Gain From God's Perspective

Well, good morning, everyone! Good morning! It's good to see everybody here. I appreciated the sermonette. I appreciated the special music since they tie into the message. It's amazing how things all work together for good as well as they do. But I do appreciate all the effort and everything that's been done to make this really a wonderful, wonderful festival site. Bev and I are very happy to keep the Feast of Tabernacles with you. And it's been a blessing to us, even though on the surface it didn't seem to be, of not going to Africa where we have been numerous times to be with people that we really need to be with, and people whom we love and we have worked with on various levels with humanitarian work and also work with the church with them as well.

But it's been our pleasure to be with you and to get to know the people in this part of Ohio, for that matter, many other parts of Ohio and Michigan that we have not gotten to know that well. Even though I've been part of the scene, so to speak, here in Cincinnati for three years, we really have not been to services all the time in the East Church. And we just really feel like we've got to know some of the people better that we haven't gotten to know, where we informally speak before and after services, and it's just been very wonderful to get to know people that we hadn't gotten to know.

Also, we've got to reacquaint ourselves with others who have come from other places around the country that we had known in years past, and the Feast overall has been a tremendous blessing to us. We were in Minneapolis for the Feast of Trumpets, and we were there because it was a special occasion. The church there was started 50 years ago on the Feast of Trumpets, and that's the home church for both Beverly and me. I started attending there two years after the church started, so it had a lot of dear memories for me.

Bev started there in 1969. Then, on the way back, this was after the Sabbath services, I got some shooting pains in my head, but I'm a master of denial, and I thought they'll just go away. But on Sunday night, they didn't, and we stopped at the drug store, and they said, oh, I don't know about those kinds of pains. Are they on one side of their head? Yes. Uh-oh. You'd better see a doctor.

And here, we're leaving for the feast in just a few days. Well, the doctor confirmed there were shingles. I thought, oh, great. This is only this. I don't need this right now. I anoint people for shingles. I don't get shingles. So, anyway, then on Tuesday, the next day, he says, well, since your eye looks the way it does, which looks swollen, so forth, you'd better see ophthalmologists. So I did.

And he says, under no circumstances go to Africa, because the place where the first part of the feast was to be held, and we were going to be in Malawi and Zambia and a little bit with the South African brethren. And we were three hours away from even the poorest of healthcare, and he says you could be in danger of losing sight in your left eye. And so, I had to make the painful decision of not going to Africa, but as it turned out, it's been something that's worked out for the best.

We were mostly concerned about the fact of how would things be handled in those countries, because in Malawi, there are 175 people, a newly ordained elder, and we had one minister from the United States who was there going to be the entire time, Howard Davis from New York. And he's turned out to be a big blessing for the area. He's really done marvelously with filling in for speaking, and also with caring for some of the needs of the brethren. And they had 40% more people than they did last year. They had 175 people, and they had three ordained as deacons. And I was just so happy to hear about things that turned out very, very well.

The same is also true for Zambia, where they had two fisites, one near the capital city of Lusaka, and another one about 600 miles to the northeast, halfway to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. And the one in Zambia, the Lusaka had 180 in attendance, and up northwest or east, had 105 in attendance. So we were very happy to see them able to handle things very well. David Mills was there for the feast for half the time in Zambia, and he went to Zimbabwe for the other half.

But we've really had just a lot of challenges to work with as far as health in those countries. Our elder there has had a stroke a number of years ago and had been in bed for a week before the feast. Our newly ordained elder has been in the hospital three times with respiratory problems.

The elder's wife in Zimbabwe has been under chemotherapy treatment during the past year. And we've just had one thing after another with us not coming. It was just disheartening about all these things that really had to come together, but they have, and they've come together very well. And Bev and I feel very blessed in being here with you.

The way I looked the day that I was told I couldn't go because of my eye with appearance, my head was all splotchy and so forth. And I wrote to Peter Eddington, if you need a model for an apocalyptic scene from beyond today, I'm available at this time. I was looking at one of those guys in 1975 in prophecy. I honestly didn't really look very good. But I do feel a lot better. In fact, I got to feeling real well after the first couple days of the feast. In fact, Bev says, you know, you said we can probably still go to Africa. But if God said no, because I had a slippage and didn't feel good and miss two days of services here, but I'm getting better slowly by the day.

And as I was walking down the hall, where's Terry Swaggerty here? Terry Swaggerty cornered me. I mean, in a place where the hall turns to right, he cornered me. And I have never seen him look so desperate. And I've known Terry for nearly 30, 40 years. He saw that I was on two feet and walking, and he had two sermons. And he was lamenting the fact that he only had one fee sermon, which he, of course, announced so proudly here.

And so he was going to have to come up with another fee sermon. So he was saying, can you please speak? You know, I was down till the sixth day and so forth. You know, he gave me this big sales job, you know, about how it was necessary for me to speak.

And how people would love it and all this kind of stuff, you know. So anyway, our main project after the feast is to go to Indianapolis and to help him with his second fee sermon. So as our feast manpower is being stretched out, you know, we go out to... or we can make his first one into a series or something. But we'll work on it, Terry. We'll work on it.

We're right there with you. We're helping here. We have now in the United States 11 fee sites and 7 satellite sites. And one of our real serious issues is the fact that we have to stretch our ministry out over more sermons. And typically, most ministers have to speak twice at fee sites. And we've been concerned about the fact that perhaps the quality of speaking may go down.

