The Coming of the Father

Thank you, Jason, for that special music. I think the music that we've had all through the feast has been very good. I appreciate those of you that have participated in one way or the other, putting together a choir, whether the adult choir, the kids' choir yesterday. When you do something like a choir director for the Feast of Tabernacles, you accept a responsibility that can be somewhat challenging with everybody coming in from all different locations and you have to put it together very quickly and volunteer. Those that do that, whether singing or directing it, really appreciate that very much and all the other solos that we've had. It's been a very good feast in that way. Mr. Johnson was talking about his clothes shrinking. I don't know that mine have shrunk, but they've begun to stink. Just keep your distance. Walked in the room last night and I figured out, well, you've been sweating all week and this and that, so stay out of my room. I thought I would take a minute here. Before I get into my message this morning, I wanted to mention something, take a few minutes to explain one of the other features of the United Church of God and what we have at our home office location. That is the Ambassador Bible Center. One of my other hats that I wear at the office is to be a faculty member at the Ambassador Bible Center. I teach fundamentals of belief and I teach the book of Acts and I teach a module in World News and Prophecy.

It's a pleasure to be a part of that. This year we have our fifteenth class in session.

Ambassador Bible Center runs from late August until late May. It's about a nine month period of time. We have forty-three students this year. This is probably the largest class I think we've had, or maybe a tie for the largest one about three or four years ago. So far they seem to be doing well. We have young people, mostly young adults who are there. This year we have one couple who have retired and come in. Usually every year we have one or two individuals who have retired and want to spend a part of that time in a setting like that. They have the means to do so. So they'll move in for temporary lodging and come to ABC as we call it. I just thought I'd mention it to you because every year we try to run usually a little seminar, availability, informational meeting at each of the fee sites. I didn't get any instructions to do that here in Jamaica this year. It's just as well. Years past where I've done that, nobody shows up at those meetings or maybe one or two.

I thought I'd just talk to all of you about it here. As I said, in its fifteenth year, the curriculum involves basically going through the Bible, a study of all the books of the Bible. Classes run from generally eight thirty in the morning to about four twenty in the afternoon. So it's rather rigorous and it can be fatiguing as the year grinds along.

I don't know that I could sit that long every day for nine months myself. I admire, take my hat off to all those who have done it and gone through it. I think their lives have been the better for it, but it is a very useful part of education, the educational arm of the United Church of God. If you are not able to take that time off and come, the cost is about two thousand dollars for tuition. For that, you get the classes plus two meals a day.

Actually, it's kind of a bargain on that end. You are responsible for your housing. There's plenty of housing available through some of the members who have rental homes and apartments and such that make it available.

But for two thousand dollars, if you come as a couple, I think the second couple comes for little or nothing beyond that. It can be money well spent if you find yourself at a point in life where you have the time to do so and the means to do it. It is something to consider, whether you're just out of high school, going into college, or at a point in college to take a break and come for nine months of study like that, or again, you are retired and have the means to do so.

It always makes a good mix for each class to have people of all different backgrounds and age groups to get to know one another in that type of setting. If you're not able to come to ABC, there are three other means by which you can take part in the material and the information.

All the classes are online and you can set at your leisure and your time to go through any of the classes. They are all available through the ucg.org website, the ABC pull-down menu at the top. It's easily found. There's a second method. Every year after we complete each session, we run a one-week sampler at the office and usually we have about 50 or 60 people come in and for one week, again about 8.30 to 4.30 in the afternoon, we have a sample of the classes taught by some of the instructors myself, Randy Stiver, Gary Antion, Aaron Dean, Frank McCready, and those are more resident than there.

That runs for a week, Monday through Friday. We have a regular clientele that has made this an annual affair for them, but we also continue to add new people every year. If you're within driving distance or flying distance, you want to do that. That's one way to do it as well.

The other way that is possible, we do conduct weekend seminars in various local congregations. We generally do two to three in a year and those are done during the summer break between June and August. This past year, we went down to Tampa and we also went out to Tulsa, Oklahoma and conducted a weekend seminar, which comprises a sample of classes on Sabbath and on Sunday. It can be a fatiguing and rather long weekend, but also a rewarding weekend.

You would need to make a request to have your pastor or elder locally to request that through either Mr. Antion or Mr. Stiver at the office. If you were interested in something of that nature being done in your area, it could easily be arranged, but it would need to be done quite early. Those are the ways by which it can be done beyond being in residence at the home office each year. It is proving its worth and its value to the Church in many ways. Again, this is our fifteenth year in doing so. It's always a pleasure to be able to see the excitement and enthusiasm of people coming in wanting to learn about the Bible, God's truth, and exploring that in a setting that we have.

