The Mystery Completed, Pt. 2

Ronald Weinland

November 9, 2019

Today we’re going to continue in the series that we started last week entitled The Mystery Completed and this will be Part 2 of that series.

We’re going to start right where we left off. I thought we’d turn over to Revelation 10, or I’ll just read it to you. We did have that toward the end of the sermon last week.

So anyway, right there it says, Revelation 10:7—But in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound... So we understand that’s the 7th Trumpet and the events of the 7th Trumpet that are being spoken of here. ...the mystery of God should be finished. In other words, this is when God is going to do it. This is another way of probably, of being able to translate this in a better way as far as what it’s actually saying, that it should now be finished, or God is going to make sure that it takes place now. It starts at a certain point in time, in other words.

So, anyway, it’s a process. It’s going to be accomplished by God. It’s going to be fulfilled by God and this is what it’s talking about. That’s what these words have to do with, a matter of fulfilling something, completing it, accomplishing something that begins.

Again here, there’s a lot of being revealed here that helps to put that puzzle together in a better way, a puzzle that we have gone through for some time now. To me that’s one of the best examples to give, of pieces of a puzzle, and though we may have all the pieces to the puzzle out here we don’t know where they go, and in time, God shows us. But in doing that He takes us through a process. There are things we have to learn and we have to unlearn things that we have not understood correctly, which He allows us to believe for a time.

Because of a present truth you are given a certain amount to see and then you try to fill in those pieces according to what you know at that moment in time, and we’ve always done that as far as the Church is concerned, going back into Philadelphia and through Laodicea and so forth. Not as much being done through Laodicea, obviously. But it’s a pattern of something we follow and as we come to a point in time where we see that something isn’t in the right spot then we have to do something about it.

Like Pentecost, or whatever it might be, like the fact that there is a spirit essence inside human beings that gives us the ability to think and reason – not a soul, not an immortal soul. All those kinds of things that we have to work with they can cause a little bit of a ripple sometimes in the Church because we tend to think, oftentimes I believe, in the Church that everything is given to us that we have, because it’s the Church of God, that we have everything, that we know everything.

We do not. We have never known everything, so it’s a process. That’s why I love how Mr. Armstrong wrote about that when he addressed, I believe it was the matter of Pentecost. It might have been some other matters. Right now it’s not coming to my mind exactly when it was written. But anyway, talking about the fact that when we come to a point where we see error God’s Church is unique in the sense that that’s been our history. As God begins to reveal something we have to address that and adjust anything that is not in its proper place.

That’s how He works with us. That’s how He works with us in our own lives. As I mentioned so many times my major training has been, as far as the ministry is concerned, what not to do, in times past. That this is not the way to work with, to treat God’s people, that there are right ways of doing things and there are wrong ways of doing things. Because people were allowed to have a great freedom in that, ministers in particular, in hundreds of churches across the United States and around the world, things happened in time because it’s impossible to have a control of that. It’s impossible to know fully what’s happening in all areas.

So they tried the best they could by having superintendents in various regions and people that would work with them and report to them and so forth. But what happens when one of them begins to go astray? Because that happened. Then it beings to affect the others that come into those same meetings with that individual and the mind slowly but surely begins to change.

It’s exactly what Satan did to the angelic realm. Slowly but surely moving their merchandise – the way they see it, the way they think things should be done, beginning to criticize and find fault. Then people begin to think in the same ways if they so choose and it takes a lot to stand against that sometimes, but that’s where we’re tried and tested, as to what we’re made of, as to what our convictions are.

Again, much of our training goes through this process because we first have to become deeply convicted of what isn’t right. That’s kind of the way Chapter 1 is. You know, people, when they start reading certain things, just on a plane that has nothing to do with the spirit, God’s spirit, just looking at something objectively that’s in front of you, things that are written in such a manner, to have to come to acknowledge and think about something that began in 325 AD and what took place at that time. It’s pretty tough to deny things that have happened in history and things that happened with a great church, a big church, and all the shenanigans that went on through time and different things that were written differently or spoken differently than what is clearly in here. Things that should be able to be understood more clearly just on a physical plane, not even talking about having God’s spirit.

Again, contrasting those things, that’s what the end of that chapter has done. This is what God’s Church does and this is what’s wrong. There is a contrast between the two, one that has continued on through time believing and holding on to certain truths and here is what that other church teaches. We have to go through that process.

That’s how God works with us when He first calls us. We have to begin learning what is wrong. So that really never changes in our life because it’s a matter of coming out of Egypt and until we’re totally out of it we don’t fully see everything.

So to me it’s one of the most exciting things of life to go through, especially what we’ve gone through in this end-time, to be seeing things, to be learning things that have never been shown to mankind, that people have never known, that the apostles didn’t know in the beginning. Certain things that God began to give to Mr. Armstrong because of where we’re going and what God is preparing for, and then that that led into what we’ve gone through is really incredible. It’s been a process, again here, the more that God gives to us the more that we have to unlearn what is wrong.

Because when you’re given something that’s true that means something else is wrong, something else is false. What is it? So what has to be adjusted?

I think of the truths about what God is doing and purposes to do and purposed from the beginning in families, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, women and how they’re looked upon, and how society and what mankind did because of, in some cases, just brute strength and the way the world became then as a result of that.

Much of what we’re going through is just like that process. We come to a point where we have to acknowledge this is wrong – this is true. Thank God He’s helping us to have a better picture of what’s before us.

So anyway, this here is one of those areas of something that, again, that is incredible to understand about the mystery of God. So I’m going to read a few of the things that are here in the book: “The Mystery of God.”

“This is a reference to many prophecies that have been told about this time and what follows. This marks a great change in human life. It is at the moment that the very first event announced by the 7th Trumpet begins to take place that this verse begins to become fulfilled. It is not something that is completed at that very moment but something that only begins to become completed...”

The mystery of God, and to understand that verse back there in chapter 10 and verse 7, God is showing that there is a point in time when it begins and He’s going to finish this mystery, He’s going to complete it, He is going to accomplish it. This is the time we’re coming to that it’s going to be done. So what is that? Is it just when you look at the 7th Trumpet, is it something that happened just momentarily in a few days or whatever? Far from it.

So it’s “...something that only begins to become completed from then and through the time that follows. The language in these verses is a little awkward when translating from Greek to English. This is describing the mystery of God that should now begin to become completed. Whatever must take place concerning this mystery that God has not yet fully revealed to all mankind will now start to become revealed so that it can now begin to become accomplished and finally finished.”

So the question is how long does it take for the mystery of God to become fulfilled? Because that reveals everything here. “If God is going to begin completing the revelation and fulfillment of that mystery,” again, “how long will that process take?” Because that is what this is about. It’s not something that happens immediately. It’s something that takes a long, long time. If we understand what the mystery of God is, which we should, it’s about a process that has to do with Elohim and what God has purposed and planned and how mankind can become a part of Elohim.

