Getting Comfortable with, "I Don't Know."

Good afternoon, brethren. Glad to be here. Happy Sabbath, and thank you, Kayleen and Courtney. It was beautiful, and I'm always amazed at how well siblings' voices can blend together. And I don't know if when they're twins, if they blend even better, but that was terrific. So, if you keep up with national and world news, lately you've had a lot to keep up with. Maybe it's always that way, but one of those sayings is, may you live in interesting times. And I think we do. I'm thinking of some of the things going on. Russia and Ukraine are still at war, even though it seems every week I hear they're so close to a peace settlement, and it's going to happen, but now there's a problem.

I think, what does that mean for us? You know, is it part of end-time prophecy? When we read the Bible, phrases like, kings of the east and Gog and Magog come to mind, and that tends to make us think about Russia and other Slavic nations, perhaps.

There is a fragile peace... no, I shouldn't say peace, a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas right now in Gaza, but it's pretty fragile. Is there going to be more fighting? You know, if you're like me, you've watched the news, and you might have wondered, is this the beginning of armies surrounding Jerusalem, as Christ mentioned in Luke 21?

But there's also been military action in Israel on and off since 1948, when the state of Israel declared its independence. It hasn't been the end yet, but surely one of these times it's going to be the beginning of Armageddon, right?

Now, there seems to be a revolution underway in Iran. Notice I say seems to be, depending on which news channel you turn on and what day it is. Maybe it's not, maybe it is. And what do we make of that? What is going to happen next? Well, honestly, I don't know. I know scripture tells us that we should pray for the peace of Jerusalem. That's something we can do. Looking to this hemisphere, you know, U.S. forces went into Venezuela, took the president there, and whisked him out of the country. Some people are outraged. Others applauding. And I've heard some analysis discussing how this will affect the balance of power around the world, even especially between the United States and China. China? Really? Well, I don't want to get into explaining what may or may not be, you know, the turn in international commerce and politics. Today, I want to consider prophecy.

To consider the things we know, and especially that there are things that we don't know. And I'm going to say up front, I did not talk to Mr. Porter before services. Actually, at one point, especially when he put those five W's and how on the screen, I thought, uh-oh. He's going to cover my whole subject in only 12 minutes and probably do a better job of it. But perhaps God was moving us together, because when we see things going on, it's natural to ask, how do these things relate to the fulfillment of Bible prophecy? You know, I remember more than once when I was a kid growing up in the church hearing sermons with this title, Where Are We Now in Bible Prophecy? The crowd here looks younger than I might think. How many have heard sermons with that or an approximate, yeah, boy, more than I thought. I distinctly remember hearing a sermon by a man who was a leading minister in the church in which he listed 20 reasons why I'm certain that Christ will return within the next 10 years. That was in the summer of 1995. And I don't say it to be critical, just noting that many times before, we've been certain of what we knew. But we were, I wasn't going to say wrong, I don't want to say wrong, mistaken might be a better way to say it. Now, I don't want to give the wrong impression because I want to say it is our business to study the Bible. We're to understand what it tells us. We're to live by it. And Jesus Christ told his disciples to watch. Watch and be ready. Now, the rest of what he said I'm going to come to in a moment. We'll turn there in Scripture. But the uncomfortable truth is, there are things we just don't know. Not only about prophecy. Prophecy might seem easy, but there are things about history, things about God's ancient law, and sometimes questions of how to apply that law to what we're doing here today. I think of example some I deal with in classes. Why didn't they have a why didn't God outlaw slavery in ancient Israel? Why didn't he forbid polygamy? I'm not sure.

That's not at all to say that we have no idea. We actually have some pretty good ideas. We have some plausible explanations. So please, if I keep saying I don't know, I don't mean that we're ignorant and stupid. We're not at all. We've studied the Bible. There is lots of things that we do know. But it can't surprise us to think that sometimes we have to say, I don't know.

