No. 07 - SEEING OURSELVES CLEARLY By: John J. Blanchard Thursday, March 28, 2002 First Day Of Unleavened Bread) Brethren, spring is almost here! In Indiana it probably already is! The birds are singing, the frogs will soon be croaking, the flowers will be blooming and the grass will be growing! As the sun came up this morning and will set tonight, every day the sun comes up and the sun sets. Things are as they always have been, aren’t they? Nothing has changed. We look out there and creation just seems to keep going. We, the servants of God, look out there and should see something beyond that - something beyond just a ho-hum, over and over again cycle of life and be learning what it is God is trying to teach us through the holy days. Some weak servants say Christ delays His coming. Some look at us and say we are dreamers and that we are silly and believe foolish things. Turn to Matthew 24:48 for the story of the wicked servant. “‘But if that evil servant says in his heart, “My master is delaying his coming…”’” It goes on to say he can make some grave errors in his treatment of his fellow servants and his brothers and sisters, as was brought out in the sermonette and the sermon this morning. So, obviously when we look out there and nothing seems to be changing and everything is the same year to year, we can get caught off guard. Jesus Christ can come back at an hour and a day that we least expect! We can get caught short changed and not ready! This should never be. God never intended for His people not to be able to be ready. He gave us all that we need to get ready. We must not be fooled by what we see out there and must not assume this is just another Passover season, just another Day of Unleavened Bread and that we are going to obey by going through these things mechanically because God said so. Are we going to give an offering and come to services as He said, start the year off because He said this is the time of year to start and go through another year marking off, as it were, time? What are we doing if we mark off time? Is this some sort of a joke? Is this something that God is playing a trick on us? Are we just cosmic time watchers or is anything gained? Why do we observe these strange rituals? One of the brethren told me this afternoon, as a matter of fact, that someone who is a working-place acquaintance of one of our members said during the week, “You want time off because you are going to keep those stupid days and eat those stupid dried out crackers!” The person in the Church was shocked and said, “What are you talking about?” “Oh, I have heard all about that stupid Church you are in!” Well is this stupid and are these stupid rituals that we partake every year? Or, as we heard this morning in the sermon, is there deep meaning to all of this? Should we be learning and growing year by year until this becomes such a part of our lives, our being, that we are actually living it? Should we be growing each year so that we are actually recommitting to some great plan that God has offered us to be a part of? Should we actually be putting leaven out of our lives - sin out, so that God can see we are bearing fruit? Is this real or is this somehow fake? Are we still foreshadowing something to come sometime in the distant future, or are we commemorating something that really took place 2,000 years ago that was foreshadowed in the Old Testament? We have to become convinced of this so that we know what we are doing, why we are doing it and why it is incredibly important to do it well. Because, brethren, there is not that much time left. There just is not that much time left! God promises that we, if we trust Him, will be able to see and understand. Turn to Proverbs 29. This is a common scripture that is read often, but I want to tie it to the holy days because we need these holy days to understand something. We need to comprehend what our position in the body of Christ is and what is expected of us. Proverbs 29:18 - “Where there is no revelation…” (some versions say “vision”) “...the people cast off restraint; but happy is he who keeps the law.” And as we were taught this morning, we are trying to keep the law in a physical and, more importantly, a spiritual sense. A spiritual sense - because we have been blessed with prophetic vision as outlined in God’s holy days. Without those holy days, we are lost and confused, we do not know where we are going and instead of being visionaries, we can be blind - literally blind! A correct knowledge of these holy days helps us to see, and this is one of the ways God gives us vision. By allowing us to partake of the holy days, God allows us to see by way of the holy days what it is He is doing in His almighty plan. That way we can focus on what is expected of us and know what we are to do. Starting with the night before last with Passover, we understood what we were trying to do - to humble ourselves, to examine ourselves. In this way, God can use us and we can recommit for another year to this awesome plan and agreement with Him. Without the knowledge of that day, what were we doing - a ritual so people can say, “What a stupid thing! Washing each other’s feet. Give me a break! There are much more important things to do and more important things on TV!” That is how vision can be clouded. We have to comprehend what it is we are doing and understand we have to do it well. Do it as God said because there are eternal consequences for us, for God’s Church, for the world and for