speaking of the Feast of Tabernacles that we’re picturing here and the Last Great Day that follows that are connected together, a beautiful picture that God gives to us.

Again, to grasp hold of what God is wanting to lead us to. He wants to give us peace. He wants to give us happiness. He wants to give us the ability to enjoy things in life around us in a right way because man’s way isn’t the right way of being able to enjoy things. It’s not real enjoyment. It’s always grasping for something that really doesn’t fulfill. It’s that breath. You just can’t grab a hold of it. It doesn’t last very long.

God’s way lasts and it grows, and it increases, and what God builds, what God constructs, what we’re able to be a part of, when it’s in us, does the same thing. So things are fulfilling, they’re genuine and they’re true. Not like the world where it is like always wanting something more. Like I mentioned about the roller coaster, give me a bigger one, a faster one, you know, whatever it might be in life. That’s the way we are.

But in God’s world and God’s way we learn to be deeply happy and satisfied and thankful for everything we have and we rejoice in what God is doing and our part in it. Totally opposite from each other.

Isaiah 65:17—For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth. And the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind. So again, what an incredible thing, that which is in the past, getting so far away from it that it begins to leave our thinking. It doesn’t affect our lives anymore. It doesn’t hurt us because of what God has given to us. The farther we go into that plan the more awesome it becomes.

I couldn’t help thinking about that first sermon, about everything that’s out there, about what Mr. Armstrong wrote. It’s all there for a purpose. There are things we cannot comprehend and grasp about God’s plan and how we’re going to work in the Family of God, in Elohim, billions in Elohim and what will do then. It’s all out there for a purpose and for a reason.

So it hasn’t been shown to us what that is by any measure and it’s going to be far above and beyond anything we could ever think of. But rewarding? Awesome! More than we can grasp? Yes.

For I create new heavens and a new earth. And the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create. So we’re just at the beginning of creation. We are ourselves a part of that creation, the most important part of that creation because it goes on in us right now. It’s ongoing right now in us.

I marvel at how God created and made Adam and Eve in that one day, and then us, He’s molding and fashioning in us… He did that. He molded and fashioned and brought together physical elements to create a living, breathing being. Then He takes us and works with us 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 years, whatever it is, to mold and fashion within us on a continuing ongoing basis a different mind, a transformation in the way we think. It’s a creation, something that He’s molding and fashioning on a spirit realm. Not on a physical realm. Adam and Eve were created on a physical realm, on a physical plane, and did it one day, in a part of a day. Us? It takes a long time.

So to understand that that’s what God is doing with each one of us, molding and fashioning in a creative spirit way. When He created angelic beings – right away. It wasn’t done over long periods of time. It was just right away.

We’re different. We’re a part of Elohim and what He’s doing in us is a marvel beyond our ability to really grasp and comprehend it. But we should strive to marvel and grasp a hold of part of it as much as we can. To grasp that part, we are an ongoing creation of God, awesome! His creation never stopped in the beginning and this is the most important part of all the creation of God – us, and those who have gone before us, and those who will come after us who will become a part of that God Family. Incredible, what God is doing, personally involved in doing it. He has to do it.

We can’t understand that kind of power, and might, and being. Then to think we want our own way and that He doesn’t know what’s best for us? He doesn’t know what makes us the most fulfilled and happiest that we can be, to be able to rejoice? What incredible deception of the human carnality, the human mind.

So be glad and rejoice in that which I create. Behold, I create Jerusalem. He’s the foundation of it and He’s the founder of it, of peace. And to have peace? I love peace. I don’t like it when drama pops up because it’s the opposite of peace. I’ve learned to hate it.

You know where I learned to hate it the most? My three years hiatus. I never knew men could have so much drama in a confined location. The confinement brought it out even more. I truly learned to hate and loathe drama while I was there more than I could probably any other way. So I’ve been able to give sermons on it in a way that I probably could not do in any other way. I’ve learned to love peace even more so.