The major thrust forward in that process begins with this, with the events, I should say, at the beginning of this 7th Trumpet. These events are long lived. They don’t happen overnight.

So reading on here: “God established that what begins with and then follows the first event of the 7th Trumpet is a time period in which this mystery is to be accomplished and completely fulfilled. The completion of the mystery of God being spoken of here is something that will take the next 1,100 years to become completely fulfilled and finally accomplished.”

So to understand the event of the 7th Trumpet, of what it’s all about, how it begins, how it’s established, what God establishes, and to understand that that mystery is not finished until it’s over, until Elohim exists and that only as far as what we have been used to and accustomed to in relationships on this earth, this is when it will be finished.

So again, 1,100 years to accomplish. So that’s something that God is giving to us to help us to better understand other things that fit into a puzzle that we haven’t fully grasped nor comprehended.

It’s like we talked about Babylon. Our thinking has been in times past, and we have to go through these things to learn this—our thinking in times past, is that when Christ returned that that would be the end of Babylon, that Babylon would have been destroyed now because God’s Kingdom is here, Christ is here, and the 144,000. That didn’t destroy Babylon. When it says “Babylon, Babylon,” it talks about it, it’s no longer. Well, it comes back in great force, in great power, and it’s not going to be an easy job.

When we grasp and comprehend what’s going to take place in that hundred years it is not a small thing and it is far from a utopia. Though God guarantees life, the ability to live for a hundred years, there is much to deal with and there are going to be many who do not choose God’s way. This is an incredible revelation, candidly, to help us to better understand the reality of human life, what we’re really like, what we’re capable of, the reality that though we might want things for people that we know you can’t give it to them.

I think of all the people I have known through time who have left God’s Church. I think of people who have been with us in the time of this remnant, of PKG, and I wish that they would have stayed with us. You grow close to people and you develop friendships and relationships. You go through many things together. It’s a painful thing when people don’t continue to fight for, to choose what is before them. That’s their choice and there is nothing you can do to ever change their mind.

I’ve known of many people through time when they found out somebody was having problems and difficulties or whatever, being separated—and I’m talking about way, way back (because that kind of reflects something in itself)—people have wanted to go and talk to them, that maybe because I know them and I can reason with them. No, you can’t. By the time God’s ministry steps in and does something of that magnitude there are certain things they have to decide on their own. And mostly, my experience has been the vast majority of them never come back when those things have happened though you want them to.

These things are in God’s hands and God knows how to work with people. He knows what resurrections are right for people. He knows what environments and what situations are best for people, so we leave things in God’s hands and obey Him and follow the pattern and the process He’s told us to follow because there are reasons for that. Then in time we begin to learn what those reasons are as we grow and mature. We come to understand a plan that He’s working out that is a marvel, astounding – that God can change this carnality into something different that He can resurrect into age-lasting life, everlasting life, if you will. Awesome!

But not everyone is going to be there. We used to have the idea, the concept in times past that once the hundred years was here that now the vast majority of mankind would be saved. I mean, who wouldn’t embrace that? Who wouldn’t respond to that? Who wouldn’t want that? Who wouldn’t be in awe of what God has done over a thousand years? Who wouldn’t latch on to that with all of their being and thank God for it?

But we have human nature. We just happen to live, or those individuals will just happen to live in a different time. But to change that mind, to change the way of thinking that has been developed within them over decades, and in some cases, over hundreds of years, of those who will be resurrected, that isn’t something that just changes just instantaneously seeing what God has done for a thousand years and the fact that God is now on the earth, in the sense of His Son and His Family, and a great family by that time that is ruling and working with people on the earth at that time, that they can communicate with face to face and know that they’re in the God Family. Does that all of a sudden change the way people think and they want to have that too?

Carnality is a horrible thing. Selfishness is a great evil, it really is. It isn’t a simple thing to conquer. But before we get into Elohim, before we become a part of Elohim, God is going to know that mind. What is it that’s in their heart? What is it they really want? What is it they really love? If they don’t love Him, if they don’t love His way they can’t be offered that because they’ll bring in a different mind that has caused such horrible pain and suffering for so long.

Even within the angelic realm, those things hurt. You think that angelic beings who worked side by side with each other aren’t affected by relationships and friendships and things that they have had for millions of years that we don’t understand and comprehend, and to see others make certain choices? They’ve experienced those kinds of things. Then to see what’s happened with mankind over the last 6,000 years? The suffering?

I was thinking about that this morning, the kind of suffering that he stirred up and made so much worse. But it’s that mind and it’s that mind that’s why God made us physical, so we can come to a point in time when He gives us the ability to, we can make those choices. What is it you want? And if you want it, understand it’s not owed to you! Understand that it’s got to be something that you want with all of your being and you have to decide and determine, “Am I going to fight for this and fight against self and sacrifice self?” Because that’s what we have to say; “I don’t like selfishness. I am appalled by what I see.” So the more that God can reveal about selfishness in ourselves, that we can be appalled in, that’s a great blessing.

Because a lot of people just don’t care. If they see it, well, that’s what they want. That’s what they embrace. They don’t want something different. They don’t want to change. Anyway, it’s hard sometimes to comprehend a mind like that.

So the mystery of God is something that’s going to take 1,100 years to be finished, to be completed, to be accomplished, something that man has never grasped nor seen, as a whole. Just certain ones down through time have been given a bit of a glimmer, a bit of a picture of it, and they wanted it.

So again “...something that will take 1,100 years to become completely fulfilled and finally accomplished. Knowing this will help give better understanding to most of the rest that’s recorded in the Book of Revelation because most of what follows covers that complete time period.”

It’s beautiful. It really is. To me, I’m excited because there are certain things that just, they just don’t fully make sense and they just don’t seem to fit and we don’t have answers. That’s why I’ve made so many comments about that hundred years. Candidly, what God’s going to give to us, what He’s going through the process of giving us now is just a bit of that picture a little bit clearer, but we don’t know it yet.

There are things in here that we don’t know yet because God hasn’t revealed it and it’s not His purpose. So He’s blessing us to see a little bit more, but even in that we won’t see everything and we’ll be wrong about some things. That’s just the way it is. We won’t fully understand it, but we’re striving as God gives us more and more to put the pieces together and to see the puzzle in a better way, and to be able to speak of that in that context in a better way. That’s a good thing because that means we have more truth in our lives.

That’s what I was saying about Mr. Armstrong. You know, you have less that’s false, less that’s wrong in your life, then that means you’re going to have more truth in your life. That’s what we want. Truth is beautiful, it truly is. To understand the plan of God in a better way, bring it on, and whatever it takes to get there.

