[Frank Dunkle] I had a friend in graduate school, I studied history at Texas A&M, and I had a… actually there were a number of us in the church during the time I was there and I had a good friend who was a year ahead of me. She was a church member, very intelligent… one of… well never mind. She was very smart she studied religious history, which is what a lot of people expected I would do, being a church member instead of military as I did. But when she finished her dissertation she included a quote in her dedication which I would like to read. It's from the book of Ecclesiastes 12. It's actually the close of the book of Ecclesiastes, and she thought it was fairly appropriate to the close of her grad study which in the field of history often, it amounts to about anywhere from 8-12 years of college. Ecclesiastes 12:12, Solomon wrote: "And further, my son, be admonished by these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is wearisome to the flesh."

“Let's hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man's all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil." I’ve wondered how many times in the past people might have used this quote out of context to say, "Well, studies are wearisome to the flesh so don't bother. We don't need to study we just need to fear God and keep His commandments to be whole. And I think there's something to the last part of that. The bottom line is that fearing God and obeying Him is the most important thing. Solomon said that is mans all, and of course fearing God including keeping His commandments will make us become like Him, that's our goal and purpose. But Solomon wasn't against study and education, matter of fact if you'll join me back a few pages in the book of Proverbs 4. I noticed there's several places just in that one chapter where Solomon shows what he really thought about that. Proverbs 4:5 he says "Get wisdom! Get understanding! Do not forget, nor turn away from the words of my mouth.”

Dropping down to verse 7, he said, "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom. And in all you're getting, get understanding." And verse 13, he said, "Take firm hold of instruction, don't let it go; keep her, for she is your life." We can pretty easily discern that Solomon was in favor of learning, I believe he was in favor of study. He also understood that it needs to be in balance, always keeping in mind that what the conclusion in the goal is. These principles, these truths hold… as true for us today as they did for people in ancient times. This weekend as Mr. Myers mentioned, is a special event; tomorrow the students of Ambassador Bible College, will have concluded almost a year of pretty intense study, and as I reach this part of my introduction it reminds me I meant to say welcome to all of you who are here visiting, we're very pleased to have family and friends come here and join in the special moment.

For those of you that have been missing your loved ones, we've been very happy to have them here so we're sad to let them go back and be with you, but I understand the need for that. But having completed months and months of pretty intense study, believe me, they know how wearisome it is, and if you would come in here any Monday morning actually usually it's Tuesday or Wednesday morning when it really shows at about 8:30 you see their faces. The important thing was they still showed up and they came and they did study. But very soon the students who are graduating are going to experience the reality of something I told them about nine months ago. I told them, "Yeah, it's kind of cool, it's a big deal to be an Ambassador College student, but being a graduate? Eh, not so much a big deal. Now, I'm saying that largely in jest, it is a big deal to graduate, but I learned back in my days that there were a few Ambassador students and quite a few graduates.

Matter of fact it seems sometimes here in Cincinnati that we have them piling up like empty soda pop cans at a picnic. I was hoping I'd get a chuckle out of that one, but you know when I was an Ambassador College student I remember when I would visit some other congregations, people were intrigued that I was regularly on campus. I was part of doing the work. Once I graduated I was some other guy looking for work. Now, I'm having a little bit of jest and making fun, but one of the points I want to make is that; soon our graduates are going to have something in common with all the rest of us. Most of us have matriculated through whatever schooling we've had, be it a trade school, university, high school, and not to mention that prestigious and well-renowned institution of higher learning, often known as the School of Hard Knocks. And we're now largely responsible for our own continuing education. And it's important to realize that we do need to continue that education especially in the field of Christianity and study of God's word it's not just for young people, not just for those who are newly converted or recently baptized, it's for all of us.

