No. 51 - HAVE WE SCARED OURSELVES SILLY? By: John J. Blanchard Thursday, September 16, 2004 Feast of Trumpets Here we are on the Feast of Trumpets 2004. The title of this sermon is “Have We Scared Ourselves Silly? The Millennium is Coming, The Millennium is Coming!” It is kind of a play on words with “the sky is falling, the sky is falling!” The United States is going through a series of calamities here this fall. There has been one hurricane after another battering the coasts of the United States. First it was Charley, then Frances, and now as I am speaking to you, Hurricane Ivan is hitting the coast. Prior to the hurricanes coming in, there were warnings that were given by the government. Get to high ground or get into a solid building, seek shelter! If you are on the fringes, get fresh water, medical supplies and food. These warnings were to prepare the people for the impending calamity. When we watch the evening news, throughout the world we see there are many storms and natural disasters taking place on a constant and regular basis. There are floods, hurricanes, and cyclones when you are Down Under. We see earthquakes and tornadoes taking place. Often times when the government has time, if they are a good government, they will put out a strong, clear warning. They will say, “Get to high ground, seek shelter, get in a strong building!” That warning is because they are concerned for their people. Also with those warnings comes the advice, such as get extra food, get a flashlight and extra batteries. Make sure that if you have a generator, you have gas for it. Make sure your car is ready to go if you need to get out in a hurry. This is advice. After the disaster, if you notice, aid comes pouring in. You get the advance warning from government by radio, television, sirens and even from authorities in some cases going from house to house. They tell people to get out and that there is an evacuation warning. They will ask if anyone needs assistance. They will inquire if there is anyone in the household that needs government help to get out. Then they advise people where to go and where to seek shelter. As soon as the disaster has passed, aid comes pouring in. There is action from the government. This action first of all is to help the helpless and the homeless. They provide shelter and take people to designated areas where they can have the care they need. They provide food, clean water and medical care. After that initial batch of aid that comes pouring in, then comes the money for reparations. The insurance companies are there writing checks to help people afford to get temporary shelter and to rebuild their homes. The government is there to help repair the roads and get the electric lines back up to restore communication. The government is also there to provide the rule of law, because in a chaotic situation, without that force to make sure things are done correctly, might would make right. There would be absolute chaos with people getting abused by stronger neighbors who had no moral compunctions. The government provides the rule of law so that safety and security is there for the people to rebuild and put their lives back together. The world has witnessed enough disasters to learn a certain routine and learn how to do this better and better. We have more technology. We can watch the world’s oceans for hurricanes. We can watch for the conditions that are ripe for tornados. In some cases, we can even predict earthquakes. We have building codes to help people provide for themselves with better buildings and shelters in earthquake prone areas. We have these things that the government has learned to do over the years in order to better care for their people. We can look at a good government and a bad government by how they take care of their people in a crisis. Some governments do not care! They really do not care about their people, but a good government does, such as we have here in the United States, also in Canada and Australia. Many other countries that are good countries have a government that is very concerned about their people. They put advance warnings out there when they can and bring aid right after the disaster. That is a good government. EVIL GOVERNMENTS Some governments do not care and are even part of the problem. If you have been following what is going on in the Sudan in the Darfur Region, you have a government that not only does not care about their people, but is actively encouraging genocide to get rid of certain people within their borders that they do not like! They are citizens of that country, but their government is their enemy. Their government is their oppressor. That is a stark example of an evil government. We can see that in other areas of the world where the government just does not care. The people in the government enrich themselves and take care of themselves while the people suffer. What if here in the United States or in Canada or in Australia we had a government that did not care? What if we had a government that said, “You are on your own? It is not our job to give you warnings. It is not our job to help you. There will be no aid. You are on your own with this up-coming disaster!” How would we feel about that? Wouldn’t we feel cut off and abandoned by our government? Of course we would because we know the result of a government with no policies in place or help or aid. We know what would happen. There would be unnecessary death and destruction. There would be anarchy, chaos, might would make right, and all law and order would break down. Maybe eventually the government itself would collapse. The country would cave in on itself. What if it was even worse? What if the government was contributing to the hopelessness and contributing to the despair? What if it was putting out announcements such as this prior to a hurricane like we have coming in right now: “You deserve this hurricane! You deserve this disaster, and you are not going to escape! We are not going to help you get out of the situation! You are going to suffer horribly, and we are not going to help you. But we are going to be okay! We are going to be all right. We have provided for ourselves. We have a safe haven, and we in the government are going to be okay. You are going to suffer and you deserve it!” How would you respond to a government like that? I think most people would despise a government like that. Most people would call them selfish and self-seeking. Most people would want them replaced with a kinder, more caring government. Now, of course, you probably know where I am going with this because God’s Church is supposed to be God’s government for the people. That is what God’s Church is. That is what He is preparing. He is preparing a government to replace Satan’s tyrannical government and give the people of the earth a good, caring government. THE CHURCH AT A CROSSROADS The Church, as well as the world, is at a crossroads right now. We have to choose what government we want to be for the people. The people will ultimately have to choose what government they are going to follow. They will have to follow the government of Jesus Christ unless they decide they would rather get destroyed with Satan and his government. It is a choice I do not think will be too hard to make for most people. But the Church ahead of time has to make the distinction and the decision of what kind of government we want to be. God