I just attempt to say, I don't know. You don't want to do that when you're in a position of instruction or authority. And my point in the message, though, today is that I think we'll do well to accept this. And as much as is possible to try to make ourselves comfortable with the concept of, I don't know. At least in some situations at some times. We should never lose sight, though, of the things that we do know. And by the way, I want to say that not being able to know the answer to everything does not at all mean we shouldn't study and we shouldn't strive to know. We should study Bible prophecy. We should watch world events. We should ask questions. We should find the answers when we can. But for now, it's worth it to realize that there, it seems to be God's will that there are things in the Bible and things about prophecy that we don't know. One of the things we would like to know the most, I'm pausing here, I'm wondering what all went through your heads. I wish we had little screens I could read, but I'd have to get my glasses out. Now, what we want to know, when is Christ coming back? By the way, among the things that we do know, we do know He is going to return. It's unquestionable. But we want to know when, and so did His disciples. If you turn with me to Matthew 24, we'll see they outright asked Him. Now, He sort of, I don't know if I'd say He planted the question. We know this is near the end of Christ's ministry, partly because it's near the end of the book. But we know this narrative, and they were leaving Jerusalem, going out. They were on the Mount of Olives across the valley, and they were amazed looking at the temple. Might have been one of those sunny days where it just looked so impressive. And they're saying, look at that! And He says, there's going to come a time when there's not going to be one stone left on top of the other, which must have taken Him aback. So later, I will read in verses 3 and 4. Matthew 24, verse 3, Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? When are you coming? When is this going to happen? He answered them and said, take heed that no one deceives you.

Okay, so He's going to go off and tell them you could be fooled. I'm not going to read all the answers. They're asking, though, when's it going to go down? And He told them, He told them many things to watch for. Okay, this is going to happen. This is going to happen. This is going to happen. But He also told them some things pretty bluntly. If you look ahead to verse 36, Matthew 24, 36, after He told them the things to watch for, He said, But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. Skip down a few verses to verse 42. He told them, Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.

One more I'll read here. Verse 44, Therefore be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. And we as the Church of God, I would say, have a long history of not being comfortable with this. And I'm not all that comfortable with it. I want to know. And through the ages people have studied, they looked at the prophecy, developed interpretations to figure out when. I mentioned a sermon that I heard 30 years ago, listing 10 reasons why Christ would return within 10 years. You might have heard of the Millerite movement. I'm not sure there's got to be a better term for that, but in the 19th century, William Miller studied the Bible, analyzed all the prophecies, and he developed charts and graphs, and he determined the exact date Christ would return in 1844. People who accepted his interpretation famously on that bright October morning gathered on hilltops. Some stories say they wore white robes and they'd given away all their possessions because we know he's coming this day. And they waited. And waited. And this is known in history as the Great Disappointment. Now, I don't know anyone in God's Church in the modern era who's gone quite that far, but at times we've been disappointed, have we not?

It's funny, I didn't think to write it when I was putting my notes, but I could find on my shelf in my office a book titled 1975 in Prophecy. To be honest, I think many people have heard of that book and must misunderstood because it wasn't as specific as some people think, but a lot of people have been disappointed. Now, please remember what my point here is not that we should ignore prophecy, not that we should ignore what's going on in the world. I'll mention this. I forgot to say hi to those on the webcast. Glad to have you here. My in-laws have moved in with us, and my father-in-law is diligent about watching the news, and I've been catching up more than I might have. Otherwise, it's good to know what's going on, and so we're keeping track. Many times Jesus said to watch. I'd like to turn to Luke. If you'll turn with me to Luke 21, we'll begin in verse 34. Luke 21, verse 34.

And by the way, Luke 21 is a parallel account to Matthew 24. So Jesus is telling his disciples, So you also, when you see these things happening, and he had listed a number of things, know that the kingdom of God is near. Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away. So take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with corrallizing, drunkenness, cares of this life, and that day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. It's going to catch people by surprise, but he says, So he says, watch. Don't get taken by surprise.