We have a pretty good library even there. Libraries are evolving, going digital, but we do have a collection of theological works that are also available to the students as well as the employees at the office and the members in the local congregation of books that—concordances, dictionaries, Bible study aids, and other books that we've gathered through the years, some from the former Ambassador College Library and other personal libraries of ministers that are now deceased—have put together a reasonably good collection for the facility that we have to also help people in their studies.

Anyway, we have a lot to offer there. There's an advantage to being in residence at a place like that, and there's a lot to have online as well. And time, perhaps, over the coming years, we may increase our online presence. What we're doing there, we are doing some work with the ministers in training ministers through a twice-a-week online training forum that we have set up.

We have about 25 or 27 ministers that are regularly going through classes, through an online forum twice a week with instructors and everybody's online at the same time in kind of a big chat room. And it is a certificate of the ministry program that we are working men through to train ministers.

So perhaps in the future that might be expanded in some way to make what is available at ABC available for more in the Church. But if you're interested, you can ask me any questions or always certainly go on the website or call us at the office and think about that for next year, the year after. It's a good thing to have in one's mind and to be thinking about.

Twenty-two years ago this month, I took my family back to my home in Missouri to visit with my family, my mother and father. My sons were teenagers at the time, young teenagers still in high school. My father had been sick with cancer for about two years at that point, and I knew that I think this was over the Labor Day weekend that year. I went back knowing that I probably would not have a chance to see him again.

I remember having a visit and I remember the last scene in my father's house with him being alive. We were gathered with at least one of my sons, maybe both of them were there at the time, but we kind of stood here on his bed, kind of like I was reading to you with Jacob the other day and the first day, and Jacob gathering his sons around him. We stood around my father's bed, and I remember saying goodbye to him. I remember some of the comments that he made about my sons and about me, and I gave him a hug and a kiss and went home.

About two weeks later, while in Dayton, Ohio, at the Feast of Tabernacles, I got a phone call about four o'clock one morning my father had died. It was actually not the Feast of Tabernacles because the Feast had ended at sundown the night before, and at four o'clock on the eighth day, this day, my father died. So every year when this day comes around for me, it is an anniversary of my father's death.

Regardless of the calendar date, I always say my father died on the eighth day. What you need to understand is that as far as the significance has been brought out already today, and as we all have, my father was not in the church. He was not a religious man. My mother was the one who was called and came into the church in the early 1960s. My father supported us, but he never became a member, and he was not interested in religion. When he died, I remember his youngest brother really was worried about his eternal soul and even had his Baptist preacher come around to my father's bedside and talk him into being saved.

He failed. My dad wasn't interested in that brand of religion for sure. When I gave the eulogy over the father's body, I was able to explain that to his brothers and sisters standing there, the graveside elements of the truth which this day represent. This day has a special meaning for all of us, and on this day I think about my father and I think about other elements and members of my family that have gone before.

I'd like for you to turn over, if you will, to Revelation 20. We're going to read this verse again and reflect on it. Revelation 20. If I turn slowly to some of these Scriptures today, bear with me. I'm not using my Bible. I had to borrow a Bible from the back of the hall from one of you this morning because I left mine at the room. I for sure was not going to walk back in here again and look like Johnny Lambert.

I went borrowing a Bible, so thanks to Matt Devaney for letting me use his Bible here this morning. If it takes me a little bit longer to get to some of these places, it's just because I'm not familiar with it. Revelation 20 is where we begin. We have come to that point in the occasion of the days here, in the Holy Days, where on this day we are ready to consider what these verses mean in regard to the eighth day of the Feast of Tabern, of the eighth day festival that God gives to us.

Let's begin reading in verse 11. Then I saw a great white throne, and him who was seated on it, and from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the Book of Life, and the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they had done. The dead, small and great, the white throne, the day of judgment for those who have died, and the earth and the sea giving up its dead, at this point in time.

The dead, great and small, the mighty, the kings, the czars, the emperors, the empresses, the rich, the poor, the downtrodden, those who never walked the high roads of life, all coming up and standing before the throne. And two things we learned from this. The books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books. We have rightly understood that those books that are opened, the plural, are the books of this word here, the books of the Bible, open to their understanding for the first time.

And they have their first opportunity in this life to have their name written into the Book of Life, called later in the book, the Revelation, the Lamb's Book of Life. And so, as you and I are having our opportunity for our name to be inscribed in the Lamb's Book of Life now, and because judgment is upon us now, as Peter tells us, that judgment has begun at the house of God, we recognize that a judgment then will be given to them.

And that judgment being a whole time in a period to learn what we are learning and have been learning for years and decades in our own lives of the Word of God, and to be judged by it. And just as you and I have years and years and multiple experiences and opportunities through grace and forgiveness to be judged, and that's what judgment really does mean in one broad sense.