But, you know, all over across the country, I've heard from Roy Holiday and I've heard from other places around the world and around the country who have just really exclaimed as to how good the speaking has been this year. That includes the feast site here. I have really thoroughly appreciated all the messages that I have heard here at the feast. In fact, I would like to use the opening night message as a model for other festival sites for the kind of service to hold and for the kind of message to give, because I just felt so up after that evening service.

And usually the first service, you know, everybody's driving in, everybody's sometimes not even fully checked into the hotel. And if the service is long and heavy and so forth, you know, it gets to be, you know, kind of a difficult start. But I just really felt very, very up. And I want to thank Frank and Sue Dunkel for the work that they have done. He's one of our bright leaders here who does everything from being the festival coordinator to the festival clown. I mean, he does the whole gamut, you know, of things that are done here.

And I realize, too, I've told him how much I appreciate what he's done. He says, oh, he says, don't thank me. Just thank all the people who have helped out and give credit to a lot of people who helped. But I do know what it's like to be festival coordinator. The slightest thing that goes wrong, you know, it's too hot. It's too cold. Who do they call?

Your staff? No, they call you, you know. We don't have a plug for a projector. We don't have a projector. But the screen, the screen doesn't work, you know. Who do they call? They call the festival coordinator. So I know all the things that have to be done. And they have done a lot of extra things, even for the senior citizens' banquet. Yesterday, they made these little bags with, you know, candy in them that had a very special touch to it.

And I have just appreciated all the work that they have put forth into what's been done. Also, I appreciated the music that we have had here for the feast, the special efforts with the children. And this really is becoming a major feast site. I wrote to our brethren in South Africa that we had nearly 250 to 300 people for the site.

Oh, you're twice, you're three times as big as we are here in South Africa. But I would like to also ask for your special prayers for something that is on my mind very, very much. Is that I really would like Cincinnati to become a major site for the church. And, you know, we have been talking about expanding our home office, which we really need to.

Now, it's not at the expense of doing the work or it's asking people for more money or any of that sort of thing. But it's asking for God's special favor to help us with something that I truly feel is a need. Because it's something that would integrate into a much larger need being fulfilled than just having a place to have a feast. But we do need to expand our facilities for our video productions with Beyond Today, with our Beyond Today dailies, and many other video productions that we have.

We really are outgrowing our facilities at the current configuration that we have. And we really could expand our home office and we could put a larger auditorium that would be dedicated for church services, for the Feast of Tabernacles, and to have a seating capacity of five to seven hundred people or so. We could have the same location that's already paid for just be built on.

And I truly believe that God can provide that for us. I believe that we are entering a very special, wonderful area of growth in the church, where this will be something that will be the function and the result of growth in numbers and people and quality that God is certainly providing for to have those things that we need to. So I do ask for your prayers for continued peace, continued focus on our vision and performance of our mission, and doing those things that we should have been doing all along without any further distractions. But I would like to see us be able to move forward with that before long.

We have talked about it, but then with some of the difficulties that we've had, we had to have certain cutbacks that wasn't the right time and place. But I do feel like the right time and place is coming. Some of the most encouraging figures to me have been, it's not by how much we send out or how many hits we have or that type of thing.

To me, the most encouraging figures are the growth that we have, the outcomes that are the result of what we do as far as media, as far as our ministry, as far as our being able to reach out, the quality and the outcomes in results. We had 4.5% growth in attendance in the Feast of Trumpets over last year, and that really caused me to be brought a lot of cheers.

I really believe that we have so many people that are in the incubator, so to speak, who have been receiving our literature, perhaps in some cases for years, that are looking on the websites over and over again and seeing what we're doing, that are looking at our websites. We're going to do a massive overhaul of our local church websites after the Feast because that's the first place that people go to, to see what is this church doing and what are the local churches doing and who's there and so forth.

We're going to really improve that very quickly here after the Feast. But I truly believe that we are a group of people that people will get to know as, hey, they're the ones who have this information about whatever. The covenants, the kingdom of God, life and death, they have the answers. They're the ones who have a strong tradition. They have been around a long time. They're very biblically founded, an organization of great integrity, and people will be drawn to us in that way. We can't call people. I can't turn knobs in people's minds to make them believe. God does that. But I do know that I have enough influence to where I can stop the process or I can slow the process down by what I do or what I don't do.

We have to ask God to please help us to be facilitators and not to be roadblocks in people's journey, people's climbing a ladder towards involvement in eternal life, climbing the ladder towards the kingdom of God. We used to talk about how we worked with people to the public first and getting people to start climbing a ladder of involvement, as we used to call it, when I worked 25 years ago in the church.

And the first areas of involvement was to hear something, to see something, to now click on something that is of interest, that looks appealing or answers a question or is fortuitous for that moment.

Next step is to send for something or to read something and to ponder it and to think about it. Next step is to ask, well, who's behind this and what else do they have?

I know that when I came into understanding the truths, when I saw that there were certain conceptions of mine that were destroyed from what I had believed all my life, I began to ask even more questions. Well, what else is it that I believe that isn't biblical and people become more and more involved? Then they start asking questions, well, I'd like to talk to somebody.

I would like to see if there are others who believe this way. And we want to make certain that every step of the way or every rung that they climb, that there is something to grab a hold of, whether it's contacting a minister, whether it's receiving a visit, or whether it's their experience of visiting a local church website that's up to date, that's clear, that's friendly, inviting, shows that there's a lively church behind it, or that these people are doing something, they're organized, they're appealing in what they have.