Going on: “That mystery is revealed as that which mankind has never grasped nor understood about the coming of the Messiah and what that would entail. Instead it has remained a mystery for nearly 6,000 years because mankind has not known it although the prophets throughout time have spoken about it. But people simply could not understand what they were told. The world has not grasped that the coming of the Messiah is about the time in which God establishes His Kingdom, His government to reign over the nations of the world, nor have they known God’s purpose or plan for mankind in all this. God’s apostle, Herbert W. Armstrong, wrote about much of this plan and purpose that God will bring to pass in a book entitled Mystery of the Ages.”

So again, that’s part of the book here and we mentioned that last week.

“This was when God began to reveal much more about the end-time and that the world was about to enter into it. After many years since then we are right now very near the end of that end-time. Although Herbert Armstrong wrote that book back in 1985 only a few thousand people began to understand what he wrote. God only began revealing that mystery to a few.”

That’s an awesome thing because the prophets through time, apostles, members of God’s Church through time over the past 2,000 years, have been given a picture, an understanding of certain things, but really in so many ways very limited. Truly very limited compared to where we are at this particular time because of where we are in time and because of what God’s preparing for, because He just continues to reveal more and more about this mystery, about His plan and purpose, and we get to share in that because of where we are in time not because of who we are, that we’re special above anybody who went before us. On the contrary.

“God only began revealing that mystery to a few.” And how blessed are those few through time? How blessed are we? That’s why I keep talking about that. Do we really grasp how blessed we are that God has shared something of such magnitude with us that He hasn’t even started revealing to the world yet? And then only a few through time have really been given the opportunity to see and to embrace? Awesome!

“That book was written to tell about what God was about to begin revealing to the whole world that has been withheld until this end-time just before His Kingdom would become established. We are now at the time when God is about to begin to reveal this mystery to the entire world.”

They’re going to see it. They’re going to see it! We believe it because of what God has given to us in the things we’ve seen on a spiritual plane. They get to see it! They get to talk with those of the 144,000. Some will have the opportunity of meeting Christ through that period of time. Don’t know that all will. It’s tough when you have billions of people. How long do you have to stand in line just shaking hands to get through billions of people? So things just don’t work that way.

Yet people will see them. They will be able to see them manifest themselves as human beings just as Christ did after His resurrection for those forty days. Awesome! They’re going to hear God’s word in a very powerful way, in ways that have never been expressed with that kind of power and knowledge. Awesome to understand what they’re going to see, and to understand the power that’s there that governs now, that they’re not going to have other governments but God’s going to take control of those things. You know, incredible! There aren’t words enough to hardly describe these kinds of things, of what we’re going to experience. But anyway.

Reading this again: “We are now at the time when God is about to begin to reveal this mystery to the entire world. As that time has been drawing near God has been revealing much more to His Church at a very accelerated rate.” He truly has.

Think of the 7th Thunder. I’m going to read part of that: [1]“The 7th Thunder is the accelerated revelation of God to man,” and little did I know how accelerated it was going to become before we finally got to the end. We’re not there yet. But more and more, the closer we get the more God’s just giving us. It’s just, candidly, hard to keep up, it really is.

Speaking of the book, God’s Final Witness, “This book has explained how man has never really fully known God and that there is great confusion and contradiction in religious beliefs concerning Him. It has also been shown that through the entire time of man on earth that only a little more than 144,000 people have truly known God. God has not revealed Himself to most of mankind. Only a few throughout the past six millennia have been able to come to know God.”

Dropping on down a little farther: “The history of man (the true witness of man) is that man does not want God’s ways. Man has not wanted God to govern his life.” That’s even been true in the Church. You think, if the world has been like that, do we not grasp what’s happened in the Church? If we have been given those things to see and to understand, and choices that people have made through time, they have been to turn away from God, to turn to something else that’s physical, to latch on to that instead of God, there is tremendous power in that, there really is, the carnal human mind, selfishness.

We have to comprehend then the kind of battle that we have to be fully engaged in, all the time to be on guard, to seek to be on guard, to fight against self. Because it’s a powerful foe; our selfish carnal nature is a foe to God Almighty and His purpose and plan for us. We have to know that. We have to understand that to know what we’re battling. It’s at enmity with God. It has to change. God tells us we can. Our minds can be transformed. So we embrace that. We cry out for that.

Again, “Man has not wanted God to govern his life.” Oh, how I’ve seen that in God’s Church ever since I’ve been in it, the resistance that’s been there to God’s government, to the Church. Even things of the Church that are simple and not so hard people have fought against, and they don’t understand the spirit that’s involved in that.

I think of the simple thing of make-up, which doesn’t matter to a hill of beans whatsoever, but there was a time when it was important because, see, for a long time it was no, none. Then to come to a point in time to say, yes, it’s nothing forbidden about it in scripture. Strive to use it in moderation. It was like, “The Church! The Church!” I’m sorry, but it’s like, “I’ve had this faith and this belief, this strong faith that physical make-up is wrong and now you’re saying it’s okay?! I can’t deal with it!!” I’m sorry, that’s how people reacted to it at times. It’s like, “We were wrong?” Yeah, get used to it.

That’s a reality of human life. We’re fallible human beings and we can only strive to do the best we can with what we have and crying out to God to help us to do it better and to grow. But as long as we’re in these physical bodies, and until Christ is there and 144,000 to say, “This is absolutely what you need to have at this point in time and where we are, and this is the truth,” then welcome to human nature and what we’re like because we’re not perfect.

Until that which is perfect is standing before us and telling us absolutely certain things, that we don’t have right now because you can’t... You can pray about it. You can ask God for help. But you know what? He just doesn’t work that way yet because He hasn’t manifested that life to this earth yet where you can have the ability of certain ones and leaders being able to go and say, “Okay, can we wear it or not?” Sorry.

Oh, that’s a big, earth shattering, shaking thing, isn’t it? But I’ll tell you what, it was in the Church and a lot of people left over it. Thousands left over it! Now, that’s important, isn’t it? I think, “In the scheme of things that one there really tops them doesn’t it? I mean, the Sabbath and the holy days, and tithing... —but this one here, it’s a biggie!” You think, give me a break! Where are our minds?

But it revealed something in a powerful way, spirit inside of us, carnality in side of us, lust, desire to have something different from God says we should. Some who wanted not to have it? Well, fine, don’t wear it. Don’t. That’s your choice. Some who wanted it, look like the Joker, fine, if that’s what makes you feel good and you feel like you look beautiful when you look in the mirror. I don’t like it. I don’t think it looks good that way. But you know? Anyway, I’m being a little facetious there.