Amazing what you can go through in life to have things embedded in your mind in a greater way that you don’t think about and don’t grasp sometimes. Then later on we’re able to look back and think, “Now I understand. I see even more clearly.”

Grown men who ought to know better, who have no comprehension of how to get along. Well, that shouldn’t be a surprise there, shouldn’t it? But that just accentuates it. It makes it clearer. It was every day…every day! That’s why I was so glad we could go out to the car pool, get a vehicle, a truck, whatever it was, and go out to a place by a river where we worked. We had some houses we worked on. I worked in the carpenter area. So we had houses out there we’d work on, remodeling and so forth, and I loved it because it got away from all the drama. Truly, it was peace to be away from all that. The only time I experienced drama out there was one of the guys if they got to a point where it was starting to get to them or something happened to them where they brought some drama with them from the camp and then look out. You just keep your distance and listen to the country music that I had more of a diet of than I have in my whole life because there was one guy on the crew that he loved country music.

I create Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy. That’s why it’s a joy when God’s Church doesn’t have drama. For me, it’s a joy. I rejoice in that.

I think of Mr. Armstrong and I understand that more deeply now in what he was saying that I didn’t really grasp to the depth I do today, of what he used to say at the Feast of Tabernacles when he would quote some of those scriptures and talk about the oil that would come down Aaron’s beard even, and he’d talk about anointing and how good it is, basically, for brethren to dwell together in peace, and the harmony, and the things he talked about, and unity that is such a beautiful thing when God’s people live that way.

But there is something beautiful about that when there is that peace and harmony that exists and he would talk about those things. I think every Feast whenever we saw him it was like hearing him and seeing him talk about some of those things. But it meant a lot to him and you can tell that, and so it does. You get a particular vision of something, of what God’s doing, and you see how human beings resist that.

Today especially, in God’s Church, I didn’t realize the battles he had within the ministry. Had no idea. My comprehension, my thought was they’re all faithful, they’re all doing what He desires and this is a great Church. And it is; God’s Church is a great Church for those who are yielding to God. But the portion that isn’t, it’s not so great. We’ve seen that then through time. We’ve seen the battles, the shaking, the earthquake type things spiritually.

So again here, to marvel at that, of what a beautiful thing it is when people have nothing against each other. How long can you live that way? Because even when we’re close together there are already things that have happened at this Feast. I’m not going to talk about it. In the scheme of things they’re not that great. But they happen. People have certain bump in here and there and a certain conflict, a little level or whatever it might be, and sometimes we just don’t catch it quickly enough, and things that happen where people get upset about certain things, whatever it might be. It’s happened.

If it hasn’t happened to any of you or you haven’t heard of any of it you are a unique cookie. No laughter. Hmmm. Think, “What’s he talking about?” If you don’t know then maybe that’s a blessing too. But things don’t escape me. I pick them up quite rapidly for a purpose and for a reason.

But again, we have them; it exists in our life. It’s our battle. But what a beautiful thing when there is absolute peace, when no one has any bad feeling toward somebody else, when someone hasn’t said something stupid to someone else, when someone else hasn’t blurted out something that they should have kept back, and if we can just keep this under control then, if we can just keep our attitudes in check and not become offended by what someone might do or think that they did.

What a beautiful thing when we can live in peace. The only way that happens is when each one of us is working at peace. That’s what God shows us. We have to be peace makers. You can’t make someone else be a peace maker. It starts with you. The more you’re a peace maker, candidly, the more you can handle those things when they happen, the more you can deal with them when they happen.

And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and a joy of My people: and the voice of weeping shall no more be heard in her, nor the voice of crying. To me that’s the worst sometimes, when things happen, when things flare up, when drama gets to a point where it hurts people so much that there is that hurt, been hurt, been betrayed, been whatever the feeling is and emotion sometimes. That’s a horrible thing.

Zephaniah 1:14—The great day of the Eternal is near, it is near, and mightily, it is swiftly moving closer as the sound of the day of the Eternal. The mighty shall cry out in bitterness. That day is a day of fury, a day of trouble and distress, a day of waste and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness. Well, we know what that is. We know what creates those things – literal, physical things.