will decide who will be in that government that He is bringing to this earth. Right now we have many issues that we are dealing with, and we are dealing with them with the knowledge of the Bible. We are issuing the warnings to the people and the warnings to the Church about what is about to happen very shortly. Are our warnings doom and gloom and hopelessness? Are our warnings warnings that will despise the people of the earth and condemn them and judge them harshly? Are our warnings that they deserve to die and suffer horribly, or are our warnings that prepare for a better world which is soon to be here? I think the Church has become so fixated on telling a horrible tale of woe that is about to befall the earth, that we have actually scared ourselves silly by the nightmare that we have portrayed to the world. Our selfishness has overcome us. We do not want any part of the horrific message that we often give to the world, so we seek a selfish way out. We use a message to scare the world and tell them all is lost, while at the same time we comfort ourselves that God will not destroy us. We are His people and His government! Who are we kidding? Do we want to govern a world that is a nuclear wasteland or people who have been liberated? It is time for us to decide what kind of warning, what kind of advice, and what kind of aid we are going to offer the world. God will decide if He wants us in His government or not based upon how selfish or unselfish we are. I want to briefly look at the false message of despair often given to the world. It is a message without hope and a message that actually repels people from God’s Church and from God! A MESSAGE OF DESTRUCTION Let us turn, if you would, to Ezekiel chapter 13. We will start reading verse 1. “And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who prophesy, and say to those who prophesy out of their own heart, “Hear the word of the Lord!”’ Thus says the Lord God: ‘Woe to the foolish prophets, who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing! O Israel, your prophets are like foxes in the deserts. You have not gone up into the gaps to build a wall for the house of Israel to stand in battle on the day of the Lord.’” We know this to be the spiritual temple today. Just as the physical one was allowed to fall in ancient Israel, today the spiritual temple has fallen. Continuing in verse 6: “They have envisioned futility and false divination, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord!’ But the Lord has not sent them; yet they hope that the word may be confirmed.” Every time a storm comes in on the shores of the United States or there is some disaster that befalls the United States or England or Canada or Australia, there are many in God’s Church who jump for joy! They think this is some sort of wonderful thing that is happening. They think, “Give them more because people deserve it.” That is not a Christ-like attitude. Continue in Ezekiel 13:7: “‘Have you not seen a futile vision, and have you not spoken false divination? You say, “The Lord says,” but I have not spoken. Therefore thus says the Lord God: “Because you have spoken nonsense and envisioned lies, therefore I am indeed against you,” says the Lord God. “My hand will be against the prophets who envision futility and who divine lies; they shall not be in the assembly of My people, nor be written in the record of the house of Israel, nor shall they enter into the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Lord God.”’” God says I am fed up with this nonsense. What does He mean I am fed up with futility, fed up with vanity, in the King James Version? If you were to look up the words vanity or futility, you would find that one of the definitions comes from the Hebrew word riyq which means a worthless thing, in vain, in the sense of desolating evil and destruction. So God says when the prophets preach a desolating evil and destruction, they preach an evil thing when they say God is behind this or God wants this. God does not want destruction of His people. God does not want the earth destroyed. The whole plan of God has been to save mankind first from their sins and then save this planet so that we can have a beautiful Millennium. God has been working toward this for 6,000 years, indeed, far beyond that, for the plans and work that went into what God is doing at this very time. Let us continue now in Ezekiel 13:11. “‘…say to those who plaster…’” (the wall of this temple) “‘…it with untempered mortar, that it will fall. There will be flooding rain, and you, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall tear it down. Surely, when the wall has fallen, will it not be said to you, “Where is the mortar with which you plastered it?” Therefore thus says the Lord God: “I will cause a stormy wind to break forth in My fury; and there shall be a flooding rain in My anger, and great hailstones in fury to consume it. So I will break down the wall you have plastered with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that its foundation will be uncovered; it will fall, and you shall be consumed in the midst of it. Then you shall know that I am the Lord. Thus will I accomplish My wrath on the wall and on those who have plastered it with untempered mortar; and I will say to you, ‘The wall is no more, nor those who plastered it, that is, the prophets of Israel who prophesy concerning Jerusalem, and who see visions of peace for her when there is no peace,’ says the Lord God.”’” The Church of God wants peace for itself. They call it the place of safety. In this doctrine they preach that they will be protected because they are somehow special, that the rest of the world deserves to die and deserves to suffer horribly. God says that doctrine is not from Him. He is not talking about physical protection. In God’s spiritual Church, He is talking about spiritual protection. God says people who pronounce doom and gloom on everyone else and expect peace and safety from Him are barking up the wrong tree. It is not going to happen that way. Continuing with rereading verse 15: “‘Thus will I accomplish My wrath on the wall and on those who have plastered it with untempered mortar; and I will say to you, “The wall is no more, nor those who plastered it, that is, the prophets of Israel who prophesy concerning Jerusalem, and who see visions of peace for her when there is no peace,” says the Lord God.’” Like I said, we are talking about spiritual Jerusalem in this day and age. Verse 17: “‘Likewise, son of man, set your face against the daughters of your people, who prophesy out of their own heart; prophesy against them, and say, “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Woe to the women who sew magic charms on their sleeves and make veils for the heads of people of every height to hunt souls! Will you hunt the souls of My people, and keep yourselves alive? And will you profane Me among My people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, killing people who should not die, and keeping people alive who should not live, by your lying to My people who listen to lies?”’ Therefore thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I am against your magic charms by which you hunt souls there like birds. I will tear them from your arms, and let the souls go, the souls you hunt like birds. I will also tear off your veils and deliver My people out of your hand, and they shall no longer be as prey in your hand. Then you shall know that I am the Lord. Because with lies you have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and you have strengthened the hands of the wicked, so that he does not turn from his wicked way to save his life. Therefore you shall no longer envision futility nor practice divination; for I will deliver My people out of your hand, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”’” HUNTED PEOPLE Around the earth today, God’s people are hunted people. If you notice, it is not the world hunting us down. It is Satan provoking people within the branches of the Church to hunt each other down as if they were prey and haul them into their own little flock. They teach them, “There is peace and safety here; it is the rest of the world that is going to get destroyed. It is the rest of the Laodiceans who are going to die!” What a horrible message! God says I am sick and tired of that. I am not going to put up with it much longer. Of course, we are talking about spiritual Jerusalem. THE CHURCH COVERED UP That term “charms”, in the King James Version you would find “pillows.” It comes from the Hebrew word keceth, which means to cover the fullness of the moon. To cover the fullness of the appointed times and festivals such as today, the Feast of Trumpets. What God is telling us here is that the moon that should reflect God’s love has been covered and made dark by these doctrines that preach peace and safety to our little flock, our little group, while the rest of the world gets destroyed. God says that covers up the moon. It covers up the love of God that should be reflected off His Church to the world. It covers up the hope that the world should have, and it hides the truth from the world. It repels people! It is a horrible message that repels people from the truth, and it also slanders God’s name! God is fed up with it. If you would, please turn to Jeremiah 14. We will see that God finds this teaching despicable. It goes contrary to His whole ideology that the Church, a type, a part of the body of Christ is here for the world’s benefit and not to curse the world. Jeremiah 14, verse 11: “‘Then the Lord said to me, “Do not pray for this people, for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence.”’” We understand it is a famine of the word today. The Church has been taken captive by the sword. The pestilence is, of course, spiritual disease that is killing God’s people. SOWING IN IGNORANCE Continue reading Jeremiah 14:13-22. We understand the rain is God’s truth coming upon the Church to produce crops within God’s people. God wants character growth. He wants love, mercy and compassion. If you remember, Jesus Christ was moved to compassion when He saw suffering people. He cried with the people, and He healed the people. He did not tell them, “You deserve this. You need to suffer more.” No, He was compassionate because He understood they were deceived by Satan the devil. Yes, they were reaping what they sowed, but they were sowing things in ignorance. God has come to bring the truth and mercy. When God’s people reject that kind of compassion and that kind of love that we should have for our fellow man, God says I will reject you. We will come to the point where the Church will say, “Why are You not healing us? Why have You turned away from us?” I thank God that we have come to the point where we realize we had been part of the problem and not part of the solution. We have asked God to illuminate those areas in our lives where we are weak and the areas we need to overcome. We have asked Him to show us the areas where we need to grow in love and compassion for our brethren and for the world. That is a wonderful miracle. We owe God tremendous thanks that He has seen fit to teach us those things. We hope for the day and long for the day when the entire Church will learn to be more Christ like. We have to stop preaching these vain and fruitless concepts to the world. We have to stop believing the lies that Satan has put out there. It is the lie that there is a physical place of safety that is for the special little group while the whole world suffers and dies. The physical place of safety has turned the Church completely inward on itself! It is completely selfish! Christ gave His life for the world, and He said follow Me in My footsteps. Be living sacrifices for the world. He did not say, “Follow Me and save your hide.” That was not His purpose. We must not believe this lie. The physical place of safety is harming God’s people like no other doctrine that I can think of, and it is helping to thwart God’s purpose at this time! God will turn it around and help those who want to repent to turn around. He will help those who want to let their lamp shine and to be examples of Christ-like compassion and love. The place of safety doctrine has scared us silly. We have been foolish because of it! It has filled us with selfishness, and it repels decent people the world over. There are people out there the world over helping victims of hurricanes, helping victims of genocide, and caring for AIDs victims. When they hear us talk, they cannot believe it is from God. They are giving their lives without understanding the truth. The are giving their lives to their fellow man, and they cannot see the love of God in what we are saying. We need to preach what God wants said. We just read in Ezekiel and Jeremiah that He does not want futility preached to the world. He wants the good news of what He is doing and what He is about to do to go out to the world. Unfortunately, we have come to believe our own nightmare. The so-called shepherds have beat us over the head with it, and have tried to scare us to do their will by telling us, “Follow me unless you do not want to be in that place of safety. Follow me to that place of safety while the whole world goes up in smoke.” Anyone who says that is a liar because you cannot follow a man to a physical place of safety. You have to follow God to a spiritual place of safety, and that is getting rid of false teaching, following the way of Christ, and becoming a loving example to the world. Look where selfishness and the silly message has gotten us. Think of what it has become to God’s Church in the last 16 to 18 years. Are we making spiritual progress? We are fracturing ever smaller and turning on one another. We are taking each other to courts. We are slandering each other on the Internet. You cannot tell me that is showing the fruits of God’s Spirit in His Church. It is the opposite! We are reaping what we sow right here in the Church of God. BLESSINGS AND CURSINGS Let’s take a look at some prophesies back in Leviticus 26 and a few other places that will help us see that we deserve what we are getting! That is what is happening. We have rightly called Deuteronomy 28 the blessings and cursing chapter, which we will look at briefly also. I want to make it absolutely clear that the first congregation of Israel was a physical congregation and a physical nation of God. Therefore, when they broke their covenant with God, they received physical correction. The spiritual congregation of God (the second ecclesia, the spiritual Jerusalem, spiritual Mt. Zion and the spiritual temple) will reap spiritual promises or spiritual correction because we are a spiritual organism. If we persist and do not learn those spiritual lessons, we can find ourselves in