TO COG
c Lawrence Nowell
The Obedient Church of God
c Lawrence A
Nowell
c c
Lawrence A. Nowell
TOCOG
Greetings, brethren. First this afternoon I believe I should say a few words about my own health. About five weeks ago I had to come back home from Orr, Minnesota once again as the year before. We were on our way to the summer camp in Scotland and I was overtaken with a temperature and decided I had to get back home immediately.
It seemed that I caught some kind of a virus and my temperature rose up and stayed more or less for all of two weeks or more at about an additional two degrees. It did not rise higher for which I was very grateful but then it began to improve somewhat. And now for the past three weeks or so I find that my temperature will be normal in the mornings but it rises in the afternoon. Now that's one reason we set this service thirty minutes earlier today because my temperature does rise in the afternoon and by evening if I walk about ten steps just across the room I'm huffing and puffing as if I'd run a quarter mile at full speed. And that is the toughest race as anyone who goes out for track, as any athlete will tell you. Because the quarter mile is usually run at full speed. And it leaves you feeling like your heart is going to break by the time you get to the finish and I felt that way many a time. And often it's that way at bedtime. I have a hard time even getting from a chair where I can undress into bed.
Now we've had some blood tests made. Unfortunately during the morning service, (I was listening to it on my television set where I see it just as if I were sitting in the front row here and better than I would in my usual seat in this auditorium), there was a knock at the door. And there was a woman coming to take some blood and withdraw some blood for another blood test. And I had to explain, (now I guess the doctor who had sent her at that time didn't realize). I said we are in the midst of a very serious annual Holy Day service. We're in a church service and I cannot be disturbed now, I'm very sorry. So I think she's going to come tomorrow. I hate to have them take blood because two such tests have already been made and analyzed and the trouble and my condition seems to be I just do not have enough blood. It's not anemia. Anemia is a lack of iron. My blood shows sufficient iron content. The doctor thought that I should not take milk and for the first three weeks or so after this thing started I withdrew from all milk, cheese and everything of that sort. Well I'm the calcium type. Every one of us is of a different chemical type physically. Most people don't know that. But I do need calcium and the blood test showed I was short on calcium so I've gone back to more milk again.
I do try to watch my diet and blood it seems is manufactured in the marrow of the bones and bones come from calcium.
Now my doctor says that any other doctor would say that I needed an immediate blood transfusion. He doesn't want me to have that. In the first place he says it would only be temporary, a stopgap. In the second place I could catch this new fatal disease of AIDS. Again, he laughed and he said, "you won't catch AIDS if you ever take it because," he said, "I'll get the blood from some of your own people." So some of you better look out! Fortunately my doctor doesn't believe in much medicine. He's very careful about diet however.
But I do need your continued prayers. I don't know, perhaps I have 80 or 85 percent enough blood. But you know what your life is? Your Bible tells you if you listen when you read. "The blood thereof is the life thereof." And God breathed into man the breath of life and man became a living soul, into the dust of the ground. The breath is the life and the blood is the life. So your life comes from two things, breath and blood. And they mix in your lungs where the blood is oxidized by the breath. Impurities are thrown out and the blood goes on the supply the life.
Well, brethren, we are gathered here today on a very solemn Sabbath day. I doubt if we fully realize just how serious and how solemn it is. I hope I can make that a little more plain and simple to you this afternoon.
We are here to be reminded of a day that is a foreshadow of the most tremendous event that has ever happened in the history, not of mankind, not of this Earth, but the most important event that has ever happened in the entire universe. And I don't think you have ever realized that full scope before. I want you to realize it this afternoon.
The event we are here to celebrate in one sense is the greatest event that has ever happened in the history of the entire universe, except that God has always existed and has always lived. And that was not a beginning, there was no beginning. There will never be an ending because God was without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor shall ever have end of life.
But I am reminded of the time when I was advertising manager and editorial writer on a daily newspaper. And one day about four or five of us were having a little sort of a talk. They were the news men, the editors and the news writers. And they were discussing what would be the most astonishing and the greatest headline that you could possibly write on a newspaper. One of them suggested, and by the way this was before World War II, one of them suggested, "Another World War Breaks Out,"--the Second World War. Another one said, "I think something else would be even more shocking, 'New York City suddenly blown entirely off the map, New York City totally leveled.'" Then another says, that's tame, he says, I think the most important headline would be, "Second Coming of Christ Happened This Morning." Ha ha ha ha ha ha. And they all had a big laugh, except me. I said, "You men, if you live long enough, may live to write that headline" and they didn't laugh any further. Because to them it was a big joke.
Brethren, I want to tell you it's no joke. But why could the second coming of Christ be the most important event that has ever happened in the entire universe? I don't think you've heard it put that way before. I doubt if many of you understand the real reason why it is that important.