And that's the direction that we want to go, to make certain that there's no missteps, that there is a very sad expectation or a very heavy expectation of something good, and when they come, it's not as good as they'd expected it to be. So that's what we're working on, and I truly believe that God will bless us in this whole church-wide effort. I do believe that when we changed or amended our vision statement to include a whole church effort, it wasn't more than just window dressing. It was really involving everybody from the youngest to the oldest, and to show them that we're a church of integrity, that we live what we believe, and that we're very earnest about the truth.

Well, the Feast of Tabernacles is the celebration of the Millennial Rule of Jesus Christ on the earth. I think we know that very, very well. It's the Kingdom of God coming to the earth, and it's the fulfillment and the answer to a prayer that we ask every day. Thy Kingdom come. This suggests that, first of all, it's not our kingdom, we're a kingdom of man's doing, but it's God's kingdom, and it's not here, because we're saying, Thy Kingdom come. We're not praying for the kingdom here, we're praying for the kingdom that is to come. And when Christ returns and the Millennium begins, the Kingdom of God is already come to the earth, and that is the answer to that prayer. In Revelation 20, verse 4 through 6, I'll just kind of quote from parts of those verses, And I saw thrones. This is Revelation 20, verse 4, And I saw thrones, and they that sat on them, and judgment was committed to them, And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. Over such the second death has no power. But they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him for a thousand years. And that's what we celebrate here at the Feast of Tabernacles, the reign of Jesus Christ coming to this earth. There's actually very little said about the meaning of the Feast of Tabernacles in Leviticus 23, which is the chapter which lists all of the feasts of the Lord, so to speak. But the day that is to be observed, the fifteenth day of the seventh month, shall be the Feast of Tabernacles. This is Leviticus 23, some of the main scriptures that give us authority about when we observe these days. Leviticus 23 and verse 34. On the first day there shall be a holy convocation, which we did, but then it'll be a feast of seven days. So one is a feast and a holy day, and the other just are feast days, days that we also enjoy the feast. And then we have one more, which is the eighth day, as has been traditionally called the last great day.

The one striking aspect of this feast is that the entire nation observed it. The entire nation observed it, and it was a place that people went to. How this actually will be fully done in the world tomorrow, I'm not sure. But nonetheless, we know that for the Feast of Tabernacles, as we have done it in the church, we don't usually stay at home. We go to a place that God has chosen to keep the feast. In Deuteronomy chapter 14 and verse 22. You shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain. Deuteronomy 14 verse 22. Tithe all increase of your grain, that the field produces year by year. And you shall eat, verse 23, before the Lord your God in the place where he chooses to make his name abide. And that is done administratively, by where we can rearrange and have locations that can be served best in the manpower that we have to provide such a venue and event.

And you will eat before the Lord your God a tithe of your grain, your new wine and oil, and of the firstborn of your herds and your flocks, that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always. We had an outstanding sermon about fearing the Lord. I really, really appreciated how well that was explained. And you shall spend that money, that money, that 10%, that tithe, for whatever your heart desires, for oxen, sheep, for wine, similar drink, for whatever your heart desires. You shall eat there before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household.

This is not a convention just for church leaders. It's not a convention just for the men. It's not something where the children are not considered important, but you and your household. Your spouse, your children, are all to be part of this celebration for the purpose of learning to fear God always, to love Him, to respect Him, to honor Him, to understand Him, and understand what He is doing.

One time on a local radio station when I lived in Minnesota, just before the Feast of Tabernacles, the announcer had a little special program about an obscure Jewish feast called Sukkoth that was being observed at this time of year. Isn't that bizarre how something which has been so highlighted biblically as the highlight where the entire family goes to observe has been relegated to being called an obscure Jewish harvest festival.

And this really points out a very important aspect of the feast days for all of us as Christians. We are not Jews. We are Christians. These are the feasts of the Lord. While it was the Jews and the Hebrews that basically kept these days, first and foremost, they were not intended to be basically kept by them. Prothetically, they were to be kept by the entire world, that those in Egypt will come up and keep the Holy Days to keep the feasts of the Lord.

And really, we don't keep Rosh Hashanah, we don't keep Yom Kippur, Sukkoth, and the other names of the festivals as the Jews have them labeled. I have gotten cards from people sometimes, Happy Hashashana, or Happy New Year, and so forth. Those are not the days that we keep. We don't keep Rosh Hashanah, and we don't keep Yom Kippur. We keep the feasts of trumpets. We keep the day of atonement. These are the days that we keep with the centeredness being with Jesus Christ as the very center of it, which is certainly not Jewish at all.

We observe the feasts that Jesus Christ kept when he spoke about the pouring out of the Holy Spirit of God. We keep the Passover as Jesus Christ instituted it for New Testament Christians. We keep the foot washing as part of the way that Jesus Christ said, this you will do. Follow this example, and whatever I do, you shall do to others in that same way.

I wanted to tell you just a little story, which I will spend very little time, but it really underscores how important it is to understand about the Christ-centeredness of the festival days. As you probably well know, I have worked with Ukrainian Sabbatarians and other Sabbatarians around the world over the last 20 years or more.

In 1991, 22 years ago, I made contact with a large pocket of them in western Ukraine. There are approximately 12,000-13,000 Sabbath keepers in Ukraine, Romania, and Moldova with over 100 congregations. They thrived under Stalinism, well, not under Stalinism so much, it was really after that, because that was in the mountains. There are hardly any Sabbath keepers in the big cities, but in the mountains, the people basically had a little bit more freedom.

