To Build For God, Pt. 4

Ronald Weinland

February 29, 2020

This is Part 4 of the current series entitled To Build For God.

Once again there is a question that we’ve been asking at the beginning of each series, and that is what kind of a house or dwelling place is in your heart, your mind to build for God?

I love that, really. It’s an awesome thing to think about because it has to do with our thinking, our attitude, our mind toward God. How do we think about God each and every day? Hopefully, we’re doing that, and if we’re not, then there are things we need to look at in our lives.

I love that example of David, how it was in his heart to build something unto God. It was a mighty thing for a long time because he went into a lot of planning, long before he died, of trying to bring things together, work with things, even though God wasn’t going to allow him to build it. He still started the process and also the work as far as designing and the things that were going to take place, and where materials would come from, all the materials that would be there and the like. So there was a lot of work done before his son came along and started the actual work on it.

To think about things like that, you know, to me is an awesome matter. To realize the kind of life that he lived, to understand what it was like toward the end of his life, and that attitude and desire he always had toward God from the very beginning. He made mistakes along the way, repented of those things, unique in the sense of living in a world that isn’t like what we have when we have the Church.

Because we’re called into a Church and we’re clearly shown far more than what they were back in that time as far as God’s plan and God’s purpose and the scriptures that are there to be able to learn things on a spiritual plane more quickly in that regard. We’re so incredibly blessed because of what we’ve been given. But to be one of a few, whether there were others, or a few that were being worked with at that time, we don’t know. But we know that there were very few in the first 4,000 years.

So again, to have that kind of attitude from a very young person to me is encouraging, too, to young people because that attitude can be in you at a very young age. It can begin to develop at a very young age. I think of the disciples. In their twenties, maybe early twenties, when God began to work with them. That’s quite an amazing thing when you think about it. It doesn’t give all their ages, but look at the age of Joshua and what he went through and what he did and those he worked with, knowing that they were younger people, in that respect, and the attitude of mind that they had. Well, God had obviously prepared them some time before that.

But anyway, going all the way back to David again. From a very young person as he was out working with sheep as a shepherd, things that he learned, things that happened to him, an attitude of mind he had toward God and looking to God. That’s very obvious as you go through his entire life from that point forward and things that are recorded about him. A unique heart. A unique spirit. A unique attitude. Not one that was willing to lie to God. He might have done some things in his life where he was deceived by certain things until God revealed it to him, but that’s a process of growth for all of us. Because there are things we don’t see in our life in the very beginning. It takes time, sometimes things revealed even toward the end of life that you learn from because it doesn’t stop with God when He’s teaching and training, and molding, and fashioning someone.

So again, what’s in our heart? That says a lot, it really does. What’s in our heart? A lot of what we’re talking about here in this series is about a spirit and an attitude toward God and a desire toward God, a desire to please God, a desire to be pleasing to God, a desire to want to do things in a way that are pleasing to God.

So again, those are things that can’t be given. They’re things that have to come from inside of you. Everyone has to measure that according to their own life and what they’re doing, and if that becomes stronger and stronger as a motivation in your life, and God will help you if that’s your desire (because you have to ask for it), He will help you to have even more of that. But again here, something you want to grow in. It’s something you should desire to have. But you have to fight for it. It’s amazing. You have to fight for it because your carnal nature resists that kind of thinking, that kind of a mind.

So last week in Part 3 we ended by covering some verses in Ephesians 4. We’re going to pick up from there again for the flow of some of this and some extra things going to be mentioned as we go along here. But it’s a good place to review and pick up from because it reveals, really, a lot of the crux of the matter in a lot of this as well.

Ephesians 4:11—He gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors... that word means “shepherds,” for the work of shepherding, for helping to do work that helps with the Body, with the Church. That’s the description that God gives. ...and teachers. There have been different times that there has been a different balance of these things depending on what God’s doing and how God’s doing it because it’s a matter of God’s focus and what is God doing, and how is God doing it? It’s God’s Church, when you speak of the Church, the Body of Christ.

So both of them working with us once we’re called, and it varies widely, in that respect, depending on what they’re doing, as to what they supply and what kind of service they provide for God’s people. That is always there for our growth, for our benefit, and we learn from it. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, as we do throughout life, throughout time with the entirety of what the Body goes through.

If you look at different times, like Laodicea, look how large the Church was. But it wasn’t to the good. God allowed it to be something else. He allowed people to begin to hear that which wasn’t sound and wasn’t right, wasn’t balanced, and in time because of the focus of so many in the ministry, because of what was coming down from headquarters, the Church just became weaker and weaker.

It’s like a famine of sorts when it talks about that in scripture, because that’s what led up to the Apostasy and greater famine.

But if we’re not constantly being given a good diet of that which is spiritual we’re not going to do well. That’s the primary means. God hasn’t put us out here on our own. It isn’t like in the beginning, in the first 4,000 years, where God directly worked with specific individuals to mold and fashion them. Now there is a body and a Church and there is great structure in that for God to mold and fashion and prepare primarily those who are part of the 144,000, and those at the end here those who are going to go on into a Millennial period and have incredible opportunities to share now.

If people have been given that they just don’t grasp, truly, how richly blessed they really are. In time, much later, you’ll come to understand and see those things far more deeply, when certain things have come to pass. But we should strive to appreciate those things now and to understand how God is working with us in our lives, all of us.

Again here, we’ve gone through many things, we’ve seen through a period of Philadelphia, for those who were around at that time. We’ve seen a lot of things, but we’ve learned through all that, good and bad. We’ve seen things done that are good and bad in life – from the Body, from the ministry because no one is perfect and God has allowed these things to exist and then we have to learn how to judge in those matters.

I’ve often said that most of my training had to do with seeing what was wrong because God put my head right down there to see certain things and they weighed heavy in some instances, well, a lot of instances over a long period of time. Those are the things that helped mold and fashion me in a lot of things, that God helped me to experience those things because of what He was doing in my life that I didn’t understand at a time.

So a lot of times we just don’t know how He’s working with us, how He’s working in our lives, and later on we can look back and say, “Now I know and now I’m far more thankful.” Because at the time you’re going through certain hardships, through certain trials, it’s not always a lot of fun. Sometimes it’s very difficult, excruciatingly difficult in the mind. It truly is. That’s why I’ve often thought about physical things, in some ways, are easier to go through in the sense of hardship rather than things of the mind that you have to weigh, that you have to come to focus upon. But those are the things that help you too, to rely more on God because He has the answers. We don’t.

Sometimes, candidly, you have to wait for years for answers. They’re just not right there right then. You don’t understand how this could be in God’s Church, whatever it might be, and so we learn through the process of experience that God gives us. I treasure those things, and we should all treasure those things that God has blessed us to experience.

So even in this we have seen many things. I think of all those who were in the ministry and what happened during the Apostasy, of people you could talk to one day, literally, and the next day because of a phone call they had in Pasadena, which I experienced with one individual especially even more so, who’d just come through in our region and came through our house. I think he was in a transfer and going to another area, and talking to him on the next day, I did not know him. I did not know the man! It was an amazing thing to experience, in one day. It shows a spiritual power at work because God was nowhere there anymore. He was not around and something else was.

That’s why, in some ways, to deal with it we talked about The Invasion of the Body Snatchers because that’s how scary it was. It was like something’s taken control of them. In many ways, that’s exactly what happened.