But you think, aren’t those things so important? But we can make them so important. It shows things of the human mind and how the human mind can so fight against God and there’s a battle there. That just helped to manifest it and it really, what it really revealed in a very powerful way was government. That’s what it really revealed in a very powerful way, how the human mind fights against God, fights against His government in our lives. Incredible!

Anyway, continuing on: “So, in the past 6,000 years, God has called a very few into a special relationship with Him in order to be taught and trained for a future world ruling government—the Kingdom of God that will be established over all the earth at the return of Joshua the Christ.”

Then a little farther down again concerning the 7th Thunder and what’s written about it: “God’s revelation to mankind will continue to accelerate as we draw closer to the end of man’s rulership and the coming of Joshua the Christ to rule over all the earth.” Now, I hadn’t read this for a long time and went back and I thought, wow, what an understatement. Hard to keep up! “Man has not known God, but all this is beginning to change. It has begun first and foremost within the Church.” Awesome! “His revelation will continue in greater power and might as we draw closer to the time His Son returns to rule.”

That’s why I feel so blessed to be able to write a fourth book, to get it out there and get rid of the others because we were far from where we needed to be...far from where we needed to be. A lot of things needed to be cleared up. Things about the 7 Last Plagues that we were out in left field on because of our beliefs that had been there since the 80’s, and 70’s, and 60’s, and 50’s. We just weren’t there until God said, “Okay, understand this, the mystery of God is going to be finished. What is it? How does it affect life on earth? How does it affect human beings?”

Then we come to “Babylon, Babylon.” Babylon, fallen? When? I marvel at that when I think about that. It just gets resurrected later on. It really does. It’s hard for us sometimes. We get these ideas in our minds.

I remember something that was written came out in The US and British Commonwealth in Prophecy. I think it was stuck in there. It was a kind of like a letter or like a newspaper and it was like it was written at the beginning of the Millennium and the news that was in there. So it was like a newspaper that you could read and it was like this utopia all of a sudden you were in and all these nicety nice things that people were doing. It was a little Protestant...it was a lot Protestant in how people would be thinking.

It was like that one show about these women, the wives: Stepford Wives. And you know, kind of like people just being zombies and this fake life. I don’t recommend it, I don’t know, it seemed like it was a weird show. It sticks in my mind, but it goes back a long way.

But you think, sometimes people just have these fake things that they think are how life should be lived and it’s not real, it’s not true. When I see the Protestant world or things in the Protestant world, that’s what I see, it’s just something that makes me want to gag – stick my finger down there and just let it rip. I don’t even have to stick my finger down there looking, it just makes you want to gag because it’s so putrid, it’s so far away from what’s true and right, so far away from what God is like and God’s plan and purpose in our lives is like that it just makes you sick, the fakeness of it all and how unreal it is.

It paints God and God’s purpose in a wrong way, so we’ve gone through those things in the Church. We had to learn that. We had to go through those things. God let us experience that, that this isn’t good. Protestantism and this fakey stuff, you know, that’s not real – tap you on the shoulder, “Oh, don’t... Stop thinking like that. Stop it! That’s not the way to walk. This is the way to walk.” You think, give me a break! How unreal that is in life.

Nobody able to sin because there is somebody always behind you tapping you on the shoulder? All of a sudden manifesting themselves – “Oh, ho, ho, you’re there again.” It’s like you don’t have a brain. You can’t think on your own. You can’t make decisions on your own because someone is always there telling you how to do and what to do. So you might as well be a zombie that’s just programmed to be “zombieized,” you know. I’m sorry; I think we get the point.

That’s not life. That’s not real. God wants a real family, people that make their own choices, people that think right. But they have to come to a point in time where they agree with God’s way of life within which to make those choices because only there is happiness and fullness and productivity and things that are right and good. Everything else is destructive, hurts, tears down. God doesn’t want to tear down His creation. He wants to build it up and we get to share in that if we so choose. If we don’t, so be it, that’s your choice.

That’s an amazing thing to understand, that people are going to know what’s going to happen to them at the end of a hundred years. They’re going to be taught and told but for whatever reason human beings when you’re deceived, well, when you get to that point where you just don’t care in your mind and you want your own way you allow yourself to think in a different way, so  you allow your own self-deception. If that’s what you choose it’s going to happen. Then when that time comes it happens because you can’t have your way. We can’t have our way.

“The Church of God, over the past twenty years, has prided itself in the knowledge of God.” Well, that’s going back a time when it was written about some of this. But again, it’s referring back to the things that led up to the Apostasy and even after the Apostasy and how people reacted within it up to the time, finally, we became the remnant.

“This pride, with its presumptuous attitude, is the reason the Church was scattered. Of all people, one would think that God’s own Church would know Him fully; but they have not. Over the last hundred years and before, God did not give His people all knowledge about Himself and His Son. Part of that knowledge was withheld from God’s end-time apostle, Mr. Herbert Armstrong.” I’ll add, and from me. God just hasn’t given us everything yet. He’ll give us much more when Christ comes, but even then we’re not going to be given everything.

We’re not going to be given everything about the hundred years at that point. We may want to know, but that doesn’t mean that God’s going to give it to us yet. There is much work to be done and that’s going to be the focus – what we need to do, how we need to do it: “Don’t worry about the hundred years; that’ll be taken care of.” When we get closer to that we’ll start preparing for that.

“Much of the Church will reject this revelation about God. However, some will begin to repent and turn to God once they see the Seven Thunders coming true. They will be awakened from a spiritual sleep.” There will be people in that position, and I think of, when I think about some of this, I think how incredible to realize that much of the Church will reject this revelation that God reveals that ever increases through time, and many have gone by the wayside. There have been a lot who have left even since 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 when the larger numbers began to come in.  A lot of people have gone by the wayside.

“At first, this thunder is for God’s own Church.” Thank God, a faster, an accelerated rate of revelation of things to us and it’s like, “Hang on!” All the things that God gave to us since some of this process began in 2008, it’s really quite incredible. It really is.

“Then, as we enter the time of the Seventh Seal, this knowledge will begin to spread throughout the world until the day that everyone will be able to know God.” So, incredible. The 7th Thunder, things we don’t think about sometimes that God is still fulfilling and accomplishing. It will just continue on until this period of time here takes place.

So continuing on in the new book: “Understanding the truth about the beginning of God’s Kingdom becoming established at Christ’s coming is only the beginning for understanding the mystery of God that will become fulfilled. Much of the confusion for mankind concerning God and why He created us has been because people have been deceived into believing other things that contradict what the prophets clearly spoke. One such teaching that causes people confusion is the belief that upon death people at that moment either go to heaven or to hell, but that, obviously, isn’t true at all. Because of this false teaching people have been kept blind to what is true. To see and then grasp what is true requires that what is false must be exposed.”