It is a period of time by which we learn and we have opportunity to grow an understanding, to make the mistakes that then we repent and we learn and we continue to grow a relationship with God. They, too, will begin to have that based upon the truth of the books that will be open. Now, I want us to think about this for a moment. I want you to think about a question. What will they need to be taught from the books?

What will they need to be taught from all of these pages that are on your laps, in either print form or in digital form, from Genesis to Revelation? These are the pages, these are the stories, these are the teachings by which these people will then come to understand and literally opened many probably for the first time and have explained to them the stories, the teachings, the lessons from these books, because these were books.

The books of Kings and Chronicles, the books of the law. They were books that were put together into this book, some called the great book, the Bible, but it's open to them. What will they need to know? What will they need to know? Hold that question. And let's consider just one more point about this day before we come back to that question.

It's been read through several presentations already, the basic Scriptures on this day, and it's not my intent to cover all of them again. In fact, as John Miller was giving his excellent sermon a couple of days ago, and he was going through the Scriptures on the eighth day, I was ticking off.

Well, no need to cover that one again, no need to cover that one again. So I want to thank John Miller for forcing me to do something that David Fitch told us all to do in his excellent split sermon earlier in the feast, and that is to go deep, because it forced me to go deep, a little deeper in my thinking about the meaning of this day, to give you this message here this morning. And so consider that Ezekiel 37 and the rattling of the bones have all taken place. You've already had that read to you. And we're not going to go through all of the ins and outs of these particular verses, but I hope that you will learn something deeper about this day, which is really what we need to do.

You know, when you look at the instruction back in Leviticus 23 verse 36, I won't turn there, but it's there that is mentioned to keep an eighth-day sacred assembly. After the feast is over, the Feast of Tabernacles is over. We're here keeping another day. It's the eighth day. And that's the only name given to it in Scripture. Mr. Lambert alluded yesterday to an understanding that we came to about twelve years ago.

That what Christ did when He stood up on that last day of the Feast, that great day was on the seventh day. And it was from that verse that we took the name the last great day. But if you look at it carefully, it says that great day of the Feast. It's referring to ceremony that the Jews had, and that when you read on in John 8, one that they went to their homes in Christ the next morning, came back to the Mount of Olives, from the Mount of Olives, He came back to the temple.

That was on the eighth day. And we corrected that little technicality. We haven't changed any teaching. We haven't changed any doctrine. It's just an understanding of what the Scripture says. And we have adjusted in our literature, which you will see, and we refer to this as the eighth day, because that's what the Bible calls it.

And there's good reason to always adhere to what the Bible says in that way, and be able to grow an understanding as we have. But here's what I wanted to bring out. In regard to the eighth day, the Jews don't know what to do with this day. You're familiar with how the Jews, you know, mirror and the centroid, they keep the Holy Days. And we sometimes get accused of being Jews because we keep the Holy Days.

We keep them with a fuller New Testament understanding that we do. But they keep a cedar, which is a form of the Passover we keep. But they keep a cedar.

They will keep unleavened bread. They don't keep Pentecost as much, because again, they don't know what to do with it. They don't understand the New Testament. And so they don't keep Pentecost, but they keep the trumpets, which is Rosh Hashanah to them. And Yom Kippur is their touchstone, holiest of Holy Days on Yom Kippur while we're fasting on the day of its home. They will keep Sukkot or Cabernet. If you go to Jerusalem and you've got Jerusalem still swells with people coming in. Not only Jews, but Christians who are going to Jerusalem to keep the feast in some way. But this day, they don't keep, because they don't know what to do with it, because they don't know what it means. And there is not the instruction that goes along with it in either Leviticus 23 or Nehemiah 8, verse 18, where it's referenced again during the time of Nehemiah. A few years ago, I started to do a little study about this and found out that the Jews call this day Shemeni Azzeret.

Shemeni Azzeret, or the Eighth Day Solemn Assembly. And the particular book I was reading about it, written by a rabbi who was making comments on it, said, made this statement, I quote, that is all we know about this holiday. That is, that it's an eighth-day solemn assembly.

That's all we know, this Jewish rabbi says. After the temple was destroyed, the eighth day became a holiday without a cause. A holiday without a cause. They don't know what it means.

They consider it to be a holy day in search of a cause. It's fascinating when you really understand that you really have to be a New Testament Christian observing the feasts and the holy days to understand their true meaning and significance, even this eighth day especially.

This eighth day especially. Now, let's go back to Revelation 20. And the books were opened. And the books were opened.

What would you teach? What would you teach? Because you're going to be there when this event takes place. And I don't know exactly how God is going to stage it. We'll learn that when we get there. I've heard speculations through the years that it will all be at once. That has been, I think, probably our general, traditional understanding. We think about it. If all at once the graves will be opened.

