Do You Get It?

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for that. That was marvelous. You know you're getting old when you see people you taught in college and their children that are adults singing with them. Never thought it would go that long and go that far. But that's what happens. We all get older. Greetings from South Africa, in particular, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, and your brethren in Malawi, the long way, and also in Zimbabwe. I had a quick trip over there. I'm back. I'm giving the evening sermon today for me. This afternoon you'll get the afternoon service from somebody else. But it's interesting to see the people over there and know that there are people around the globe that are working for the same goal that you and I are. I appreciate the sermonette. It plays in very well to what I'm going to talk about today. Our calling and thanks, how God works with us. The title of my sermon was, Did You Get It? Half of you don't get it. I make this statement in a historical sense, because you people here do get it. That's why you're still here. We were told this loudly and boldly over 30 years ago. Yes, 30 years ago today, January 16, 1986, was the day Herbert Armstrong died. It's part of our heritage. It's part of something that's the heritage of a number of groups, a number of people.

But he died. But I titled the sermon, Did You Get It? Do it around to me 31 if you turn there with me. Moses hoped that Israel got it. Moses hoped that they would understand, they would continue.

And I think I'm in the wrong chapter here. I think I want 31.

Yeah, chapter 31, verse 1. Moses went to the people and spoke these words to Israel. He said to them, I am on 120 years old this day. I can no more go out and come in. Also the Lord has said to me, You shall not go over this river Jordan. So he sets the stage there. God took him at 120 years old, we know. Dropping down to verse 11. When Israel shall come to appear before the Lord thy God in the place which he shall choose, you shall read the law before all Israel in their hearing. And gather the people together, men and women and children, and the stranger that is within your gates, that they may hear, that they may learn and fear the Lord your God, observe to do all the words of this law, and that their children, which have not known anything, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as you live in the land where you go over to Jordan to possess it. Verse 16, The Lord said unto Moses, Behold, you shall sleep with your fathers, and this people will rise up and go a whoring after other gods of the strangers of the land. Where they go to be among them, and will forsake me and break my covenant, which I made with them. In verse 19, he tells Moses, Now therefore write ye the song, and teach it in the children of Israel. Put it in their mouths that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel. He knew what they were going to do, and he wanted to sing a song to understand. Verse 29, For I know that after my death, you will utterly corrupt yourselves and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you, and evil will befall you in the latter days, because you will do evil in the sight of the Lord, to revoke him to anger through your work of your hands. Moses, in his last speech, his last song, warned Israel of what would happen if they forsook God. I can ask ourselves, what has happened in the last 30 years, since the founder of the modern era of God's church, the man that we know that God called and used, died? It's hard to believe that's 30 years ago. Many of you young people weren't born at that time. But yet, it's good to know a bit of our history for the proper reasons. Things he said would happen have happened, both in and out of the church. Things in Europe, Middle East, things in the church that he predicted. The world is ever closer to the day of the Lord. He thought it was coming in his lifetime. I think it's coming in mine.

It may be longer. It is coming. We all know that. Apostasy rose from inside the church. It did not diminish with attacks from the outside. It came from the inside. This is Israel rebelled from the inside. No one could have predicted where we are now, where we would be. We were very strong, physically and financially.

In 1986, the income of the church was around $250 million. Today's dollars would be at least two or three times that, closer to a billion dollars. Some referred to it as the Armstrong Empire. He would never refer to it as that. He would be repulsed at that. Because he knew it was God's work, just as all of us did. But I asked, were we really strong spiritually? We had money, but were we strong spiritually? We assumed we were, because we had uniformity. Everybody came in a suit and tie. Everybody dressed nicely. Everybody went to the feast. Everybody did all the things. But we mistook uniformity for unity, because not everybody believed the truth of God and what we were taught. Many have tried, and many are still trying to copy what Mr. Armstrong did. Some think that building a college campus, or somehow meeting world leaders, or rewriting their own history, can convince others that they should follow them. But that's not what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to follow God. Some people I find nearly worship Him. Many try to play off His name. That's a marketing. Yet others try to vilify Him. But that's happened before to others. I don't wish to do any of those things today, but I will ask, what would He want from the remnant of God's people? What would He want us to take from some of the things that He taught from God's Word? In saying half of you don't get it, history has proven that He was too generous. It's probably more like 80 percent of the people that didn't. In the last days of His life, He made several really shocking statements to me. Not unlike the things that Moses said to Israel. The most shocking was when He said, in a few short years, half of the church will keep keeping the Sabbath. He said, half the church will leave. The college and the foundation will close. I asked Him, how? The Bible doesn't change because you die. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy? Six days to a labor in New York? That's still there. He just said, prophecy, I know it's going to happen. It was interesting. Funny thing is, the half of the church that left left to keep the truth. Or the half that stayed, or the 80 percent, left it. It was shocking. Because I had so many friends that said, when they change the Sabbath, I'm out of here. Yet cleverly, they disguised it into, well, you're a Christian seven days a week. Oh, yeah. So what? We're all Christians seven days a week. So was Christ, and He still kept the Sabbath. But people bought into that. I would like to examine a little bit of what did happen. This afternoon, Mr. Cubich is going to speak on the vision for the church. He's our current president. I say current because we haven't been good at picking people. Hopefully he'll stay a little longer, get tired of these meetings to change presidents. And he'll probably touch on this a bit as well, because it was Herbert Armstrong that he heard and read the articles that brought him to the truth of God. Just as he did to all of us in some way or another, through our parents, our ministry, or whatever. Even the young people getting a second and third generation, as Moses said, teach your children. Perhaps some of the things that he taught we didn't fully see. I didn't. I didn't expect things to happen the way they did. By looking back, though, we learned how to go forward. And that's what he wanted, the church to go forward. He knew, as do you and I, that Jesus Christ is the head of the church. He doesn't stop when anybody dies. He didn't stop when Moses died. He didn't stop when Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, any of the apostles. The church goes on because Jesus Christ is the head of the church, not men.