the plan of God. We have been called into something great, huge, wonderful! God has opened our eyes to these things through His holy days. That comprehension is a miraculous blessing! We, in this room, have it. We need to keep it. We need to have clear vision so we need to stay “right” with God. We have entered another year. This is the first holy day of that year. God has given us a chance now to go forward this year and really produce some fruit and understand what we are doing and why we are doing it. Can you think of anything more important to be doing today? No! Yet the world goes on about its business out there oblivious to what we are doing. Although soon, very soon, unbeknownst to them, they will be doing this. They will be asking questions of people, why, what does all of this mean? What are we doing? What happened? What is going to happen? We are going to have answers for them. We are going to draw from our experience, the experience since Jesus Christ, almost 2,000 of these rituals since His death. We are going to look back on Old Testament Israel, and we are going to explain. That Bible you have on your shelf at home, if you open it up and look you will see these were commanded to be kept forever by the first ecclesia. We were the second ecclesia - the firstfruits. Our job is to help bring this government and to teach you. Ask us questions and we will help you! We have been doing it for years! We understand because God blessed us with vision! God blessed us with knowledge! You see we are not better than other people. We are just first. We are not in any way superior. We were just called before they were. We have learned to be humble, to examine ourselves and judge ourselves so that we can then help others take the speck out of their eye. We need to take the beam out of our own eye first. That is why we start with Passover before we go through the rest of the year. Look at ourselves, ask God to see us for what we are, take the beam out of our eye so eventually we can help take the specks out of other people’s eye without ever condemning them or judging them or hating them. We need to learn this first before we can help them. Now we are getting into the purpose of the holy days - the deep, deep purpose of why there had to be firstfruits. Now we understand why there had to be an earlier ecclesia to do these things physically that we could learn from and a New Testament ecclesia to understand the spiritual lessons (the spiritual vision) that people need to have to fulfill their part as the body of Christ - as a living sacrifice for the world. That is what we need a clear understanding of so that we can do this right. We need to do it properly. With prophetic vision we do not dismiss the truth. You see in Proverbs 29:18 if you would look up those words in the Hebrew where it says, “Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint.” you would see that means there is an avoiding of the truth - a going back, a dismissing, a setting at naught, a refusing to do, no longer seeing what was uncovered. We do not want that to happen. God blessed us with this eyesight and with His vision He gave us this understanding. We never want to go back to be among those who draw away and to lose this understanding. This is what we are taught by the prophecies: Do not go back and lose your vision! When that happens, you are in dire danger! All of us fell into that for a while. God is now reawakening, in this era, people with vision to understand their shortcomings so that they can eventually be used to help the masses out there to see their shortcomings and to teach them! There will be a Church. The gates of hell will not prevail against that Church. But it does not say the gates of hell will not come very, very close and they have. God has preserved the seed that will go into the millennium and teach. That seed, as we heard this morning, will be part of that l44,000 who are sealed, because they have learned in their mind to let God rule so that they can be used by God for eternity! They will be part of His government! We are not in a small enterprise. This is an awesome undertaking that God has here and using fallible weak human beings such as yourself and myself takes real guts! God has guts! He is not going to lose. If we stay with Him, we are not going to lose. So we want to have a clear comprehension of these holy days. We do not want to be narrow minded and think that just because spring is here, the snow is melting, the grass will soon grow and the leaves will bud that it must be time for the holy days. No! What we see out there should say to us that it must be time for us to bear fruit inside! It must be time for us to lay aside an offering for God of ourselves. It must be a time for us to prepare for the Son to shine this year in our lives so we can produce a crop and give back to God 30, 60 and l00 fold. This is spiritual understanding and spiritual wisdom and knowledge. It is a gift from God to us and we need to apply it to our lives and understand each and every day what God expects of us. These holy days yearly remind us what God expects from us. So we go through them each year, not to waste time and do something stupid, but to remind ourselves that God’s plan is there forever, we are a part of it and yearly we are going to grow. He lays out the plan so that we can understand step by step through the year what He wants us to be doing. Now that is a miracle from God. The holy days are critical for us