So that’s part of what we’re talking about, what is false has to be exposed, and then we have more truth in our life. That’s the way of God’s Church. That’s the way of our lives spiritually.

So continuing on with some of these other ideas: “Some believe that loved ones die and go to heaven whereupon they watch over and help to protect loved ones. Some think they’ll go to heaven to look upon the face of God forever or to live in a kind of paradise where they can do things that they like to spend time in their leisure,” like fishing for eternity, some of these concepts and ideas, just throwing it out there.

“Heaven is sometimes pictured as a place of banqueting, a place of expressing great laughter, happiness and joy.” You know, I went online and looked at some of these things and I thought, wow, thank God we don’t think that way. Thank God we don’t have these crazy things in our minds of what God’s plan is for mankind, that somehow such things would be the desire? No wonder people don’t really want to die. I’m sorry. Who wants to die? But you understand what I’m saying. Because it’s like, “Uh, do I really want to do that for all eternity?” I wouldn’t. I mean, all these things, you want to do that for all eternity? Just let me sleep. Just let me go to sleep and let it be, if you understand what I’m saying.

“This false doctrine of going to heaven or hell has much to do with why the Messiah coming to earth to reign does not make sense to people. Because of the false doctrine about going to heaven they have not been able to grasp a simple truth that after death all must instead be resurrected to life again at a time that God has already planned and purposed.”

That’s just nuts to people when they hear it sometimes. It really is. “A second life? I’m not going to heaven? You people are really whacky, aren’t you?”

“This has much to do with the mystery of God that will become accomplished over the next 1,100 years. Once this first event of the 7th Trumpet happens that is the moment in time when God’s Kingdom is going to become established and the end of mankind’s self-rule is brought to an end. That self-rule that will be taken from mankind...” And you won’t have to turn on your TV’s anymore and hear all the drama.

You know, people just are filled with hatred and it, to me, it’s a marvel to be able to see these things unfold right now, what’s taking place. People just hate each other and they’re so divided. They all think they’re so right. They don’t understand what God is doing and what’s getting ready to happen on this earth. You think, thank God we were snatched out of that and that we have a hope that is powerful and real. They don’t. They’re fighting for things that they think they have to fight for because that’s all they have. Thank God it’s almost all over.

“That self-rule will be taken from mankind. Mankind will no longer be allowed to rule itself, but it will be ruled over by God.” How long? 1,100 years. “This marks an incredible transition in time. Again, this,” speaking of the beginning of it when Christ returns and establishes God’s Kingdom, this is only the beginning of the mystery of God to be completed. There is so much more until Elohim is complete.

That’s what the mystery is about. You know, Mr. Armstrong has written about the fact that we’re going to become a part of Elohim. People mock and make fun of that. “In a God family? That’s what that’s about?” It’s like, “Who do you think you are?”

That’s why they hated Christ. That’s why they hated Christ. They didn’t recognize who he was, the Son of God. That was really taking it too far, wasn’t it?

“This mystery that will then begin to become completed is about how all those who survive a third world war and live on into this new millennial age will now have opportunity to learn why they were created and what God has actually planned for them. It even includes how all those who have ever died,” speaking of the Great White Throne, “will finally be given that same opportunity once God gives them life again. Then they will begin to be shown the kind of life they can attain to which goes far beyond temporary physical life.”

“In this new age to come people will learn that God’s purpose has always been to first give mankind the opportunity to experience physical yet temporary human life and then die.” That’s hard for the human mind to grasp because of all the false things they have been taught. This is so contrary to what they’ve kind of believed, what they’ve been told to believe.

“Then in time that mystery includes giving the opportunity to most all who have ever lived the choice to attain spirit life, life that never ends.”

I’m going to go over to Revelation and spend some time going through this in the rest of the sermon for today. But another sentence here: “This understanding in Revelation of this mystery is awesomely exciting and far beyond what the human mind could ever conceive.”

So we’re going to jump around here a little bit in explaining some of these things. Revelation 20 is a good place to begin with this because there are certain things we need to grasp and think about as we consider this overall picture of what’s being shown to us.

Revelation 20:7—Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison... We know it says, earlier than that it says, “for a little season” and we’ve had sermons about that in times past. “For a time.” “For a little while.” It doesn’t say how long. We don’t know how long it is. We know there is a hundred years and then, yes, indeed, after the Millennium he’s going to be released. It doesn’t say immediately after the Millennium, and that’s where people have been wrong in times past as well.

So there’s a period of time there. There’s going to be a Great White Throne judgment and God has clearly revealed that there is a period of time that’s still going to come when finally this being is going to be released to do what he does best, to speed up, to accelerate a process that’s already working in the minds of human beings who have rejected God. That’s what it’s about, people who don’t want God’s way of life, people who are only conforming to it in many cases. Conforming isn’t enough.

If within a hundred years you haven’t sought to have your mind transformed and God work with you to change your thinking and you haven’t grasped that and held on to that with all of your being because you recognize its importance and you want it with all of your being, and so you just kind of live in a society because, after all, God’s reigning and ruling, Christ is on the throne of rulership over all the earth, thousands upon thousands and tens of thousands are reigning with him at this point in time, hundreds of thousands. We don’t know how many at that point in time. People are just kind of conforming to that, but they really haven’t chosen it. How long does it take?

I’ve been in the Church for about fifty years transforming the mind. To have a hundred years is plenty of time to do what God offers and people have those choices to make and so they have to make those choices themselves, what do they want. God gives them ample time, ample opportunity, so this is a part of what we’re talking about here, what happens at the end of a hundred years. There’s a reason why He’s released from his prison at the end of a hundred years, from his confinement at the end of a hundred years to do what he’s going to do.

Revelation 20:7, again, Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog... We’ve talked about that in times past, different peoples and how they think on a spiritual plane, what opportunities they’ve had in times past and have had these opportunities now and those who have just rejected God during this period of time. ...to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea. That’s astounding!

To know he’s going to have that kind of power—not that he necessarily has that kind of power—but to understand how many have not chosen God’s way of life by this time! By those who really don’t want it. By those who actually hate it. By those who actually want something else. They prefer something else. They are striving for other things. They are doing other things.

That hundred years is not about controlling people and controlling nature and controlling what people do. God lets us make choices. God lets people sin. You can’t learn if you don’t. That’s why you can’t have the hand tapping you on the shoulder, because then you’ll never learn. You’re just going to be like a little bit of a zombie and have someone smacking you up the side of the face if you decide to do something wrong! God doesn’t work that way. Does He work that way in your life? Stop you from sinning?