But he uses men because he has a plan for mankind. And as you heard in the sermonette, he calls a set of people. And God knows why he calls and brings them to Christ. We often do ask why, as Clay said in the sermonette. He wants to use every one of you. He wants to use me.

And everyone he's called. If you yield to him, you can be part of what he set aside for us. God picks peoples for their strengths. And, biblically, he often lists many of their flaws. Thankfully, the flaws are fairly short. But he lists them along with those strengths, I think, so that we can know that we don't have to be perfect to be helpful. We should be trying to become perfect. But if we expected that we had to be perfect, we'd all have given up long ago. We know Moses had incredible strengths. If you read Josephus—and I read Josephus the first time when I was about 13 or 14. I know it's an odd book for a teenager, but I did read the Hardy Boys at the same time. But Josephus talked about Moses being a general in Pharaoh's army, and how successful he was at expanding the borders, and how he was working in Ethiopia. He was about to conquer their head city, and a daughter of the king there came out and presented herself to be his wife, to stop the destruction and the war. And it's interesting, later on, that same Ethiopian woman was brought up by Miriam and Aaron, his brother and sister, to use cause against Moses. And there was an Ethiopian woman. But it was interesting to see the accusation by his brother and sister. All men of God have things they can be accused of, all sin. God knew Moses through and through, though, and he knew the strengths that he wanted to lead Israel, and having led the armies of Egypt, and then going 40 years in the wilderness and leading sheep, which were a lot easier than the army or Israel. And he didn't want to lead Israel. For two reasons. He knew how hard it would be. The other is he realized that he was going up against the strongest army on earth. And yet, God was on his side, but still concerned him when God first gave him the job. We know David's strength, slaying Goliath, but we also hear about him being cursed by Shimei for being a bloody man in different things, and also his sin of Bathsheba. But he was a man after God's own heart. And others, like Abraham, who lied about his wife. He had to be some wife for him to be lying all the way through those years because he was afraid others would want her. And of course, we know Peter denied Christ. We know of others. Of course, they all denied Christ and Iran. But God knew their strengths. He knows you. He knows me. He knows what we can do. And oftentimes, he puts us in situations in our lives even before you're called into the church to give you certain training and background for the things he's going to have you do either in this life or the next.

Mr. Armstrong was a superb writer. How good a writer was he? Well, in the 70s, when they were trying to figure out exactly what to do, and of course, he had his heart attack, and they sent a bunch of his writings anonymously to one of the top copyright people in the country, an expert living in Ventura.

And when he started reading the work, he just stopped and said, I'm honored that you have asked me to evaluate the work of Herbert Armstrong, probably the best copywriter in this country.

His name wasn't honored, but he knew who it was. But he learned that before God called him. He worked at it.

Mr. Armstrong wanted to be an advertising man. He didn't want to be a preacher.

He was always truthful, even in his ads. He wanted to make sure that they said the truth.

His wife challenged him on the Sabbath. That's what started it all. Sinner-esque in the Sabbath was the key issue in the apostasy. It forced United to start its openers doors to provide a home.

God wanted the writing talents Mr. Armstrong had. Paul writes of the simplicity in Christ. Mr. Armstrong always tried to write at a sixth grade level, so everyone could understand it and make it clear. He didn't always follow the rules of grammar. He had the big bold type and dashes and things that weren't there, but it made it stand out.

It's interesting. Some people started the church before the apostasy took hold.

Some people want to be in charge of churches. And I pray for the people that still keep to the truth that they will actually stay there, because it's hard to have protection when one man's in charge. And we always hope that people will stay with the truth of God. UCG actually started when we were forced to either choose the Sabbath or choose to deny it. And we chose not to deny it, because it's biblical. There really was no choice for us. Many had already stayed home, and United provided a place for those who stayed home to avoid the apostasy to come back, and to keep God's way and God's law. Of course, we've even had some in United that wanted to be in charge, and our documents don't allow that. That's why we've gone through some presidents. And Victor, don't do that.