You know I've mentioned many times how Winston Churchill said before the United States Congress during World War II, "There is a purpose being worked out here below." You know, somehow he knew there was a purpose being worked out and "here" below means there was a super power above working it out. He didn't know much about that Power. He didn't know what that purpose was. And very few people on Earth do know. And very few people even realize there is any purpose to life or any purpose being worked out.
Now about the second coming of Christ. When they asked Jesus to teach us to pray He gave what is generally called the Lord's prayer although it isn't the real Lord's prayer, the real Lord's prayer is found in the seventeenth chapter of John. But He taught us to pray a few things there, about four or five things there among which was, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Do you know the churches don't pray that? They don't understand that God's Kingdom has not come and is going to come. They think it's already here. They say they are in the Kingdom. Some say the church is the Kingdom. Some say that the Kingdom is something in the hearts of men. They have every kind of wrong idea but none of them seems to understand it.
They don't understand the prophecy of Isaiah 9:6-7, where it says that a virgin is going to conceive and bear a son and his name will be called (no that's in the seventh chapter of Isaiah, but the ninth chapter) that, the nation Israel would have a child, be born as a baby and would grow up and the government would be on His shoulder, that He would live forever and His Kingdom would last forever and ever. They don't seem to know that that's in the Bible, and they don't understand it.
They have been deceived. They just think that we live. They don't know how we came to be on Earth. They don't know of any purpose in life. They think if you do good you'll go to heaven when you die. And if you do what you think is wrong, and of course you decide what's right and wrong for yourself, but if you do what you think and you know is wrong then you are going to go to hell where you are going to burn and burn and burn and never burn up but just keep burning forever, shrieking and screaming in pain forever and ever and ever. And of course if that were true then the saved mothers who have gone to heaven will see some of their children down there shrieking because they seem to be able to see them and know what's going on. Well this world has been terribly deceived and they just simply don't understand.
Some look at a passage in the fourteenth chapter of John where Jesus said He was going to heaven and He said if I go that He would come again. But they forget about His coming again. But He said, "In my Father's house are many mansions." Now if you will go to the original Greek in which that was written you'll find it means positions, occupations, positions of government, not houses to live in built out of wood or stone or brick, but positions. And some can't understand if you went to prepare those places why we don't go on to heaven. And then He said "I will come again, and receive you unto myself." And so they think that when He comes He's only coming to meet us as we take off to heaven. They overlook 1 Thes. in the fourth chapter, where it says, at that time the dead in Christ will be resurrected and they shall rise first and we which are alive will not prevent (or precede) their coming, they will rise first. And we which are alive and remain shall be instantly translated from mortal unto immortal and shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. He's not coming to meet us as we go to heaven, we are going to meet Him as He returns here. But where does He go? Zechariah fourteen says, that that very same day we're going to meet Him in the air in the clouds and He's coming on down from those clouds and land on the Mount of Olives, just to the east of Jerusalem. And they overlook that entirely, they only read a few of the scriptures. They leave out the ones that would entirely negate everything they have claimed and everything they believe.
But why is it of such great importance? Why do I say that it will be the greatest event in the entire universe so far? To understand that we have to go back to the very beginning. And I want to go through it and skip through it real rapidly. We need to have a background. You need to get the whole picture. We can get little details and you can get lost in a detail if you don't know what goes around and what's on the other side. The old saying, a bear went over the mountain, he went over the mountain to see what he could see and the other side of the mountain was all that he could see when he went over. Well most people don't know anything except what they see immediately around them.
We need to go back in time. We need to go out in space. We need to get the whole picture. And in that whole picture I want to give you something that perhaps you hadn't realized quite before this afternoon.
I said a while ago that God and the Word, (that in the Greek language was called the Logos), who was with God and was God but another personage altogether. And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us and became Jesus Christ. And of Him it is said in the Book of Hebrews that He was without father, without mother, without descent, without beginning of days or end of life. The same is true of God the Father.
Now in Him was life. In the Father was life and if He had life He had movement and action and He was doing something. Well when Jesus was on Earth He said I work and my Father works. They did work but how did they work? What did they do? We find the Bible reveals they were Creators. Now they had a job to do and there were two of them. They were two different personages yet both were God. The Word was with God but the Word also was God. And so God is God And the Word is God. Well, I am Armstrong and my two sons were Armstrong and all of my male grandsons are Armstrongs but they're different people. And so the Word finally became the Son of God by being born of the human virgin Mary but He had existed from eternity with God.