They could have their own homes, and they worked their gardens and were builders. Large pockets of these people developed even under the Soviet system. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, some of these people came to the US and found us in Florida, first of all. Then they found our church. Since I spoke Ukrainian, I was asked to speak to them and found out about an entire culture, about an entire grouping of people that had kept the festivals, many of the things that we observed ourselves. Our beliefs were similar.

And so, in 1992, I went over, the first time, this is the first of many trips, to see who these people were. I was astounded by what I found. There were people who understood the nature of God, the Father, Jesus Christ. They understood the Holy Spirit being the power of God. They had a very, very clear understanding of the Sabbath. Much more strict than we keep the Sabbath, for that matter. They didn't use a sign of the cross. They said, if Jesus were killed with a gun, would we have a gun as a symbol of our religion?

I mean, this is the argument that they used. They understood the state of the dead, that we're not in heaven, but that we are asleep until the resurrection. They had an understanding about clean, unclean meats. In some ways, even stronger than ours. They bleed their fish, even. They didn't keep the Roman holidays. They totally rejected Christmas and Easter. But, they did not keep the Holy Days. Very few did. They resisted them. My very first sermon was, knowing this, maybe it wasn't the wisest, but I did it anyway, is why we keep the Holy Days.

Why I observe the Holy Days, and why they are important to us. And the reaction I got from the audience and from the pastors was negative. They kind of crossed their arms, either mentally or in person, and just did not want to really go further with that subject, and did not want to even talk about it very much.

However, after a number of trips, we talked about the Holy Days, about our observance of them, and they basically stiff-armed the Holy Days. Well, finally, after a couple of years and a couple of trips, the truth came out. Yes, we've had several people that have started keeping these festivals, Holy Days. My question to them was, look, you keep the Passover, that you find in Leviticus 23.

It was the very first of the feasts of the Lord, the Sabbath Passover, and then you seem to draw a line, and you don't go beyond that. You don't go beyond and keep the days of 11 bread and Pentecost, a feast of weeks. And they said, you know, we've had a number of people that have adopted these days.

The first thing that happens after they do, they become Jews. They start growing beards. They start growing long sideburns. They wear funny little caps. And the worst of all, they get circumcised. They say, oh, we can't handle that. They say, Jesus Christ is our Lord. And we don't want to relegate Him into being a carpenter again. That's the way they would say it a number of times. We want to honor Jesus Christ as our Lord. Well, in 2006, I visited Ukraine and visited one of the pastors who was quite resistant about the Holy Days. And it was one week after Pentecost. In fact, I gave a sermon on Pentecost in Lafayette, Indiana.

And then the next Sabbath, I was in Ukraine, and I gave the same sermon, basically, about Pentecost. About the fact that the Church of God was started on a Holy Day. The Church of God wasn't even started on a Sabbath day, and couldn't possibly be even a Saturday.

The Church started on the Day of Pentecost. Then I explained to them that Jesus Christ is the center of all the Holy Days. You know, going on to the Feast of Trumpets. And I explained things that I had talked to them about before, but perhaps I had. Perhaps not made it clear the centricity, the centralness of Jesus Christ as being the center of all the Holy Days and festivals.

That same pastor came to me afterwards to be talked again, and they love to talk. They'll talk you to death. They'll talk you to 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning. You have to say, enough! I can't handle it, you know, anymore. But they just are so curious. They want to say, they'll ask you questions, too. They'll say, that answer is not good enough. I want to know what's in your heart, not what's in your mind. They are just very, very direct, and they just love to draw everything out from the people that they talk to. He said, I begin to understand why the Holy Days are so important to you because of Jesus Christ.

And he didn't point out the fact that I didn't come with a beanie in my head, or long sideburns, or wore black clothing. He said that I understand this now. And so he started keeping the Holy Days with that church. Then we produced the booklet, God's Holy Days, and translated it into the Russian language. And they said, this is amazing truth that we hadn't understood before.

It was wonderful to be with people that hadn't understood something before, even though it took a while from our first visit in 1992 to 2006. I mean, that's a long time. That's 14 years before they started adopting these days.

And now, more and more of the Sabbath keepers are adopting the Holy Days because not only do they see that it's Biblical, but they're not threatened by the fact that certain elements will take them and to take their faith in a direction that they're not comfortable with. I told them about Christ being the very heart and core of the observance of all festivals, and that these days actually paint and actually display the mind of God for mankind.

That these are days that while we worship God on these days, these are days that God gives to us to understand Him better. And as they know about the Passover service, and their Passover service is very similar to ours. Very solemn, very reverential, understanding that Jesus Christ established the symbols of the New Testament Passover. The New Testament Passover is not Jewish at all. It's the same thing with the bread and the wine and the foot washing, for that matter, that they observe.

I said, let's carry that now further to all the Holy Days. I said, really, for the Passover, we don't observe the coming out of Egypt. We may talk about coming out of Egypt in a spiritual sense or a metaphorical sense, and ascribe Pharaoh being Satan, Egypt being the land of sin, and so forth, but we don't celebrate that. We don't really observe that. We observe coming out of sin and developing the righteous character of Jesus Christ, signified by the unleavened, the deflated bread. Pentecost. While we do point out the fact that that's the day the law was given, the big focus of the day of Pentecost is the establishment of the Church and the giving of the Holy Spirit to the Church, which, incidentally, is also the day that the law of God was given.