I've heard some speculate and think that, well, maybe it will be by stages because of all the billions of people. I don't, the Bible doesn't tell us exactly how God will stage it. As Revelation unfolds it here, it says that it will happen. I've learned, brethren, and I hope all of you have, through your years, leave some things to God and don't try to figure it all out with vain speculation and empty words that are useless and teachings that, frankly, become heretical.

There are certain things that sometimes people think they have to explain and it creates whole new scenarios. At the end of the day, if you really do understand God and the Bible and His creation, they don't make sense. Leave some things to God. On this one, there's enough for us to plumb the depths of, to go deep and to understand, to leave how He's going to do this to the time when we'll have a class for it.

You may not call it ABC, but I'm sure at some point during the millennium there'll be a class to prep us for this great event that we'll see a reuniting of families and the dead come back to life and the bones come back together in a physical resurrection.

You're going to be there. What are you going to teach? What do you think they will need to know? What teaching would be on your first day that you would sit down with someone whom you're assigned to begin to open the books to their understanding? What are you going to teach? Will it be the Sabbath? Will it be the Holy Days? Do you want to teach prophecy? Do you want to teach the story of David? What do you want to teach? What would you, where would you begin? What would be your syllabus? Your curriculum that you would put forth?

I have to ask myself, what would I teach my dad? What would I want my dad to understand as he begins to have these books open to him and he begins to judge, be judged? I'm going to give you three things that would be a part of my syllabus in the first three. Now, yours might be different, but I hope it stimulates your thinking to really think it through. I would label my first class justice. I think you're going to need to know that there is justice in eternity, that there is justice.

One of the great truths of life is that there is not justice in this world. So many people feel that we live in a random universe without meaning or purpose. They either embody that in a scientific concept or they just embody it in a know-nothing approach to life that doesn't really care because life is nothing but suffering and hardship. You're born, you suffer, you die type of thinking.

Or they bury it in an atheism, that the evil, the suffering that we see is not of God and I cannot believe in a God that would do this, therefore there is no God. And if there is, I despise Him for it. And some atheism gets rather violent and militant in that way. But people live their lives thinking and looking at this world as if understanding there is not much human justice.

And you know what? They're right. There isn't much human justice in this world. And when it does come at times and in its way, it's limited. It gives some solace but never enough. And it still leaves a great aching void in life and in one's heart. Human justice, even rendered by a court, by an arbitrator, by whatever form, human justice can only bring so much relief. When it's denied to victims of a crime, people have difficulty dealing with the after effects.

And that's true. When there's been a horrible death, when there's been a horrible tragedy of multiple people died, being killed, the killing of Osama bin Laden a couple of years ago, did it bring any one of those people back to life who died in the Pentagon or the World Trade Centers? No, it didn't. It didn't bring them back to life because it can't. Eighteen years ago, in April of 1995, a deranged former veteran of the United States Army drove a bomb-laden, explosives-laden truck into the federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

It got out, walked away from it, and it blew up. It blew the whole side of the building out. 168 people, including a number of children who had been dropped off in daycare that morning, were killed. It took a number of years for justice to grind, and Timothy McVeigh was eventually, six years later, put to death by lethal injection at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was unrepentant. Some of the families of victims traveled to Terre Haute, Indiana, and sat in a room and watched through a one-way glass.

The chemicals slide into his body. They hooked up a remote feed to other victims' families in Oklahoma City who sat and watched him die because they wanted justice. They interviewed some of them after they watched him. It was all over. Many said, we're glad it happened, but justice hasn't been done because it didn't bring back their baby. It didn't bring back their father.

It didn't bring back their mother, their friend, their brother. Justice, on a human level, had its work, but it didn't really bring back what was really needed. It was not enough to remove the loss of their loved one. When we think about this day and we think about justice, we find that justice is really in the providence of God the Creator, and it's his bond of a claim to sovereignty in this world. In the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, I would turn here on my first lesson to those who set before me in whatever setting it will be, and I would want them to know that there is justice.

But I would begin to teach them some of these matters, and I would turn to Ecclesiastes 3, verse 16. As I explained why, because they're going to be wanting to know the answer to why in a different source, in a different way. In Ecclesiastes 3, beginning in verse 16, Solomon reflected on this, and he said, Moreover, I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there, and the place of righteousness that iniquity was there.

Regardless of whether it's in an ecclesiastical church, religious setting, or in a human palace of justice. He says there's iniquity. It's not always done right. There's not always justice. People get hurt. People are denied justice. In a civil case, in a criminal case, in church settings, Solomon said, I looked everywhere. I said in my heart, verse 17, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.

And I would explain, this is the time for you to understand. This is the time for you to understand God's purpose, and even the purpose in your life, for you died because of injustice. Solomon goes on, he said, I said in my heart, concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.