So I will mention when I wrote this message thinking particularly for our  graduates, but I don't mean to leave anyone of us out and particularly not me. I hope you will understand what Peter wrote and I'll just quote it here most of us know it 2 Peter 3:18, where he said, "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" We need to take that seriously throughout our lives, not only to grow in grace but in knowledge. Remember what Solomon said, "Seek wisdom! Get understanding!” have you already got it? Solomon might have responded by saying, "Well, get some more!” I'll also quote 2 Timothy 2:15 I prefer the Old King James version the new King James says "Be diligent", but the Old King James said, "Study to show yourself approved, a workman not ashamed, rightly dividing the word of God." You don't have to be an Ambassador College graduate to work at rightly dividing the word of God, and that doesn't mean splitting it up and taking parts out of context, but it means understanding it, digging in deep and being able to put scriptures together.

I'd like to think not only of our graduates who will walk across the stage here tomorrow but all of us as being enrolled in The Graduate School of Christianity, and I like to use the graduate school model because I think it can demonstrate some of how we as individuals can and should continue studying our Bibles and growing all of our lives. And when I discuss that I don't mean to come across as vain, I don't mean to say look at me I went to grad school, go to my office and look at my diploma on the wall. Because the most important thing I learned in grad school and one of the first lessons I learned was, how much I still don't know.

Tons and tons, I went in thinking I graduated college, “Boy, I know a lot!” I started working with professors and the other students and boy I don't know a lot. I started to become aware of how much I didn't know. One of the things though important to learn, I realized that you don't really have to be more intelligent to get a master's degree or to get a Ph.D. then an undergraduate, you just have to stick with it. You have to keep going, keep studying, never give up, finish the course you started. That should sound familiar to all of us, it's something like Jesus said about being in His Kingdom remember Matthew 24:13 "If he that shall endure to the end will be saved."

I will turn to John 8 because this is another one I would like to read, John 8:31. You'll bear with me, I've learned that when you follow the choir it's good to cite some scriptures because you won't have that long before the clock strike midnight. Well, not literally, I'm not going to speak that long. John 8:31 "Jesus said to those Jews who believed in Him, ‘If you abide in My word,’” that's continue in My word, stay in this word, then “you are My disciples indeed." And we've been looking at discipleship within the Church, it's something very important, a disciple is a student, someone who wants to learn, but I would say more than that we want to not only learn from Jesus Christ, we want to learn to be like Him.

We want to follow our Master, follow His footsteps and strive to become as He was and as He is. And we're all called to be disciples of Jesus Christ. And so just like graduate students plodding along on their doctoral work, visiting the library and working on thesis and reading, and reading, and reading. We need to continue in the word of God. Keep studying, keep learning, keep increasing. And like I said when I was there studying at Texas A&M one of the most of the most enduring lessons I found was to discover how much I had yet to learn.

Another important thing I learned was that I had to take a very active part in my learning. I studied in the liberal arts with history so I know some of the hard sciences are a bit different, but in humanities disciplines like history or literature and I believe theology, the classes were called seminars and they included very little and often zero of professors getting up and standing up in front of the class and giving lectures. Rather, a typical reading seminar, a group of a dozen or so students would get together with a professor about two or three hours each week, largely to discuss what they'd been studying and learning during that week. For example, a seminar in late 19th century American history which typically have the first week focusing on the effects of federal reconstruction governments in the south, and each student would be assigned a different book to read on the subject, then the next week they get together and share what they learned: the author's thesis and how he supported his argument.

The next week might switch to economic developments of the 1880s and 1890s, one student would read a book on the rise of big business, another one might read a biography of Andrew Carnegie, while a third reads the effects of changing weather patterns on agriculture in the plain states. And if your eyes are glazing over that's because this is true stuff I got out my notes to see what we studied those weeks. All of us would share our thesis and our conclusions and often we'd have to type up a one-page summary to share with each other so that we could try to gain from the reading of everyone. And we came to understand that different scholars come to different conclusions, have different thesis, and they back them up sometimes pretty well. One author would say that the populist movement of the 1890s was mostly caused by conjunctions of changing weather patterns and change variable market forces. “No!” another writer would say, “The populist were motivated by the manipulation of America's two-party system by machine politicians and farmer's latent need for political representation.” “No,” a third one would say, “It was all about the mass immigration from eastern and southern Europe in changing U.S. tariff laws.”