the unenviable position of having spiritual blessings withheld from us and suffering physical punishment as well. How many people in the Church are suffering from anxiety, depression and marital problems? How many people are on medication for all kinds of mental illnesses in God’s Church? You cannot tell me that God’s Church should be depending upon all of these things to fix what is wrong in our head when it is something that is wrong in our heart. It is something that God needs to fix within each one of us. We have to allow Him to do it. Let’s take a look here at some of these blessings and cursings. Leviticus 26, verse 2: “‘You shall keep My Sabbaths and reverence My sanctuary: I am the Lord.’” No one understands that correctly but God’s Church. Verse 3: “‘If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them, then I will give you rain in its season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall last till the time of vintage, and the vintage shall last till the time of sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.’” Eat the bread that God sends. Have the rain that will make the crops grow in our lives. We will eat them in safety. They are blessings. Verse 6: “‘I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none will make you afraid; I will rid the land of evil beasts, and the sword will not go through your land. You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.’” If you look back twenty, twenty-five or thirty years ago, the Church was attacked from time to time, and it was always victorious. It never was overrun because the Church was being protected because it was keeping the Sabbath. It was revering the sanctuary, and it was overcoming and growing in a spiritual sense. Let us look at some of the curses if we break our covenant that we made with God at baptism. Drop down to Leviticus 26:14. “‘But if you do not obey Me, and do not observe all these commandments, and if you despise My statutes, or if your soul abhors My judgments, so that you do not perform all My commandments, but break My covenant, I also will do this to you: I will even appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever which shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set My face against you, and you shall be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you shall reign over you, and you shall flee when no one pursues you.’” This is the Church today. The Church is full of wasting disease spiritually. We have had terror appointed over us for those who hate the Church and rule over it. Those who abuse the sheep, rule the Church! That is what God is saying here. And have we not fled? I think all of us here in this room certainly are tired of running. Where are you going to run anymore? The Church has fallen apart into many little pieces. It has been shattered. God told us if we break our covenant with Him, this would be the result. Leviticus 26, verse 36: “‘And as for those of you who are left, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a shaken leaf shall cause them to flee; they shall flee as though fleeing from a sword, and they shall fall when no one pursues.’” There are no armies after us. We keep getting told armies are going to chase us. We keep getting told we are going to be put in concentration camps. We keep getting told that we are going to die in horrible circumstances, but it is not the world that is after us. We are after each other. The Church is devouring itself! The Church is suffering a famine of the word, and it is suffering a lack of healing because God has withdrawn Himself from the Church. He has done this because of our own selfishness and because of the horrible message that we give the world that portrays God to be a horrible God. Turn, if you would, to Deuteronomy 28. By the way, these prophecies were fulfilled in ancient Israel in a physical sense. Now all we have to do is look around us and see how they are fulfilled spiritually today. Deuteronomy 28, verse 25: “‘The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them; and you shall become troublesome to all the kingdoms of the earth.’” That is what has happened to the Church. We have fled in seven ways in every which direction. We have lost our strength. We have been defeated by our enemy, which of course is Satan. PHYSICAL DESTRUCTION AVERTED There was a time when God’s Church could defeat the most powerful state in the United States, California. We could defeat Satan who was trying to get into the Church and destroy it. How did that happen? It was by the protection of God. It was under the leadership of one man who was strongly convicted and who tried to overcome in his own life, Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong. He tried to get the truth to the brethren. Yes, he preached that there would be disaster if we did not repent. That repentance occurred when the Church was formulated under Mr. Armstrong in the Philadelphia era. That is what averted the physical destruction of the earth! But it did not avert the spiritual destruction of God’s people. We brought it on ourselves by our own selfishness. STILL TIME TO REPENT Turn, if you would, to Proverbs 28. The saddest thing about the whole concept is not only have we scared the people in the world, but we have scared ourselves by being so foolish. Proverbs 28, verse 1: “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.” The righteous are bold when they are obeying God. It is the wicked who flee. We all fled. I am not exempting myself. We were not overcoming. We were not doing what we should have done to get rid of every spot and blemish, so God had to allow this fall of the Church to see who would repent and return. To anyone reading this, there is still time at this point to repent and return to God. That is the purpose of all you have been going through, as we have gone through as well. Let’s repent. Let’s start cleaning up the bride of Christ and get ready for what God is going to do next. Turn to Isaiah chapter 30. It describes the battle that we have been undergoing and the point we are at right now. Isaiah chapter 30, verse 8: “Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and note it on a scroll, that it may be for time to come, forever and ever; that this is a rebellious people, lying children, children who will not hear the law of the Lord; who say to the seers, ‘Do not see,’ and to the prophets, ‘Do not prophesy to us right things; speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits. Get out of the way, turn aside from the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.’” These prophesies of deceit are the smooth things. We will be okay. We are special. We will be protected. It is the rest of the world and the rest of the Laodiceans that deserve to suffer and die. Continue in Isaiah 30, verse 12: “Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel: ‘Because you despise this word, and trust in oppression and perversity, and rely on them, therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach ready to fall, a bulge in a high wall, whose breaking comes suddenly, in an instant. And He shall break it like the breaking of the potter’s vessel, which is broken in pieces. He shall not spare. So there shall not be found among its fragments a shard to take fire from the hearth, or to take water from the cistern.’” God says that He is the potter and we are the clay, so it is talking about the Church. The Church is going to get so shattered that there will not be a big enough piece to reuse in a fire to form a useful vessel! There will not even be something to haul some water. Have you ever seen the starving people in the Sudan and other desert areas where they have just a little piece of clay or a little piece of a broken vessel, and they are trying to scoop and drink water? God says there will not be enough in the Church left for that if we do not repent and turn back to Him! That is about the point we have come to, brethren. Continue with Isaiah 30, verse 15: “For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.’ But you would not, and you said, ‘No, for we will flee on horses’ therefore you shall flee! And, ‘We will ride on swift horses’ therefore those who pursue you shall be swift!” Tell me, who here can outrun Satan? None of us. Without the quiet assurance of God’s protection, we are not going to go anywhere on this planet, this universe, this solar system and get away from Satan! He is there. His horses are much swifter than we will ever be. God says that if we think we are going to flee this, it is not going to work. Verse 17 of Isaiah 30: “One thousand shall flee at the threat of one, at the threat of five you shall flee, till you are left as a pole on top of a mountain and as a banner on a hill.” So God is describing the battle that the Church is in. He says it will get to the point that the Church’s flag will be left on top of a pole on a hill, Mt. Zion, and the troops are all gone or dead! All you see is the flag fluttering in the breeze. There is nobody there. That is where we are. Tell me where God’s flag is or where God’s army is or where God’s people are. Or tell me where the force and the power of God is. He is not protecting His Church right now. He wants us to awaken to our spiritual condition. Revelation 3 tells us that the Laodiceans are poor, blind, wretched, naked and miserable and do not even know it. Buy from Him gold tried in the fire and clean garments. In other words, get rid of the false doctrines, get rid of our sins and overcome our shortcomings. Get rid of every spot and blemish, and God will give us character of gold and rewards. God will give us a clean garment to wear when His Son returns. It is entirely up to us! Are we going to keep preaching foolish things, repelling people from God, or are we going to show them the hope that is about to befall the world? God is fed up with our nonsense, and He is going to force us to change. We better start getting with His program and teach the truth. Turn, if you would, to Jeremiah 6. Read Jeremiah 6:10-15. Of course, this happened to ancient Israel in a physical sense. Today it is happening spiritually because we preach peace and safety. We encourage people to repent to be protected, to repent in a selfish sense while at the same time condemning the world. God says I am fed up with that. I am not going to put up with that. A living sacrifice like My Son is willing to lay down their life for the world for they love the world. They love the people of the world. They do not love Satan’s system. We hate what it has done to mankind, but we love the people. It is our purpose to help avert destruction by getting the temple of God ready. That is why in Revelation 21 you will see the world will some day rejoice. The bride has made herself ready! There is certainly nobody saying that at this point. It is up to the bride to start getting rid of its spots and blemishes and cure the problems that are making us sick. THE CHURCH OBSCURED Today we are finding ourselves on the Feast of Trumpets with the Church, the moon, full of despair and obscured from the world by our ways, by our sins. The world cannot see the joy of Christ’s return. They are in fear of Christ’s return not only by our preaching but the false preaching that is all around the world. It is doom and gloom and Armageddon and horrible conditions that God will supposedly bring about here at the end. They do this instead of preaching how good and how wonderful the Millennium of God will be. They run around preaching, “The Millennium is coming, the Millennium is coming, and you are all going to die.” What a horrible message. Let us turn now to Isaiah 28. God addresses this issue again for us here. He actually addresses it in many places in the Bible. Isaiah 28, verse 14: “Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scornful men, who rule this people who are in Jerusalem, because you have said, ‘We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we are in agreement. When the overflowing scourge passes through, it will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood we have hidden ourselves.’” That is the concept of the place of safety, the rapture, or whatever you want to call it. It is a selfish doctrine. Continuing in verse 16: “Therefore thus says the Lord God: ‘Behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; whoever believes will not act hastily. Also I will make justice the measuring line, and righteousness the plummet; the hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters will overflow the hiding place. Your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; when the overflowing scourge passes through, then you will be trampled down by it. As often as it goes out it will take you; for morning by morning it will pass over, and by day and by night; it will be a terror just to understand the report.’” As the Church comes to understand what has happened to the itself and that we have been overrun, the wall has bulged to the point that the temple has fallen down, the Church will be terrified to understand what has become of them. But it is time to get on our knees and beg God for help. Beg Him to forgive us for what we have done and help clean us up while there is still time. Isaiah chapter 29, verse 1: “‘Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt!’” Ariel is another name for the city of Jerusalem and our spiritual Jerusalem. “‘Add year to year, let feasts come around. Yet I will distress Ariel; there shall be heaviness and sorrow. And it shall be to Me as Ariel. I will encamp against you all around, I will lay siege against you with a mound, and I will raise siege works against you. You shall be brought down. You shall speak out of the ground; your speech shall be low, out of the dust; your voice shall be like a medium’s out of the ground; and your speech shall whisper out of the dust.’” That is because the Church is preaching what Satan wants. Satan wants the world destroyed. When we preach what Satan wants, we are preaching out of the dust. Remember in Genesis the serpent was cursed to lick the dust. When we preach what he has to say, we are hissing his words for him! Verse 5: “‘Moreover the multitude of your foes shall be like fine dust, and the multitude of the terrible ones like chaff that passes away; yes, it shall be in an instant, suddenly. You will be punished by the Lord of hosts with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with storm and tempest and the flame of devouring fire. The multitude of all the nations who fight against Ariel, even all who fight against her and her fortress, and distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision. It shall even be as when a hungry man dreams, and look he eats; but he awakes, and his soul is still empty; or as when a