For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts, even one befalls them as the one dies, so dies the other. Yes, they all have one breath, so that a man has no prominence over an animal. And Solomon said, that's emptiness, too. Yeah, an animal dies and a human dies, at times, like an animal, slaughtered in a genocide, a holocaust.

And it's all emptiness, and what's the meaning, and why? All go to one place, he said, and all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows the spirit of man that goes upward and the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth? Wherefore, I perceive that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work or his slot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him? And I will explain, we can now tell you what will be, what has come, and what it is that you waited for.

And all the tears of the oppressed will begin to be comforted at that time. And they will begin to understand that. And I would explain that when the eighth day comes, all will be made right, that it will be a time of true justice, and that the dead and small and great that have come and been resurrected will no longer have to face indiscriminate wars and killing.

And all the unjust efforts that humans have had to dominate the earth will be over. That now God will make right the greatest injustice to fall to befall human beings, and he will give them the opportunity for eternal life.

And maybe in my group I'll have a Muslim who stood on the walls of Jerusalem in the year 1099 when the Crusaders were besieging. And that Crusader made his way over the ladder onto the rampart to the wall of Jerusalem with a cross emblazoned upon his chest, and his sword raised against this Muslim who was crying out to Allah and ran his sword through him in the name of God. And then that same Christian Crusader later that day who walked through the streets of Jerusalem and found the Jews huddled in their synagogue, and along with his fellow Crusaders killed every man, woman, and child. And the streets did at that day run with blood.

And so that Jew and Muslim and Christian who died on that day in July of 1099, not knowing the truth, but thinking that they served their God, that they conquered in His name, they defended in His name, and they huddled in fear in the name of their God, and all of them suffered a fate, they will begin to understand where they were wrong. And justice will begin to rain down, because God will give His life back to those who had their life snuffed out in their prime, and never ever got it started. They will rise to life, and they will know that there is hope. With God there is no injustice.

It's only His all-encompassing infinite plan. That is today beyond all human understanding and reason. Because God determines the times of mercy, compassion, and judgment. And that's a terrible thing, folks. That's a terrible thing. And I say terrible in the sense that it's an awesome thing. It's not that God's bad, but it is a terrible thing to consider that God is merciful, compassionate, and has justice in His, and He determines the times of it. That's what you read in the book of Romans, when you read Paul's anguished soliloquy in chapters 9, 10, and 11 of the book of Romans about Israel. He was a Jew from the tribe of Benjamin. By that time they'd all kind of been blended together and been converted. And Paul spent three chapters in Romans explaining to his listeners and to us what happened to Israel. This great nation that God called and gave His law and His covenants to and then made a covenant with. They defied it. He sent them into exile. And what about God?

Was He just even with Israel? And He's explaining to a Gentile audience where they fit into the plan. It's interesting. Romans is a book that's rather thick, and it's one of those go deep type books in itself, but they're in the hearts of the whole book of Romans, chapters 9, 10, and 11. You can only understand those three books if you understand the meaning of the eighth day. You cannot understand what Paul wrote in Romans 9, 10, and 11 about Israel and God's mercy and judgment upon them and the depths and the wisdom of God's plan. You cannot understand it unless you understand this day and what this day means.

Bible ties together in that way. With God, ultimately there is no injustice because He has an all-encompassing plan. And it's only a resurrection on the scale of the seconds that it can really render true justice. When a mother will receive back to life the son or the daughter that they lost in war by disease or random senseless violence. It's only in the times such as this day when whole nations will rise from the grave with their bones rattling, they'll understand why they didn't thrive on the high places of the earth. Whole peoples like the Hutus or the Tutsis of Rwanda or even other nations of Africa and the Congo and Nigeria and other places. Armenians in Turkey who have been slaughtered by Turks for hundreds of years. There are certain peoples that have been marked for extinction time and time again. The Jews are not the only ones. They have not ridden the high places of the earth. They will have their opportunity on a day such as this when justice reigns, when justice is explained. And so I will explain to my father and to those who are there about justice. And they will learn.