You know, if you don’t live by God’s way of life, if you don’t hold on to it with all of your being – which some still are not doing, which just blows my mind sometimes, a few. But a few is too many! I think, how can you hear all these things and continue to do certain things? It’s frustrating because it’s kind of like the one in a hundred, one in ninety-nine, whatever it is, expression there. But you know, you’re concerned and worried about them and the choices they’re going to make if they don’t get things turned around. And one is too many! So I continue to cry out to individuals as well, to strive to understand what you’re doing. Anyone else who might be letting down, you can’t afford to be letting down at this time.

What’s happening in the world right now ought to scare “the you know what” out of every one of us. If you’re not sobered by everything you see over the past few months—and I didn’t want to get into next week’s sermon—but, if you’re not sobered to the core of your being by what you see, if we’re kind of sluggish and asleep and we’re not shaken up by it and wonder how close can it be? Because it can be exceedingly close right now. You don’t know!

Does that kind of shake you up just a little bit? Because I’ll tell you what, you haven’t seen anything yet! And I don’t want to get into next week’s sermon! But I’ll tell you what, if we have ears to hear...if we’re not hearing Thunders galore over the last several months we’re in some bad shape, we really are, and we need to ask God to wake us up, to help us to be alert, to help us to be on guard and to take where we are seriously, more seriously.

This is the most serious time I’ve seen yet by any measure since I’ve been in God’s Church. I think writing the book has helped to even stir that up even more because it’s so obvious, everything around us, in government, in the world, things that are taking place. It should be ever so obvious. I think of that sermon given at the Feast a couple years ago talking about everything is set. Everything is prepared as far as the world is concerned, and it was. It still is.

It’s just a matter of God’s timing and it’s a matter of completing a job. I’m so glad God revealed that, too. There has to be 144,000, and when that’s done, it’s done; we’re ready. Incredible.

Again here, talking about the ministry, and so forth, and things that we’ve seen in the Church in times past and during times of Laodicea and times of the Apostasy, after the Apostasy, and then rebuilding and becoming stronger, and then the things we’ve seen within the Church. I hope we understand there have been a lot of different changes even within the ministry within the Church. We learn from that process, and there still may be more changes. But it’s for the process of how God molds and fashions us. We learn from that process and it’s just a way that God works with us. He’s preparing us all to fit somewhere in the Body that we don’t understand and so we go through many experiences. We should be thankful for those things in every facet and every form.

So anyway, going on here (I love this) ...until we all... Well, it talks here about service, for the edifying of the Body of Christ until we all come in the unity of the faith. In other words, come into a unity of the faith and a strength of living by this way of life. I don’t know that there’s ever been a time for the vast majority of God’s Church to be like this, a unity of the faith, because of what God has given us to believe. I don’t care what age you look at, to realize where we are now and what’s taking place and why God is bringing us to this point, to me, is awesomely inspiring, because there’s a maturity and a strength of unity that hasn’t existed before.

It’s not a matter of size, it’s a matter of conversion. It’s a matter of strength. It’s a matter of spiritual strength in people’s lives. Again, until we all come in the unity of the faith. Grow into it, if you will, come into it. You just don’t just come into it, but until we’re there to that point of time.

I think, look at the time we’re living in and God is bringing the entirety of the Church through a period of time, even of the past 2,000 years, to a time like this that it never has experienced in the same way because it wasn’t there even as a body.

Again here, going on it says, and of the knowledge of the Son of God. I think, how much have we grown in that? I think of the truths God’s given to us, things that haven’t been known in times past that God has revealed to us that are exceedingly inspiring. “And of the knowledge of the Son of God.” Joshua. Joshua, Joshua, Joshua, you know, and other things about his life that we see more clearly than ever before.

...unto a perfect man, a mature, in other words, growing in that respect in a maturity unto the measure and the stature of the fullness of Christ. That’s our desire, to grow in that way, to become more at one with God and with Christ. That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.

I think of all the things we’ve gone through over time, and especially if you’ve gone through it, you can’t help but think about it at times, things that began to happen in the early 90’s that led up to, finally, ’91, ’92, questions and what’s going on, and finally hitting ’94 and then explosion as far as what took place within the Church and of all the incredible deception that was taking place before and after.

I think, what a blessing we don’t have that anymore. What a blessing that we have technology where most of the time we can be on YouTube and not get cut off, but with technology that we have today to be able to be heard, and if that happens then generally the sound is still going out there on the other system.

We don’t have these same things going on, and primarily because of the structure and size that God has given to us so that the ability to come into unity is enhanced by God, by God’s spirit, by how God has molded us, built us into what we are today, a small Body where primarily we’ve gotten used to a process whereby we hear a voice, or some other voices at time, but it’s still the same unified single voice that comes across to everyone around the world. You think, how awesome is that?

I remember when we use to try to call up someone else on a telephone system. You could get a maximum of four people on it before it so took away from the quality of the sound. So one person would get the telephone call and send it out to four other people and you’d all be hooked up. I think it was four other people. Anyway, that doesn’t seem that long ago. That was still the case in Cincinnati. We had a hook up by the telephone system like that. You think, look at what we have today. I think of all the things we had to plug in.

We had all these things in the basement up in Erie—not in Erie, in Toledo area—and we had all these systems set up downstairs where all these VCR’s were and you could hook up one VCR to four to record because we were sending out tapes at that time, cassette tapes. So we’d get one started, backed up a little ways, and then you’d shoot down through there getting the other four going, you know, the other four going at the same time so you could copy four copies off there. Then four more, and then four more, and then four more. I remember I had two whole lines of these VCR’s out through there, and you think, crazy! Now it’s all on internet. Awesome! More powerful.

I guess what I’m saying is look how fast we have moved to where God has brought us these things and given us these things. It’s really an incredible thing at the end of an age to be able to have this. I’m looking forward to the time Mr. Armstrong sees it, “You had what? What? And able to do what? You could write a book, have it published off of a single computer, get rid of the whole staff of people doing those things? Awesome!”

That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine. So we don’t have that today like we did, and if it started somewhere, man, that would get put down so fast! I mean, it wouldn’t get very far. What a blessing to be in such an environment today.

...but speaking the truth in love. Agape. God’s love. Speaking the truth in love and look how much truth we have. We can talk about it. We have a fellowship with one another and if that mind and that attitude is in us our fellowship is enhanced mightily. We have grown a lot in that in the sense of seeing that we’re family. We are a hodgepodge of a family. How blessed are we for that? Different people, different backgrounds. I think it’s awesome that there is so much variety. God has put that there for a reason, so we can learn from it, slowly but surely. But the more we can focus on that and ask God for help in that, to love the Body, to love everyone in the Body, to seek to see the best, to try to encourage the best, then that’s what it’s about.

Yes, we all have weaknesses. Not a one of us doesn’t still have some rocks we’re pulling. You may not see them but they’re there. We all have them. Hopefully, they’re becoming fewer and fewer. But we all have things to grow in and to learn. We’re all at different stages within the Body. But it’s a beautiful thing because of God’s spirit. Where else can you go to experience something that as soon as you come through a door you have something so unique in what you’re able to share with one another just in a fellowship and to know where it came from? Because God made it possible. God has made this possible, that we’re able to have this kind of an experience, this kind of fellowship. To me, it’s an awesome thing.

...but speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, who is the head, even Christ. Growing, growing. So what are we doing? God is doing that and He offers it, Christ and God Almighty, but it’s up to us what we put into it. It’s up to us how we grow. Because He’s made it all possible. He’s given us everything to build with, everything that we need. More than enough. But it’s up to us to follow up with that work.