Feast the trumpets. It's not some civil New Year's Day. We're not crowning a king of Israel on this day. This day is a day that is the return of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the dead at the sound of a trumpet. And now, slowly, since 2006, more and more of these people have been keeping the Holy Days. They've reprinted our booklet on God's Holy Days. It's being very well read in western Ukraine and former USSR republics. We had a number of them come to our Feast of Tabernacles in Estonia, and they really would like to keep the Feast of Tabernacles with us.

We even thought about having the Feast with them two years ago in Hungary, and we still are kind of toying with the idea that our cultures are so different, though. Our cultures are so different that it's not a matter of doctrine, it's more a matter of culture. But that's another subject, and I could talk about that later. The Holy Days lay out a coordinated plan and perspective, as Mr. Adams alluded to in his sermonette, of God's working with mankind from the deepest personal experience of coming to repentance, which is deeply personal.

Now, when you come to repentance, when you see that you are nothing, that you need to repent not only of what you've done, said, thought, but also of the things that you are, those are things that you say and really admit to God, maybe not even fully to your mate. But those are very deeply personal things that you come before God and say, I come and I repent of my sins, and I accept Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. That's where the plan of God begins, this little mustard seed.

And we see it developing and growing into developing character. We see it in being given the Holy Spirit by Jesus Christ and becoming part of a church. We see it as the return of Jesus Christ to the earth and being born again, or to being born into the kingdom of God in a very literal sense, of being resurrected at the trump of God, at the return of Jesus Christ. It all becomes very clear, very, very transparent. The plan of God just seems to mushroom and become bigger and bigger.

And then finally, the kingdom... Then there's another Holy Day there that talks about reconciliation as one that falls right before the establishment of the kingdom of God on the earth. Whether it is a celebration, a very solemn remembrance of reconciliation, which has to come before the kingdom of God is put here on the earth. There has to be a reconciliation of mankind to God in a peacemaking process of something as deep in the heart of mankind in a relationship with God.

And then the kingdom of God, which is symbolized by the Feast of Tabernacles, and then it gets even bigger as salvation and God's plan of His love for mankind is given to everybody. Everybody has that opportunity to the rest of the world, to the billions of people that have been born. So you see an amazing perspective from being something very personal just between you and Jesus Christ to something that is made available to everybody in a big sense. You understand this. I understand this. The world does not. And this perspective is something which is an amazing aspect of the observance and the keeping of the days that we do.

To me, this has been the most exciting truth of all about God in a very coordinated way, giving His understanding to me of the transformation from being what we are right now to being born into the kingdom. And to me, this is our greatest distinctive from anybody else around. If you don't keep the Holy Days, if you don't get really the outline for this, you're really spinning and understanding a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but you don't get it in the coordinated way that you really do.

To me, the Gospel of the Kingdom of God is the Gospel itself because it contains everything that people think of as the Gospel. Eternal life, Jesus Christ being center of your life, Jesus Christ Himself, period, talks about His grace, and so forth. All that's included here in the study and in the discussion about the Kingdom of God. Do we value our understanding in how we keep these days? The Holy Days explain the biggest questions about the human experience, and the Holy Days explain in a way that no other way can explain.

You probably have all known and heard of Carl Sagan, one who was on Nova series for a long time, died in about 1996 or so. You know, and I take a look at what some of these people wrote. Very learned men who really had huge minds in some ways as to seeing the universe and its greatness, and yet were absolutely ignorant of the things that you and I have had our minds open to.

Now, Carl Sagan, he's known for his pale blue dot quotes in how he referred to the Earth. The Voyager satellite, you know, if you want to call it that satellite, the spaceship that left our solar system, after it got outside the gravitational pull of the Sun, the command was given to it to turn around and focus back onto the Earth. And a little glimmer of the Earth was seen as a tiny little pale dot. Now, to some people, seeing that this is the crucible of life, where God is working from as a mustard seed, is immense truth about how God is so loving and caring, he's developing and incubating something very little, but that's going to grow very, very big. Atheists, among them, Carl Sagan, didn't see it that way. Carl Sagan, when that little blue dot was displayed, said, consider that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've heard of, every human being, whoever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor, explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and singer in the history of our species, lived there on a moat of dust suspended in the sunbeam. And he went on to explain in his book on the tiny blue speck, the pale blue dot, that it's really nothingness. We're just nothing wandering around, totally insignificant. There was a debate at Biola University, which I have on a DVD, between a believer in the great God who created the universe and an atheist who said, this is all just kind of come to be. And one of the crux arguments was from the believer was, look, what God has done, what he's created, all these great phenomena, all these galaxies, all this universe is huge for his family that is to grow and to fill this, and something which he speaks of in the Word of God, when even some of the greatness wasn't fully understood by the writers or even by the technologies of their time. The atheists came back and say, why would a God waste so much, have so much, that is so incomprehensible for the need to incubate these few little people? Isn't that just a waste? And you just realize, is that with God staring at these people and saying, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, they still don't see him. But brethren, you and I can see God, and we can understand him, and we can participate in this process of growth, this process of coming to be a part of that kingdom and a part of that family.