Now what did they do way back there before he became Jesus Christ and that was before there was any Earth, that's before there was any universe? They were Creators and to create they had to think out a plan and a design and design what was to be created. They had to create whatever was made. It first was spirit. I was going to say the material that anything they created was made of, but angels are not material even, they're spirit beings. Now the first thing that the God family--and God is a family--the first thing that the God family (God and the Word) created was angels. Now if they are working to do something they have to have some kind of relationship in the way that they work together and do it. And two cannot walk together except they be agreed. Well they were perfectly agreed. Jesus was the Word but He said I have spoken nothing except what my Father told me to speak. He said I have kept my Father's commandments. He said my Father is greater than I and another time He thought it not robbery to say that He was equal with His Father. He was equal in the family sense just as a son may be equal to his human father. He's a human being the same as his human father is, but he's not equal in authority. And Jesus was not quite equal in authority but He was [egual] as a Being.
And finally after He had been born human and after He had ascended up to heaven, where He said He would go and that He would come again, God had turned all power in heaven and in Earth, in the entire universe, over to Jesus Christ. But He still operates it and does everything He does as His Father dictates. Two can't walk together except they be agreed.
Again, let me tell you--two cannot walk together except one is the leader, the boss. People don't believe that today. God made the husband the head of the wife. You'll never find a real happy marriage unless the husband is the head of the wife. They might even get along to a certain extent. They might kid themselves they are happy but they are not as happy. They don't know real happiness unless they are happy in the way God intended them to be. Now the wife is equal with her husband. She is a human being the same as he is. She's an heir of salvation the same as he is, but he is the leader. Jesus is equal with God the Father. He is God but God is in charge. They are not equal in authority.
Now the first thing that they created was angels. And each angel was created separately and individually. Angels were not reproduced or born as humans are. Each one of us humans has come from a mother impregnated by a father and it took a father and a mother to produce each one of us. Angels have no father or mother except that in the sense of being their Creator they have been called sons of God. You find that in the first chapter of Job. But we also find in Job 38 that at the time of the creation of the Earth the angels were singing, and the archangels shouting for joy because this Earth was made to be their abode.
Now God created the Earth. Well how did the sun and the moon get there? How did Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the other planets of our solar system, how did they come to exist? How did our whole system which is part of a Milky Way, which is one galaxy, come to exist? And there are many other galaxies besides the galaxy of which our Milky Way is one and our solar system is even part of that. God created it all. And in Ephesians 3:7 "God created all things by and through Jesus Christ." So in a sense Jesus Christ was the Maker but He only made by his word. He spake and it was done and He only spoke what the Father told Him to speak. There was complete harmony and unity.
How did they live together? They lived in love, love one to the other. The Son loved the Father and obeyed Him. The Father loved the Son and when He became Jesus and was born and was being baptized in the River Jordan, God the Father said, "you are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." He loved the Son. Jesus loved the Father and obeyed Him. There was absolute cooperation.
Now how did they live? They lived by the way of love which is cooperation, mutual respect, working together but one in leadership. And in the Bible we read that there is one lawgiver. Jesus Christ is not that lawgiver. God the Father is the lawgiver. But God the Father judges no man and He's turned all judgment over to Jesus Christ the Son.
So there is organization. And there had to be organization. And to have organization you have to have some sort of government. You have to have a structure by which people operate together or you have friction and one against the other and finally anarchy and self-destruction.
Now the way they operated together was love and love is an outgoing concern toward the other. That becomes a law because what is a law now? When I made a very short address before the Graduate School of the Constitutional Law Department of the Law School of the University of Southern California, I gave them a definition of law. And I said I'm not a lawyer. I haven't studied your law books here. But I have studied a law book that, I said, you may not even have in your library here but it's the foundation of all law books. It's one called the Holy Bible and it speaks about law from the very beginning to the very end, all the way through. And lawyers ought to know what it says about law if they want to know about law. You know later they did look it up and found one copy of that book in their whole library, the law library in the University of Southern California. So they told us that they were ordering, I think, about a dozen more Bibles.
Well, law is merely the rules of human conduct. It's a rule which if you violate it brings with it penalty. Now you might call the rules of a football game, and football is just on now I guess, the rules are law. And if there is a violation, if a man is offside that's a violation, they fine that team by a five-yard penalty. There are certain other violations. If they violate that law or that rule it could be ten or fifteen yards.
A law brings a penalty and a law is merely rules of human performance or conduct.
Now the first thing that God created was angels. He had a law that they should love one another and love is an outgoing thing from one toward others, of having concern for the welfare of the other. That's what it amounts to, and cooperation with the other, being of kindly feeling toward the other, not hostility, just the opposite, but rather cooperation. That was the relationship between God and the Word and it was cooperation. Now I've gone over all this before and I'm going to go over some more of this because I want to come to something.