The second thing that I will want to teach, second day of class or maybe the second week, it may take a few days, but for me as a spirit being, time won't matter. But it will matter for them so I'll still have to keep to a timeline, probably. I think it will be 90 minutes, 2 hours, 50 minutes. What do you think? I don't know. We'll worry about that too when we get there. The second thing I would want them to understand is that life and this world and now their opportunity for judgment is all based on choice. They have a choice to make. They had a choice earlier, but they didn't know it. They made choices earlier, but they didn't know within the context and it wasn't their day of judgment. Setting in that day, in that room, in that setting, I want to teach them that they will have a choice. Do you remember the story of the two trees? You ever heard the story of the two trees? I'm sure you have. You heard it once upon a time, so many times you were sick and tired of it. We're going to bring it back. We're going to start right there in Genesis and we're going to teach them about the two trees, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge in good and evil. All what messages we'll be able to explain to them that came from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It all makes sense. My father and all the others will understand that they have a choice before them, a choice between two ways. I'll take them back to the two trees to begin with and explain the difference between them. In the end, encourage them to choose the tree of life. I will make this point, I think, at that day, maybe in a more profound and deeper way because I will have had a thousand years to learn more about it. I've come to understand, at least at this point, that the whole universe and all of human life is about choice. God's plan is about choice. Everyone every being, thinking, sentient being has choice. Lucifer and the angels had a choice and they chose those that He drew with them. That one-third, they chose, as the movie says, they chose poorly and they will be judged for their choice. That's what the Day of Atonement is all about. They had a choice. Adam and Eve had a choice and God gave it to them.

We don't need to worry about whether God knew what they were going to do and free will or whatever else because the fact of the matter is God has hardwired into mankind free will and choice. You and I have choice in front of us every day, all day, every week, all week, every year of our lives. We have choice. Evil, good. We're going to eat from the tree of life more than we eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. How are we going to live our life? We make those choices. I think maybe at that point I will inject into my father's life, you know, this is why you nearly sacrificed your life one day. I will have then the opportunity to explain to him why on a day in June in 1944 when he stepped off of a boat on the coast of France and lived through a hell called Omaha Beach that he had to do that. A farm boy from Missouri who had no quarrel with the Germans, who had no quarrel with anybody, probably didn't learn much about European geography if not history in his eight years of schooling that he had, and then got caught up in something far bigger than he and his times and got shipped off and stepped off a beach early on a morning and walked ashore into hell and lived to tell about it and nearly sacrificed his life.

How many of you have seen the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan? My dad lived through that. He lived through that. It was more than 20 minutes. It was a solid day of hell, that first day on Omaha for American soldiers. My dad had one of his hometown buddies that he'd shipped in with die on his arms on the beach that morning. His legs nearly cut off with German machine gun fire. He lived through that and all the other episodes and came home and had a family. As I jokingly say, my dad lived through World War II at Omaha Beach, then he came home and had a deal with me. I never fully appreciated during the time that exactly what he did go through has only been in more recent years that he would never talk about it. I was too dumb to know exactly how to ask the right question about what he experienced. I will explain to him that what that was about, dad, was because some people made some bad choices for a long period of time and it created a whole world war where billions died. That's what I will explain to him. I will explain to him, now you have the opportunity to choose and to know clearly, without any fog, what it's all about. I think I'll turn back to Deuteronomy 30 and I'll open this book to their understanding, this portion to their understanding. In Deuteronomy 30, verse 11, and I will read to them, this commandment I command at you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.

It's not in heaven that you should say who will ascend to heaven and bring it to us, because in that day there will be a whole lot of spirit beings who will be teaching and engaging the human population of 6,000 years during that period and explaining things. It's going to be right in front of them. Stop beyond the sea that you would say who will go over to sea for us and bring it back to us. It's going to be right there in front of them. Again, they're not going to have the fog of any of deception to hide it from them. The word is very near you. It's right here. This is what it means, this whole teaching is known. It can be in your heart. It can be in your heart and you can do it. It will be for the first time knowledge that will be available to them. It will not be hidden by deceptive religious or philosophical teachings. The knowledge I will teach them was there even during your lifetime. I will teach them why they didn't understand it. Why they couldn't because of all the deception, human deception, spiritual deception, satanic deception, the distractions of the world and of the life. Perhaps even for so many, frankly, they're not even going to know what they missed because they never even saw a Bible because the Bible wasn't even available to them in their own language, because it couldn't be printed, because there had not been a press printed, and because they had been born in a squalor in a hut in Europe, and they never walked outside of maybe a one or two mile perimeter of their village in their entire life. They lived and born and lived and died within a very, very small confine, and they never read a word of anything. To know that there was a God or a Jesus Christ or a Bible or whatnot, they knew nothing. But for that time, they will know it. They will have the chance to know it, and it will be fresh, and it will be alive, and it will be vibrant. And I'll read on and say, see, I sat before you today life and good, death and evil, and if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today by loving the Lord your God and walking in His ways and keeping His commandments and statutes, you will live and multiply, and God will bless you. And I won't say necessarily in the land that you're entering in, but perhaps I'll say in the life that you're entering in to take possession of it. To take possession of your life now. And when it says here as it does, if your heart turns away and you're not here but you're drawn away to worship other gods, I might pause right there and give them an instruction of what's going to happen and to warn them that they don't want to fall under any deception and warn them about that. And I will tell them that they can live. And I will read with a great deal of passion where it says, therefore choose life that you and your offspring may live. Loving the Lord your God and obeying His voice and hold fast to it. This is the life that will give you longevity. And it won't be thirty years of squalor. It won't be five years of pain that you didn't even know about. It won't be a life with debilitating disability that kept you from achieving your full potential. It will be a life of purpose and meaning you've had that other life once, you'll not have it again. And there will be no tears. There will be no need for that. And that will be explained to them. And they will have that opportunity to learn. And then I think I will go to a third point on the third lesson. And I would want to teach them about the Father.