Some have tried to market Mr. Armstrong to get a following. In UCG, I see us trying to market what he taught, the truths of God. That was what was important to Mr. Armstrong, not him. The truth that he taught from his studies of the Bible. The many years he spent trying to prove his wife wrong and proving her right, and giving up his advertising career that he was good at.

Very good at it. In the 1920s, he was making $18,000 a year. You do that today, you're talking half a million to a billion dollars, because taxes take most of it. He could have gone back to that, but God opened his mind to his truth, to the plan of God through the holy days. And he didn't understand them when he first started keeping them, but he saw God said to keep them.

So he did. And then later he understood why. That's the plan of God. That's how it was revealed. And he taught that to us. It wasn't overnight, though. He went through 14 years of poverty, abject poverty, and 14 years of relative poverty, when he could have returned to advertising and made a lot of money. But God knew that he wouldn't do that.

That's why he worked with him before that. Instead, he used the abilities he had to preach the gospel to the world. The Apostle Paul did the same in Acts 22. Apostle Paul was a very talented man. Where was he? Acts 22.3. It says, A city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the top scholars of the day, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and zealous toward God as you are of this day.

Paul was important in his day. He was zealous in persecuting Christians. And he was zealous in teaching Christians, and dying for Christians. Paul had to defend his ministry at times, but he never marketed himself. He marketed his God and his Savior in preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and about our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Mr. Armstrong never marketed himself, although others did at times. He even got fired once because he thought I was marketing him. But I wasn't. We built a book. Off of that incident, we created the Ambassador Foundation Presents, Robert W. Armstrong, Ambassador for World Peace. He thought I was marketing him by getting meetings with leaders by telling how important he was, that all these people he met.

And he said, that's not about me, it's about the gospel. And I explained to him, I agree, Mr. Armstrong, but I don't know too many world leaders who are going to let someone walk into their president, king, prime minister, etc., with a box of Stephen Crystal that's about the right size for a dozen sticks of dynamite and say, here, without knowing who you are and what you're doing. And I said, if this isn't what we need, because I'd read the material we'd sent before, that we need to write something.

And so we wrote this book, and handed it out to a number of dignitaries over the years. His sole message and purpose of going to world leaders was to market the kingdom of God, to preach the gospel as a witness. God gave him a lot of wisdom as he used his advertising talents in those big bold letters. If you go back and read any of his read letters, they're all on the internet, people read them at times, all the PDFs of all the files, which are interesting.

The set of books in the library that are a compilation of all the works. There's some big ones and little ones about that wide. Huge books. You can see them. I kept those when I left Pasadena. I knew what they were doing with most of his stuff. And so I brought them here, and they're donated to the library.

You can see those here. It's interesting, though. Mr. Armstrong saw what God's purpose was, and he pounded home these key phrases that he gave us, so that we would learn to follow God, that we would stay, as Moses told Israel. Follow. Continue. Some of the key phrases he pounded home. Well, the first one you probably all think of is, there were two trees in the garden. He gave the true tree sermon a number of times. The tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life.

Even I didn't realize at the time the significance of that. I understood it, in part, as we all did. But it was later I realized that those two trees, the good looks the same off both trees. It's the motive behind what you do that makes all the difference in the world. In fact, one of the men who was in leadership when we came out of, made the comment that we always taught the two trees, and that Christians run the tree of life, and these evil people in the world. And I went to this seminar and saw these good people, and so we had to be wrong.

I said, you're dividing the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And the good off that is good. I agree with some good people off of that. But it's not the truth. And the motives and what they do may not be for the right reasons. And certainly God knows, and certainly the people who do good will be easier to teach when the resurrection comes.

But then He didn't believe in the resurrection. And I asked Him, why? It's so clearly stated. And what do you do with the people who never heard about Christ? How do they come to God? Well, God knows how they would have reacted had they heard Christ's name. And I said, well, God would have known how I would have reacted had He heard Christ's name, and all of us.

And so why did Christ have to come? If God just knows. Not that simple. We also heard on radio and TV all the time from sermons, Don't believe me, believe your Bibles. Compare it with your Bible. Blow the dust off your Bible. Sadly today so many people don't even have a Bible, which is a shame. We heard that Satan is the God of this present evil world. We should come out from among Satan's world. Be separate. Be holy. We can't leave it, but we can set a good example in it. One he said quite often when there was controversy, I don't care what you think.

I care what God thinks. Something all of us have to do as well when we make decisions. Is your heart in the work? The work, the work. All of us old-timers heard the work a lot. We knew exactly what that meant, the work of God, what He was trying to do.

Did he have weaknesses? Yes, don't we all? I find the Internet full of garbage, and I'm sure Satan finds that amusing and helpful in his causes. We're accused. I'm on the Internet, too. There's a lot of things said about me. It's interesting if you were close to someone who gets accused, you get part of the fire as well. Sometimes the fire is warm from friends, and sometimes it's getting scorched.