It is the day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers. Against, in other words, all that man yet has that stands against God. So much is going to be destroyed.

And I will bring distress upon men, and they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Eternal. And their blood shall be poured out as the dust, and their flesh as the dung, in other words, as human waste. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Eternal’s fury. It’s referring to the execution of His judgment. That’s what it’s about. It’s a time of the execution of judgment.

So there are different periods of execution of judgment that God describes in scripture. The greatest one that’s ever happened on the earth will happen soon. That’s the first great one, and then the next one is at the end of the hundred years – two periods of time that are spoken of that these things are about.

Zephaniah 2:1—Gather yourselves together, yes, gather together, shameless nations, before the execution of judgment begins, before the day pass you by, in other words, while there is still time, like the chaff that is blown away, before the fierce wrath of the Eternal comes upon you, before the day of the Eternal’s wrath begins. The sooner that people listen, the sooner that people will repent, the sooner people begin to change, the sooner God can help them.

Seek the Eternal, all you humble of the earth, who have been exercising His judgment by seeking righteousness. Who do you think that’s about?

Seek the Eternal all you humble of the earth who have been exercising His judgment by seeking righteousness, seeking to do it God’s way. It’s only the Church. …and by seeking humility. Only the Church. …it may be you will be hidden in the day of the Eternal’s fury.

So it’s a matter of our relationship with God and how real these things are to us and our relationship with Him that we cry out, “Yes, I want to continue on. I want to experience a new age. I understand the value of being able to go on into a new age. At least I’m striving to what You’re offering and I want to be a part of it.” And you ask God for that. “I want this. I love what You’re showing us, a new age, a new world. Strengthen me in the power of Your spirit. Help me to conquer and overcome self and selfishness.” It’s about us and that’s why it says it this way.

Because none of us are owed going into a new age and just as there will be people who wouldn’t be here next year, if we have another Feast like this, there will be people who aren’t here. Every year, every year I have been in God’s Church it has been that way, and it will not change.

See, I can say that knowing with all my being that’s true. You know why? Just as I know what the Millennium is going to be like and like the Great White Throne, and that there are going to be people like the sand of the sea, billions who will not accept God after all that time. How unthinkable is that? But it’s true and it’s real and we should understand that because of carnal, selfish, selfish, sick, perverted human nature. It’s an evil, an evil that God cannot have around, an evil that God cannot continue to allow to live on. So we have to fight this fight, so just as there won’t be some at the Feast there will be some who don’t come through this. That’s between you and your God. God doesn’t owe us that. He doesn’t owe one of us what is in front of us, and so if you want it you’ve got to embrace it, you’ve got to cry out to God for it, and you’ve got to fight your carnal nature now more than you ever have.

We are down to the wire. Okay? You have got to fight as you have never fought. This is not a time to let down. This is not a time to give up. On the contrary, this is a time to fight your nature more than you have ever fought it. Because there is still selfishness in this Body, too much, and that’s what we have to nip in the bud and that’s why we have to cry out to God to help us. Don’t look around and say, “Yeah, I know that person and that person.” Look at self! Each one of us has to look at this and fight against that.

So again, what an awesome thing to understand the kind of change that’s going to come.

I’m not going to take the time to go through the rest of these verses that we have but there are some incredible changes coming and we have the opportunity to be a part, to share in it, to see what God is doing, why He’s done it, and to be a part of helping to set this world right, to be the foundation of it.

We can’t grasp, you really can’t grasp what it will be like for you to be on the other side of this in the Church of God, to live on into a new age and be one of those that were a part of a remnant. Because of what you’re going to experience you’re going to be able to handle it better, but you still have carnal human nature and even then you’re going to have to be careful that it doesn’t go to your head. Because there will be many who want to elevate you and you can’t allow that to happen because they’re going to be so dumbfounded in who you are. You are one of those? You experienced that? You have to be careful, don’t you?

So be thankful for what God is offering you, embrace it with all of your being, and fight for it.