to have this vision. As they unfold during the year, it is critical for us to see the sequence that God is working through. It is a sequence that has been established for eons and eons. Many in the world may laugh and many in the churches that believe they are Christian may laugh, and we do not hold that against them because on the surface they look right. This was the 3,449th Passover that the Jews kept the other night! We have kept almost 2,000 as of the other night. Who looks right? Doesn’t it look like somebody has been wasting their time for almost 4,000 years? Some others may appear to have wasted their time for almost 2,000 years. We do look foolish. But when we follow God’s plan and we understand the church eras, we know Christ will eventually come. We can tell where we are in time and that He is coming very soon. We happen to be those who live at the end time just before Christ’s return. As such, we have the benefit of hindsight don’t we? Just think, we are doing the 3,449th. What if we were doing the 75th Passover or the 200th or 500th Passover? Would you begin to wonder? Would people get disillusioned? Would they lose vision? You bet! But to us who are alive at the end of the age God says I will reveal to you what has happened because you have persevered. You have hung on! Now do you see why Satan did not want people to hang on? Just when God was about to pour out His Spirit and open up so much to us from His word and pour out blessings that would be able to go out to the world and intercede for the world, a huge blindness hit the Church! Now does that make sense? Of course, it does. Christ tells us as His body in Revelation, “Hold fast what you have, lest any man take your crown.” It was not just a meaningless warning. That was visionary for us. It was Him giving us the eyesight to understand what has been going on all of this time and where we are in time. This is critical information for us to keep inside and to utilize as we try to bear a crop for Jesus Christ who will be here sooner rather than later! So many are setting dates, 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 years into the future. Will the Church be ready with that kind of thinking? We need to be ready now because we do not know when Christ is coming precisely. We do know He was honest when He said, “It can come and take you as a thief in the night.” We know He was honest and truthful when He said, “In the middle of the night you will hear a cry that the bridegroom is coming.” and literally a whole Church is taken by surprise and shocked. Only a few are ready, in comparison. How can this happen to people who have had these scriptures, who have had these holy days and this knowledge all of this time? How can that happen? Well, brethren, it can, and we are warned that it can. When we see because of God’s blessing, we need to do something about it and start bearing fruit and taking this very seriously. So that is what we are going to do this year. We are going to take this very seriously and not horse around because we, and those we love, should not be taken by surprise. Is it just enough to know? Is it just enough to watch the clock and tick off the time? Is it enough to say I think I see the time, I think I can pick the season and I think I see some warning signs on the horizon? No, because that can goof us up something awful. With that kind of thinking, we miss the spiritual signs that God is showing us constantly. Watch for this, look for this, look for that! If we are looking too physically, we miss the sign, which is how the bridegroom can come and actually take His bride by surprise! They can say, Christ, when did You want me to do this or that? He will say when the least of My brethren were there, that was your opportunity. When I was there and I was naked and I was hungry, I needed food. That was your opportunity. If we answer Him, but, Christ, when did I see you naked, when did I see you hungry, how can You hold me accountable? I did not see you! Christ would say, wait a minute, I do not know you because you never saw the least of My brethren. You did not discern My body. You neglected My body. Therefore, I have no choice but to neglect you! This can happen. We do not want this to happen. We have been given every opportunity by God to avoid that problem, but we want to take advantage of that help. Thank God for opening our eyes. Thank God for giving us the gold that is tried in the fire. Thank God for giving us the clean raiment, as we heard this morning. The righteous acts of the saints - righteous in God’s sight not our sight. God is the One who looks at our clothing and says you are naked, and you do not know it. We do not want to be caught naked spiritually when Christ returns. We want Him to come and find us wearing white garments. We need to put this on BEFORE the wedding supper, BEFORE things happen. It is not something you can put on at midnight. When the cry goes out that the bridegroom is coming and the Church stands up and begins to follow Him in and some are locked out, we do not want to look up in consternation and say, “Why me?” Well, you are not ready. You do not have any white clothes on. You cannot come into this affair. Well, how did we know to get ready? You needed to be applying the things I was trying to teach you year by year through My word. We are not going to be able to put it on in five minutes! This morning I could get ready for church in five minutes. We were running a little behind