So God put angels on this Earth. Perhaps a third of them because a third of them went wrong and I would assume that probably those were the third that were on the Earth. Anyway He put a super archangel, and there are three kinds of angels, ordinary angels and seraphs and then cherubs. Cherubs are the highest, and only three of them are mentioned in the Bible. If God has created more He doesn't tell us, but he does mention the three and gives us their names. They are Michael and Gabriel and Lucifer. And Lucifer is the one who was one of two whose wings had spread out over the very throne of God in God's heaven. And God's heaven, I guess you would think of it as being on a planet where gravity keeps drawing it down. But you see originally there was no Earth, there was no matter of any kind. Everything was spirit out in space. But there was a throne of God and God is ruler. And the very fact that God began to create others there had to be rules that applied to their conduct one with the other so they could work together and do what they were given to do. And that means government. And the government is based on the principle of love, now for humans that is given in the Ten Commandments. The first four of which tell us how to love God, define love, that is the general principles of love toward God. And the last six give the general principles of how we love neighbors. But that's only in principle.
Sin is transgression of the law. And sin is transgression of the obvious intent or principle of that law, not just the latter of that law if we understand it. And you read of that in the third chapter of 2 Corinthians. But God had to have organization.
Now when He created the Earth, He created the entire universe at the same time. In Gen. 1:1, In the beginning Elohim, which is translated into the English word God, and it should be Gods--it's in the plural, created the heavens--and that should be plural and is in the original language as Moses wrote it--and the Earth.
So the heavens--everything in the whole universe--was created at the same general time.
Now in the second chapter of Genesis you read about "in the day" in which God created the heavens and the Earth. That means the entire universe. But their "day" doesn't necessarily. . . "day" is used in two ways in the Bible. Sometimes it's a twenty-four-hour day consisting of a light part we call day and the dark part we call night. The seven days in the first chapter of Genesis were twenty-four hour days. But here it speaks of day in the general sense of an approximate time. That's without regard as to whether it's twenty-four hours or maybe several days or it could be maybe twenty-four years or more. But it's an approximate general time.
God created the universe. Now He had created a whole universe. Now we find that He put the angels on this Earth and we find a great deal of evidence in the Bible and of course I've written on this, it was in the book on the Human Potential. You'll also find it in the book that has just been printed [Mystery of the Ages] and many of you haven't received your copy as yet. Some of you have, and all will receive it at least at the Feast of Tabernacles if not sooner. There will be a copy, at least, for every family in the Church and we are sending a copy, by the way, to all co-workers too.
Anyway God had a great purpose. When He created the universe he wanted that universe perfected. Now God creates in dual stages, not all at once. It's like a woman baking a cake. She makes the cake first but it's not complete until she takes it out of the oven and then later puts the icing on it. Now what she takes out of the oven is, it's good as far as it's gone. There's nothing wrong with it, it just needs to be a little something more added to it.
When God created the heavens and the Earth He took one planet and that one planet was called Earth. And that planet God had designed and intended to become His headquarters of the whole universe. Now I don't think you've heard that spoken of before. So I think you'll find something of it in The Human Potential book.
Now He put angels here to try them to see if they could do what He wanted done. He had created the Earth and as far as He went everything He had done was very good. Not ordinary good, VERY good! But it wasn't complete. The icing wasn't on the cake yet. And He put angels here on the Earth and He intended angels to work the Earth. The Earth comes in three different forms. The solid part of the Earth which consists of rock and metals, iron, steel, all kinds of metals. It consists of dirt and it consists then of liquid which can be water, oil and various liquids. And it consists of gas, which we call air or gases. For example, one which we call H2O, or water, at 212 degrees F begins to be converted into steam or a gas that goes up and just goes into the air. At below 32 degrees F it becomes a solid, just like rock and we call it ice. And you know you can melt gold; you can melt silver; you can melt bronze until they flow just like thick water.
Now there are forces in the Earth. There are elements that produce electricity in the Earth. There are elements that can produce great power. Oil can burn. We find elements in the Earth that can explode. Now we find what they can do with an atom and that there is energy and power within the matter of the Earth.
God intended the angels to try out on the Earth first before they went to the other planets and the other places in our solar system in our galaxy called the Milky Way and other galaxies. This was the try out--the Earth. He wanted them to work the Earth and beautify it and improve the face of the surface of the Earth and make it more beautiful. Instead they defiled the Earth. They ruined it and it went into a state of decay and decay is not a created state. God cannot and never did create anything in a state of decay. But now while I'm on that, we find that the moon is in a state of decay. I knew all along that Mars and the other planets in our solar system are in a state of decay. And when they first landed a camera in an unmanned spacecraft on the face of Mars, and it sent photographs back here, we could see nothing but decay. Now decay is not an original created condition, it had become that way. Instead of improving the Earth the angels destroyed it and they became demons. And Satan rebelled against the government of God. The government of God would have given them the way of teamwork, of working together and cooperation, organization, to produce a result. Instead of that there was chaos and they rebelled against God and against God's basic principle of government which is love. And they went into competition and strife and hatred and destruction instead of construction.