...from whom the whole body is fitly joined together (fit together) and compacted by what every joint supplies. This reveals the fact that we need each other! “By what every joint supplies.” If there is a part not supplying it, like a knee, and it’s not doing what it’s supposed to be doing then it causes some pain after a certain time. And you think, you’re not supplying what you’re supposed to supply! So you go get a different one. Anyway. That was bad, I know.

But that’s the way it is. We don’t see it fully, but the reality is, what is every part of the Body putting into it? Because the more we’re all putting something into it, supplying to it, the better off we are as a body.

...according to the effective working of the measure of every part... So in your body you want every part to work well. Then you get older – it doesn’t. Those things stand out in our life. ...and makes increase/makes growth of the body of the edifying of itself in love.

So, to me, it’s an awesome thing to think about some of this because when we think about David and what was in his heart, he had a love toward God, and God blessed him with that and God allowed him to experience even more love, a love that was of the spirit, of God’s spirit. Those things help to mold and fashion and shape David’s thinking and it helps to mold and fashion our thinking in a very powerful way to where that attitude and that spirit and that mind is more and more in us and less of the selfishness. In other words, we can yield to that more and cry out to it more, but we’re still always dealing with the selfishness.

So continuing on from there. Although there are scriptures which are very familiar to us, nevertheless, it’s needful that they be deeply ingrained in our being. So sometimes it’s good to go back and review. I’m just going to give you one scripture here: 1 Peter 2:5—You also as lively stones... It means living stones. We’re a part of a temple, a spiritual temple, and we’re lively because we’ve been given a life from God and Christ, not a physical life, but something that we’re beginning to taste of that’s on a spiritual plane and we look forward to the time that it’s all spirit, the body and the mind fully at one with God, fully changed.

We’re being built up as spiritual house. We understand that. We understand what God has offered us from the very beginning, of being able to come to a point of baptism and having the impregnation of God’s spirit because we want to change, we choose God’s way of life and we know we can’t do it on our own. So it begins in that process there and that’s the process where we begin to build, by the choices we make.

...a spiritual house, a holy priesthood. So we’re all part of a priesthood, a spiritual priesthood. I think of the verse back in Ephesians there. People get hung up, did in Worldwide especially, about people ordained and so forth. You think, you don’t get it. That’s not what it’s all about. That’s a part of a process, yes, but do we not grasp that which is greater on a spiritual plane? We’re all part of a spiritual priesthood and that’s what we need to see.

...to offer up spiritual sacrifices. That’s the greater portion of our calling if we grasp it and understand it. So what’s a spiritual sacrifice? Choices, choices, choices we have to make in our lives once we’re called, once we have the impregnation of God’s spirit. The sacrifice comes from fighting against the carnal human nature, saying no.

So to build unto God, to build for God. A lot of choices when it comes to whether we yield to and desire to have God’s love working in us and bring certain things to check and say, “No, no more; that isn’t right” and fight against our carnal, selfish human nature. That’s what we have to do in order to experience more of God’s love. There are sacrifices because it’s always saying no to self.

A spiritual sacrifice is when you give up things that self wants, especially when we come to see them, the things we want, carnally, as far as the human mind is concerned, are contrary to God. Selfishness is contrary to God. It’s against God. “The carnal mind is enmity against God, is not subject to the law of God and neither indeed can be.”

Now, we have the blessing of the impregnation of God’s spirit so we can make the choices to fight against that, but that attitude and spirit is always going to be in you and you always have to fight it. It never stops.

So how and what are you building? Again, some very familiar scriptures. But again, I think of what I said earlier about the one in ninety-nine. How can we hear certain things and not see what we’re building and be honest with ourselves? How can anyone impregnated with God’s spirit not be truthful and honest to God?

God knows what we are. He knows what’s in our mind. He knows what we’re thinking. He knows the wrong we’ve done. He knows the wrong things we’ve said, whether it be in the world to fellow employees, employers, neighbors, relatives—I don’t care what it is—and we’re accountable for those things until we repent. Then they’re gone if we truly repented with all of our being and cried out to God for help to make change in that, to not repeat it, and the ability to see those things when they begin to happen. The more you fight that the more you begin to see things in it when it first begins.

1 Corinthians 3:6—I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. Again, very familiar scriptures. A ton of them are. But they need to live in us. We’re lively stones. We’re living stones. We’re to be growing in these things and understanding. And candidly, there are people who don’t agree with this by their life or don’t see themselves for what’s being said. That will always be true!

It’ll be true throughout the Millennium, it’ll be true in the Great White Throne, and it’s true today because we have human nature and not everyone that receives the impregnation of God’s spirit will always make right choices. Sad! But that’s life. No one else can make them for us. We all have to make our own.

But God gave the increase. So there’s work we do. He realized Apollos had work to do, Paul realized he had work to do, and there is other work that’s done in the Church as far as what we read back in Ephesians of things that take on administratively and so forth in caring for the Body. But in all that everyone has to work. All of us, if we grasp. It doesn’t mean “even” it just means we all have to understand that. We all have work to do in the building as to how we respond to what we’re taught.

So what Apollos gave depends on someone who hears it. Do they do it then? Do they seek it and want it in their life and make changes accordingly? But God gives the increase. Why? Because the spirit comes from Him. The ability to hear what is said comes from God. If someone is letting down in their life they’re not even hearing the same thing.

See, we have different levels of hearing on the Sabbath throughout the Body. Some are hearing sound, and no more, words, and no more, story, and no more – still, some. Others hear sound with inspiration because of God’s spirit, because of what we’re putting into the building. We’re praying. We’re seeking God’s help. We want to hear. We pray about what’s going to be given. We pray we have the ability to be stirred up and inspired by God’s word! It’s God’s word!  These are words that come from God given to us so we can grow and receive the greatest of blessings that we really don’t grasp the fullness of.

What does it mean to become Elohim? We believe it, but we don’t know it yet. We only see a part of that because of Christ’s life, but we don’t understand it because we don’t really see what he’s lived now as a spirit being for the past 2,000 years in the God Family. But we know that’s what we’re going to receive.

...but God gave the increase. So then neither is he who plants anything, neither he who waters. So it shows here no matter what happens in the Body, no matter where they are in the Body that God has placed them. Apostles, it doesn’t matter. It’s God that gives the increase. We all have a part to play throughout the Body! We’re all a part of a spiritual priesthood! Which is far more important, if we grasp it, until we attain to, until we’re there in Elohim. See, that’s what it’s about. That’s the goal. That’s the desire.

...neither he who waters; but God who gives the increase. Again, there is nothing for anyone to ever be lifted up by! Yet my experience throughout God’s Church has been far too much of the other garbage where people get lifted up by who they think they are!

I got my gut full of that during Laodicea, and even in Philadelphia. People get lifted up by how important they think they are. Elevated. To me the epitome of that was what happened right here in Cincinnati at some of the potlucks. Well, we couldn’t even call them potlucks because that was like a sin! “Potluck?!” That’s what we got. “Potluck? That just sounds redneck.” That’s basically how it came across. “Are you a redneck?” Now, that’s not what was said literally, but that’s what was implied. “Are you some kind of a hick? You want to call it a potluck?!” I heard him!

So, to get upset by calling something a potluck? Because we’re more sophisticated than that, especially those up there on the risers at the tables with china, silver, looking down on the rest out there who didn’t have china and silver. Boy, aren’t we special. I was so sick by that, so embarrassed by that. It was a sickening thing that happened in God’s Church. But you know what? We can learn from that, can’t we, to realize that isn’t what it’s all about?