and I came and unlocked the door here. I told the brethren at the house, “I will be back in a minute and I will throw my suit on. I will drive you all back and we will all come to church in five minutes.” If Christ were here, I cannot put character on in five minutes. I cannot pray to receive the Holy Spirit in five minutes. I cannot say, “Oh, give me a second Lord.” I will run out and buy some oil in five minutes in the middle of the night when there is nothing open. How much time do we have left? Only God knows. Is there time to waste? Absolutely not! There is no time to waste, whatsoever. Please turn to Ecclesiastes 8:5 - “He who keeps His command will experience nothing harmful; and a wise man’s heart discerns both time and judgment, because for every matter there is a time and judgment, though the misery of man increases greatly. For he does not know what will happen; so who can tell him when it will occur?” Now we may not be able to point to the exact time these things will happen, but we know there is a time for judgment. We know the Church is being measured right now. So we are being judged as we sit here. We are being judged as we live. It is our time now! Most may not understand this anymore but there is no time to waste. It is an on-going thing. The time will end and that is the critical time. When judgment is finished upon the Church, Christ will know whether we have the white clothes on or not. The cry goes out and those with the white clothes on are helped. Those without, have to spend more time out in the world of hard knocks and learning that they need the mercy of Jesus Christ. They will be learning how not to judge and how to love under very harsh circumstances. It is not a threat from God; it is just a fact. We need not fear if we have spent the time listening to His judgment, judging ourselves, examining ourselves, looking for where we fall short and asking God to help us measure up while there is time. This is putting on the linen garments. This is getting ready. So now is the time. There is no time like the present. The wise understand this. This is what Ecclesiastes says. The wise understand. The wise virgins understood and the foolish forgot. We are playing for all of the marbles here now. We are at that point in time when we are almost out of time. It is as any athletic contest or something with a deadline is taking place. Up until that final buzzer, anything can happen. But at that final buzzer, there is a victor and there is a loser. There is no time to go back and change things. This is what Christ is saying. The wise should be aware of this. When that final buzzer goes off and the bridegroom is coming down the way, you cannot go replay the first quarter or the second quarter. You cannot go ask for a “time-out.” You cannot say, let’s have a two minute replay. No, it is done! It is a done deal. There is a sealing process. We heard about that this morning in Revelation. When that sealing is finished, it is finished. It is time for the next group. It is time for the next game. The next group is the innumerable multitude. Then they will be judged. They are going to be helped to see right from wrong. There will be people ready to help them. There will be other people who were not ready and do not understand and say, “What happened?” They are actually in need of help at that time themselves. How can they serve others when they are in desperate need themselves? This is what could happen in a very short time from now. The point is, there is no time to fool around. The wise appreciate this and use this holy day season this year wisely. In whatever time that we have left, they use it very wisely to produce a crop for God. As we did for the Passover, we can briefly look at I Corinthians 11:27 - “Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned...” So let us judge ourselves while there is time. Let us be wise about this and examine ourselves daily throughout this year. Ask God’s help, when we need it, to repent so there is a bountiful crop in our lives for Christ to come back to. We will have righteous garments on and possess the gold refined by fire and the silver refined by fire that is the character that God needs to have a bride - a temple ready. We do not want to be found wood, hay and stubble - wood, hay and stubble that needs to go back out in the fire. This would be the wrong time to get the dross removed. This would be a time when the next crop should be coming in. You can see the analogy with agriculture. There is a crop in the spring and a crop in the fall. When we pull in the spring crop, the fall crop is not ready. But if there is still a spring crop on the ground when the fall crop is ready, you destroy it. It becomes fertilizer. It gets plowed under. This is agriculture. This is something we should understand but we are so far removed from agriculture anymore that most of us do not comprehend. What is left literally becomes fertilizer in the ground that we walk on to produce another crop. It has died to help what follows later. It is something worthwhile to think about. It is sobering but there is a crop that will go out to help produce the next crop. There will be shepherds who will farm the next crop and help water it and care for it so that they can produce. That is what God is doing in His Church at this time. As was read earlier in I Corinthians 5:6-8, so it is now time to “Put out the leaven of malice and wickedness.” We still have time to put out the malice and