What do we understand from God's perspective? I'd like you to turn to Acts 3, verse 19, known as the pivotal verse in the Bible. The pivotal verse in the New Testament, and perhaps even to be safe to say, the entire Bible. This is still part of the sermon that the Apostle Peter magnificently delivers on the Feast of Pentecost. Peter writes, or as is recorded here, Acts 3, verse 19, Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, that he may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until a times of restoration of all things. The Apostle Peter, here's a fisherman, and I'm not sure how much learning he had, but he had an amazing perception about the meaning of life, about the history of the human race, and about the messengers in that human race through his people, the Jews, which God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. There's going to be a restoration, there's going to be a coming to fulfillment of all those things that have been preached from day one. And that's what Christianity is going to be able to continue on with. This was given on the first day of the official start of Christianity, on the day of Pentecost, in 31 A.D. This is knowledge that's been hidden from the world, and yet it's right there in your Bible. Six billion Bibles have been printed to date. Still a bestseller in this country. Ten million copies of the Bible are produced every year. I mean, if any book had ten million copies produced in any one year, it would be considered a wild bestseller. But the Bible is one that produces annually ten million copies. It's been translated into three and a half thousand different languages. It's been translated digitally. It's been translated into Morse code. It's been translated into Braille. It's been translated into every known communication device, method of communication. And yet, the knowledge of what the Bible is is understood by very, very few, and by those who really practice the things that the Bible teaches. You really don't understand the Word of God if you only read it and say, Aha, I understand it. The Aha moment comes from doing it and fulfilling it. I have kept the feast now for 47, 48 years. And I daresay that the last several years, the understanding becomes deeper and deeper about what God is doing with mankind, what He's doing with me personally, what He's doing with my family, the way He's shaping my values, the way that He's shaping the way I think and the way I envision things. But it's not done by just reading it and saying, Oh, that's great. No, it's done by keeping it, by observing it, by doing those things that God says to do. In this particular case, to go to a place that God has declared you are to go to and you are to rejoice before Him for seven days, you are to eat and drink, and you are to learn to fear the Lord your God always. Learn to respect Him, honor Him, understand Him in ways deeper and deeper all the time. That's where I get my understanding. And I'm sure that you can say that about yourself, too.

That's why we are to assemble together, not to forsake the assembling of ourselves, because we encourage, we support, we lift each other up.

Isaiah 11, verse 9, this is another verse, having to do with the millennial time. However, it deals with this concept of knowledge and what we know and understand. Isaiah 11, verse 9, they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Suggestion is that the knowledge of the Lord is not here yet. That in spite of all the knowledge that we have and access to knowledge that we have, mankind still doesn't get it because he doesn't practice it. And mankind can think he knows, but until you practice it, you don't understand it. We live in the information age. We live in the information age where right now I find myself being too lazy to go to my books, because it's so easy with Google just to look up something very, very quickly. I needed to look up a Carl Sagan quote, you know, boom, I just typed in a little, you know, just typed in, I kind of remembered that it was pale blue dot, there it was, all his quotes, almost all his books, everything is just available at my fingertips. But do we practice what the Bible says? We are to practice, do we live it? Well, until you do, you won't get that perspective. You will just have head knowledge. There are many people who know. Hosea 4, verse 5. Hosea 4, verse 5. My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. People are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. You can know a lot of things academically, but really knowing it means to be practicing it, means to be living it, means internalizing it. To where you really believe, this is it. This is what I am living for. This is what I'll die for. I hope that all of us feel this way about our faith, and it will never be dissuaded from observing, keeping, and practicing those things that we're doing. One of our most popular booklets, probably is, is What is Your Destiny? Which is pretty much a rewrite of some of the thoughts. I shouldn't say rewrite because it's far more than that. But the concepts go back to our most popular booklet in full time, which was Why Were You Born? I have to say that when I brought the booklet, Why Were You Born?, this is when I first came to visit the Sabbatarians. They said, whoever wrote this booklet was a genius. He really put things together in a way that is amazing. This is truly an evangelistic booklet. That's the way they put it. But the questions that are asked in the beginning of the booklet that are answered throughout it are, What is your destiny and why do you exist? Is there a reason and purpose for human life? And you know something? I know that. I know that I have a purpose. Isn't that great? You know that you have a purpose. Do you know that there are people outside of this room that just don't know that at all? They are just vegetating from year to year or living with false values of just trying to get as much as they can or experience as much as they can, not really thinking too much about beyond this or being fearful of what's beyond this. I'm not afraid of what's beyond this life. I welcome what's coming beyond this life. I can wait, but I almost can't wait to see those things that are coming. The Apostle Paul said, you know, I'm torn.

He said that I win both ways. With all the persecution and all the beatings that he had gone through and all the trials that he had, he said that, you know, if I'm to leave you and to die is what he meant, then I'll be with Christ. And he already had a vision of what it would be like. It was so wonderful that he couldn't even possibly explain it. It was something that was really worthwhile. It wasn't just staring at some beam of light. It was something that was so wonderful that God gave him a glimpse of it just to keep him going. But he said that, also, I want to be with you. So whether I'm with you or if I die, I win both ends. And I hope that all of us can feel that way. This is an older group. Not everybody's going to be here in five years. Some of us are going to experience that holy city and the experience of the kingdom of God in our next moment of consciousness. Are we preparing for that now? Are we excited about it? You know, one thing that has really made me very, very fulfilled, I would say in the last several years, is that I don't get so rattled and shook about trials. You know, people have had a lot worse trials than I have had. People have lost children. I can't imagine that. When people have lost a mate, that's very, very hard to fathom. But you live through it. You have to. Now, people have lived through horrible trials of one sort or another. But, you know, when you have the whole perspective of God, of how God is working with you, and His whole plan of what He has beyond, and you see the whole picture, it'll all even out, and it'll all have its place. Now, just the way the perspective is of the Bible, as we have it from when God first created mankind, and created two trees, and then had quite a history of a lot of horrible things that happened. And sometimes you get very bogged down that unless you understand the whole point of what God is doing with mankind, it gets to be a pretty heavy story. But it finally all evens out. My wife and I have sometimes enjoyed reading the Bible to each other in the morning, and then until we found you-verse, which has several different readings of the Bible on the Internet, where you can actually have a human voice read the Bible to you. And so we have said, hey, this is, let's listen to it. And this way...