And I might turn to John 17. In some ways, John 17 is one of the best places to start to learn about the Father because it is a prayer from the Son to the Father in the last hours of His physical life. And it's a very, very moving prayer. And it's a very, very moving prayer. And it's a good place to start to learn about the Father and Jesus Christ. But I would want my Father, who gave me life, to know about our Heavenly Father. When the Heavenly Father, He really didn't know. It's ironic. We were just out in Deuteronomy 30.

If I teach my Father out of the book of Deuteronomy, I will probably for the first time have a chance to make Him understand it. Because when my mother came into the church in the early 60s, she was just like a lot of people. She wanted everybody to understand. And I can remember her preaching to her brothers, her Baptist brothers, Methodist brothers, I think. I remember Sunday afternoon arguments at my uncle's house and thinking, this is the place I'm going after the barn and playing. I find a snake to catch or something. But I remember walking into our home one night and seeing my mom with the book of Deuteronomy open in front of her, trying to explain to my father something out of the book of Deuteronomy. I just remember her teaching, trying to teach him how to pause and listen for a few moments. She was passionate and she wanted him to learn. She wanted him to understand what she had to understand. I looked at my dad. I could see he was just perplexed. He didn't understand it. And he went on with his life. She finally realized that was useless and futile and wasn't going to happen. So I think when I open the book of Deuteronomy to my father, I'll have a chance to explain to him. Or maybe I'll let my mother do that. We'll see how that works out too and all of those matters and all of those relationships. But I would go to John 17 and I would explain from Christ's words to the Father. The Father he knew and loved and explained from there the deep love and desire of the Father to build a family. Now you may be added to that family. And that there is a plan of salvation.

And I would read to him these words in verse 1. These words spoke Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour is come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may also glorify you. As you have given him power over all the flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him. And this is eternal life. And maybe we'll pause at that moment and explain a little bit about eternal life because we will be spirit beings.

And we will be in eternity and interfacing with time and space at that level in a way that we'll have to learn about, too. Maybe like the word get is Melchizedek with Abraham and I'm sure God hasn't lost the way to get that done over the years. This eternal life, verse 3, that they might know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you have since.

And from there you have the opening to teach everything about the Father and Jesus Christ. That this is eternal life, to know that God, to know who He is, to understand His great and infinite plan based on choice, free will, and the fact that God will not admit anyone into His family who has not passed that time of judgment and has willingly chosen from the tree of life, chosen good, chosen to avoid evil in a lifetime, and have set their character to do good, to do what is right. Because that is the will of the Father, and that's what He has wired and hardwired into this physical creation. And when you study the origins of this universe, when you study what we do know, and what we do know is a lot, and even that is not even, I don't think, at times among the scientists at the level of kindergarten where God is, compared to where God is. And yet, as they continue to grow and explore and understand the physics and the cosmology of this world, this universe that they peer directly through with even powerful telescopes and probes, they learn certain fundamentals.

One of the things that they learn is that hardwired into this universe is choice. Choice.

As they study deeper into the level of quantum science, the subatomic level, they find that things do not operate at the level of physics that we and I operate in, and that it is random, and that it is based essentially on choice. I think at times that what they're looking at and what they're trying to explain is something of a spiritual concept that is right here in the pages of the Bible, that God has hardwired the world, the universe, to operate even on choice, even while the natural world operates on laws that He designed to work in a regulated way, chemistry and physics and biology and all. And yet, there are things that are unexplainable by those laws that are observable and understood at the subatomic level. But one thing they do see is choice. And that's the God that is the Father that loves us, who has then, when He is known, and through the full life of Jesus Christ, who He sent, when that is known and understood, that Jesus Himself subjected Himself to choice.

And He chose wisely, in every step of the way, on every day and on every moment of His life, He chose wisely. He chose of the tree of life. He chose good. And He lived that life that then allows for you and I to enter into life. All of that will be explained, and I will tell them, this is the Father we serve. This is the Father that we need to know. In verse 4, Christ said, I have glorified You on earth, and I have finished the work which You have given me to do. And now, O Father, glorify You with me, glorify You me with Your own self, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

And I think I will explain that before that moment when the world was, whether the world that Adam created by His choice or the world that came into being at that moment, when if it was a big bang and it all came from something about the size of our thumbnail as some scientists teach, and time and space began, even before then, there was the intent for the Father between the two beings to share what they had and to share their glory.