But that's it. Satan talked to God about Job, and I'm sure Satan has talked to many of us, trying to accuse us. I would say Mr. Armstrong's main weakness, at least to me, was that he was often a poor judge of character in some people. Individuals would tell him how great they are, and he tended to believe them when they weren't. But I asked, were these flaws in the other men hid from him on purpose that test us?

Because so many people leave over other people, and yet other people have nothing to do with your salvation unless you let them.

Many followed a man because Herbert Armstrong appointed him. In fact, he even gave a sermon once where he said, Your salvation may depend on following the man I appoint, which is a mistake. But it was said, based on promises, that the man believed everything in this book, and that it was taught, which he didn't.

But a lot of people said, hey, that's fine. He's in charge. You can say that. Free at last. All these phrases we heard when people thought they had freedom in keeping God's law in the Sabbath.

Others followed men with great personality and speaking skills.

And it's good to have speaking skills. I love listening to certain preachers, but I always match what they say against God's word, which is what we all must do.

And people often with great personalities tend to start throwing churches because of pride and vanity.

This was true in the Old Testament. Absalom was the best-looking man in the country. And he blogged at the gate. And he told people he'd be just. And he took people away. Korah was one of the princes of Israel. After he died, they told Moses, why did you kill him? They didn't say, thanks for getting rid of that evil guy.

Other people who sought position in the New Testament church. That's just Dr. P. Dr. P. who seeks preeminence. And he was in charge of the church and threw people out. Somehow he managed to do that.

Mr. Armstrong thought he'd be alive until Jesus Christ returned. Just as the apostles, some of them did. That was why he was so diligent in trying to finish the work. We heard that all the time. The gun lab finished the work.

Of course, the gun lab for him was 30 years ago. And if we had kept running at that pace, we would be worn out. Although some of us think we're worn out anyway. Some people put him on a pedestal. He became their hero. Just as they make other men their hero. Yet he taught me to follow God and to follow Jesus Christ. But many people transferred the status he had to their new hero. And left the beliefs.

Without realizing they had replaced Jesus Christ with a man. And the truths of God. Many have made that mistake over the centuries. We can see in the beginning of the New Testament. The writings for people went astray. It's nothing new. And it's happened in this end-time church. Those who are old have seen it happen a number of times.

Some people also think they can be their own preacher. They stay at home all the time and decide everything from themselves. Neither one of those is on either end of the spectrum is good. We need fellowship. We need to have people that challenge us to make sure we're sticking to the truth. So we have our Council of Elders and the documents we had to make sure that nothing can be changed without complete scrutiny. And looking at this book to make sure it's there. Strongest I ask, Michelle, if your husband leaves, will you follow him?

She said, I came into the church without him. I'll stay in it without him if I have to. So I stayed, so I would lose her.

We have to prove what a man says by comparing Scriptures. Two of the things Mr. Armstrong missed as he aged in life, I found it fascinating. One was he said he missed being with people. As he got older, he couldn't shake that many hands. If we had 7,000 to 10,000 people at these sites, one site had about 12 or 13 at one time. He said, I can't shake that many hands because he would just be too tired. But he wanted to be back with the members and deal with them. On the trips, he loved working with the students on the dig, or on the Jordan project.

He'd play hearts with them at night, talk to them after services and things. I set up a feast in Texas once. I knew he wanted to be with people. He told me that. I went through the books and found out how many people would be there.

They'd been there 20 years, 25 years, 30 years. I picked the date and had about 200 people. He was scheduled for two hours. He stayed there for four hours just to talk to people. The second thing, he said, I miss being able to simply read the Bible because his eyesight had gone. He was legally blind.

You'd never know that when he marched up on the stage and things that he couldn't see what he was doing. But he missed that. Do we study and stand in awe of God's Word the way he did? It was interesting. The last six months of his life, he came downstairs and he said, I need you to look up something for me, which is what I did a lot for him when he couldn't see. And his question was, Jesus said something to somebody about something. And I say, can you be a little more specific?

He said, I'm not sure. I know what I want, but I can't think of it. So just start reading Matthew. So we did. Mark, Luke, John. Maybe Paul wrote it. The Epistles. It was in an Acts. We read the whole New Testament. And I was pretty convinced he just wanted to hear the Bible read to him again. But it really wasn't what he was looking for because we never found it.

He did not ask me to read the whole Old Testament. Thank you. But I did read the books that he wrote and the thanks to him during that time period. But he worked very hard.

We had to stand in awe of God's Word the way he did. Something he taught me and taught all of us. That's where the source is. In trying to challenge Christ when he was on earth, the leaders would often bring up Moses and Abraham. We're Abraham's seed. We have Moses. Some today wish to say they have Herbert Armstrong.

But he would be upset with that. He would say Herbert Armstrong gets you nothing. And he would be true. He would want you to have and to know God the Father and Christ his Son. And Christ came to reveal the Father. And the Father wants us to know his Son and understand those deep questions of life. Why did he work so hard? Armstrong worked all the time. I know, because I had two as well. Not by choice. But we were always working. In fact, he almost made an idic to have all the college and church people work six days a week.