If that’s what you want, you can have it. That’s what I mentioned here recently then, wasn’t it, about individuals, if they want something else. You want a little extra money so you’re going to go out and work on Atonement? God isn’t going to stop you. I’m not going to try to stop you. If that’s your mind, if that’s your heart, if that’s your choice God gives you free reign to do that. But you’re going to suffer. You’re going to hurt your mind. It’s the most precious thing any human being has ever been given. The mind. What we do with it, it’s a matter of our own choices, our own thinking, especially once God gives us the ability to think differently, to see something that’s true, to latch on to something that’s true. The choice to choose it and to want it and to have it in your life, awesome!

They went out on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. Now, we don’t know what these things mean yet. Something is going to happen that they’re going to do, like the sand of the sea, perhaps billions and billions of people who don’t want God’s way of life are going to be swayed by this being to do something, to try to accomplish something.

Then fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them. Now, this is a capsule of something, highly summarized if you will, as to certain events that are going to take place in time. There is no great explanation. There is no great discussion of it. Some things are going to come back to this moment in time as we continue reading here. But how these things transpire and what exactly happens, we don’t know. We don’t need to know.

Verse 10—The devil, who deceived them... So that’s by choice of what people allow, and if people really don’t want God then he has a greater power to lead into greater deception. That’s the way he works. Because that’s the mind they have chosen anyway. They’ve already made a choice they don’t want God, they don’t desire God’s way, even if it be a matter of total lethargy, like Laodicea. Lukewarm. That’s not of the mind to have chosen God, wanting God, fighting for God, fighting against self. Because that’s not happening in that kind of mentality and so that can be swayed. What happened in the Apostasy? People were moved, swayed, pulled away from more so from what God was offering.

So again here, time for judgment. If you don’t want it, you don’t have to have it. It’s not going to be forced upon you.

The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone... I’m glad this is something that God has cleared up, too, speaking about Satan, about the devil spoken of here, and what’s going to take place here at this particular time. It talks about a time we understand that he is actually going to be destroyed at some moment in time.

This word, the way this is translated sometimes is very difficult, and I don’t know fully all the language involved in it, but I know what it’s saying as much as when God began to reveal things about Christ is coming in the flesh, what that meant, that Christ is coming, speaking of those things of a continual ongoing process in our life and how we understand them now though it’s written differently as far as English is concerned.

Some translate it as his coming later in time. They look at it as a future return. Some as though since he came in the flesh as a human being, and you think, well, the Protestant world believes that so what does that prove? So we came to understand, God gave the understanding of that, that no, it’s a process here of his continually coming into our lives, into human flesh. That’s what it’s about. It’s about him and his Father dwelling in us.

So in like manner this here is something that is along the same lines. This is where it talks about where the beast and the false prophet. That word “are” isn’t in there. It should be italicized. It’s not talking about where the beast and the false prophet are as though they’re some separate being. He is the beast and the false prophet! He has been that at different times in history. That’s what it’s talking about. He fulfills those things. He is the epitome of that. He has raised them up. That’s what he has done.

He has lied about God from the beginning of time, to Adam and Eve, a false prophet. You talk about teaching things that are against God, against God’s way of life with that kind of a mindset, to deceive as much as that Church did in 325 AD that became a reality finally, everything that was opposite of what God gave, and he was behind that. That’s where it comes from. It comes from this being and that’s all it’s saying.

So there are different words here. It’s a compound word that means “which” or “wherein,” and then “about a certain place.” That’s what the other word means. So it’s difficult. I believe I understand what it’s talking about in every way – talking about who he was at certain times. If you look up that one word, talking about certain things that happened in a certain place at a certain time, that’s who he’s been.

Revelation talks about the beast and his power over a church, and that he’s the power over it. He’s been the false prophet from the beginning of time against God’s way of life. He started it when he started talking to the angelic realm and trying to peddle his merchandise and getting them away from following God to following him. So he’s been a liar for a long, long time, and that’s what this is about.

So it’s just saying this is an end to him, in essence, the one who has manifested himself, who has been, who has had this power exerted upon mankind, the beast and the false prophet, the liar who has lied about God from the beginning when he was no longer Lucifer, but when he became Satan the adversary to God.

And shall be tormented day and night forever and ever. So what’s that mean? We understand certain things that are going to be burned up. When they’re finally burned up then it ceases to exist. It’s just something that’s constantly in your mind, constantly before you. Well, there are certain things God has said about him he hasn’t known, and not only that but you know what, when he’s done these things, he hasn’t been fulfilled. He’s been tormented!

That’s what happens to people. People who leave God’s Church, they’re not happy. They’re not fulfilled. There are things that happen up here in the mind—they do—where people begin to experience things in life, they have things that gnaw at them. They’re not at peace at all. They’re a torn life. Only God’s people can have peace.

When you leave that and go back out to that what happens to you is worse than if you’d never known it. That’s what it’s talking about in scripture when it says it’d have been better if you’d never known at all because of what’s going to happen to your mind. What a horrifying, horrible thing to go through. Because that can actually accelerate another thing. Well, it’s in God’s hands. An unpardonable sin. It can come to that where people don’t want to repent, they want something different and they choose that. It’s their choice. That’s how far it can go.

That’s why there are going to be people as the sand of the sea when this is all said and done who are swayed by this being to do something that we don’t understand fully, that God uses kind of like a giant vacuum cleaner to clean it all up and to end it all. This is the end of mankind. This is the end of mankind on earth when this takes place. No more human beings on earth anymore. Only the God Family will exist, when the mystery of God is completed.

We need to understand that. The mystery of God is not completed until mankind has been taken care of, until judgment has been fulfilled, because that’s a part of the mystery of God. It’s about judgment. It’s about things that can come upon, will come upon man. It is about the Third Woe because it’s about judgment and God’s judgment is in the Third Woe. So it’s not something that just happens at Christ’s coming. It’s something that continues on and it’s fulfilled later on in a far greater way at the end. It’s about final judgment upon mankind, that people have made their own choices and they are going to receive what they have been told they were going to receive and have ignored because they wanted something else.

Perhaps distorted mind and thinking toward sex. Can that happen? If that’s what you want that’s what He’ll give you. What else do you want that’s contrary to God’s way of life? What other kind of wrong relationships? What other kind of wrong things? Is it power? Is it recognition? Is that what we lust for and desire? Incredible, the human mind.

Again here, this thing about torment and how it affects the mind. It’s not a matter of this concept of hell and people being tormented all the time, they’re down there and these little things are running around with pitchforks stabbing them in the butt. It’s hot! How much of that can you take? Well, I guess if you’re kind of a quasi spirit and you have physical feelings? Well, it’s just hard to understand that one isn’t it? Some of the stupidity of human beings.