the wickedness. Let us take advantage of that. As was pointed out, malice is in our hearts and minds condemning someone else (allowing them to suffer while we ourselves, of course, do not want to suffer). We are called to be sacrifices for others, to help them not to suffer and not to be watching for them to suffer. We should help them to avoid it - to help teach, to help them bear a crop, to help them be part of the firstfruits. Help them be part of what Christ wants to come back to and marry. This is the job of the Church at this time. So proper examination as we did the other night is very humbling but very helpful. It is very humbling because we see ourselves the way God sees us. We gain some vision of ourselves that helps us understand to avoid perishing. We must not cast off the truth. We must apply the truth to our lives, put on clean garments, develop holy righteous character, bear a crop for God. With vision we will reach this goal because we understand what the goal is. We are not perplexed. We are not confused. We are not wondering what is coming and when. We are getting ready. We are getting ready with every day that we are blessed with. God will find us ready, and it will be His work that has done it. But we will have allowed Him to work in us. We are the only ones who can say, “Yes, God, go ahead and do it in me.” It is His plan. They are His holy days. They are His commandments. He cannot make us abide by any of it, but He promises to help us if we say go ahead God and work it in my life. I am allowing You to use me to build holy righteous character. I will attempt to make every right decision from here on out; and I know when I make a mistake You will forgive me when I repent. That is our covenant. We just recommitted to this covenant. The concept of discerning the Lord’s body we need to take seriously so we do not blow it! Hang on to the vision that we have received so we will not blow it. So what are we judging ourselves to find? What are we looking for? After Christ’s last supper in John 13 we were taught about love. Let’s go to John 13. Love covers a multitude of sins we are taught. Christ said this is the upshot of all that I am trying to do in you. John 13:31 - “So, when He had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and glorify Him immediately.’” Is God glorified in us? Verse 33: “‘Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, “Where I am going, you cannot come,” so now I say to you. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.’” Now that should ring throughout the land and through the world and people should be able to look at the body of Christ and say, “Those are the people.” Those are the chosen ones. I can see that, if for no other reason, because of how they treat one another! But right now we are indistinguishable to the world; because when they look at the body of Christ, what do they see? Hate! Bitterness! Envy! We are beating up one another and publishing horrible things about each other. We are putting it out for the world to see on the Internet, putting it in newspapers, putting it in lawsuits in courts - brother against brother, sister against sister, group against group. The body is divided. We say come Lord Jesus and marry us! Now how is this possible? There is a huge cleaning up that has to take place. It starts with saying, God, show us where we are wrong. Then Christ will say you are poor, blind, wretched, naked and miserable and do not know it; but now that you have asked, I am going to help you see it so you can do something about it. The eye salve goes on miraculously and we see ourselves in a new light. We can then examine ourselves properly. We hate what we see and we do something about it because we tell God I am ready. Give me the gold tried in the fire. Give me some clean garments. I hate the fact that I am naked. I hate the fact that I am hungry, poor and blind. Yes, I am miserable and wretched, and I did not know it! God will say with that attitude I will come in and sup with you. With that attitude I will feed you. We can fix this problem and do not worry - not all is lost. For with that attitude, you can rule with Me on My throne! How’s that? That is wonderful! Who did He say that to - the Laodiceans! The people who are alive at the end who are willing to let Him show them what they are like. Is there shame in saying to God I am Laodicean? I understand I live at the end and I am sick. I have problems. Help me with them. Is that shameful? I do not think so. I think that is humility. I think that is the attitude God is looking for. I think that is the attitude that in Revelation He is waiting for us to exhibit because that is “hot.” It is not lukewarm. It is not cold. It is hot because that is saying, God, I will take whatever it is You have to dish out to me to get me ready. I know time is short. I will take whatever you need to give me and please give it to me now. Help me to get through it and grow. I guarantee with that attitude, God’s hand will be lightly upon us. For we will have examined ourselves and judged ourselves and He will then do what He promised. He did not lie. We are judged as we judge. That is His word that He gave us that is as sure as sure can be. So as we judge ourselves, He will judge us. If we are harsh on ourselves, He will say you have done it. You have done it for Me so now I will be light on you. But if we do not judge ourselves and examine ourselves, He must be critical of us. He must be harsh. He