Then in six days God renewed the face of the Earth for mankind as you read in Psalm 103. And God renewed the Earth back as it had been before He put the angels on it. Then He put man on here and He intended man now to do what the angels should have done. He put man here to try man out to see if he could do this Earth. The idea being that if they could finish the Earth properly then they could go to all these other planets and the entire universe and beautify it. And perhaps put life forms on all these other planets. And all the places in this whole vast universe that goes farther than any astronomer even knows. So He put one man on the Earth.
Now in the beginning God had created the heavens and the Earth. And he'd put the angels here, but a lot of things happened between that first verse and the second verse of Genesis 1. The angels had destroyed things and the archangel Lucifer had become Satan the devil. The angels with him, which were a third of all of the angels, had followed him. He'd probably talked them into it, convinced them, and they became demons. And they were bent on destruction and chaos and not order and beauty and joy and happiness.
And so God, in six days, renewed the face of the Earth. And God said in the first chapter of Genesis, verse 26 while He was reshaping the Earth after He had brought about life, brought land out from the water, created the sun and the moon to shine on the Earth, had created fish and water animals in the seas, fowl in the air and some one the Earth, and land animals on the Earth, even down to insects and everything. Then God said, in verse 26: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." In other words let us reproduce ourselves. God created angels and they turned wrong. Now no one but God himself now, He knew, could be depended on and relied upon never to go contrary to His law of love. And that law of love was necessary to work together to have the organization so that they could reclaim the entire universe, not just this Earth alone. This Earth is only a trial place and this life. When He said let us make man in our image, He made him with mortal life--not immortal life!
So in Gen. 2:7, We read that God formed man of the dust of the ground. And into the dust of the ground He breathed the breath of life and man made of the dust of the ground became a living soul. The dust of the ground became a living soul. And now people have been deceived into thinking that man is a soul and that a soul is spiritual. No, a soul is living matter, breathing the breath of air, and with a circulation of blood in it. And the life comes from the blood and the breath of air.
But there is a spirit in man and God put a spirit in man. But the spirit was not enough. The man needed another spirit to go with that spirit just like God Himself needed someone to go with Him. So there was the Word who became Christ and they two became one God. And God is a family and they are a God family. But they're one family, but they're two persons.
Now they said let us reproduce ourselves, let us make man in our image. In other words, let's increase our family. It'll still be one family and we become one with God. Man was made with a spirit. If the Spirit of God comes into him, that begets him by a process of reproduction--to be reproduced as a God-being. And that unifies him with God. The Spirit of God joins with the spirit of man and the two joined together--like a husband and wife joined together to form one family. And the Spirit of God joins with the human spirit of man to form one God, but only in the begettal state in this life. We are only like an embryo or a fetus not yet born.
Now the churches of this world have been so deceived; they think they are already born again. They simply do not understand.
So God created one man and all human life has come from that one man. You say, well didn't He create Eve? No, He made Eve out of Adam. He put Adam into a deep sleep and took out one of his ribs and turned it into a woman and Eve came out of Adam. But they could reproduce, and they had children, and their children had children, and all those children had children. And today, there are about between four and a third and four and a half billion of us humans on the face of the Earth today. That's quite a swarm of people!
Now the first man Adam had a chance to do what Satan had not done and to submit to the government of God and to organize. And then he would have children and he would organize the children into a government of cooperation of mutual love and concern. For they would work together in an organized way of government. And they would work the Earth and do just what the angels should have done and beautify this Earth. God gave them a sample. He took the man and the woman He had created and put them in a beautiful garden that God created, called the Garden of Eden. Maybe that was to show them how the rest of the world, the Earth, should be made. And maybe He intended them even to beautify the Garden of Eden because He put them there to dress it and to keep it.
But Satan got to mother Eve and she took of the tree that she was forbidden to take of and gave it to Adam, and he took of it too. And so they simply followed Satan instead of God.
God gave them permission to have of every tree in the garden except one, the knowledge of good and evil. But also in that garden was the tree of life. Now if they had taken the tree of life that was God-life, the Spirit of God would have come into them. They would have been united with God and united with God--they would be like Christ is united with God. And as a human being He is the Son of God. And we would have become, and Adam would have become, a son of God--a begotten son of God. He would have had God's Spirit. That would have connected him with God and God's mind would have come into him, just like the mind of God can come into us.