Because the commandment says six days till you labor. I talked him out of that. Because I convinced him that we wouldn't be very good neighbors if people didn't mow their grass. And we wouldn't have very good families if you couldn't spend time with your family. And I told him that he didn't need to do that. And he didn't think I needed to either.

But it was interesting. His last trip at age 92, we visited nine countries in 24 days. Either with church members or world leaders. It was hard for me at 30. Certainly hard for him at 92. I was 32 at the time, actually. He was 60 years older than I was. When he was 80, I told him I was catching up on him.

He said, what do you mean I'm catching up? I said, well, I was 20 and you're 80. Now you're 90. I'm 30. That's a third. I was a quarter, now I'm a third. So I'm gaining. I've gained 30 more years since then. Because he stopped. Even today, I feel guilty sometimes if I haven't worked 12 hours or more. Because my days were up to 18 hours most of the time on trips. We had to set up. We had to do everything. I only had to set up the trips, though.

He had to actually talk to people. And God told him what to say. There were very different sermons at different times of different people. And I always wondered what was going to happen. And I was always amazed that some of the strongest sermons were in Catholic groups and places where you talk about the beast and the false prophet. And I figured we'd never get out of there.

But we did. And he talked to the billionaires of Rotary Club, who called me half an hour before his speech and said, oh, by the way, we have a rule. We don't talk religion. What's he going to speak about? And I said, world peace. And he gave one of the most religious messages he'd ever given. And afterwards, the man who called me cut said, we need to change our rules. That was interesting. So I didn't get stoned in Greece. I'll save that for Paul. Was he impressed by people? Was he simply autograph hunting?

Celebrity status? No. When we first met Prince Charles and Diana together, my wife actually broke up in Heize Day before. I think she was nervous. And he asked her if she was nervous. She actually healed up before we actually saw them, thankfully.

But he said, don't be nervous. They go to the bathroom just like you and I. He respected and followed the protocols. But he saw them as humans. More than that, he saw them as future God beings, the way he saw you and me. And that's the way we should see everyone as well. He believed he would be here until Jesus Christ returned. No question. He believed the commission to preach the gospel to the world as a witness was his. Because if I'm here until the end, and this has to be preached before the end, I have to do it. Was that what he really had to do 30 years later? We can speculate on that, what God did to use it, and why. But what he did, there's no question in my mind God used him to build the basis of the last two eras of the church of God. And I believe in the eras, that's something I think he can somewhat prove, although that's not a salvation issue. There are too many miracles that happen. Too many visits that I were told couldn't be set up that were. Too many visits supposed to last five minutes, it lasted an hour or two. Some would give him credit for this, yet he'd be the first to say, it wasn't me. It's God. Look to God, like Moses said. Keep the law. Look to God. You can't control what other people do or what they say. Your work will speak for itself, and God is your judge. Stromer It was about the people of God. He was concerned about you and about me. About all of those.

But wasn't that the same as Christ and the apostles? Turn to John 17. He said and strongly felt the next step was the purification of the bride. As we heard in the sermonette, God calls us to His Son to be His bride. To be in that covenant, because the bride relationship is a covenant relationship. That means living, learning, and teaching God's way of life.

He made me promise to help purify the bride. I asked Him how. He didn't really give me any indication. He didn't know. He just knew it needed to be done. We know that love for God's people was the apostles' concern, also Jesus' concern. John 17, 15. We read this, The past over time, I pray not that you should take them out of the world, but you should keep them from the evil one. They are not of this world, even if I am not of this world. What we do is very different for most of the world. Sanctify them through Thy truth. Thy word is truth. That's where the truth lies. As Thou hast sent me to the world, even so I have sent them into the world. We are here because of the people He sent, down through the generations. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their words.

Why? That they may be one, as You Father are in Me, I in Thee. That they also may be one with us.

That the world may believe You have sent Me. Your actions, our change lives, make the world believe God sent Him. As we say, we are here because of the words of God.

Jesus Christ's concern was for people.

Justice ours must be. Our concern must be with truth. The only real absolute truth is found in this book here. The Source. The Word of God. It's where it comes from. It's the only real perfect truth. It's not about men and copying what they do, but copying Jesus Christ. We want to be like the Father. Christ, of course, answered Philip when he asked, Show me the Father. What did He say? Have I been with you so long, Philip, that you haven't seen the Father? If you've seen Me, you've seen My Father.

It's interesting because that's the goal each of us has. You should be able to say, If you've seen Me, you've seen My older brother, and you've seen the Father.

We're a far cry from that, but that's what we're trying to be, and that's what we will be at one point in time.

And we were called, like it says in 1 Peter 2.21, because Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps.

And we're told to have this mind in you that was in Christ. In Philippians 2.5, the book is about our minds and our relationships, not things. How do Mr. Armstrong see things? We had a lot of things. We had three campuses at one time. We had a lot of properties. We had camps all over the world.