But he also said, you're not going to know in advance when it's coming. At least not very far in advance. And maybe it's good to say we won't know exactly when he'll come. Can we be comfortable with not knowing? Well, maybe if we look at the things he said to do, which he did, but my point today is we need to somehow be comfortable with the fact that we're not going to know. And I want to turn to a passage in the book of Revelation that it's my go-to on this. It's Revelation 10, starting in verse 3. Revelation chapter 10 and verse 3 has this little vignette in the apostle John's vision and communication that just stands out to me because it's so different than the opening. Ah, there we go. Sorry, I was beginning to think my Bible wouldn't let me turn there. Okay, so as you know, John is having this vision. He's on the Isle of Patmos, and he's showing things that are... it gives us a good sequence of how things will unfold leading to the end of this age and the return of Jesus Christ. And there's a scroll with seven seals, and they're opened. Then the seventh seal has seven trumpets. The seventh trumpet has seven great last plagues and bowls. And of course, Christ is going to return. There's going to be a happy ending. We know these things, but in the middle of this, in Revelation 10 verse 3, says this. Now, it cried with loud voices, referring to an angel. So I want to jump in the middle of the verse that says, When he cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices. Now, when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write. And I heard a voice from heaven saying, We seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered. Do not write them.

Hmm. Oh, I put hmm in my notes, and I just said it without reading. That was good prophetic planning. Now, why didn't God just have someone tell John, don't even mention those seven thunders? Leave that out. But it didn't. You know, we don't need to know there were ever seven thunders or that they said something, right? You know, that's not what we see here. What we see is a record that there are seven thunders, whatever that is, and they said something. We're not allowed to know what they said. Have you ever had someone come up to you and say, I know something you don't know, and isn't that annoying? Now, in my view, it's impossible that God put this here just to be annoying. I don't see God doing that. But He has it here for a reason, perhaps. Perhaps the reason is this is His way of telling us there are some things we're not going to know. You know, maybe there are things we just don't need to know yet. That's where I'm kind of excited. You know, we know there's going to be a generation of church members that are alive at the end when Christ returns. If I'm one of them, I'm going to keep my ears open for those seven thunders and finally know what they say. But we don't know. And this bit about the seven thunders has been in our Bibles for about 2,000 years. That's something we just have to accept. Perhaps something to get comfortable with. You know, I think God would like us to be comfortable with, at times, having the answer, I don't know. You know, I've thought of this. I'm privileged at Ambassador Bible College to get to teach the Pentateuch class. And one of my favorites is the book of Genesis. But, you know, when you look at Genesis, the first 12 chapters cover approximately 2,000 years of human history. But we can cut some of those out. The first chapter covers a week. Then there's three chapters focused on Noah's flood. So then we're down to like eight chapters and still about 8,000...no, not 8,000...2,000 years of human history. That's a lot of summarization. There's a lot we don't know about the history of humanity on earth in ancient times.

You know, one of the things we'd like to know is how and why did they live so long? You know, I believe those numbers are accurate, but we can just speculate on why they are.

I'm certain Genesis does tell us what we need to know. Tells us what God wants us to know, and leaves us with a lot of frustrating questions about things we'd like to know, but it doesn't tell us. You know, I like to say Genesis is not a science textbook. It's not really a legal treatise. In some ways, it's not even a thorough history in some ways, but Genesis is what God wanted it to be. Just not necessarily what Frank Dunkel wishes it was at any particular time. Yeah, I have to get comfortable with I don't know, and so do my students. Some of them are in the room because they hear me say, I don't know an awful lot. I'd like to look at a case study.