It reminds me of the chalice that supposedly was Christ’s and those who think it had to be of gold. You think Christ was going around with a gold chalice on Passover night and passing it around? Or a silver one? And we’ve got to have that. Give me a break. “You mean it was just plain old pottery?!” I’m sorry. “That would be beneath him!” He set the perfect example of what we’re to follow and what we’re to be like.

So again, we learn from the error. We’re to learn from the mistakes. But we’re to learn and we’re to be different as God’s people, truly, with all of our being, and so there are things we need to understand. Pride is something you have to fight against. It’s the difference between that that Mr. Armstrong did and that which the man of sin did. Another thing that made me sick, in that respect, especially in retrospect, and that didn’t feel right at the time when crowds—I remember up in New York—applauding, clapping that someone walked on to the stage.

Mr. Armstrong wouldn’t allow that because people on occasion did it. People who were Protestant minded, who didn’t understand yet, would begin to clap and so forth, and others joined in because of peer pressure. “Oh, if they’re doing it and I’m not I’ll look bad. Oh no!” Even though you don’t believe in it.

Anyway, but he, literally, they did for a long period of time, and he said, “You can do better than that!” You think, “Who do you think you are?”

That’s how ugly pride is. Pride should be repulsive to us. It should want us to gag. If you can’t reach it with your finger just put the other down – blech- and just let it go because it’s that bad. It stinks. It’s worse than that!

If we can see that in ourselves we’ll never want it to be there. If we see it that way, for what it is, we’ll never imbibe of it. We’ll never drink it in. We’ll never want to portray that. We will fight against it with all of our being because we see what it is. One of the greatest dung hills ever. Truly, that’s what it is.

God gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one. Beautiful. So then neither is he who plants anything, neither he who waters... Now he who plants and he who waters are one. Beautiful. It shows the side of humility and the side of unity with God’s spirit. Because that’s what makes it possible. Because God gives the increase. To be able to be one in spirit, to be able to be one of the same mind, to have the truths we have and to be in unity and agreement on those things and clearly see them for what they are and what they say and to say, “Amen. Thank you, God Almighty,” is an awesome thing.

...and everyone shall receive their own reward according to his own labor. So, it’s how we build, isn’t it? It’s how we build. That’s why I marvel and have marveled through time that we can all hear the same thing and be hearing different things or just sound. Because without God’s spirit all you can hear is sound. That’s all you can hear.

For we are laborers together with God. I love it. Laborers together. God has called us to participate in the building process. What else could make sense? What else could be real? What else could be true except that? God gives every means, every ability, His power to accomplish it, and then it’s up to us to respond to what He offers, to do it.

Like fasting. It’s up to us whether we do it, and if we never do it then we’re not using one of the most powerful tools God has given to us to be in greater unity and oneness with Him. To pray regularly day by day is something that is a tool that God has given that has great power in it if we yield ourselves to the process and recognize this need in our life because “I need God. That’s why I got baptized because I know I need God. I can’t do this on my own.” You can’t do it by your own ability, by your own willpower. Willpower means diddly you-know-what – squat! Only if it’s in unity and agreement with God do our choices have meaning and purpose.

And you are God’s husbandry, God’s cultivation. God does the work, in that respect, and we do the work. It’s something we do together. There’s a fellowship in the labor, laborers together. ...God’s building. You are God’s husbandry, God’s building. Sometimes it’s hard for us to grasp that. The more clearly we can see that and grasp that the less sin will be in our life. The more we think that day-by-day the less sin there will be in our life because we won’t want anything to interfere in that relationship with God because we love God, because we’re growing in our love to God and Christ, and we have a thankfulness because we grasp what we have been given and are thankful for it.

According to the grace of God – mercy, forgiveness, love, on and on it goes, that God pours out upon us, that we’re able to drink in. According to the grace...which is given unto me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation. Again here he talks about there is a building process here. Here it is. What is the foundation for us? It’s the truths God’s given to us. It’s the truth God continues to give to us to build upon that foundation. God gives us that foundation. It begins with Christ. It begins with a greater appreciation and understanding of Him, and God has continued to even give us more of that as time has gone on.

I have laid the foundation and another builds thereon. We all do. Whatever God has called us to and given us, to be able to live by faith because of the belief He’s allowed us to see and to embrace, then it’s up to us, isn’t it? We have to be careful how we build upon it, very careful to do it God’s way.

...and another builds thereon. But let everyone take heed. That means warning, be careful; there’s a warning there about how you build because we’re all going to be building something. That’s just the way it is. Let everyone take heed how they build thereon. For no other foundation can be laid than that which is laid, which is Christ Joshua. Just said that. Passover. The foundation. Our High Priest, to understand that. To understand what has been given to us, the ability to be reconciled to God through the forgiveness of sin and then to have the life of God living and dwelling in us because of that process, and then a desire to continue in that and have that life continue on in us.

Now... not “if.” Better translated as “whether,” because people will build in one way or another, if you will. That’s really what it is. Whether anyone builds upon this foundation of gold, because, again, that’s going to take place regardless, silver, precious stones... We know what these things mean. At least most do. Not everyone does. ...gold, silver, precious stones. Those are things, in the example here, you want to have, see, because something is going to happen in the midst of all this, and it’s the matter of a fire. It’s called trials. Because those things reveal how we’re building, what we’re building upon.

That’s why I think sometimes when I think of one that was being built down in Georgia. It’s been a few years back now, but this structure, I think it’s three stories, maybe four. A three-story high hotel all of wood. You think, “Man! Didn’t know they were still doing that in this way.” Fire – how fast could that go through there? A lot of kindling. Not the best way to build something to last for a long time. Because they have ability to do them a whole lot better, things that are fire resistant so they don’t spread so quickly. Cheaper way.

So again, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble. So we fit in there somewhere, all of us. What are we? What are we building with? Every man’s work shall be made manifest. Every one of us. It’s going to be clear. At some point along the way or even toward the end, because God’s going to make sure of it, especially now. In times past certain things could happen where someone could just die while in the Church, or I should say attending in the church, but not having really lived it. But they died and will not be in the first resurrection, a part of the 144,000. So those kinds of things happened.

So the only difference between now and back then was that they didn’t leave before or weren’t put out. The reality is God knows what’s inside of us. Now, at the end of an age, we have a situation where some are going to be a part of the 144,000, but most are going to continue on and live in a new age. A continuation of God’s Church, that’s how it begins, that’s where it begins, and built upon what has been given up to the end of the age here.

I’ve said it again and again and again, nobody is going to get by with anything. If we’re ignoring, if we’re doing the wood, hay, and stubble thing as far as building is concerned—the same analogy of being out in the courtyard—if we’re screwing around with this way of life and not taking it seriously and not fighting against sin with all of our being and getting rid of the garbage and the swill and the cesspool in our lives, of things where God is being ignored, where God is being rejected in the sense of “I’m going to do what I lust to do!” See, because that’s what “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life are.” If we lust to do those, if we desire to do those more than yielding our self to what God has given us, we’re not going to get by with it.

