David Mills
The Wonderful Kingdom of God
John Elliott serves in the role of President of the United Church of God, an International Association.
playlist
United Church of God President John Elliot emphasizes that the Feast of Tabernacles should expand our vision of the coming Kingdom of God—not merely as an improved version of today’s world, but as an entirely new age under Jesus Christ, filled with wonders humanity has never experienced. Christ’s return will bring dramatic changes. The main focus is: we may not yet comprehend everything God has prepared, but we should determine to be faithful, ready, and there to participate in the wonderful Kingdom He has prepared for us.
This Feast of Tabernacles points us forward to a marvelous future of Christ's reign on earth. He will reign with His bride, serving for a thousand years. Now you may have wondered, what will the wonderful world tomorrow ahead actually be like? You know, that time will not just be some improvement on today's world, the human experience that's been known living under Satan's rule. God has been planning a new future, something beyond our present experience. It will be filled with a structure that we can only begin to imagine. The Bible gives us a glimpse of that time, when the earth environments will be remade into lush landscapes. Today's dangerous animals will be redesigned. Abundance will replace scarcity. The weather and soils will be ideal for farming. The populations will know God and be living righteous lives. Can you imagine such a world? Maybe to some extent, but do any of us have any knowledge or experience that allows us to accurately imagine a world that we've never seen? Humanity's entire life experience has been that of a dark and different era. Societies and all their systems were built on age-old Roman, Greek, and Babylonian foundations, and the building blocks of civilization as we know it were laid by an imposter god who consistently has brought harm to this earth and all of its inhabitants. Consequently, earth's environments that we know scarcely resemble those of the future. Our imagination of what future godly societies will be like gets skewed by our own saturation in this world of godlessness, blinded civilization. Our view of environmental and societal structure has come from experiencing Satan's evil age. That's where I live. That's where you've lived. And consequently, we will be wondering what the world tomorrow will really be like until we actually experience it. And what a wonderful experience that will be. To give you and me just an inkling of the wonders that are ahead, God commands us to set aside 10% of our increase to experience something completely different than anything we normally do in our lives.
You see, people in Israel previously never saved 10% of their best, never traveled with all their family, their servants, their widows, orphans, their priests to Jerusalem. They never had eight days of feasting and learning with their other
John Elliott serves in the role of President of the United Church of God, an International Association.