thirsty man dreams, and look he drinks; but he awakes, and indeed he is faint, and his soul still craves; so the multitude of all the nations shall be, who fight against Mount Zion.’” This battle for spiritual Mount Zion is something like a dream. You cannot see Satan or his demons. You cannot see the thoughts that Satan projects into the Church. You cannot see what he is telling the Church to do to destroy the body of Christ, but we see the result. We see what happened to the body of Christ. We know Satan has been active. It is like we go to sleep at night, and we pray to God before we go to sleep. We dream that we have received spiritual food and have received the spiritual water. We wake up in the morning, and we are still in a famine. We are still without water. We are still without the truth. That is the battle we are in. Stop looking at physical armies. They are not coming after us. Satan has come after the Church, and he has overrun the Church. Just look at the evidence. This is what’s obscuring the truth from us, though. We look at things far too physically. Continuing in Isaiah 29, verse 11: “The whole vision has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to the one who is literate, saying, ‘Read this, please.’ And he says, ‘I cannot for it is sealed.’ Then the book is delivered to one who is illiterate, saying, ‘Read this, please.’ And he says, ‘I am not literate.’ Therefore the Lord said; ‘Inasmuch as these people draw near with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but have removed their hearts far from Me, and their fear toward Me is taught by the commandment of men, therefore, behold, I will again do a marvelous work among this people, a marvelous work and a wonder; for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hidden.’” THE FOOLISH VIRGINS If we are fearful by what men are telling us and we want the place of safety so bad that we will speak foolishness and selfishness to the rest of the world and to one another, God says I am going to make you all go spiritually dumb. You will not understand what is in this book. You will not understand My words and you will not understand compassion. It is high time we get rid of the foolishness and preach God’s ways to people and take on His character. Take on the character of Jesus Christ. Continue in verse 15: “Woe to those who seek deep to hide their counsel far from the Lord, and their works are in the dark; they say, ‘Who sees us’ and, ‘Who knows us?’ Surely you have things turned around! Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay; for shall the thing made say of him who made it, ‘He did not make me?’ Or shall the thing formed say of him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding?’” God says that He is the potter, He made the Church, He put each of us in the Church as He saw fit. We are not to tell Him what we want said. He is to tell us what He wants said. He wants us to become unselfish like His Son, willing to lay down our lives for our fellow man and for our brethren in the Church. This is a completely unselfish attitude. We have looked at the subject of bearing the cross like Christ, and bearing one’s cross means to extinguish all selfishness. Today is the Feast of Trumpets. Let us pray that today the world will hear the voice of God clearly, that the Church will hear the voice of God clearly, and that the Church will stop speaking foolishness. Turn, if you would, to Matthew 25, the parable of the ten virgins, the five wise and the five foolish. Matthew 25, verse 1. “‘Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.’” You recall we read in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel that it is what the virgin daughters of Israel are speaking to the world that God finds so horrible. It is a futile message. Here we have a New Testament reference to those daughters of Zion. Starting in verse 2 read Matthew 25:2-13. That is what we say to you today. We do not know exactly when Christ is coming, but let’s stop speaking foolishness while there is time. This is what is being mentioned here. The lamp is God’s word. How we preach God’s word is whether we are dark to the world or bring light to the world; it is whether we have oil that is useful or have no oil at all. Use God’s word properly and shine the light of the truth out to the world. Be an example to them of His love, of His mercy and His compassion. Teach them what is about to befall the world and say it clearly. God says you will be one of the wise virgins. It is foolishness if you continue to speak of what we read, this futile doctrine of vain thinking that the world will be destroyed, but God will only preserve a few people. God calls this foolishness. That is what makes a virgin foolish. It is what they are saying about God’s word. GOD’S USE OF TRUMPETS This is the Feast of Trumpets, so let’s read about what God does with Trumpets. Turn, if you would, to Exodus 19. God uses trumpets in a variety of ways. A trumpet makes a nice clear sound. Read Exodus 19:10-21. Here we find the trumpet sounded louder and louder to say what? God wants to talk to you! On Mount Sinai when that was heard, the people gathered near the base of the mountain to receive from God His word. We find that a trumpet needs to issue a clear direction to the people that God wants to talk now. The Feast of Trumpets is telling us that today. God wants to talk. He wants to be heard. He is tired of foolishness being spewed out on people by people saying they have a message from God, and they do not. People say they have a message from God, and they do not. But God Himself wants to be heard through His word, the Bible. Turn, if you would, to Ezekiel 33. Starting in verse 1, the famous watchman, and read to verse 7. God says the trumpet is also a warning. This is the Feast of Trumpets. It is a warning. God says when this is fulfilled and My Son returns, you best be in shape. Hear what I say loud and clear, says God. Get rid of foolish talk. Get rid of foolish and selfish doctrines and get in accord with what I want to tell the world, because I have a wonderful thing to tell them. It is a warning that I am coming, but they will have an opportunity to repent. Your opportunity as part of the Church is now. That is what God is saying, and we have to get cleaned up. We have ten days between now and the Day of Atonement which would picture God judging, so we best use this next ten days this year to get rid of every spot and blemish that still exists in our lives. Get ready as if Christ will be judging us in ten days. We need to have this attitude within ourselves constantly and then project an attitude of hope to the rest of the world. That is the warning for God’s Church and ultimately a nice warning, clear and loud, for the world to get ready for His Son’s return. But it is the Church that bears the responsibility now. Turn, if you would now, to Leviticus 25. This is just before the blessings and cursings chapter. You will find the trumpet sounds loud and clear before the Jubilee Year picturing the Millennium. Leviticus 25 and we will start in verse 8. We will see that a trumpet sounds that there is a wonderful time, a Jubilee, a year of release and liberty that is coming! This is another announcement. We have found that the trumpet can say that God wants to talk. The trumpet can give a warning, and now we find that the trumpet gives an announcement. Read