In Philippians it says, (lets see, it's the fourth chapter or the third), "let this mind be in you which is in Christ Jesus." The Spirit of God coming into us is really the mind of God coming in with our spirit to join it and join us with God until we begin to see things as God does and to understand spiritual knowledge. Because the human eye cannot see and knowledge cannot enter through the eye or the ear cannot hear. Nor has it entered into the mind of man the spiritual things that God has prepared and the spiritual knowledge. But God reveals it to some of us. But God reveals it. Not the Holy Spirit reveals it, God does. But how does He reveal it? By the Spirit which is after the Spirit of God is in us.
In other words, without the Spirit of God you can't understand it. When God reveals it you don't understand the revealing, but with the Holy Spirit you can. But it is God who does the revealing, not the Holy Spirit if you notice the wording in 1 Corinthians 2:10. But then it shows in verse 11 that there is a spirit in man and no man can have the knowledge that he has, an animal can't have it, and man could not have it, save for the spirit of man which is in him. That's the human spirit. In the same way we can't understand the spiritual things except the Spirit of God is in us with the human spirit.
Now God gave man the chance to do what the angels have not done. But the first man turned wrong, Adam. So God closed up the tree of life from Adam's descendants, Cain and Abel and Seth and the others that came along. And the tree of life was closed except that God opened it to certain ones to prepare for something later, the same as He is opening it to those in His Church. He's calling certain ones out of this would that had been developed, influenced by Satan, and Satan holds the world captive.
I'll pass over the early ones because of course Abel is called righteous Abel and Enoch walked with God. And there was Noah, who was a preacher of righteousness. But we'll go on to Abraham because all the promises of God have come from Abraham and passed on through Isaac and Jacob, and to a certain extent to Joseph. And then there were the prophets of the Old Testament in the nation Israel. Now God did give them His Holy Spirit for the writing of the Bible and as a part of the foundation of what was to become His Church. And in due time He sent the Logos who was made flesh and became a human being and dwelt among us and became Jesus Christ. He came as the second Adam. He came to do what the first Adam should have done, should have received the Spirit of God and been one with God and had the love of God within him and then organize and carry on the government of God on the Earth.
Jesus Christ called out a few to start the formation of the Government of God in the Church. There was Peter and Andrew and they were fisherman. Jesus walked along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and He called them and He drafted them. He said, "come follow me." And they had to forsake all and follow Him, and they did.
He called twelve to start with and He started with those twelve and He taught them for three and a half years. Then He paid the price of the penalty of human sin.
Now at the time God shut up the tree of life, which means He shut up the Holy Spirit from all flesh except those that were called for the Church--just that one exception--otherwise it's still closed to everybody else. At that time, God said it was already decreed that Christ would come as a lamb of God to be slain to pay the penalty in our stead because sin is the transgression of God's law. Adam had broken it, all of his sons had broken it, and the penalty is death! But Jesus came and did not sin. And when He died He took our sin on Him, and He paid the penalty, and paid it in our stead.
Then God resurrected Him from the dead. He had not sinned. And now He has all power that He originally had, which he had forsaken and given up to come down here to start the Church, to lead us and to show us the right way, and to pull us out of Satan's world and to pay the penalty in our stead that we could be reconciled back to God the Father. Now we are not saved by His blood--by His death we are reconciled to God. And God is the one who has immortal life to give, but if we repent and if we accept what Christ did for us and accept Him as personal savior--and repent means that we are going to live God's way from hereon--we repent of having broken it because we didn't go that way. And we change our life. It means a totally changed life from hereon to live by God's law. And God's law is the direction of the way to live, not the way that seems right to a man.
Now the churches of this world only follow the way that seems right to a man, the same way as Adam did. But God formed a Church that would have His Holy Spirit. And God would come into those in the Church that He called, that God the Father would draw to Him. And Jesus said no man could come to God the Father through Him, no man could come to Christ, except God the Father would draw them.
And so Jesus paid the penalty. He rose and went to heaven to be our High Priest and prepare positions for us as our High Priest in training us in this life, so that if we overcome when He comes to rule the Earth and take over the throne from Satan, we shall sit on that throne with Him. And if we overcome, He will give us power just as He has power over the nations and we will rule them. And God will set up His Kingdom, His government, on the Earth. And we are the ones that are preceding, in the Church, and the second coming of Christ is going to be followed by the next annual Holy Day, The Day of Atonement which means putting Satan off that throne and Christ will sit on it.
Now when Christ comes Satan will still be on the throne and Christ isn't going to have Satan put off before Christ comes, but after He comes. Maybe it'll be ten actual literal days apart. We don't know. That's the way the Holy Days are arranged anyway. Of course it doesn't mean that Christ will come on this certain day in just so many years from now. But there is ample reason to think that things have happened that way in the fulfillment of prophecies previously in the other Holy Days, and it could happen that way. But we don't know because God had said that no man, not even Christ, knew the time or the day or the hour when Christ would come. Only the Father knows that. So we can't set any time whatsoever. But we do know by all signs and enough of the prophecies to know it's now near, it's even at the door. It's very close to us now. We are the last generation of this world and this age!