The plug came out. Oh, the plug came out. Okay.

So we started listening, you know, Genesis, hey, great stories and so forth. And then we really got bogged down in judges. Rape, murder, you know. I said, I'm not going to work this day. I mean, I'm just going to cut somebody's head off. I'm not going to work today if I listen to too much of this stuff, you know. It just, you know, it sounds terrible. In fact, a couple of times when listening through some of these violent chapters and the stupidity of all the actions of people, I said, let's listen to Psalms, you know. Let's just jump ahead for now, you know, just to do that. We actually jumped into the New Testament, you know, because we couldn't take all the stories of just all the violence. But when you see the whole plan of God, even in the way He designed the Scriptures, where in the first two chapters of the Bible, God lays out very, very clearly what He wanted for man.

Here's the tree of life. Not only did He talk about the tree of life, man had access to the tree of life, and it wasn't that it was forbidden in any way. Here it is! And the suggestion is, is that it's called the tree of life. In other words, whatever fruit you take from it is going to perpetuate life. Then there's also the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Uh-uh. Stay away from that one. Because if you do, then you'll be cut off from the tree of life, which perpetuates life. Well, we know the story very well, how man made the wrong choice.

And then, why do you have all the violent history? You know, going through to the flood, then you have the story of Nimrod, you know, and Tower of Babel, and it just doesn't get any better. Israel was just a, you know, a nation that just didn't obey very well. And the whole history of Israel is just terrible. Second Kings 17, finally God gives up on them, so to speak, at that point. He says, okay, the people are going into captivity. They don't get it. He had a plan of redemption, of course, through Jesus Christ. And through Jesus Christ, and through the Church, and through the giving of the Holy Spirit, a new covenant was established, of which we are a part of, very thankfully. But finally, in the very, very end, the Bible ends where it begins. And it really puts the whole story together. I wanted to just show you that, so that you could kind of understand the wisdom and the great thought that God had for mankind.

God has a far greater view of things than we possibly could ever have ourselves. I'd like to kind of go through this story. I just kind of gave you the barest versions, but I'd like you to turn to Genesis 2, verse 17. Because everything we need to know about man, about man's transgressions, and man falling to the state that he did, is all recorded very, very clearly, and then ultimately redeemed in the final sense through Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. Genesis chapter 2, verse 17. But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. And that is exactly what happened in Genesis chapter 3, which I would like to point out, because I think it's important to show how evil had entered in and how it had to be redeemed. Genesis chapter 3 and verse 3. Now the serpent was more cunning, he was brilliant with evil intent, than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, has God indeed said that you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? We have a phenomenal sales technique of he got her to agree with something that God had told her. He knew that that was true, and so he got her engaged in the conversation. He got her to agree on something very obvious. The woman responded and said to the serpent, we may eat, this is verse 2, we may eat the fruit of the serpent, probably what I had before was chapter 3 verse 1, we may eat the fruit of the tree of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree, which is amidst the garden, God had said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. She's naive, transparent, oh no, we can't do that, we can't do that. But she's engaged, she's already talking with the serpent. So the serpent replies to the woman, and now he's closing the deal here. He's got her on the hook, he's already got her talking. You will not surely die, he's already got her talking, so now he says, you shall surely die. He makes his move the big lie. For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. He got her confidence, and he took a chance, and he hooked her, and got her to believe a lie, a total fabrication. And once you get people to agree on certain things, you can tell them any old thing, and he made this outrageous statement up that has been our curse to this very day. Man listened to that lie, and death came and passed on to all of us. And man had now entered into a period of distancing and being cut off from God. And ever since this place right here, when they were driven out of the Garden of Eden, man has lived in an age of regret. We live in an age of regret, an age of regret that needs to be bought back, and needs to be redeemed, needs to be straightened out by Jesus Christ. So man then was to make a living by the sweat of his brow. Now he no longer lived and had a relationship with God. He now was cast outside of it, and generation after generation after generation has faced mortality, as you and I are facing mortality ourselves. But the very end of the story is beautiful in Revelation 21 and verse 1.

Revelation 21 and verse 1, Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Revelation 22 and verse 1, He showed me a pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street and on either side of the river was a tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

This story couldn't have been written by a human being. Where you have in the very first three chapters of the Bible, man's being cut off from the tree of life. And then from Genesis 3 all the way here to the end, in one of the most violent books of the Bible is not only the books of Joshua, judges in the history of Israel, but also the book of Revelation. There's redemption coming, where the nations will be healed. To me this is the point of prophecy. To me this is the most important aspect of prophecy in that it's going to work out alright. It's going to end fine.

That the greatest focal point of prophecy is Jesus Christ returning to this earth with the kingdom of God. We are given statements of encouragement such as the one in Romans chapter 8. I'd like you to turn to Romans chapter 8 and verse 18.