We had magazines. We were putting out nearly 9 million magazines, just the plain truth, plus a couple million good news per month, 10 issues a year. We were putting out 100 million documents a year, just in magazines. I remember one who put out the 500 millionth booklet.

But was it about those things? He was a prolific writer, and all those things were simply to clarify the plan of God.

But he saw things for what they really were for use. Now, did he, in his early years? I don't think so. He wanted to be with the rich and the famous and things, and it's interesting. He had a perspective on it differently when he was young than he did when he was old. It says, I'm sure Moses had a different perspective when he led Pharaoh's army than he did when he led Israel.

But he saw things for their use for God, for their use to help other human beings understand God.

We must know how to use the things God gives us. Not for ourselves, but to help others.

Everything in Mr. Armstrong's home, whether the church bought it or whether he bought it, and all those personal items he bought himself.

But it was interesting. He left them all to the church. At dinners with the students and others, he would talk about the kingdom of God. He'd let them ask questions about the church, about the Bible, about anything they wanted to ask. And he told them at the dinner he prepared at this beautiful table, and it was the most beautiful table I'd ever sat at. It's nicer than the ones I sat at with King Leopold or Queen Sirikod and King Poum-en-Pon or Queen Arshua, and different ones that we had dinner with.

But he said this is a foretaste of the kingdom of God. He said, we're going to have a wedding supper, and it's going to be so much nicer than this. But he wanted everyone to have a taste of quality, a taste of purity, a taste of something that really is just beyond it, what we could imagine. And of course, we're told that we don't even know what God has in store with us totally. It's beyond our comprehension. But it was all to help people understand the gospel. And he would, as he walked around the house, he'd tell me, if the work needs money, we'll sell all these paintings.

We'll sell all this. It didn't mean anything to him except that he could use it to help others. Do we help others? Matthew 25. Turn there, we read that often. But we have to be helping others because that's how we become a sheep or a goat. And he divides those. Matthew 25, verse 31. When the Son of Man comes in His glory and the holy angels with Him, and they are coming, He will sit on the throne of His glory, and before Him are gathered the nations, and He separates one from another, like the shepherd divides the sheep and the goats.

Verse 33, He's sheep are on the right hand, the goats on the left. And the King says, Come, you blessed my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. I've been looking for this since the foundation of the world. And why does He give it to Him? Who are the sheep? I was hungry, you gave me meat, I was thirsty, you gave me drink. A stranger, you took me in, naked, and you clothed me.

Sick, you visited me. In prison, you came to me. Things that we do in God's church. And the righteous say, When did we do that? When do we see you hungry or thirsty or naked? We didn't see you. You never had that. God took care of you. And He said, verse 40, The King shall answer, Rarely I say to you, And as much as you have done it To one of the least of these, my brethren, you've done it to me.

God sees everything you do, no matter how small it is. And that's expected of us. Do we believe what the Scripture says? Do we do it? Mr. Armstrong took out some individual cases occasionally. To me, I look that like wasting his time because he has spent two or three hours just talking one-on-one with someone to help with a problem. It wasn't a waste of time. It's just you feel so much better when you actually feel like you helped someone.

I mean, he was helping the whole church, but when you helped generically, the whole church, it doesn't feel the same. We need to do those little things. I have to do it. I made promises, promises that were hard, some bold promises that he made me make to him. He held my hand the day before he died, and he said, Aaron, promise me you'll be with me in the kingdom. What a hard promise. But this book shows how to keep that promise.

One of the movie lines, somebody said, well, I can't do it. It's too complicated. The answer was, it's not complicated. It's just hard. And that's true. It's just hard. It's not complicated. No other book tells us how to do it. I turned to Philippians 1.6 for encouragement all the time, just this, you should, as he did. Being confident of this very thing, that he, which has begun a good work in you, will perform it till the day of Jesus Christ. He does it. We don't. We have to yield to him and let him. We're all being tested. God sorts out the wheat and the chaff.

Do you know your Bibles? Have you blown the dust off? Do you discern the word properly? Or do scholarly works of men, or what appear to be scholarly works, throw you aside? Pride of knowledge. It's not there. We've had people leave because of sacred names things, calendar issues, other things. They get something in their mind. They can't seem to shake it. But yet all these things were looked at by Mr. Armstrong and those before him, even. And it's always caused division. And God hates division. Do you have the humility to learn from others? Or does your pride keep you from a proper understanding and teaching?

One of my favorite things Mr. Armstrong did, he ordered me to tell Mr. Kocz when he was wrong. At the time he was naming Mr. Kocz. And I said, you're asking me to tell my future boss when he makes a mistake? And he said, you corrected me. Which was rare, but it was true. Because a few things people brought to him sounded good. And he asked me if I agreed.

And I said, Mr. Armstrong, can we read the Scriptures? And if the Scriptures disagreed, it was out. That was the basis of how things came in. But for a while sometimes a few things came in and hung around until they got corrected. Do you turn the other cheek? Or do you demand to have your own way? Is your motive give or get? Do you feel entitled? Or do you feel under God's mercy that God's grace is sufficient for you, like he said to the Apostle Paul?