If God could make sure that tens of thousands of people would die by a certain time when the children of Israel were ready to go into the promised land do you think that He has the ability to take care of a few in the Church to make sure they will not be in that promised land? Because the reality is, oh yeah, nobody is going to get by and be looked upon by others in the world in a new world, in a new age, and they say, “You were a part of the Church?!” God’s going to see to it that everyone who is recognized and seen as having been a part of God’s Church are living a certain way of life in spirit and in truth. Perfectly? No. But in spirit and in truth. Anyone who does not believe that, I feel sorry for them.

Because we still have people who are robbing from God. Of all the stupid things to do! Of all the stupid things to do! To rob from God! I don’t get it! How does anyone think that they can have a relationship with the Great God of the universe and look down upon them and they’re not giving the simplest of what God said to do from the very beginning, a tithe or a yearly offering. Doesn’t have to be something large. If we’re strapped, if we’re having hard times, put something to God because we’re grateful.

Think of the examples Christ gave. Think of the widow’s mite. You know, you think, it’s not about the size of it; it’s about what it is in our life, what comes out of the heart, what comes out of the mind. What kind of a heart do we have toward God? One that loves God? One that wants to please God and be pleasing to God? It just goes on. Mindboggling!

Now, that doesn’t equate for other sins out there that we’re not aware of because that’s something that’s very easily able to be seen. You can’t help it. You send out yearly reports, quarterly reports, and as you’re going through certain things in the folding machine, or whatever it might be, and it’s like, “What?” I mean, it hits you. Some of those things, you know, it’s just, it’s like, you’ve got to be kidding me!

Well, candidly, sometimes you already know there are certain things going on in people’s lives because of their life. You realize something is not right here, and if something isn’t right, then other things reflect it.

But what about so many other sins that are done in the dark? That are done in secret? That no one else knows about? That only we, or at least we think, we’re the only ones that know. God knows. He knows it. He sees it. He knows what’s going on in the mind the moment it begins. What are you going to do with it? Which one are you going to raise up, what you want to do that’s sin against God or God Almighty, and cry out to Him for help and to fight against what’s wrong? Because, you see, those sins don’t get by either.

No one gets by. We all have accounting. We live in a time of judgment upon the world. You think God isn’t going to judge the Church in a very unique way and not just let people die of an old age who weren’t a part, who are out in the courtyard messing around for a long time and they just died of old age?  “Oh, that’s okay. He’ll be with us in the resurrection.” Bull! It’s like everyone who ever died who was a part of the Church is going to be in the resurrection.

I think of that that happened throughout Philadelphia and Laodicea. People lived and died and it’s like everyone no matter how old they were, no matter how short a period of time they might have been in God’s Church, “Oh, they’re all going to be there. Oh, praise the Lord.” Now, nobody said that but that’s as Protestant a spirit as you can have, to think that way. We had too much of that in times past. God brought us through that, helped us to see that’s not true.

We know that’s not true! We’ve seen too much in history, in times in God’s Church where that wasn’t true. So we were to judge and learn from those things as time went along. To realize, wait a minute! A person can’t live their life like that.

I think of someone. I probably shouldn’t even share it. I can’t share it all because it’s too gross, too sick, too perverted. But of a man up in a region that we were in, to me, who committed some of the most heinous and sickest of sins on earth apart from murder. Put him out of God’s church because he wasn’t in it and for too long people had played games in the ministry with him anyway. After it came to light what he was still doing, disfellowshipped him.

Then I got a visit from headquarters. This was in the early ‘90’s, ’92, ’93, in through there. They were putting pressure on me to let him back in the Church, that this was basically coming from headquarters. “Well, look, he’s written these letters and he’s said these things about you.” Well, I was used to that by that time. People who you know their sins, you know what they’ve done? Sometimes people can turn disgustingly evil and he was turning disgustingly evil and sending sick things to headquarters – supposedly of how I treated him and what I did. It wasn’t about what his sins were and what he had done wrong that he really hadn’t repented of. Needless to say, I told them he is not coming back. He has not repented and that is some of the sickest of things a human being can do. No way on earth are they a part of God’s Church!

Anyway, that’s what sin should do in our life. I don’t care what kind of sin it is you should hate it like that. Sin is evil and it hurts the Body. Okay? We have to get rid of it. We have to fight against it. So whatever sin is out there in the Body to this day that you know you’re still imbibing in, quit it! Ask God for help to change. You don’t have much time. How much time do you have to work on self, to just say no to that kind of garbage? How much do you really want what God is offering you in a new age, to be a part of that?

I can’t imagine not wanting to experience that with all of your being, or else something is wrong with the belief of what we’re believing to this point in time. That’s the point, something is wrong with that.

Every man’s work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it. God judges. Judgment has always been on the house of God because God has called us to judgment. When He calls us we’re called to a time of judgment. The world isn’t being judged. It’s about ready to. That’s where we are in time. The scriptures that talk about a time of judgment, this is it. After 6,000 years this is the time for judgment, when God is going to put a stop to man’s rule, to man’s stupidity, to man’s arrogance, to the pride of mankind having sway over other human beings. The kind of garbage we see in the world today isn’t going to be allowed to continue on.

The kind of injustice in every system that we have in government around the world is wrong. It’s not God’s! The problem is because we don’t have God’s spirit in those areas. Because only God can judge righteously. So everything is messed up and I’m so thankful that God is making that manifest right now in a very powerful way. Everything is corrupt.

You want to drain the swamp? You can’t do it. Because that’s the mind of human beings and it just gets replaced with a different swamp mind. Because you can’t help it, because you’re human beings, and we all have selfish motivation as human beings and we can’t judge God’s righteous judgment without God. God has to be there.

...because it shall be revealed by fire. We understand that means by various trials that come along. We’re going to be tried by something that comes along, something is going to happen in our life whether it be because of foolish mistakes we have made and because of maybe going deeper into sin and that in itself will manifest it. Or something else will happen in our life that God will even bring directly upon us to pass judgment.

It shall be revealed by fire. I’ve seen so much of that happen in people’s lives, especially around the time of the Apostasy. I saw a lot of fire, a lot of fire, and people making choices because it revealed. It revealed what was in people’s hearts that they didn’t know what was in their hearts. They had never faced it. Even after they made those choices they didn’t grasp what was in their heart because they went farther away from God. They made choices that went away from God, and when that happens, it’s like this shutter that goes shut in the mind and you’re not the same person anymore, you’re different, and you’re headed in a different way on your own with certain knowledge. And what you do with that then, it’s just knowledge, but not with inspiration and help of God’s spirit in it anymore.

That’s why so many people who left in times past, “I’m not eating pork anymore, but I’ve got to work on Saturdays. It’s the only way I can make ends meet.” Hmm, okay. Choices, choices. A lot of people have done those things. “But I’m not going to touch pork. Lobster? Might. They’re raised in tanks now and they’re pretty clean.” That’s how the human mind works, by our own intellect. Certain knowledge we have out there, some will keep, try to keep a Sabbath, like so many have, holy days, like so many have. It becomes a routine. But not with God’s spirit. God’s spirit is not in it, period, exclamation mark! Not since the day they were spewed out of God’s mouth.

Every man’s work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it, it shall be revealed by fire, and fire shall try everyone’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work remains which they have built thereon... We have to build. We’re a part of it. What are we building? What are we building unto God? ...they shall receive a reward. Rewards that we really can’t grasp yet, truly.