A case study of a particular thing that's been in our culture, in the church, and it's in the Bible, but it brings up a question we've had for a long time. So let me begin by describing an incident that happened when I was, I think, 19 or 20. So, I don't remember all the particulars, but I remember I was with a couple friends in the car, and it's Friday, late afternoon, or evening. We're like going somewhere for dinner, and it's one of those hazy days. So the sun is getting low on the horizon, and it seems this red circle, you know, because there's humidity in the air or whatever, and it just really looks bold, maybe because of the atmospheric conditions. So one of my friends looked at the other and said, what would you do if suddenly you saw like a shade coming down, and it just goes dark, and you see the moon, and it's bright red? And my friends, I don't know, I'd say, where's Mr. Armstrong? Where do we go from, you know, what do we do? And it seemed interesting, but he thought of Mr. Armstrong. Of course, Herbert Armstrong was still alive at the time, and we had the idea that he would know what we're supposed to do, and particularly, where do we go? Because in the church at that time, we had this belief, and by the way, I want to say this carefully, I'm not saying that we don't have this belief, but we emphasize some things a little differently then, but we talked about a time to flee, you know, when the church would have to go to a place that we called place of safety, where we would be spared from plague and persecution on all the earth. And by the way, that's a great, I'm greatly abbreviating things that will happen and things we do know. And I put in my notes to be clear to say, I'm not being critical of the idea of the church fleeing or being in a place of safety. And I'm not saying that it won't happen. What I'm saying is that decades ago, we spoke with much more certainty about some things on which the Bible doesn't speak with certainty. I'm sure God is quite certain, but he hasn't revealed everything to us, and that includes some ideas of what people taught about going to a place of safety.

Let me describe the way I perceived it when I was a boy in the church. And I know you look at these white whiskers and say, boy, that must have been in a previous century. No, but when I was young, you know, we thought about how it would be. And so this might not reflect what ministers actually taught, because you know how, you know, 12-year-olds hear things differently than said. But the way we looked at it, there'd be a time when the world is troubled with wars and rumors of wars and things like that, kind of like now. And suddenly one day we'd get a phone call via the church's phone tree. You know, a phone tree, like the pastor, would call four people. Each of them would call five or six people, and they would call five or six people. If we put it in modern times, it'd be, you'd get a text or, you know, whatever. Or we might be at Sabbath services, and somebody walks up to the speaker, he opens up the message, and says, brethren, it's time to flee. Okay, we would go somewhere, probably to a local airport. We would board planes, hopefully 747s, and we would fly to the kingdom of Jordan and take a bus to Petra. And we would be there for three and a half years living in caves, and at the end of that, Christ would return, and the kingdom of God would start. Now, does that sound completely familiar to many of you? I'm wondering, does it sound totally unfamiliar to anybody here? Maybe some, yeah, so it's largely a generational thing.

I'm thinking, if you've been in the church 15 years or less, maybe not so much. And I would say, what I just described would sound to people in others, other churches that call themselves Christian would look at me like I'm totally insane, because they know when you die, you go to heaven, or you go to hell, what are you talking about? Christ, so what I want to say, though, is this understanding of the church going to a place of safety didn't come from nowhere. It didn't come from an overheated imagination. It's based on Scripture.

I'm just going to add that we might have been uncomfortable with the gaps in between, where we might say, I don't know, so we filled them in. Let's consider what the Bible does tell us. Let's go back to Luke 21, if you will. Luke 21, beginning in verse 20.