must allow us to fall into whatever devices and eventually correct us. It is a question of His love. It is not a question of Him hating us. He wants us to be part of the bride and be ready. It is our job to say, yes, God. Help us! So that is the point we are at, brethren. This is the time. Everybody points to the end time excitedly saying, wow, I wonder what it will be like just before Christ returns? Well, look about you. You are there! The body is dying. The body is sick. The body hates itself. Christ says I want to come to My body. God the Father says I want you to marry My Son but look at your condition. We say we cannot see our condition, we are fine. We are doing the work. We are okay. It is everybody else. God looks through the body of Christ and says, how can this be? How can everyone claim to be working for Me and talking for Me and hating Me at the same time? How can this be? How can it be the Church that I called out of this world? How can it be the Church that My Son died for when they hate one another this way? This does not have to stay this way. I am not trying to depress you. These are the holy days. This is the start of a new year. This is exciting because as we know the truth, the truth can set us free! As we know our condition, God says I will free you. Christ has paid the penalty. You do not have to carry this load. You have judged yourself. You have found yourself wanting. Here is the Passover Lamb! Take and eat of His body and drink of His blood. Put on the garments. They are free! Just let Us give them to you in abundance. Now we do not know if we have a few months or a few years, but we need to start doing that in order to bear a decent crop for God. I guarantee you this - there is still enough time! But there is no time to waste! God knows how much time we need. With this understanding at this point in history, this is when we needed it. Let’s jump on it with both feet. Let’s grab it by the mane and hold on tight and never let go. Let us encourage one another as we see the day approaching. It is our job. Anyone who we find naked, hungry or thirsty we will share this with. We want the entire body ready if it were possible when Jesus Christ returns. That is what we want to do. I John 2 shows us some other things to watch for. We are warned. I John 2:15 - “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life - is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.” It is time to set the world aside. We dwell in it. We must live here but we are not of it. We are going to help liberate it. We are called into the kingdom of God ahead of time, remember? We are the firstfruits. So we live in His nation, in His city. We are waiting for that government to come so that we can help the world get freed of the lust of the flesh and the pride of life and from Satan’s way of life. Let’s guard against that. Let’s bear fruit against that so we can help others and show them, eventually, how they can bear fruit and work into the family of God - be blessed with eternal life! So, we see these things by a proper self-examination, and we ask God for help during the year so that we can love the body of Christ and eventually extend that love to all of the world. That is what we are examining and judging to find. How are we polluted? How we are polluted with these things from the world? How are we polluted with false doctrine? How we are polluted by no hope? When we have no hope to give the world, what hope do they have? When we offer them judgment, condemnation, destruction and death, what hope have they? Are we not the light of the world? Are we not the salt of the earth? Is the world not to be preserved by us, the Church of God - the body of Christ? We must offer them hope! We are here to help set them free as God’s soon-coming government. What a responsibility we have! What a wonderful calling we have! It starts this year by washing one another’s feet, taking the Passover and entering the First Day of Unleavened Bread today. We tell God to help us to put the leaven out of our lives because we want to help the world put the leaven out of theirs. What a calling! Let’s not lose sight of that vision. Let’s never be blinded again. This is too important and there is no time left for wasting. So first, we put on humility and examine ourselves. You can read that in Proverbs 15:33 once again. In humility we judge ourselves as it says in Matthew 7. Please turn to Matthew 7:1. “‘Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you. “‘And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me remove the speck out of your eye,” and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye. Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.’” Are we ready to help the world take the specks out of their eyes or are we so blind with a beam in our eyes that we cannot see what we are doing? We still have time to fix that problem because of God’s help. Let us avail ourselves of that time, and let us remember that God has sacrificed for us so that we can repent whenever we make a mistake and continue to grow. We practice it amongst the family first - amongst each other. We learn how to love one another. Wash each other’s feet daily and weekly. Encourage each other all of the time. During the next seven days we humbly ask God for more of this help and for extraordinary vision. We ask him for extraordinary help in seeing us as we are so we can put the leaven out of our lives. We need to find that leaven and root it