Leviticus 25:8-17. MESSAGES FOR THE CHURCH AND THE REST OF THE WORLD The Jubilee is almost upon us, brethren. The Millennium is almost here, and the Church is full of oppression. The members of the Church oppress one another terribly, and Satan has been allowed in the Church, and he is oppressing the Church. We need to get cleaned up and sound this trumpet clearly to the Church and to the world that liberty is at hand. Our Liberator, Jesus Christ, is coming. On the Day of Atonement He will get rid of Satan, the demons, and that horrible tyrannical government so that the world will be free to enjoy a wonderful Millennium. That is the good news! God’s plan has provided a way to prevent the world’s destruction and bring a marvelous Millennium to fruition very, very soon. Therefore the trumpet sounds ahead of time, and not only warns, but it calls and it announces the good news. The trumpet is in the hands of the Church! Are we going to sound God’s words clearly, or is He going to have to wrest it totally from the Church and do everything Himself, which He is entirely capable of doing? Or will He have to pass on some crowns to some new people to get the job done in time? Let’s do our part to clean up and get the bride ready so that we can be part of the loud, clear sound to the world that there is a hope that is coming very soon. Let’s listen to what the trumpet is saying and then repeat it for God. It is saying to get to high ground. It is a good government. Our King is a good King. He is telling us in the Church to get to the high ground. Come to Me, My solid temple. Build on My foundation and speak the truth. To the world we repeat, “Come to the high ground, come to the mountain of God where there will be peace and joy.” Get into a solid building, God says, to the temple of God. To the world we repeat, “Come to the temple of God to have your tears wiped away. Enjoy your freedom. You have found the sons of liberty, you have found the sons of God!” It is similar to the warnings of our physical government that we started with this in this sermon. We know there is a storm upon the Church, and we have a warning for the Church. We tell the Church to please clean up while there is still time. We warn the world to prepare itself to align itself with God’s kingdom. He will restrain Satan, eliminate his influence and open up the tree of life to all of the world. This is good news. This is the gospel of the kingdom! The Church needs to take this warning clearly and repeat what God has to say to the world. To the Church we say, “Come to your senses. Give hope to all people. Seek spiritual protection and not physical protection. Be willing to lay your life on the line for your fellow man and your brothers and sisters. Be a willing and loving sacrifice in the hands of God. He is the Potter; we are the clay.” To the world we say, “Prepare for your liberation, for coming soon will be the halting of the influence of Satan. The Millennium of God will be here. Align yourselves, your thinking and your doctrines with the truth of God for His Millennium. Seek the ways of peace. Stop learning the ways of war. Come to the high ground of God’s mountain, the sure way of His sanctuary, the truth of God and He will bless you.” Let’s turn now, if you would, to Jeremiah chapter 4. This is a little more straight talk from God. Jeremiah 4, verse 1: “‘If you will return, O Israel,’ says the Lord, ‘return to Me; and if you will put away your abominations out of My sight, then you shall not be moved. And you shall swear, “The Lord lives,” in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness; the nations shall bless themselves in Him, and in Him they shall glory.’” How can they if they have been destroyed, brethren? I ask you that question. Continue in verse 3: “For thus says the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem: ‘Break up your fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your hearts, you men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest My fury come forth like fire, and burn so that no one can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.’” God says take your hard heart and soften it, so He can rain the rain of truth and He can sow the seeds of righteousness in your heart. Then we can bear fruit for God and get rid of the evil thinking and the evil doctrines that we have espoused. Jeremiah 4, verse 5: “Declare in Judah and proclaim in Jerusalem, and say: ‘Blow the trumpet in the land; cry, “Gather together,” and say, “Assemble yourselves, and let us go into the fortified cities.” Set up the standard toward Zion. Take refuge! Do not delay! For I will bring disaster from the north, and great destruction.’” This is what has happened to the Church. Verse 7: “The lion has come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of nations is on his way. He has gone forth from his place to make your land desolate.” We know that Satan goes about as a roaring lion. “Your cities will be laid waste, without inhabitant.” This is a reference to the congregations of God around the world. Verse 8: “For this, clothe yourself with sackcloth, lament and wail.” Cry for the condition of the Church, He is saying. “For the fierce anger of the Lord has not turned back from us. ‘And it shall come to pass in that day,’ says the Lord, ‘that the heart of the king shall perish, and the heart of the princes; the priests shall be astonished, and the prophets shall wonder.’ Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Surely You have greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, “You shall have peace,” whereas the sword reaches to the heart.’” It is a sword that hurts our hearts, brethren. We are being convicted by the word of God if we listen to God here. Continue reading Jeremiah 4:11-13. This is the army of Satan plundering us. Read verses 14-22. We have been foolish for far too long and silly for far too long. BRING HOPE TO THE WORLD Let us take on the wisdom of God and preach His truth and bring hope to the world. The world needs hope now. The world is going to be called in massive numbers. Turn, please, to Revelation chapter 7. The Church, the bride, is going to be here to help the world to come out of their suffering and to be taught the righteousness of God. They are going to be taught in huge numbers, brethren. We have to get ready for this purpose. In Revelation 7:9 it says, “After these things…” This is after the 144,000. Continue reading verses 9-17. That is what we want to tell the world. Yes, you are suffering in Darfur, yes, you are suffering in Bangladesh. Yes, all around the world people have pain and suffering, but they are about to be called in huge numbers! The body of Christ and Jesus Christ Himself will help wipe away the tears from their eyes. We are not here to condemn. We are here to help. We are here to point the way. We have the greatest responsibility for we are called, and we have the truth. Now it is for us to put up or shut up. Speak the truth of God. Bring His compassion to the world like Jesus Christ did when He walked the face of the earth. Let’s bear our cross and follow Jesus Christ. Malachi 3 and 4, which we do not need to turn to, say God will be able to return to His temple suddenly. We know that the temple must get ready. Malachi 4:5-6 says that this is what averts utter destruction. This occurred because Mr. Armstrong was powerfully used by God to establish