So again, this is about the devil as the one who deceived them. He deceived them long ago. He deceived them long ago. He had power in their life long ago. Over the vast majority who are resurrected he’s had power over them already on earth. Some whose minds just don’t want something different; they don’t want what they see. They want the kind of life, the freedom to do whatever they want to do. They want to snort it up. If they want to, you know, let their minds go... “Yeah, I feel good,” and just kind of be numb. If that’s what you want go ahead. You know if that’s what you want to do to your mind, then go ahead. Just raise all the pot you want to raise!

I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. God just lets us do what we want. If we want those things He’ll let us pursue them. But there comes an end where you can’t do it anymore. There are people who want that. You can’t change them.

Only through the power of God’s spirit can our minds be transformed and you’ve really got to want that with all of your being. You’ve got to hate carnality, selfishness, and the ugliness of it.

So again, this is the one, this being, deceived them before, working to deceive them again because they’re kind of programmed in that way. They want something different from what God’s given so it’s not really a big or a hard or a difficult thing for him to do.

So again here, what is a better translation in many ways, The devil who deceived them, which in a certain place being the beast and even the false prophet, and in those times being tormented, because it’s torment. You don’t get a real fullness in life from doing things that are wrong. On the contrary, you are never fulfilled. There is torment in that, especially for this being for what he’s done for so long. The more he learns about what’s coming his way even more so.

To know that he’s going to be separated from mankind for a thousand years? Yeah, there’s torment in that thinking too, because he has learned that God’s going to do what God’s going to do, and though he thinks he can change some of those things, what if?

Just like people who leave the Church. Well, there is certain knowledge that you just can’t fully get rid of.

Revelation 20:11—Then I saw a great white throne and He who sat upon it. So now we know what this is. Now we’re coming full circle here again. We’ve gone through that period of time, talked about, now he’s coming back and starting to fill in more of the pieces and saying there’s a Great White Throne Judgment. Judgment. It’s about judgment. It’s about a time of judgment for mankind, a hundred years of it. Great opportunity, great mercy given to mankind to change.

...and He who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and the books were opened. In other words, this is it. This is the time for judgment. There is no way to escape it now, it’s there. There are certain things you’re going to have to face and you’re going to be told. You can’t hide your face from it anymore, can’t bury your head in the sand anymore. You’re going to be told. You’re going to be shown. You’re going to be able to see it clearly, powerfully so. “Yeah, you’ve been dead for a long time.” “Yeah, you died in the Red Sea. How was that?” Things people are going to have to face. “You went after the Israelites. You were messing with God. It doesn’t work.” Whew.

And I saw the dead, small and great, you know, through human history those well known, those who have never been known, standing before God, and books were opened. We understand that. Open to their understanding. Now they can see things they could never see before. They have the ability to see something that they were never able to see before – accomplished by God’s spirit. God gives them the ability, enough to be drawn, to be able to see it, but they have to make choices.

You know, when God does that for people when they’re first being called into the Church, just because they’re able to see those things because it’s in the mind and God opens up that ability to see, doesn’t mean they’re going to choose it. I’ve seen that over and over again, people have not chosen it. They want something else so God lets them and they give up. What an incredible opportunity! They don’t know what they’re doing.

...and the books were opened. And another book was opened, which is, basically, in essence, to Life. It’s about life. It’s about coming to the point in time where you’re sealed and that’s the desire then, to be a part of God’s Kingdom, to be in the God Family.

And the dead were judged according to their works. Ah, the Protestant world didn’t like that one. “Judged according to your works? You can’t be saved by works. You know, you keep tithe. You send tithes in or you keep the seventh day Sabbath, you keep the holy days. You can’t be saved by works!” Lying hypocrites. They have works – Sunday, Easter, Christmas. “Oh, but we’re not trying to be saved by those things.” Oh, well, okay.

Anyway, going on: by the things which were written in the books. So again, judged according to their works, by what’s written in this book here. “Are you going to live by it or not? Here it is: life and death I set before you. You have the ability to see it now. You couldn’t see it before, now you can see it. What are you going to do with it? Choose life! Please, choose life!” Given every opportunity.

Verse 13—The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them. So death and the grave. It’s just death, the grave. It’s just a way of saying what we all understand. The grave? Oh, yeah, I know what that means. It means you’re dead.

And they were judged, each one according to their works. What an incredible time. We can’t comprehend that. That’s astounding what’s going to take place.

Then death and the grave/hades were cast into the lake of fire. There comes a point in time when it’s all done. There comes a point in time when people have choices to make and what are you going to do? You’ve been given life. This is the second death. Those who don’t choose it, given an opportunity to live a second physical life and don’t choose what God has offered them. Well, that’s it. Judgment – second death. Death for all time. Eternal judgment. Not to be punished for eternity but a judgment that lasts for eternity, never to be resurrected again.

And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire. Whew. So we know what the end is. It’s all going to be burned up.

Revelation 21:1, going on. Chapters don’t end; the thought continues. Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth... So what happened? People reading through this and made chapters out of it and it’s like something different has happened. Well, something has happened, but it’s happened in this time period. It’s happened after these events have taken place. It’s happened in a point of time after judgment has been given, and then it says Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. No more human beings! That’s what it’s saying here.

Also, it say, there was no more sea. Do you understand what that word means prophetically? It’s about the masses of humanity, the seas. That’s an expression that’s used prophetically about the vast masses of humanity.

Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem... What is that? Completed. Finally the mystery of God, Elohim, God’s purpose and plan from the very beginning of time here at this point coming to pass. New Jerusalem, it says, coming down out of heaven from God. Just like what happened to 144,000, just like what will happen to those at the end of a thousand years, they go through the same process, exactly the same, resurrected, to a point wherever that is, whatever that is.

...prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. This isn’t just about the 144,000. It’s far beyond that. Everyone who becomes a part of Elohim fulfills this, of what it talks about, of what they have worked for, of what they have sought to accomplish, of what they want to receive in their life in a relationship with Christ and to God Almighty through that process.

And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, no longer men, but here it is, it’s established finally, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.... There are going to be tears during the hundred years. There are going to be things happen where there are going to be tears. There are going to be people who hurt other people and there will be tears. There will be people who betray one another and there will be tears. As long as there are human beings with selfishness there will be tears. Human beings can be very vile and very evil to one another. They can treat each other very harshly. I’ve known many in God’s Church through time who have come to tears in their relationship with one another in Gods Church because they’ve been so hurt by others, come to tears.

Just because you’re in God’s Church does not mean you’re there, doesn’t mean you can’t have this kind of suffering in your life. That’s what God is making clear. There comes a time when there will no longer be tears.

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death... So when’s that? It’s over. It’s all done. The mystery of God is complete. There will be no more human death because it’s over. Those who receive the second death, that was the last. No more human beings are alive.