Luke 21, verse 20, this is, again, Jesus talking to his disciples privately, and I believe this would be on the Mount of Olives, as in Matthew 24, but he tells them, When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let not those who are in the country enter her. For these are the days of vengeance that all things which are written may be fulfilled. Okay, so this gives us an idea that there would be at the time of the end a time to flee. Now, this is particular for the people in Judea, but we presumed it would be for the whole church. Those in Judea are told to go to the mountains. Well, there's a mountainous area. I want to point to my map that I usually have in class that's too small for the students to really read, but you know, if you look to the south and east, in areas that were formerly Moab and Edom, now mostly in the kingdom of Jordan, there's mountainous areas. That brings to mind a couple of other scriptures we read, which I want to read today. If you go to Isaiah chapter 16, verse 4, Isaiah 16 and verse 4, in the midst of this message, it says, Let my outcast dwell with you, O Moab, be a shelter to them from the face of the spoiler, for the extortioner is at an end. In Moab, a shelter, fits fairly well with Isaiah 26, just 10 chapters ahead, Isaiah 26 and verse 20. Isaiah 26 verse 20 says, Come, my people, God's people, enter your chambers, shut your doors behind you, hide yourself as it were for a little moment until the indignation has passed. This seems to clearly be talking about protection for God's people during some time of punishment. It addresses Moab, which, you know, qualifies as being in the mountains near Judea. There's one place that really stands out in that area, if you would go to look, and that's in the region that used to be a city of the Nabataean kingdom known as Petra. Okay, I mentioned Petra earlier, and if you've seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you've seen one of the best images of Petra. From what I understand now, you know, well Petra, it's remote, doesn't look all that comfortable, but it sure looks like a good place to hide, except for the hotels and the tourists that are there now. Petra is not mentioned by name in the Bible, but Moab, mountains, and such are. And of course, it's in the wilderness. Let's add another place in Revelation chapter 12. Revelation 12, beginning in verse 12. And I'll remind you again that I'm saying we need to be comfortable with not knowing things, but I say if we say some of the scenarios we painted seem, you know, they seemed extremely detailed. As I said, they didn't come from nowhere. There's stuff in the Bible to lead us to that. Revelation verse 12 says, And we could go on, of course, the serpent spews out waters, the earth opens up and swallows them, but let's move ahead to the end of the chapter in verse 17. Again, it says, Hey, we keep the commandments of God, have the testimony of Jesus Christ. In Bible prophetic symbolism, a woman is commonly used to portray a church, or I believe in this case, the church. Time, times, and half a time fits with other elements in the book of Revelation to indicate this is end time prophecy. We interpret this to refer to a three and a half year period.

So this does seem to be saying at the time of the end, it seems that we have members of the church going to her place. And I've heard ministers point out that the term place of safety doesn't appear in the Bible. But her place certainly does, where she's nourished and I would presume kept safe for three and a half years, which also could be called 42 months, which also could be numbered as 1260 days. Not hard from these scriptures and several others in the Bible to see why in times past ministers in the church of God taught this. In the end time, God will miraculously, possibly using jet airliners, transport his people to the stronghold of Petra. And while most people in the church will be protected there, there's going to be two witnesses. Who are they? I don't know. But they're going to preach the gospel for three and a half years. Now, we get asked, does the Bible say all these things specifically? Well, not all the details. It does say some of these things. It implies others pretty strongly. And that's great. Implications and indications are good as long as we're prepared to admit that's what we're dealing with. You know, we don't have to do a thorough study of end-time prophecy today. I'm not going to because that's not my purpose. But we can consider some things we know about it, some things the Bible does tell us. We see in Scripture there will be that time—I'm using the term plagues and persecution to summarize a lot. I mentioned seven seals, seven trumpets, seven last plagues, and they're pretty horrific. But you wonder, what are those locusts? You know, don't know for sure. They might, you know, could be locusts. It's clear that Christ is going to establish His kingdom. Time of plagues and persecution will stop. There will be a thousand-year reign. Peace and righteousness and God's Spirit poured out. In the midst of that, do we know protection for God's church will be in Petra? Will it be anywhere in Jordan? Well, the Bible doesn't say that, at least not as clearly as I wish it did. You know, are we going to be protected in one particular place? I've heard ministers with a lot of influence say that maybe God will protect people wherever they are scattered around the world.