I proved what I was taught. I teach what I was taught. I'm irritated by people who say, we're going to change a doctrine, we're going to change the Sabbath. I'm more irritated when they say, well, you haven't changed it, but you're going to.

I told one man, you're going to get a divorce. And the only way he can prove that to me is if he dies married. You can't prove a going-to statement. That's ridiculous. But they say these things to destabilize people and to draw people away. I'll never forget my first introduction to a king. When Mr. Armstrong did the protocol thing and he said, Your Majesty, may I present to you Aaron Dean?

And he added a product of the schools I started. I never thought of myself as a product. I really didn't want people to look at me. I'm not enough like Christ yet. But that's the goal. To be exactly like God and His Son. I want to be presented to God, as you should. We're told that. In Jude 1.24, interesting verse there.

Verse 24 in Jude, chapter 1, because there's only one chapter. Under him that is able to keep you from falling, to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God, our Savior be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. You're going to be presented to God the Father. He called you, He gave you to His Son, and He's going to present you. I think that's an incredible thing. We must read the book and learn of God the Father who loved us enough to give us His Son.

You have to ask yourself, who made the greater sacrifice? Most fathers would die for their sons. It's harder to watch your son die. It's a tough thing to do. But we have to obey God and show our love by obedience to His law, all of His law, not picking and choosing, not redefining it. We should be able to let others correct us without getting angry. And even if the correction is wrong or seems unfair, only God sees the whole picture and where everything fits in what is fair. Who are we to say what is fair from God's point of view?

We have two or three pieces of the puzzle. He has the whole mural. And what we think is unfair is perfectly fair for training you for the position He wants you to have. We look at fairness, we think of Job. I wouldn't kill all of my friend's children and take all these possessions away from Him.

It's interesting how many Israelites died because of David's sin. That wouldn't be what we would call fair. But we have to trust God implicitly and know whatever He does. Jesus Christ accepted the wrongs that were done to Him. We have to accept any wrongs that may be done to us. Without complaining, without getting bitter, not deciding to run off and start our own churches or try to tell other people and gossip.

It's always caused problems. God fixes things His way and in His time. All the problems of the past get fixed. They just don't get fixed when people want them. And the splits for 6,000 years of man's history have happened because of pride and jealousy in the fruits of the flesh. Which tree are you eating off of? Are the fruits of the Spirit in your life? I've learned a lot of lessons from the past. Mostly I've learned how much I don't know, how much I can deceive myself at times if I'm not careful.

But God does know it all and He reveals what we need to know, when we need to know it, and how we need to hear it. If you're close to Him, we don't know everything. The other man of God who wanted to know things, Daniel 12, verse 8, he talks about wanting to know that God reserves the time and the place.

Daniel says, I heard and I understood not. Chapter 12, verse 8, Oh, my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And he says, Go your way, Daniel. It's sealed and closed till the time of the end. It's not for you to know. There are some things that are not for us to know.

Verse 10, Many shall be purified, made white, and tried, but the wicked will do wickedly, and none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand.

I thank God for the work He did through all the men in the Bible and through Herbert Armstrong as well and through other ministers that have helped me along my way. He has a place in history just as all of us do. The first fruits of God have a special place.

And that will happen when Christ returns. We should make more of Mr. Armstrong than He was, nor should we make less of Him. He was given a job, and He tried to do it the best He could until He died January 16, 1986. Do we do the same? We should. We're not as exposed to everyone, but we're exposed to our neighbors, and we should do the job that He's called us to.

Armstrong tried to warn us of what would come. It did come. Many failed to keep the Sabbath. They left the truth.

He'd be happy, though, that there's still those keeping the Sabbath, the holy days, the truths of God.

And that's what UCG is trying to do. We're trying to teach the truths of God. We don't preach a man, we preach the gospel. That's what He did.

We're one of the only groups that has a true protection, because with one man, you can go off. God appoints that man, and He has at different times through the years.

That's fine, but if He hasn't, then you have to protect yourself from those things by following God. He'd be proud of our documents, I think, that we're protecting.

Armstrong left the doctrines in the hands of the Advisory Council of the Elder. He called it his Ace in the Hole, parallel to our COE. He didn't leave that to his successor.

Unfortunately, that was changed. There was no legal basis to stop it. But those who would stand up were removed from the Council, and he began putting other people on and changing things.

I was the first one removed because he knew I would stand up to him, because I heard the promises. And I would tell him, as I promised I would, when he was wrong.

And so, I ended up where I wanted to be, have a family, and live on a lake in Texas, which Denny Luker pulled me out of. I'm not sure I liked that, but it was nice.

But I guess God had more for me to do, too. But God's always sorting the wheat from the chaff. The seed is sown on good ground and bad ground, stony ground, among thorns.