Then Christ is to come. And when He comes the dead in Christ are going to rise first. Now I can't tell you for certain whether that includes Abel and Enoch and Noah. But I know it'll include Abraham, Issac and Jacob because Jesus Himself said to the Pharisees, "you will see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God and you yourself thrust out." It will include the prophets because they are part of he foundation of the Church. It will include those that have had the Holy Spirit of God and have been overcomers, right down to us if we are overcomers today. And if we are still living the dead will come first, they will rise first, at the coming of Christ. Then we will be changed in the twinkling of an eye from mortal to immortal and rise and meet them in the air. But we are only going to meet Christ as He's on the way back to the Earth. He's not meeting us. We're not going to heaven. There is not a word in the Bible that says we will ever go to heaven. God has ordained that this Earth is going to be the headquarters of this universe. But we have to learn first how to work this Earth and turn it into the kind of beauty that it should be.
You know there is one little comment I'd like to say right here. We are part of the remnant of God's one true Church of the Philadelphia era. There is another era yet to come. I think it'll only exist briefly, at the most about two-and-half or three years.
But in any event this Church has taken what was the nearest thing to a slum in Pasadena which is the very ground on which we are stationed right here-- right now! And here is, in some respects, the most beautiful building on the face of the Earth, put here. This was all slums, and the most beautiful place in Pasadena is this campus. And we have taken it, or rather, Christ has taken it, and used us and we have submitted to Him and He has done it -- we haven't really -- and turned it into beauty. Now that's what is going to be done to the whole Earth during the millennium, and during the Millennium that we will celebrate with the Feast of Tabernacles that is soon coming up.
So God has given the Church seven annual Holy Days. Now He gave the Sabbath to man and Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man and therefore Jesus, the Son of man, is Lord of the Sabbath day. So the Sabbath is the Lord's day, not Sunday.
The Sabbath was given when man was made. Man was made on the sixth day of what is called creation week, which is only a re-creation, and on the very next day God made the Sabbath for man. The first thing He made for man was the Sabbath. But He didn't give the annual Holy Days until the Church started. And the Church started in two phases. One was the physical material phase of ancient Israel. And the other is the spiritual phase which is the Church of God that started with Christ. And so the annual Holy Days were given to ancient Israel and they didn't know the meaning of it.
God caused me to see that He had ordained these days forever and they should be kept. And so back in the year of 1927 I saw that we should keep these annual Sabbath days and I said we shall keep them. And my wife and I began doing it, however, we couldn't convince anyone else to do it with us. And for about seven years we did it alone by ourselves. But we didn't know why. We didn't know the meaning. We just knew God commanded it and we said God commands it, we're going to obey. We'll obey first and let God show us why later.
So later God did show us why. These days are picturing the plan of God working out His purpose here below--which Winston Churchill talked about.
It begins with the Passover in the Spring, the crucifixion of Christ. That made possible the beginning of the Church. The Church is starting a new creation, a spiritual creation. The Church is starting the government of God all over again. We've had the government of man. Adam chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, doing what seemed right to him, relying on himself, doing what he thought was right. Oh yes, there was good as well as evil in human nature. There's good in the world. Sure there are people that have ethics, good morals, good intentions, but it's all on the human level and it's all on the self-centered level. It's long ways from being on the high plane of the love of God, which shed in our hearts alone can fulfill the law of God. That is a spiritual love that transcends anything that a human can have till they have the Spirit of God.
But God also decreed as He decreed that Christ would come when He closed off the tree of life, He decreed that it was appointed for men to die once and after that the judgement. Then as we read in 1 Corinthians 15:22, "As in Adam all die because all have sinned"--in Adam. So in Christ shall all be made alive. Everyone who has sinned and died, and all have died that are say under 140 years of age today, because there is no one quite that old on Earth. I think if God would extend my life that I could get fairly close to it. I'm in my ninety-fourth year now. I don't know how long God will extend that life. That's up to Him and you brethren had better understand that. There's no guarantee that He's going to extend it on and on and on and on. I'm going to hope He will as long as He wants to use me, I think He will. But when David was old and stricken with years, 23 years younger than I am, He let king David die. And David was a man after His own heart and David was ruling his people. So God determines a lot of these things. We can't of our wishful thinking do it either, and we need to realize that and take it a little bit seriously, brethren. Your faith must not be in me it must be in Jesus Christ. He's the Head of the Church, I'm not. And if I were not here it would be another who would become the Pastor General. And if that should ever happen, if you want to get into God's Kingdom you will follow that Pastor General. And you will remain united and you will remain one. And your eternity depends on that. Every one of you, don't you forget it. Because years ago this Church was very seriously, it's a matter of seven or eight years ago, still divided. Thank God it's not really divided today. There maybe a little contention here or there that maybe we just haven't quite discovered. Maybe some have a little contention they are keeping to themselves. It hasn't surfaced. But we have such wonderful cooperation now, such a wonderful attitude and spirit of love, the Spirit of God and of God's Holy Spirit. Brethren, do everything and pray your heart out that it can continue that way in the Church.