If any one’s work shall be burned, they shall suffer loss: but they, it’s not “shall” but may yet. That’s what’s being said here. ...may yet be saved; yet so as by fire. Sometimes certain trials can shake people to the core of their being to where they repent. Some things can come along in life if there is a way to bring someone through it, to pluck them out of the fire. That’s why I love that expression, “and a firebrand plucked out of the fire.” If something is there that God places before us in life with His involvement, if that can shake us to a point where we finally open up our eyes and then say, “What on earth have I been doing? God in heaven, please forgive me. Help me to change. Help me to be different. I do not want that. Thank you for revealing to me what You have.” So that’s happened in some people’s lives at different times, and even in the past few years. It’s a beautiful thing when people can respond in that manner and begin to make changes in their life.

Then sometimes people slip back, too. You can’t ever slip back.

Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwells in you? What a beautiful thing, to recognize that the Great God of the universe has a portion of life that’s living in us. That’s how we’re able to have unique fellowship with one another.

If anyone defiles the temple of God... What defiles the temple of God? “Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life.” Sin that isn’t genuinely repented of. Because genuine repentance leads to change. It may not be immediately but you keep fighting until it happens, until the change comes.

...for the temple of God is holy, which you are. That’s what we’re to be because God will live in us then, dwell in us. If He’s not in us then we’re not whole, we’re not part of something sanctified, holy, set apart for holy use and purpose. We’re on our own. There are some people out there that are on their own and they think that they’re living in the Church, inside the temple. No, they went way out of the courtyard out to get pizza somewhere or something because they’re not there even in the courtyard.

Let no one deceive them self. If any among you seems to be wise in this world, let them become a fool, that they may be wise. In other words, don’t rely on your own thinking, of your own reasoning. Because that’s exactly what happens when people are involved in sin. There is something going on that’s screwed up in the thinking that has to be repented of and some of it goes back to what do you really believe? Look at what God has given you to believe. Do you really believe it? Because your choices reflect something different.

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He takes the wise in their own craftiness. See, thinking that people can be a part of something and they’re really not because whatever they’re thinking that’s screwed up. They’re not thinking right and thinking somehow that they can continue on to act like they’re inside the temple and building with something that they’re really not because they don’t really see themselves clearly.

And again, The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise.

Luke 6; basic parables here, but they say a lot and they have lessons in them, things that should be embedded in our thinking and in our mind. People read through parables sometimes and just kind of rush through them, but you know, Christ wasn’t just flapping his gums. He gave them for a purpose to the Church. He spoke them. He gave them so that we could learn from them, and they’re not just supposed to be nice. “Well, that’s a nice little platitude, a nice thing to see.” No, they have great meaning to them, things that have lessons in them that God wants us to learn. He puts them in simple terms so we can learn from them on a spiritual plane.

Luke 14:16—Then he said to him, A certain man made a great dinner, and invited many; and sent his servant when it was time for the dinner; to say to those who were invited, Come, because everything is now ready. Well, I’m not going to go into a long period of time of who this can apply to, but it could apply to different people throughout time in the Church. But I think of the time we live in now and what God has given at this time now.

Then all of them at once began to make excuse. The first said to him, I purchased a piece of ground, and I have need to go and see it. The whole point through this story, if you will, is our human nature. Somehow in life, too often in life, we don’t view the sin in our life like we should. We see things and we make excuses that justify our thinking because how can you do certain things without justifying certain things? “Well, God knows my frame. God knows my flesh. He knows we’re weak.” Whatever goes on in the mind. “God knows I’m having hard times right now,” not realizing that robbing from God is the very reason, so often, that we can’t get ahead, period. God not only won’t bless us, He will curse us because we claim to be inside the temple. I would not want to be in those shoes.

He says, I ask you to have me excused. I think about us sometimes as human beings, what we do, and how we do certain things.

Then another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m going to prove them. “I’m going to try them out. I’ve been working at this a long time. Oxen are expensive and there’s a lot of work to be done and this is pressing.” So what do we do to God? Sometimes we don’t realize at times. What are we doing that we can’t have time for fasting? Maybe once a year. What about praying? Too busy during the day? God’s not in our mind enough? We’re not thinking about God enough? Just don’t have the time? I’m tired? Whatever it is, what are we doing?

I ask you to have me excused. Excuses, excuses of why. Why, why, why we do something that we know is different from what we’ve been taught.

Verse 20—Another said, I married a wife, and therefore, I cannot come. You know, just can’t do it. Busy, busy, busy.

So that servant returned and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring here the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And I say, “Thank God!” Because I feel very much that’s the way we are at the end of the age, that God has blessed us to reveal to us even more powerfully the power He has to change us, the power He has to work with us in life, to dumbfound the world. Not calling the great and the mighty of the world that God says, making it very clear to us that especially at the end of an age everything God does He’s doing it. But He lets us share in it

We are small for a purpose and for a reason. If it was old days of Worldwide, the temptation, the reality would be far too many would be taking it upon themselves and into time, “Look what we did. We got this message out to the entire world on all these languages and radio and TV more than any other religious organization.” And, “I did this.” And, “I was a part of that.” Whoop tee do. That’s not what it’s about.

It’s about what the Great God is doing and lets us share in. So He lets us be a certain way and yet when God calls us we’re not to remain the same way, because in time God makes it clear we’re to confound the wise, so-called wise, the wealthy, the rich, the mighty of this world because of what God’s doing in us, so that they’re in time going to be able to see the change. “You! You were! This is what you were a part of? This is what you did?” I wish we could see that more clearly.

...go out into the streets, lanes, and city; bring in the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. You say, “Well, I’m not blind.” Maybe we saw ourselves a little bit better when we were called. I was blind. I was lame. I was crippled as all get out. Poor, yeah, without God’s spirit. Do we not see ourselves as human beings? Thank God. I look at what I was and what God called me to change to become and the battle involved in that, especially in the beginning, and then change. And you think, wow! God. God’s power

Verse 22—Then the servant said, Lord, it is done as you have commanded, and yet there is room. So the lord said to the servant, Go out into the roads and the lanes and compel... That’s not a small thing it says there, “compel.” It means, “to urge forcefully.” That’s what this word means. “To urge forcefully.” Poom! Right up the side of the head with a 4 X 4. “Okay, my hearing’s been sharpened a little bit. My mouth is wired shut for ten weeks. I’m ready to listen. If You’re out there, please help me to see what I’m going through in life, what the purpose is.” That’s one person’s story I know.

I’ve heard of a lot of other stories as well in the Church. It’s always exciting when especially around the Feast time when people have time to spend a little more time, “How did you come in the Church? What happened?” We all have different things, different experiences.

So compel them, “to cause to do or occur by overwhelming pressure.” Whew, overwhelming all right. If it straightens up the senses a little bit, like I talked about that fire even once we’re in the Church and something happens to us, okay, if I can learn from that I’m exceedingly blessed.

...compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. Awesome! So whether it be the 144,000 because there is a certain amount of time, “Compel them to come in. Get their attention. Work with them. Go out in the lanes and the byways. I don’t care, wherever!” Anyway, it’s an awesome parable if we see ourselves in the mix of all that.

Now, there went great multitudes with him, and he turned and said unto them, If any one comes to me, and does not... Again, what awesome lessons here. It’s translated as “hate,” but it’s not hate as human beings, as we think hate at all. The word isn’t used that way. The best or the closest thing, in many respects, in this kind of a context is “to love less by a comparison,” that’s being made. That’s the point. There is a comparison being made and so the point being is you’re going to love one more than the other. It doesn’t mean you hate the other, but you have to categorize and have to judge and so forth.