out. We cannot allow it to spread beyond our individual selves to the rest of the body. We will then be able to help the world eventually remove the leaven from their lives. Psalm 149, verse 4: “For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation.” God takes pleasure in us when we humble ourselves and extends salvation to those of us who have humbled ourselves and examined ourselves. He will seal us and say we are ready to marry His Son at His Son’s return. This is so beautiful. It is a wonderful plan that God has brought for us and given to us. All of these blessings come because He allowed us to see. He allowed us to see who we are and what we are. He gave us these holy days year by year, not as rituals to waste our time and not something stupid to do, but something to learn from. It is something we can apply in our lives so that we can bear fruit and be ready when our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, comes. He can then say, well done, good and faithful servant. We want to hear those words. With those holy days we can see. Let the world laugh. Let other people laugh. Let them ridicule us. Let them persecute us. It doesn’t matter. Soon the blindness will be off of them too, and they will be looking to us! We will not put them down. We will not harass them. We will just be so glad that there are more of us! That is the sign of the love that Jesus Christ had for us. When they were putting Him to death, He did not put them down and say you stupid fools. In a few minutes you watch what the Father does to you! You are going to see the huge mistake you made. The world will laugh at you. No, Christ said, forgive them Father, for they do not know what they are doing. They do not understand why they are persecuting Me. They do not understand why they hate Me. They do not know what motivates them to kill Me. Didn’t He say that if you are the body of Christ, they will do the same to us? You bet! As we get persecuted, we are not going to say you just wait! My Father, my Big Brother is going to get you! Wait until He gets you! No, we will say, Lord, we forgive them. They do not know what they are doing. They do not understand they are hurting Your body. Soon the blinders will come off of them. When they do, we can help them. The world will weep. Those who are honest enough to want to repent and accept Christ will weep. They will apologize. Every knee will bend to Jesus Christ. We will help wipe every tear from those people who are alive on the earth at that time. We will wipe every tear from their eye. We will just be glad we can do it. People are not going to be running around saying now I can get you back. I can get you back for what you did to me and said to me. I can get you back for how you hurt me in life. We are just going to be so glad that they repented and that we can help them in the Millennium. We will be glad that they will not have to suffer anymore. A world set free, what a beautiful thing! God is offering us the chance to help set them free and liberate them. It is not a chance to lord it over them and be cruel to them. This is our calling, brethren. It is why the humble are called into this. People who will not say I am going to get you back but rather people who will say by the grace of God I would have done the same thing. Don’t worry about it. I would have done the same thing. You did not know what you were doing, and I am not going to hold it against you. Our yoke is light because our Master’s yoke is light. We can all pull this load together. Satan is going to get the full blame, because it was his vibrations, his mental images, his talking to you that invoked the hatred and the bitterness. He caused the envy and the strife. The guilt will be placed upon him, where it belongs. What a wonderful thing to understand, brethren. Let’s never forget that. So as we keep the Feast, let us not do it with the old leaven of malice and wickedness, but with truth and with sincerity let us do it, remembering that there but by the grace of God, go I. Let us study Hebrews chapter 10 when you have time. We can boldly now go to the throne of God, ask for intercession and intercede for others knowing that God will hear us. He will answer our prayers. He will help those in need, and they will be glad to have the knowledge. They will be glad to have the help that we can give them. We will be part of the government that they will be living under soon. They are going to love their new government. They are not going to hate us. Hatred will be banished. The world will be changed. Satan will be locked away. Love will reign, and that will be the basis that the government runs on. The love that God the Father and Jesus Christ have will then be all over the world! We can be right there helping to bring it to the world to teach the world to share it with all mankind. Yes, we are the children of God, brethren. We have been blessed with this knowledge to be able to use it some day. That day is coming soon! So let’s love the body of Christ now. Love one another so that we can bear fruit for God so He won’t have to say, when I was naked and hungry, you did not do a thing for me! No, we are going to be able to say we tried. We looked for you. We tried to discern your body. You helped us to see, and we tried to do what You wanted. He will say, yes, well done, good and faithful servant. Loving the body of Christ is just the beginning. We are going to continue with the next story, where do we go from here?