And now is their chance to take part in that. And I'll have a chance to then, who knows, it's going to be a long class. There's going to be a lot to explain, and I'm looking forward to getting into understanding finally all of the questions. Brethren, God has given us enough to lay down that backbone, that backbone that we have, that ship's keel of understanding and truth and knowledge upon which we can build and hang our lives for all eternity.

And when we come to the Holy Days every year and we walk through the cycle of meaning and teaching of every one of those Holy Days, from the spring to the fall, the Passover and Days of 11 bread, all the way through to this eighth day, we have the essence, the heart of it, all laid out in graphical form for us through this.

And all of that will be explained. And I will explain justice and I will explain choice to them. And I think I will linger a while on the meaning of this day. When you understand this day and what the depth of it is from the Scriptures, and I don't have time to go through too deep. We haven't gone too deep here in these few minutes. It opens up understanding.

What we know from the meaning of this day is what the world really does yearn for and need. There is nothing else like the meaning of this day found in any other religion or philosophy or idea of men. I've read a lot, as have many of you. I've studied a lot, not everything. I haven't read Don T. Hoady yet. It's on my list. Maybe I'll put it on my bucket list.

It might take me kicking the book. I'll put it there. I've read a lot, as you have, many of you. And I've studied a lot in all my years in the ministry, as a student, to the Bible. I think I've swept over the core ideas of world religion and philosophy.

I'm familiar with the core teachings and the synthesized core. I've read every work from everyone. But I've read nothing to begin to even hint and compare with what this day does teach us about justice, choice, and the purpose of human life and all of God's holy days. When you come to this eighth day, it's like getting that crystal locked in. The eighth day to me is kind of like a multifaceted crystal, that depending on how you look at it and the light and the way it works through, you see more. And you never see all the possibilities of the vision and of the light and the substance of a finely cut piece of crystal.

I was thinking about it this morning and I said, it's kind of like what Indiana Jones did. I love movies. I always like to get movies references into my teaching. Do you remember in the first one, looking for the lost Ark? And the way he found the Ark, where the Ark was, he put that staff in the ground and he had that crystal and he put it right in the staff and the light came through, buzzed right across the room, right to where they were supposed to go. And he got that crystal locked in. And that's the way the eighth day is, when you get this locked in and the light begins to come through it, it zeroes in on understanding and truth and unlocks understanding that people have been searching for since after the foundation of the world, throughout all of humanity's existence.

This day comes and brings it all into fruition. On this day, families will be reunited.

All of us raised our hands when the question was asked earlier, if we lost yet loved ones, look forward to them. My father died on this day, and so I look forward to seeing him again. I look forward to seeing a lot of family members that I never really quite understood in my life. Through my years since my dad died, I often wish I'd just had one more day with my dad. One more day, just to ask him a few dozen questions that I never quite got around to asking him.

I'll have more than one day eventually. I've got to wait. I'd love to know a lot of things now, just like you probably would like to know a lot of things, because families are rather complex, aren't they?

You've got good, you've got bad, and sometimes you've got ugly.

And at some point, especially if you've come to conversion and calling, you begin to look back. You get your life in order. You look back at problems of your past, a parent, an aunt or an uncle, whatever. Maybe they're not around anymore for you to even ask why. Why was it like this, Mom? Why was it like this, Grandfather? Great-grandfather? Great-great-grandfather? Why did you do that? Why? On this day, all the questions of why, when it comes to families, they'll be answered. And there will be a unification. Memories will be made complete on this day when all families are reunited. We began this Feast when I asked you a question. What will God be telling you this year?

What has God called you to learn and to understand at this year's Feast of Tabernacles here in Jamaica, from all the experiences, the messages, the fellowship and conversations and everything that you've engaged in this year? What would you learn? What has God brought you here, and what has He taught you?

We pictured that scene around the bed of Jacob in Genesis 49. And I had a little bit of a scene around my father's bed. If you still have a father or mother, if you still have somebody to talk to and go ask those questions, make it a point in the near future to ask them the questions before you. It's too late. While you still can, talk to your father, talk to your mother, talk to that figure that is your father or mother in your life. Find out why. Do it in humility. Do it with patience. Do it in love. But if you have the opportunity, try to do it. You'll be better off for it.

In the doing, you may learn something about your own physical life. And if you don't have that opportunity, then ask your spiritual father.

Ask him what you need to learn, what he wants you to understand.

So what has He taught you? What has He taught you this year? What is it that you needed to learn?

I'll leave that question with all of you. It's been our pleasure to be with you and to get acquainted with so many of you this year. I wish you all a very, very successful year as you go forward in your relationship with God and Jesus Christ.