If anyone comes to me and does not love less, in other words, by comparison his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, even their own life also, they cannot be my disciple. There is a lot said there. If we could grasp that in its spiritual content of what’s being said in every phase of life we would be able to judge through things far more easily. But the reality is too often we don’t. The point being is what do we want in our life? What are we doing against God? We’d be able to see those things more clearly. We’d be able to realize this doesn’t make it, this doesn’t work, because we’ve got to love less one.

We’ve got to love God. If that isn’t in our heart, what’s in our heart to build to God? What’s in our mind? How do we think toward God? And this reveals it, and if we’re lifting up anything else? I love this example because it uses personal relationships in life because those are the things that are sometimes the greatest in the sense of how we make choices and decisions.

That’s one thing that I saw in such a profound way after the Apostasy, because the vast, overwhelming majority of the Body made choices and decisions because of what other members of the family or close friends had done. They went with this group or that group and others followed them because they still wanted that family there. So maybe not fully convicted of it, but we’re going there because we’re still able to be together or because of a certain fellowship that was together so they kind of cling together and try to hold on to a certain thing. It just happened repetitively over and over and over again in God’s Church all over the world. Awesome!

But I was rather dumbfounded by some of that. Not really, but seeing it is one thing, knowing what it produces is another. You think what a horrible way to make a choice about God, about what is true, about 14/15th Passover. “You mean you’re going to do that rather than adhere to, live by what you were given, that some knew better than?”

I think of that great, big group, the biggest of all, knowing that so much of the ministry—close to a half—believed in 14/15 Passover. How can that be? So somewhere along the line a decision, a choice has to be made. Sometimes not very easy.

Verse 27—So whoever does not bear his pole, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. So using the example of what he was going to go through, that he had to carry on his shoulder for a period until he just didn’t have the strength to do it anymore and someone else had to take it the rest of the way to be erected with him on it, and he gives that example. If we’re not willing to sacrifice, to give to God everything of our being, our own life also, what are we? What is our life? Well, if it’s in God’s hands it’s everything.

If you live that way, if you know that, that your life is in God’s hands? That’s why I’m not worried about coronovirus. I don’t give diddly squat about it. I don’t care if it’s ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times more powerful killing off people all around. It doesn’t matter to me in that respect in my relationship with God. Well, how could I put that? Maybe I shouldn’t even say it because I don’t want some to take it in an unbalanced way.

But anyway, I’m going to do what I’m going to do, period. My life is in God’s hands. If it goes, it goes. Who is in charge? God. Duh. If He’s working with me, are we in the Body of Christ? Do we see the truth? Do we know the truth? Are we striving to live by it? Then at some point if it’s gone, it’s gone. And what does that mean? Resurrection. You’re in God’s hands. What could we want more than to desire and attain to Elohim? I mean, isn’t that what it’s all about?

So, if we believe that with all of our being then what else matters? Nothing. Just God. God, Christ, the Body of Christ, the Church, the resurrections that come and those who will be in it, and the future, and life into age lasting life ever, ever more. I can’t comprehend that, but I look forward to it.

So what’s in our heart? What’s really in our heart to build to God? That’s what we have to ask ourselves and pray to God about.

So how many during this series have gone before God and said, “Help me to see. Help me to see those things that aren’t in my heart the way they need to be so that I can live by what You have been telling me that I need to focus upon more, and really want with all of my being; to build unto You with all of my heart, with all of my being, with my thinking. And where it isn’t, where I’m not right, please help me to see it and help me to fight against it, to change and to repent. Help me to come to repentance in the things I need to come to repentance in that are hurting me in my relationship with You. Because I love You, grateful for everything you’ve ever given to me. My life is in Your hands.”

If that isn’t in us, wow. Cry out to God for it because He’s the only one that can give it to you.

Let’s turn over to Jude. It should be the most important thing in our life. Anything that isn’t, well, we’re raising up like idolatry, like an idol, spiritual idolatry, spiritual fornication and adultery. That’s why those examples are given because if we can see them for what they are spiritually and see something like that physically, a great, big old idol standing up there and we’re bowing down before it, that we raise up that’s more important to us, whatever sin it is that seems to be more important. “That extra whatever it is, few bucks a week, a day, a month that I’m able to keep to myself. God understands. I’m having hard times right now.” Well, you made them a whole lot harder. Amazing.

Jude:20—But you, beloved... Over and over again. I love the way the apostles wrote these things, “You, beloved.” We’re loved of God. The world isn’t, and if we don’t see that then we’re really missing something. Because God has called us through a process of reconciliation to be drawn to Him, to be drawn out of the world, to have opportunity, to have the impregnation of His spirit in our minds, to be able to be forgiven of sin so that He and His Son can dwell in us, in our minds and our being and our thinking, and if we strive to hold on to that and embrace that with all of our being in that relationship we have with God and with others in the Body, what an awesome thing!

Beloved. God loves us. Do we see that? Does everyone see that and understand that, what that means? The Great God of the universe within a period of the first 6,000 years when so very few have ever had that experience in life, have to wait? They don’t know they’re waiting, but they have to wait. Then the overwhelming majority have to live another hundred years. Maybe they only lived one, two, ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred, six hundred, eight hundred, but they’ve got to wait and live a hundred more. To me, knowing what I know and nature, in my own nature, if I have a few weeks or months, why on earth would I do anything to thwart or threaten that? Because I don’t like living in this. How much do you love living in it?

I hope you all feel that way. I really do. Do we really see? What a horrible thing it is to live in a human body. Who wants that for a long, long time? You want to go through it a hundred more years fighting that fight and be given the opportunity you may not have much more time to have to fight it? Let’s say you’re forty or fifty and you’re going to live on maybe thirty, forty years more in a new age with Christ and the 144,000 ruling on earth? Is that worth fighting for?

Or do you just want to go ahead and do some things on the side that maybe aren’t seen, that maybe you don’t think are seen that your kind of going back to on occasion in your life, screwing around and playing around with things you shouldn’t mess around with and have to live another hundred years fighting against self? This time you better be fighting because if not at the end of the hundred years or some point in between it’ll already be judged for you that you’re not going to come through it. Because that’s going to happen.

Like sand in the sea, seashore it says, so many. I am thankful that God has revealed that to us as a Body, to understand more. Because to me it’s a maturing process, more balanced that we’ve come to understand that throughout the Millennium it’s not a utopia. It’s not like it used to be thought of when we were so young as a Body, as a Church and it was like this newspaper that came with the “U.S. in Prophecy” type thing and The World Tomorrow and all these nice things. You could pick it up and “Isn’t this nice?” Nice things are going to happen all the time.

I’m sorry, but it was putrid because it was presented as a utopia and everything is going to be so good and if anyone would dare to start thinking something wrong, that they might go do it, some loving person is just going to appear and tap you on the shoulder and say, “Oh, that’s not the way, this is the way. Walk in it.” “Oh, yeah.” I mean, do we see how foolish, how empty that is?

I’m making fun of it because it needs to be made fun of. We need to be able to look back in time and think, “Thank God He brought us out of that one!” Because anybody that was in that was walking around a bit like a zombie spiritually, you know, and not seeing the reality of God and God’s spirit and how it works in our lives. That even during the Millennium there are going to be thousands and thousands and thousands who say, “I don’t like this! I don’t want to live that way!” They’re going to be going out and doing other things.

Do you think people aren’t going to go around and fool around and do things they shouldn’t do and want the wild parties and the music that goes with it and the drunkenness? You think it’s just going to be a nice, clean, peaceful world in every house? Think there aren’t going to be arguments with people?