That’s a hard thing for us to comprehend. No more human life. It’s like “Oooo... Is that good?” Oh, yeah. It’s wonderful! To be in the God Family, to be spirit, to be of that mind, to be in agreement with a certain way of life, to have that unity and oneness and cooperation? To see things today, it’s nothing but divisiveness, competition. That’s horrible! One party against another, people wanting to be ahead, people wanting to slam the other; they’ll destroy them. Go to any lengths you need to – lie, cheat, steal, bribe, get rid of them, lie through your teeth until you’re not sure how to lie anymore.

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there should be no more death nor sorrow... No sorrow because there are no more human beings. There is no more selfish human nature. What an incredible time! ...nor crying.

There shall be no more pain... No more pain of any kind. No more physical pain; no more mental pain. Because mental pain, well, I could say it, but it’d probably shock people. It’s the pits, to say it nicely. Mental pain hurts. Mental pain is suffering. And we suffer. We have those occasions in our life. Even when you’re in God’s Church you’re going to have that kind of thing happen in your thinking, in your mind.

There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. It’s a new heaven and a new earth. What existed before is gone.

Then He who sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. All that’s old is gone. All that’s happened before is over. This is finished. Everything has been made new. Everything He’s worked for, for perhaps billions upon billions of years – things we can’t comprehend – now fulfilled.

And He said to me, Write, for these words are true and faithful. And He said to me, It is done! It’s completed. It has been finished. We can’t understand that feeling, that desire that permeates God’s being, His life, His purpose that so fills Him. To have experienced what He’s experienced for so long and to have come to this point in time in His creation. Finally, the fullness of His creation being established because His creation has been ongoing for up to 6,000 years now within those He’s been working with, the creation that continues in you and me to this day, a spirit creation, that which is going to become Elohim. Awesome!

I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give the fountain of water of life freely to all who thirst. And who thirsts? Those who have proven themselves. They want what God has given and God gives it to them for all time then.

Whoever overcomes shall inherit all things. That’s why you read about in Hebrews we’ve only seen one who has inherited all things to this point in time. But that’s God’s purpose and His plan to fulfill the mystery of God.

Whoever overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son, or My child. It’s just another way of expressing something here of a relationship with God as children.

But the cowardly, the unbelieving, given opportunity to believe but just doesn’t want it, believes something else. Sometimes the mind can just become so perverted like whatever Satan does – and I believe with all my being it’s to believe they’re going to be able to accomplish something that defeats God still, and it can’t. Incredible.

But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, you know, raising other things up above God, desiring something else in life that God says you shouldn’t have that’s not healthy for you, that destroys the mind rather than strengthens and builds it and enriches it. It does the exact opposite. It corrupts it. It causes it to decay.

...and all liars. Some people just like to lie! Some people can’t help but lie, it seems, can’t embrace what is true in life, can’t think along those lines. What a horrible thing! You have to come to hate those things. ...and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

So God makes it clear there are those who are going to receive something that He’ll be involved in with them for all time, to have full access to Him, to have His power, His life permeating their lives, and yet all the others who haven’t chosen His way of life, when it’s all said and done, it comes back to this, the second death.

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues... Why at this moment in time would such a being be spoken of? Not at the time of Christ’s coming but at the time all this is over with, at a time when all these things have come to an end? Well, good food for thought.

And one of the seven angels, talking about the seven last plagues, came to me and talked with me, saying, Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God. Elohim. The final fulfillment, the completion of the mystery of God, and yet one of those beings was still there, having to do with the seven last plagues.

So I’ll just mention it right now. Seven Last Plagues, we have believed in the Church since I’ve been in it, that it’s something that happens at Christ’s return. No. If there are some things that God does at the beginning... Well, we’ll get to that part of the chapter later.

But there are things that happen at the very end that we cannot comprehend nor understand about what those things are about that God unleashes upon mankind. But one thing that becomes clear as you go through all these things and as we begin to see some of these things is this is about a massive destruction of human life and what God does to judge the earth in the Great White Throne, after the Great White Throne, at the time Satan is let loose for a season.

There are certain things God will bring to pass to destroy it all. It will not be the God Family that does it. It will not be the 144,000 and Christ who do it. They do some of those things at the beginning when they come as far as taking control of the earth and great power that’s going to be unleashed, but there are certain things that have to do with the 7th Trumpet that take over 1,100 years to fulfill concerning the mystery of God to become completed, to become finished, which is all of what that 7th Trumpet is all about. Awesome to understand what God is going to fulfill.

Yet we have looked for events to be something that happen quickly, speedily, and to be fully fulfilled at Christ’s coming, and that’s not the case of what God is showing us here. It’s far more spread out. Just like Babylon. Babylon is resurrected; they have to be dealt with. There are going to be massive numbers of people, as the sand of the sea, who will not choose God’s way of life. It’s better that we come to grips with that, face to face with that, because that will help us to understand our nature better and to understand, hopefully, what God has offered us that we must and choose, if we so choose, to hold on to with all of our being and to fight for.

Because this is not owed to anyone and we’ve had false concepts in the past, that if not careful they will lull you to sleep spiritually. If people think that in the Great White Throne it’s a great utopia and all of a sudden we can have God’s way of life and can become spirit beings? That’s not the way it works. It comes in the same way of what we’re living in God’s Church today, and that is by making choices.

Some of the greatest choices you have to make is to deny this piece of stuff that is not very pretty, not very pretty at all. It’s that stuff that comes out of the back of that little white llama. That’s what we are. That’s what our nature is like. Actually, that’s kind of complimentary. That stink and that smell and that swill is kind of a complimentary thing, if that’s what we were fully. I’m sorry. Our nature is far worse than that because our nature is destructive and that stuff isn’t. It just decays and helps to fertilize the earth so other things can grow. We don’t do that. We fight against God. We fight against God’s purpose. We’re evil. Our nature is evil.

And yet I think of people who left the Church, “I just get so tired of being told how bad I am. I go there every Sabbath and I hear how bad I am. I am tired of this! I’m going to go somewhere where they tell me how good I am.” That’s what people do, go to some Protestant church where everything is syrupy sweet and you live in this kind of utopia world and you’re fake and you’re lying to yourself.

God wants us to see reality for what it is and to realize we all have to accept what we are, who we are, and to be so thankful that we have such a merciful, patient, loving God who gives us the time to change, the blessing of when we repent that it’s gone, it’s forgiven. It’s never brought up again. Just let it go. Don’t beat yourself up with it. Don’t bang yourself up with it. Don’t beat your head against the wall. Just be thankful that God is that way. It’s behind you. Nobody is going to hold it against you if they’re living God’s way of life. You’re free. What an awesome thing God offers us. We have to make choices, don’t we, and we have to own our choices.

[1] 2008-God’s Final Witness, pg. 59 in pdf (112 in hardcover)