the Philadelphia era of the Church. He restored the truth of God so that we could go forth and cleanse the temple and get rid of every spot and blemish in the Church of God as the bride of Christ. In this way, helping to preserve the earth. It is our purpose, it is what we are here for! We are not here for selfish gain. We are not here to be protected while the rest of the world gets destroyed. We are here to help. We better say a message of help and hope to the world. They need it desperately. If you were to turn to Luke 9:51-56, you would read about how James and John wanted to destroy a village that they felt had insulted Jesus Christ. They wanted to call down fire on the village and destroy it. Jesus Christ rebuked them and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” That is the purpose with which we must be in accord if we want to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” There is an ignorance right now in the Church because the Church has fallen asleep to the purposes of God. But there is a time of refreshing which will come, a restoring of the breath of God, you might say, within the Church. We will come to our feet and preach the truth, those of us who will allow God to do that. That time of refreshing, we hope, will come very soon. We can read a little bit about it in Acts. SOON A TIME OF REFRESHING Turn to Acts 3:11. “Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch which is called Solomon’s, greatly amazed.” Here you have Peter and John who had just healed a man and not condemned a man. They brought healing into his life, and the people were all amazed. Read Acts 3:12-17. Peter is saying we know you killed Christ in ignorance. That is why Christ said while they were nailing Him to the cross, “Forgive them for they do not know what they do.” Verse 18: “‘But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before…’” Listen carefully to what was just said there in verse 19 and 20. Be converted, be baptized, repent, and have your sins removed so the time of refreshing may come. The body of Christ must get rid of its spots and blemishes to make the bride ready. It is our job. Once we have agreed to this work and accepted the Holy Spirit and signed a covenant with God in the blood of Jesus Christ, we have to work toward overcoming. That is what will allow the time of restitution and refreshing to come. Continuing in verse 21: “‘…whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.’” This time of refreshing for all things means we are going back to a time where the animals will have their natures restored the way God wanted them to be. The earth will be like the Garden of Eden and not a nuclear wasteland! Satan wants it to become a nuclear wasteland. The world will be a changed place. Things will be restored, and what is holding it up is the Church not overcoming, the Church not repenting. The Church is the bride of Christ. This is the temple of God to which Christ is going to return, and in order to return, there must be sufficient repenting at the end time. Everything else is in place. Our brothers and sisters down through the past going right back to the prophets have done their work! The last remaining era of the Church is the one we are living in. We have to finish our work and overcome. We are promised that he who overcomes will sit on the throne! That is what the Laodiceans are promised. Let us overcome our sins, our faults and our blemishes, and let us speak wonderful things to the world and not foolishness, nonsense, vanity or futility, but hope. The trumpet should sound clearly and accurately and say what it is God wants it to stay. Restoration is coming. Hope is coming. Turn, if you would, to Isaiah chapter 11 where it eloquently shows what it will be like in the wonderful world tomorrow. Isaiah 11, verse 1: “There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. His delight is in the fear of the Lord, and He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, nor decide by the hearing of His ears; but with righteousness He shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips he shall slay the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of His loins, and faithfulness the belt of His waist.” The truth of God will come from His lips and from this Bible. It will swallow up evil wherever it is on this earth. Evil will be destroyed from the face of the earth, and the truth will bring hope to the world and change the world. We are going to see that in just a moment. Verse 6 of Isaiah 11: “‘The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play by the cobra’s hole, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, who shall stand as a banner to the people; for the Gentiles shall seek Him, and His resting place shall be glorious.’” Now we see in the Millennium when things are restored the way God has intended, the wild animals will no longer be mean. Satan’s influence will be totally banished from the earth. Children will be able to play with snakes. This is the Millennium we look forward to. The banner that we are proclaiming here is God’s flag. God’s flag is going to have His family around it and the family is the Church, the bride of Christ. We are going to say to the entire world, to people of every nation, kindred tongue and people, “Come to the mountain of God. Come to the valley of peace. Come here and hear the words of truth.” We are not going to condemn. We are going to tell them to come. We will be standing there if we have been faithful and if we have been over comers. We will help God. We will be shields for the earth. Let’s read two more scriptures. Let us read Psalm 47. We will read the whole psalm. It is a short one. We are part of the shield for the earth as you will see here. We are part of what protects the earth and why the bride of Christ is so important and so integral to the plan of God. Read the entire Psalm 47. The shields of the earth are His people, the first fruits. He has used them properly to protect the earth as living sacrifices to do His will. That is what makes the bride ready, so Christ can come suddenly to His temple and cut time short and avert worldwide catastrophe. That is our purpose. Our purpose is not to condemn but to get ready as the bride of Christ. Our purpose is to be a government that really is for the people and came of the people. God called meek people, the foolish of the earth, to be His and to form the government by which He will preserve this physical earth. Only Christ can take away sin, but the government of God can help protect. That is why we are shields. Turn, if you would now, to Isaiah chapter 2:1. “The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, ‘Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” Brethren, how can we have this enormous multitude come and learn the ways of peace if they have all been destroyed? It will not happen that way. God is going to win big. He is going to win bigger than we ever dreamt before. We can be a part of it and a part of the government that sounds a loud and clear trumpet to the Church and to the world that the liberation is nearly here. Christ is returning soon! Come to the high ground! Get to the Rock that is Jesus Christ. Get into that secure building, His temple, for He is about to establish a government that will bring true liberty to all mankind. That is what the Feast of Trumpets, this very day, portrays for the world.