Well, unless God makes us zombies anyway so that we can’t think any other way and totally takes away human nature and we don’t learn anything and can’t be changed because we are pre-programmed like robots. “I-can’t-do-that. Can’t-go-tonight. No-drinking-for-me.” It’s not realistic, is it?

The reality is we have human nature and human nature sucks. Human nature is our downfall, and if we give into that and we don’t love God and want God then that’s our choice. God doesn’t force it upon anyone. Not now, not then, and not in the Great White Throne.

I think we’re going to be surprised by the end of the Great White Throne, and maybe by the end of the Millennium how may have really chosen to fight for God’s way of life and have the opportunity to become a part of His Family, and others who make the choice that they really don’t want that. I think we’re in for an awakening if we don’t realize there are going to be a lot of people even during the Millennium not going to choose this.

There are many in our past. How many have really chosen it, really want it? We want it for everyone. We don’t want to think or believe or see that someone couldn’t be there that we perhaps have even known. But the reality is there are going to be some in that mix because the Apostasy revealed it, the greatest fire ever taken place, and there are plenty who made choices at that time, that’s their mind and they will never want God. Unpardonable sin. Because they don’t want something different.

That’s what happened to Lucifer. As soon as he made a choice it was unpardonable because they weren’t granted that because right then the mind changed forever. It’s like, “Well, why wouldn’t he want to choose to come back?” Because the mind changed. It was spirit, composed of spirit. That choice determined a future that was perverted, going astray, away from God.

Thank God for His plan that He’s made us the way we are with a human spirit, a spirit essence with human nature so we can come to a point in time when His spirit comes along to draw us we can make the choice. Then we have to fight for it against self because that can never ever happen again. We all have to come into unity and oneness with God and that’s a choice. We have to come to where we love it in spirit and in truth, and if we don’t, God knows it and that will come out.

But you, beloved, building up yourselves... Okay, we have to work. We have to work at it. ...building up yourselves on your most holy faith. I love this, if we understand it more deeply what that means. We’re given to believe something and we chose to live by it. The reality is if we’ve been given something to believe and we’re not living by it you know what that’s saying? We don’t really believe it. We believe something else. We believe we can do, we believe something different than what God has shown to us. Therein is the problem.

...on your most holy faith, praying in the holy spirit. So we have to be at one with God, seeking to be at one with God, seeking to repent of sin so that we can be able to have this, being able to pray in the holy spirit. Because that means God is in us and we’re in God, we’re forgiven of sin. That’s why Christ died, so that we could dwell in the Father and in Christ and they in us.

...keep yourselves in the agape of God. That’s a choice and it comes through praying in the spirit, it comes through building up yourselves. It comes through realizing you’re part of the construction. It’s not just going to be done to you. You’ve got to make choices that it be done to me, “Because I want to go through the change, I want to go through the conversion process, I want to go through the transformation of the mind to become something different, to be in agreement with God about everything. Anything that’s not in agreement with God, I want to get rid of.”

...keep yourselves in the agape of God looking to receive.... It says “looking for.” It’s what it means, looking to receive literally. We want something greater! We don’t want what human life has to offer us. We’re looking beyond that. ...looking to receive the mercy of our Lord Christ Joshua unto eternal life. Is it greater or not in our thinking? Do you want it or not? You have to fight for it then. The greatest fight is in this, toward this.

Oh, there’s more. I thought I’d for sure I’d be through this today. I am. That’s a good place to end anyway. There is so much there going back up to the first part of Jude and read some of those things, but again, it’s this attitude of mind. I do want to read the first three verses. Let’s go ahead and take a look and then we’ll stop there, because there’s a part of a context that led up to this verse 20 and 21 that talks very much about what this series has been all about.

I think of the book of Jude, written around 80 A.D. This far along in the scheme of things, knowing who he was. Awesome! Half brother to Joshua. Awesome to think about some of those things. To realize in the beginning he didn’t believe him, but after things had happened, God called him, worked with him and he was drawn to the truth and became a servant in this regard, of what he was able to teach and help others in.

You have to realize by this point in time most of the apostles had been killed. A lot of them had been killed before this time and there wasn’t much left. We know John was around and he wrote a little bit more later on in the ‘90’s.

But it says here in Jude :1—Jude, a bondservant of Christ Joshua. Beautiful. Beautiful. A bondservant. Meaning by choice, a desire to serve and bound to with all of his being by choice. That’s what we want to be, to this and no other way of life. ...and brother of James – brother, James. So enough was said. It could have said brother to Joshua but it didn’t. He said brother of James.

That’s why I love the way John used to write. They were running, Peter and him, and it was like, “This other one.” He didn’t say himself in this, basically, a type of race here and who got there first, and “this other disciple.” But, beautiful.

Anyway, to those who are called... We’re called. Sometimes it’s so hard to grasp what that means. We should never lose it. ...sanctified, set apart for holy use and purpose, by God the Father, and preserved... I love this, too, because this word means “to guard” or “to watch over” in Christ Joshua. God watches over us. Christ watches over us. They want us to succeed. They help us. They work with us to lead us to choices and decisions that we have to make and encourage us along the way, and even inspire through the power of God’s spirit.

Then we go through various trials at times to see where we are and they work with us in different ways to bring us through all that. But sometimes because of our continuation of wrong choices there’s a time to say, “No more; no more time. You’re not changing. You don’t desire. After everything you’ve been given, after all the mercy and grace you’ve been given and you treat it so shabbily, you treat it like something beneath you to walk on.” Sad.

...mercy, peace, agape be multiplied to you. God’s love be multiplied to you because that’s what they want to give us. They want to pour that out in our lives to the degree we will receive it and that is determined by our attitude, our heart, our mind to God in what we’re building to God, truly.

Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation... Fellowship together. We’re all in this together. I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you... So here it is, not that long removed from the time that Joshua was there on a pole and bled out on the earth for us. Fifty years later? You think, less than fifty years perhaps, right in that neighborhood. Time goes by quickly and you think what an awesome thing and already battles that people were having spiritually in their lives. By the time you got to John he talks about there are many antichrists. We know there is an antichrist to come, the antichrist, but already within the Church, within the ministry, there are many antichrists. Even then. Even then!

This is a part of what his focus is. I found it necessary to write to you now at this time, after not that long ago and after all that you’ve heard that has come from other apostles who you know gave their lives for this way of life, and what are we doing? What are you doing?

...exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith, the belief, the truth that God gave to you, and “the faith” means the choice to live by that. There is a lot said there. The choice to live by that. We are the only ones that can make that choice, and if at this date today you’re still battling with some stupid sins out there and not making progress, cry out to God more for mercy if you really want help. He’ll help you to change. He’ll help you to conquer. But you’ve got to be engaged in the building, which is a fight.

You know, it takes work and sometimes in life we just get too cotton picking lazy. If that’s a bit of your battle anyway living in an age of technology like we do today, trust me, please believe me, you’re going to have the battle spiritually. You can’t separate them.

...write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once delivered to the saints. A lot said there. What have we been given. We’ve been given more than that. We’ve been given so much more. We’ve been given history, as well, of an additional 2,000 years of God’s Church, as a whole, right at that point, and all the truth that’s progressively been revealed to us.

Now at this end-time where we are, what’s coming, Joshua is about to return, to know that we live at this time? Well? Still an admonition all the way to the end that we should contend earnestly for the faith which has been delivered to us.