That might all sound pretty boring to you, but I'm describing it to show that there's some value in studying some subjects from a number of different angles and comparing those viewpoints. You think “That's history, not the Bible. History is open to interpretation, the Bible surely is not.” I'll come back to that thought because, if it sounds like I'm going that way I do want to say that I believe and I know firmly that the Bible is absolute truth, it is God's inspired word. So even though we might have different views at times it is God's truth, we teach that here at Ambassador Bible College.

There some things that there's no debate about, you know, when is the Sabbath? Seventh day of the week. It is holy because God made it that way, it is “to be a delight,” that's what God specifically said. And if there are some things that we can study perhaps about the Sabbath and discuss and share, like what do you do to make the Sabbath a delight? What do you not do to make sure you don't profane the Sabbath? And when I say that some topics might be subject to discussion and interpretations, that does not mean that any of us should presume that we can set our own rules rather than obeying God's rules.

It doesn't mean even that every person's opinion is quite as valuable as everyone else's because experience and study does make a difference. I would ask can we look to the way that graduate seminars are conducted as a model for how we can study and learn from the Bible? I think we can in some ways, one way that we regularly have profitable discussions in our congregations is by interactive Bible studies, I found those to be really effective especially with small group in home Bible studies. When I was pastoring in the Portsmouth congregation, I love that I followed the system that the previous pastor had set up, where we met in three different homes in a row, in one week out of the month. And what happened was even though I came prepared, I learned a lot from the brethren as we discussed these topics, I'd write down notes so that by the time we got to the third day in a row I had a lot more stuff to share with them. I know there are some congregations where they have round table discussions, and I've heard of some called messenger chats.

But a very important feature of all of these is to not only have knowledgeable but humble participants. It's good to also have an experienced elder to guide the discussion. Just like in grad school, we would have a senior professor to keep us cocky overconfident grad students in line and let us know when we were being silly about things. Ephesians 4:11 reminds us God appoints pastors and teachers in the Church of course other offices are mentioned there too, but there is a role for that. I've learned a lot from others in the in the congregation when I've been part of those discussions, but also admit that I love listening to a well-reasoned and well-researched lecture. My specialty was in late, you think I'd know how to say it by now… late 18-century American history and early, and so I focused a lot on the Revolutionary War supposedly I'm an expert, but I love listening to a good lecture about it.

Similarly, I love listening to sermons by other pastors and most ministers I know like that. We may be graduate students of Christianity, but we'll never graduate from being able to benefit from Sabbath services in the traditional manner. So while I'm mentioning these interactive mode and sharing our learning, please don't think that I'm saying, “Well, throw away normal Sabbath services! We're not doing that.” No, of course, we're doing that and we can learn a great deal from that. Solomon gave us some wise guidance if we can go back to the book of Ecclesiastes 5. Ecclesiastes 5, I'll begin in verse 1 he said… he wrote, "Walk prudently when you go into the house of God,” and I can remind us that we’re the spiritual house of God, His spiritual temple, “draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they don't know that they do evil.”

You can make a connection here, I'm not going to turn, but Hebrews 13:15 reminds us that we “offer the sacrifice of praise" calling it "the fruit of our lips,” but I'll continue in Ecclesiastes 5:2 where he says, "Do not be rash with your mouth, let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. For God's in heaven, and you're on earth; therefore let your words be few." Even as a teacher I sometimes remind myself of that, “God's in heaven, Frank, and you're not, so watch what you say.” And you might say, "Well, hold on, you were just talking about us being responsible for our own learning and studying God's word, but now it sounds like you're telling us keep quiet — only ministers should lead discussions." I don't mean quite that, I am looking for a balance, we want to have responsibility in the act of learners, but also recognize and respect certain positions.