And God knows. Apostasy had to come from the top of the church. No one in the back of the room could say, quit keeping the Sabbath without being thrown out.

And we had to be tested. We had to find out what we believed. God had to know, like he said to Abraham, now I know where you stand.

Here we are left with a remnant who actually believed the Bible. Not the man in a position.

His sheep hear his voice, Christ said. But if you're on a different mountain, you don't hear that voice. You have to be close enough to God to hear.

We have to stay close to Christ. We have to know our Bibles. We have to know the truth.

Christ said, I do the will of my Father. We have to be about our Father's business. Strymerstrom did that well while he was alive and he left it in the hands of people he wished would have continued.

His message to world leaders was, other people have told you about the man Jesus Christ. I'm bringing you the message he brought.

Repent. The kingdom of God is at hand. Did he care about the books that he wrote? His legacy?

I brought a bunch of them up here. I was going to put them up earlier, but I forgot about it. He wrote a lot.

These are most of the books. Of course, he had a set of booklets as well.

And a lot of other things that I collect. I have boxes of it that I couldn't bring at all, but I brought pieces of it.

This book here is the listing of all the world leaders he met and the people that he did during the years.

Other people put that together. I just stole it.

But they were throwing it away, so I wasn't really sinning. And I repented if I was.

Did he care about these books? This legacy? Only us who would help you or me or others get in the kingdom of God.

If his name wasn't on any of these books and people read it and came to God, he would be very happy.

In the book, he tried to put the puzzle together with this one to make it easier for people to see and be guided through it.

It wasn't about him as about God, about the kingdom of God, about Jesus Christ, His Son.

And that's what it has to be for us. He called himself a worthless piece of junk. He wrote that in the autobiography.

He said it in his prayers, too. I know, because I heard them.

He was very sick and I had to stay in the room. It was actually the only time I ever heard him say good things about me. He was talking to the right person.

But it's interesting because we have to have that same kind of care and concern. And we have to yield to God.

And I saw what God can do with the worthless piece of junk, just like he can do with you or me, because we're all worthless pieces of junk as well, without God and His Holy Spirit.

But we, indeed, like Paul, can do all things through Christ that strengthens us and through the Spirit of God.

If things aren't going well in your life, perhaps you haven't truly yielded to Him.

Examine yourself.

But also, if things aren't going right, it may be that He's training you for something that you don't know what it is.

When Michelle and I, we were separated in college, they wouldn't let her transfer. They didn't think I was good enough for her.

They were probably right, but that's all right. I won anyway.

But then I started flying at graduation and we were separated some more. We'd always get used to it, I guess.

I learned to cook in college so I could eat better, and I had to do that on the plane.

I knew how to take things apart and fix things, so my dad was over maintenance.

I just had an electrical department and the cabinetry on the airplane to fix all sorts of things there.

But all these things you do, you don't know how God's going to use them.

And some things you may not want to do, but God knows what He needs you to do.

So you shouldn't complain about the things that you learn that you may think are below you because God wants you to understand something for the position He's going to give you when it comes.

Some people think I live in the past. I do not. I live in the present and the future. I look for the future.

But I do look back, so I know how to go forward.

When you read your Bible, you're looking back. Why? So you can know how to go forward.

And that's what we do. Don't be fooled by men. You have to follow God.

Did you get it? I think you did. That's why you're here.

I'll remind you of what my friend, he was my closest friend. I never thought I'd have a close friend that was 60 years older than I was.

But he's your friend because of what he wrote and what he wanted for each of us, just like the apostles wanted it, just like Paul longed for it, just like Christ longed for it, and Moses.

What are we going to do? Will we do it? Do we get it?

We honor people in the proper way, but the honor all goes to God and Christ, who did all things.

In Judges, or not Judges, but in Joshua, the last chapter, Joshua 23, there's a verse there. I want to read in chapter 31, chapter 23.

It says, Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua, and which had known all the works of the Lord, for he had done for Israel.

Will we pass it on? Or will it die with those who were with him and those of the elders that knew him and knew those that followed him?

Of course, Moses was a single leader, and so was Joshua. But elders, there was a group of elders that led Israel. It hasn't always been one man in Israel. In fact, if all of us followed God's way perfectly, we wouldn't have problems in leadership. It wouldn't be a problem.

I pray that we in the United Church of God always do get it.

I'm thankful we followed the teachings that we were taught in this book. I'm glad we don't idolize any men.

Mr. Armstrong, Moses, you name it. We don't idolize any of them, because idolatry is wrong. We worship the one true God and his Son.

The truth is in this book, and our salvation rests with God, not with men. We do show a proper respect, because the work is indeed about God, and we're thankful for those who serve Him. God says to give honor to those who serve, and we do that.

My prayer, as I close out, is that we can have the same dedication to God until we die, or Christ returns, whichever happens first.

Dedication of our young people, I hope can be as strong as the dedication of our forefathers was. In that way, we will honor Herbert W. Armstrong, but more impertantly, we will honor God the Father and Jesus Christ, his Son.