Anyway, now to finish. When Jesus comes Satan will have been discredited. The Church will be then made immortal and all the government will be restored. In Acts 3:19-21 the heavens have received Jesus until the time of restitution of all things. And then He's coming back again. Restitution means restoring to a former state or condition or restoring what had been taken away. He's coming to restore the Kingdom of God. There was an Elijah to come and to restore things in the Church. That has happened and what has been restored is the government of God, and many of the truths. At least 17 or 18, principle, vital, doctrines of truth have been added to about the three that had survived in the Sardis era of the Church that they still had. But they had clung on to those three. But they didn't know about the government of God in the Church. They didn't know about what I'm telling you today. They didn't know about these Holy Days.
So, to start with, the Passover. Then follows seven days putting sin out of our lives, but we can't do it alone without the Spirit of God. So then comes the next Holy Day, the Day of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit. And then comes this whole Church age. And the next thing to happen after that, and after this nineteen hundred and some years of the Church age, is the second coming of Christ. And He's coming to take over the government of the Earth and He's coming to restore government. It has been restored into this Church. And there are those that are just waiting for me to die and like buzzards they would like to come and gobble up all you people and tell you that no one else is fit to lead you but them. And they look to human charisma, someone who has a certain personality, someone who's a good entertainer, but God looks on the heart. Don't forget it, brethren. People are always fooled by human personality and the charisma that attracts them right to someone. That must never happen in this Church. And I am going to do all I can to stay alive and prevent it happening as long as I can.
Now when Christ comes the government of God will be restored and for one thousand years we go through the time reflected and foreshadowed by the Feast of Tabernacles. A thousand years! I think it will take at least three generations before we can weed out all of the evils and have a real utopia here on Earth, but it'll come. It will come and it will come comparatively fast.
At the end of that time Satan will be loosed for a little season, at the end of the Millennium. And there is a great possibility that it'll be in the six thousand year period in God's plan before the Second Coming of Christ. And He's coming a little sooner than that because He's going to cut it, the Great Tribulation and this time short, because there wouldn't be a human being left alive if He didn't. That little space that He cuts short may be added on the end of the Millennium. And that's when Satan will be loosed for a little while to go out and deceive those that are living, and yet have not been made immortal, and are the last generation of that thousand years.
And after that Satan, and those he leads, will be put away and reserved for the lake of fire. And then will come the one hundred years of the Great White Throne Judgement and everybody whoever lived will be resurrected. And at the end of that time God's purpose of humanity, of reproducing Himself, will have been completed. And then, finally, the New Jerusalem is coming down. There will be a new heaven and a new Earth. And even God the Father is coming to this Earth, and this Earth is going to be the Headquarters of the universe. And according to the second chapter of Hebrews and the eighth chapter of Romans, the whole universe is in decay waiting for the appearance of the sons of God, resurrected and finally God's purpose in humanity completed.
And then we are going to restore all of these planets from decay like this Earth. And this Earth is just a place of starting. This life, brethren, is one of qualifying. This life is one of qualifying to reign and rule with Christ not just to get saved, not just to get into the Kingdom, but to qualify for a big position. And then even that and this Earth then will be made as it should be and as all planets should be. And this is where we are practicing so that we can then begin to go throughout all eternity into all the universe. And the Second Coming of Christ is that event which will start everything in the government of God to doing that for the first time. It will be the greatest event that has ever happened in the history of the universe, not just the history of man, not just the history of this Earth, but the greatest event that has ever happened in the history of the universe, when Christ comes to take over the government of God and to rule the Earth. And the Earth will be the Headquarters of God and from there He will. . . He didn't create all these planets and all this great universe in vain. It's in decay now and it is in vain. Of course a thousand years are like a day and a day is like a thousand years to God. And there is a lot of time. Eternity is a long time ahead and ultimately God is going to make something beautiful out of this entire vast universe.
Now Jesus said if we overcome we will sit with Him on that throne. We will be given power over the nations. Are you overcoming, brethren? Examine your own self. That's something I can't do for you. I can teach you. Did you listen and did it sink in? Well, keep it there and meditate on it and be sure and make your calling and election sure.
Thank you, brethren.