Malachi 3:16-17 gives us a quote that many of us came to dearly loved back in the mid-90s when the church was in turmoil and we weren't sure where our leaders were taking us or thought they were taking us. And we learned that those words between us were very valuable. Malachi 3:16 says "Those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord listened and heard them; so a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and meditate on His name.” It says, “‘They'll be Mine,’ says the Lord of hosts, ’On the day that I make them My jewels. And I'll spare them as a man spares his own son who serves them.’" I don't think this is God talking about when people get together and talk about things like the weather or a recent ball game, God likes for us to talk about spiritual matters, and learn and grow from each other for our iron to sharpen iron. But still, in doing that, it's always a good idea to be more eager to listen than to speak.

There's another example that I'll turn to wrap up this-this part of the subject in Acts 18. Acts 18:24, we see an example of a man who was fairly well-learned in beginning to teach others, but who still could be taught himself, and happily was willing to learn. Acts 18:24, "A certain Jew named Apollos, born in Alexandria, an eloquent man, mighty in Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord, thought he knew only the baptism of John. So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately."

It's interesting because it already said he'd been speaking the word accurately, but they taught him more accurately. “And when he desired…” actually I'll leave there, it does mention that he went on, well let me read, "He desired to cross… exhorting the brethren to receive him; when he arrived, he greatly helped those who believed through grace; for he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ." It's worth considering, Priscilla and Aquila, aside from teaching him, or in the process of teaching him, they didn't berate him publicly or say that guy that doesn't know what he's talking about.

They took him privately and helped him to understand more fully. That's something we can do for each other, but always being more willing to hear than to speak. Thinking about all this emphasis on our continued Bible study, it occurred to me that it might be appropriate to mention some of the methods and techniques that are most appropriate for Bible study. Now, one method could be you come here for nine months and sit in this room and people are going to talk at you all day and that'll help you in your Bible study. But as I said, that can be wearisome to the flesh and eventually, you pick up and go somewhere else, you have to, we'll kick you out. No, actually Monday morning we've got a group of 24 or 25 more students coming in just for one week and we will be happy to work with them. But let's mention some of the principal lessons or principles… principal principles… I didn't think that one through very well, some guidelines for our Bible study and I'll say first and most important is to pray to God and ask Him to guide your understanding, to guide my understanding through the power of His Holy Spirit.

David did this, it's recorded in Psalm 119, in Psalm 119 I'll read verses 33 and 34. Psalm 119:33, David writes this of his words speaking to God, he says, "Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end. Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law; indeed, I'll observe it with my whole heart." Without a miracle from God, we cannot and will not understand His word, I believe in miracles and I believe it's a miracle that we are gathered in this room and that we can read this book and do understand it, it's a gift through God's Holy Spirit. It's an amazing thing that we should never take lightly.

I'd like to also turn to Matthew 13 to remind us of this. Matthew 13:10. Jesus Christ, of course, was teaching and His disciples whom He handpicked and chose, had a special time to talk to Him when the crowds weren't there, and we see this happen Matthew 13:10 "The disciples came to Him and said, ‘Why do you speak to them in parables?’ He answered, said, ‘It's been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to them…’” meaning the general populace who weren't His disciples, “…to them it's not been given."

I'll skip to verse 14, as He quotes a prophecy of Isaiah, said "And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: ‘Hearing you'll hear and not understand. Seeing you'll see and not perceive; for the hearts of these people has grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.’” As I said, God hasn't chosen to reveal the understanding of His word to everyone at this time.

Our understanding of His plan is that He will give everyone that opportunity and I believe that we do have a part to play in that when that time comes. But the point is, it's a blessing we should not take for granted and we should never neglect to ask Him to increase our understanding and give us His divine guidance as we go through His word. Of course, a second technique that's fairly common is we need to study and understand the context of a verse or a passage. There are many incorrect doctrines in various churches based on one singular verse or sometimes even a word or a phrase from within a verse because it's taken out of its proper context.