Because this is what needs to keep us going. I consider, Romans chapter 8 and verse 18, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. And I turn to these passages often, because I know that we suffer in our lifetime right now. And again, I would say that at this phase of my life I'm less bothered by conflict, by trial, than I ever have. Because I know that Christ is going to make it work out alright. I take a look at the leadership that we had previously by Dennis Luker of trusting in Christ to lead us from one crisis to another and deliver us. I look forward now to a period of peace, a period of progress, a period of growth in the church of God. And nothing's going to stop it. The only way to stop it is if I do something really, really stupid. And hopefully I'll be removed before I do something really, really stupid. But I'm asking God to deliver us, to lead us, to bring about the results that this church is on a mission to perform and has as its mission to perform. Verse 19, for the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. Now Paul understood this. God had revealed this to him about the fact that the world is just waiting for the kingdom of God to come, for the sons of God to be born, for the resurrection to come. This is the Saint Paul who wrote 1 Corinthians 15, the resurrection from the dead.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. Because the creation itself will also be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. This world, and I was not here to hear Terry Swaggerty's sermon, I understood he spoke about how this creation is suffering and groaning and waiting for redemption in the world tomorrow. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs until now.

Not only that, but we also who have the first fruits of the spirit, that's us who have the first fruits of the spirit that was given to us at baptism by the laying out of hands. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body, our corrupt bodies from the standpoint of just being physically continuing to degrade.

We're also waiting for that resurrection, for that kingdom to come to this earth. And we need to live it as though it's right here, because you know something? It is. The next moment of our consciousness after this existence will be in that kingdom. For we were, verse 24, saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope, for why does one still hope for what he sees? For if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.

Are we moving in that direction, and are we thinking this? Mankind, through all the years, has had to sustain himself, has had to prove things, try things out in so many different ways, through different governance systems, different economic systems. He's had to figure out how to heal himself, how to doctor himself. Mankind has been groaning. We are groaning, too. But we're groaning with eager expectation for the redemption of our bodies. Unfortunately, this world is groaning and suffering. When I see what's happening in the world, and we all, I could just give you the front page of today's paper, or what Fox or CNN News have.

It's a story of groaning. We almost hate to turn on the news. Who got bombed now? What's happening in Syria? What's happening in Kenya? The world is groaning. Mankind has been groaning ever since his expulsion from the Garden of Eden, his living his life, his own way. It's a very, very sad story.

God is continuing to give us a perspective through the Holy Days, through the Feast of Tabernacles. That is a perspective of a chronology that starts with a Passover with the very smallest beginning of the redemption of who we are, personally coming to accept Jesus Christ to all of mankind. Also, God is giving us a perspective of how great he is, and how some of the things that are in this life, if put in a proper perspective, are just not as big as we might make them out to be.

I take a look at what's happening in people's lives. I see the suffering that they have, and it's very hard to comfort those who are grieving. One of the sessions that we have in instructing our ministry is how to help those who are grieving, to help somebody with grief that they're suffering from the loss of a mate, or even other things such as bankruptcy, or losing things in this life, or any type of loss, or children, or whatever other things that bother us very, very deeply.

But God gives us a perspective through all the Holy Days about how all these things will work themselves out. They're not just little points of interest, but as we live through them, as we live a life of righteousness, as we come to repentance, as we receive the Holy Spirit that works in our lives, as we await the return of Jesus Christ and our resurrection, as we come to a reconciliation with the whole world. There's going to have to be a lot of reconciliation. There's going to be a lot more said even about the meaning of the Day of Atonement, because of all the hurt, and of all the anger, and of all the division that's taken place, even among those who say they have the Holy Spirit of God.

I don't fully understand how all that can come to be. But there's going to have to be a reconciliation that's beyond my capacity to reconcile. And that's why the Day of Atonement is such a somber and sober day, because a reconciliation will have to come before the Kingdom of God returns to this earth. In a grand scope of rebuilding this earth that has been groaning for 6,000 years after man's expulsion. And then, after that, finally God makes His way known for all mankind.

It's a beautiful story. You couldn't write a story like this as a human being. You couldn't make up such a story. You couldn't dream of something as great as the plan of God. It is truly a supernatural story that has been put into ordinary terms in the Word of God. And it could only be understood by grasping the meaning of it, but also by practicing it year after year after year, and living it and being able to share it with one another.

Those of us who work at the home office, our job is to be able to propagate this message. This is the preaching of the Gospel. This is the good news. I mean, the things I'm talking to you about is the good news. It's the good news about what's going to happen to you and to all mankind, and the process, and the perspective, and what God is doing. So let's rejoice in these days. I truly am so thankful to God for all that He has done for me. And sometimes my prayers, God, just thank you for all that you've given to me.

I don't know how I could thank you more. In fact, I say, it's so simple, God. Are you sure that's all there is? There's got to be more to it. It's so simple. I get it. But what I get is my relationship with Him, and also what I see has to be done for all mankind. There's a lot to it, you know, and a lot of work that has to be done, and a lot of effort that has to be expended on our parts.

But my desire is to be an instrument in His hands to be able to do His work in the way that He wants it done in our time. So again, it's been wonderful to be with all of you here at the Feast of Tabernacles. It's been wonderful to see people that I haven't seen in ages, and to be able to fellowship with you today. We hope to be here for the hymn sing tonight, and looking forward to the eighth day of the feast.