A common example that we use in explaining this principle is found in Luke 17. Luke 17:21 says, I'm breaking into a thought, it says, "nor will they say, ‘See here!’ ‘See there!’ Indeed, the kingdom of God is within you." Reading this, some preachers say, “The kingdom of God is within you. It's a feeling it's a sentiment set up within the hearts of men.” But if they would back up to verse 20, they'd see a little more context to this because there's it says, “When He” that is Jesus Christ “was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, ‘The kingdom of God doesn't come with observation…’” He’s was telling them it's not going to come by looking for it and then His following statement wouldn't mean the kingdom of God was within them, the Pharisees, a group that Christ was often calling “a brood of vipers and whitewashed tombs,” no.

In this case it would be better to translate that passage to saying the kingdom of God was amongst them, because they were standing in a group around Jesus Christ who was the King of that Kingdom, the King of Kings right there in their midst, and of course that directly leads to one of our third or actually I've already led into a third Bible study technique and that is to use references. Sometimes Bible dictionaries, concordances, commentaries, to help us gain better understanding or fuller understanding sometimes of the meaning of the words that were translated into our English.

And there are times when a different translation can clear up confusion, make a passage more understandable and there are many English translations available today, I have on my shelf in my office a gift, a member gave me a book of a 26 translations, and of course I thought, “Boy this should be a lot bigger book,” but it only shows the ones where the wording is different. But it's amazing to look and see okay, there's different ways to translate some of these things, of course, you want to think about well, is it a word for word translation or a thought for thought which is often called a paraphrase, you might even get down to which set of manuscripts does it come from; Byzantine, Alexandrian or other and I don't want to spend too much time talking about translations, but it's worth us being aware of those. I'm still a big fan of the Old King James, not only is it accurate, but I love the beautiful poetry.

And of course, the commentary and references of various kinds can be useful when I'm working on notes for class, I often have four or five of them open on my desk and spread out along with old wrinkly, that's what I call my college Bible because, it's looking like a mess, I thought about bringing it up here and said, ‘No, you don't need props.” But that was the Bible I bought during orientation week of my freshman year and I also have another book I bought that week, a one-volume commentary by Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown and it's useful I've used it.

But we want to remember that the scholars who wrote those, as far as we know did not have God's Spirit opening their minds to full understanding. So we want to use the understanding that we have first. And of course comparing a number of different scholars can help us get to the truth. And that friend of mine I mentioned in my introduction who did her dissertation on religious studies, she was studying the American Puritans. And I remember her and I discussing how amazing it was that they could have so much knowledge, most of them, or at least many of them men could read Hebrew and read Greek, and they became upon great truths, they realized that Christmas and Easter had pagan origin and we're things Christians shouldn't keep, and yet they fell short of realizing that they should be keeping God's Holy Days. They fell short of realizing the seventh day was the Sabbath. And it just reminds me that knowledge and intellect are not alone enough, it takes God's Spirit to open our understanding.

For those of you that are from Cincinnati, visitors might not know that we normally have 90-minute services, but the choir has come to learn this especially when I'm speaking we tend to have an hour 45-minutes services. So I'm going to wrap up here, not go too much longer. Another technique I wanted to mention of course is the one that we often describe as letting the Bible interpret the Bible, it's a classic memory scripture, but it's worth reading Isaiah 28:9-10. Okay, I said Isaiah 28 and turned to Isaiah 8. Isaiah 28:9 says, "Whom will he teach knowledge? To whom will he make understand the message? Those just weaning for the milk? Or just drawn from the breasts? For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line. Here a little, there a little."

I remember Herbert W. Armstrong used to use an analogy of saying the Bible is a lot like a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of different pieces and you need to put the pieces together in the correct way to see the big picture. I still feel that way, there's truth in that we let the Bible interpret the Bible and it'll do that. I'm reminded, I'll just cite this scripture in Zechariah 4:12-14, Zechariah had a really interesting night, he saw, we believe about eight visions in one night, and a lot of them are pretty unusual, I've heard them described as being like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, I didn't make that one up.

But at one point he saw this golden candlestick and these two olive branches with oil coming out and he says, "What are these?" "Don't you know?" "No I don't", "Well these are the two anointed ones." And he still didn't know, but if you put that next to Revelation a book written hundreds and hundreds of years later Revelation 11:3-6 mentions two witnesses, who will have power to prophecy, and it says, ”Oh, these are the two olive trees and the lamps.” If you put two pieces together to let the Bible interpret the Bible, you say “Okay then these two witnesses represented by those two olive trees there are prophets anointed by God who might anoint others.” In some ways, it's a shame because it still doesn't tell us who those two people are, although I've watched some Beyond Today episodes and I have reason to believe it's two men that work upstairs. They might deny that. But this is only one example of that principle of letting scripture interpret scripture.

Another thing to remember is make sure you've looked at all the scriptures that deal with a particular subject. When I took doctrines class when I was a student I think it had more hours devoted to it because I had a professor who said, "Okay, we're going to look at this doctrine." And we turned to every scripture in the Bible that said anything about that doctrine. It wasn't necessarily eloquent or artistic, but boy it was thorough. Like I said I don't do that way in class, but if you want to do a personal Bible study, what I sometimes call a concordance study or a word study can be pretty valuable, get it out and say, “I want to study patience.” “Okay what does the Bible say about patience?” And it'll take you to every scripture out there and you can go through them they can be enlightening. It's funny, I missed it in my notes here it's just as well I was going to say I know all these books I'm talking about, now are available on your laptops you can have electronic versions of them. I'm not the guy to talk about e-Sword or the many others, and I hear they're really good, I'm just old-fashioned and like paper books, but you can get the same learning and a lot of value in those so whatever type of reference it is you choose, they're good to use.

Last principle I want to mention by my counting I'm up to five and I'll mention I don't have seven. I think the first time I gave a sermon where I had six points I stopped and I wanted to call the regional pastor and say “Am I allowed to do this? Am I going to lose my job if I only have 6 points?” Apparently, it's okay. But one important point in studying the Bible is to… I like to use the phrase "get comfortable with the concept of saying ‘I don't know’", there are some things we want to know, but we might not. And when I became a history teacher, I had to get comfortable with that, students would come to me with questions sometimes and I go "Huh, never thought of that one, I don't know", and I could try to fake it, but they'll catch you. And I'd say, at this Ambassador Bible college class we've been bragging on how smart they all are and I learned “don't try to fake it, Frank, they'll catch you and it'll be worse than if you did.”

There are some things in the Bible, there are some things about God's plan and about life that we just are not sure. For example, who are the two witnesses? Probably not Aaron Booth and Nick Bizic, although wouldn't it be great irony if it turned out to be. You know, over the years scholars said, “Maybe it'll be Moses and Elijah resurrected.” I've read some commentary say, “It'll be John the Baptist and Peter.” When I was young, a lot of people said, “It will be Herbert and Garner Ted Armstrong.” I'm pretty sure it's not going to be them, I can speculate maybe it'll be Steve Myers and Aaron Dean, probably not, and I'm sure they're not volunteering for the job.

You know other questions, we can study, but perhaps not have the answer to. The big one: when is Christ going to come? Let's get out our chart let's figure it out we're not going to know, He specifically said we wouldn't know. Where will be the place of safety? That's another one, I say if God has a sense of humor it'll be Petra. I know I shouldn't say that I know God does have a sense of humor I'm not sure if His sense of irony goes that far, but the point is, I don't know the answer to those questions, and neither do you, at least not beyond any disputes. We might have guesses that are correct, but we're going to have to wait till the time comes.

I'd like you to turn with me to the book of Revelation 10 because this is kind of a unique passage in the Bible that I think is there partly to help us get comfortable with not knowing some things. And this is in the midst of all these fabulous visions that John was seeing, and in Revelation 10:3, says… I'm breaking in the middle of a thought, but there was an angel and it says, "He cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roars. And when he cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices. And when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write…” He pulled out his pen, “I'm going to write down what they said.” And “a voice from heaven said ‘Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, do not write them.’"

Huh, why not write what they said? What did they say? Was it the names of the two witnesses? Was it the location of a place of safety? Who knows? What I wonder or question is why did God have John write down that there was something said that he wasn't allowed to write down? Unless it was to make the point that there are some parts of God's plan that He has planned and it's set, but we're not going to know. And again, I'm somewhat speculating here so don't take it as this is doctrine of the Church, but this is one thing I think we can interpret from this. I think God wants to make it clear to us that there are some things that He knows, but that we don't know. And He wants us to know that we don't know if you follow that. And that makes it a matter of faith for us to trust Him. We have to trust that God reveals to us the things that we do need to know.

And I think that it's worth emphasizing how much we do know, when I say these things, "Oh, we got to admit there's things we don't know." I don't want people to interpret that as saying, "Oh, the guy running ABC says we don't know anything about the Bible." No, we know lots about it, God has revealed tremendous truth and committed them to us. I spoke to the students recently about commitment along with conviction and courage. He committed to us the precious truths of the Bible and He wants us to commit them to others. Commit them to others who are capable of passing them on again, we're not ignorant of God's plan we know a lot, we should continue to study. And if there's something we don't know, it's not wrong to keep studying maybe it just wasn't time to understand yet, we can get to know. As I said, my point is that we should be continually studying, learning every day, reading God's word, taking it in as part of us. It's an ongoing way of life for a Christian. We're training to be kings and priests in God's Kingdom, kings and priests, let's look at a little bit of what the Bible says kings and priests do, for instance in book of Proverbs 25, I only have a couple more scriptures here.

Proverbs 25:2 says, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings to search out a matter.” I've seen that it could have be translated to "the glory of Kings to research a matter." Do some research, we're looking to be kings in God's Kingdom with Him as the King of Kings. We could also note Malachi 2:7, this is a brief passage so if I get there ahead of you I'll just read it. They way I'm doing today, getting there ahead of you I wouldn't put money on. Malachi 2:7 says, "The lips of a priest should keep knowledge, people should seek the law from his mouth; for he's the messenger of the Lord of hosts." If we're to be priests in the Kingdom of God I'm talking about in the Millennium when Christ rules and we're to be kings and priests with Him, then people should be seeking the word of God from us. So we need to be studying and learning it now so that we can teach them.

Think just one more time about the comparison I'm making with graduate school, I know in the United States educational system to become a teacher of children, you have to go to a college and obtain a college degree. But if you want to teach adults in college, then it's required to obtain a graduate degree to teach those who would be teachers. If we as Christians have a role of being teachers in our future, perhaps teaching people in the Millennium because remember those people that come up in the Millennium will be like us looking forward to the massive resurrection that comes at what we call the second resurrection. I didn't get through my sermon without doing one “bluh”, the students will appreciate that. Billions and billions of people come to life and need to be taught God's way. Rather than just think we're going to do all that, it would be appropriate for us to think we're going to train a whole core of teachers to take part in doing that.

And if we want to prepare to teach the teachers, then we're sort of in the role of needing to go to grad school, get that advanced degree in God's words so that you can be ready to teach them. We'll be teaching and training teachers and we've got this great obligation. So in some ways, I feel like I should make an apology to our students who'll be graduating tomorrow, because you're going to get your diploma but, the study goes on. You're not done, I'm sorry. You're going to be studying this book for the rest of your lives, that's okay I think you'll enjoy it. That's one thing I'll say in the last two and three years I've been teaching here, I've learned more than I realized that I had yet to learn. I'll bet I've got that much more to learn in the next year and we're all continuing scholars of God's work and of God's way of life. So I want to urge us, let's all be grad students of Christianity.