I'm not convinced of that myself, but I have to give at least some thought to it. Do we know how we'll get the answers to these questions? You know, say we do get a mess. It's time to flee. How are we going to find out? Will it be via the phone tree? Will God send a text message? I'm stopping there because when I talk about questions we knew the answers to, I often say God will not answer my texts. But it's a joke. I don't have His number anyways, so. Although I do talk to Him, and I'm sure that He hears, but He's not sending me these answers. But how will we travel? Airplanes? Woman's given wings of a great eagle. But then again, in Exodus 19 verse 4, God told Israel, see how I bore you to myself on eagle's wings. But the preceding chapters describe them walking through the wilderness. Okay, so in Exodus at least, it's a poetic metaphor. Is it a metaphor in Revelation 12?

I don't know. I need to be comfortable being able to say I don't know. Now I'll say this because I teach prophecy, you know, classes quite a bit, people sometimes ask me, where do you think the place of safety will be? My stock answer is, well, if God has a sense of humor, Petra.

Now I have to pause there because I'm actually very certain God does have a sense of humor. I'm not quite as certain about Petra, but I have to say I'm not certain that it won't be Petra. Because I'm talking about the things we can't prove in the Bible, but when it comes to proving otherwise, okay, there's still uncertainty. You know, so not being certain is not the same as disbelieving. Now I'm going to mention, and I think it was about 35 years ago, I heard a minister who was a leader in the church at the time give a sermon in Pasadena, and I still remember the title was, Fun with Prophecy. And some of you might have heard that one yourself, and I'll confess, I wouldn't recommend it if you could... Well, the funny parts I would recommend listening to, it was entertaining, but he discredited the idea of there being any place of safety. And he cited evidence from the Bible to show that he said, you can prove that it will be in Vail, Colorado. And a lot of us thought, well, if I had a choice between three and a half years in Petra, or three and a half years of Vail, pretty sure which one I'd go for. Now, and the reason I bring that up is, you know, I'm a proponent that we should know and understand what the Bible does say. We should also be aware of what it does not say. Scripture does not explicitly say that the church will flee as a group, and, you know, that it'll be to a place that was Moab. But it also gives us some pretty clear indications that we should consider that. And by the way, the first century church certainly fled Judea and Jerusalem and went to that territory.

And as I said, you can't find scriptures to explicitly disprove those things, you know, because if they were there, I'd be telling you about them. To be honest, I think a lot of our old teaching about the place of safety seems more plausible and provable from the Bible than a lot of things I've heard people say to argue against it. Well, by the way, if you're thinking, boy, that guy's wishy-washy! My point is to acknowledge the things we don't know and be comfortable with that. And you might say, though, well, what do we know? Is our whole religion and our whole way of life based on assumptions about things that we just don't know for sure? No. Absolutely not. And that's something I can say for sure. You know, I've made a case for trying to get comfortable with saying, I don't know, but I want to assert there are many things that we do know, and we know that we know, and we need to build on that and have great confidence. For me, personally, it's very comforting to think about the many truths that we know, you know, and to understand we certainly do know the things that we need to know. You've heard the phrase, that's on a need to know basis, you know, so some things God's telling us we don't need to know yet, but some things we do. There's a passage of Scripture I like to consider along with that one from the seven thunders. It's in Matthew 19. Matthew 19 verse 16. Matthew 19 verse 16.

It's an incident during Christ's ministry. He's traveling. He's speaking to crowds. And it says here in verse 16, Now, behold, one came to him and said, Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? I could do a show. Anybody here interested in eternal life? I'm guessing that's part of why we're here. Yes. Now, Jesus first corrects him. Why are you calling me good? There's one good, but that's the Father. So, he addresses that, but then he says, But if you want to enter eternal life, keep the commandments.

Okay, if you want to enter eternal life, keep the commandments. And that makes sense. But as I go through this, I always like to pause and say, notice some of what Jesus did not say. He didn't say, if you want to have eternal life, figure out where the place of safety is. He didn't say, you got to identify the 144,000. He didn't say, okay, eternal life, tell me which modern nations are descended from which of the tribes of Israel. He didn't even say we need to figure out when he's coming back, which is good, because later he'd tell us you're not going to know when I'm coming back. Now, I want to assert that I would dearly love to know all of those things. I want to know.

But I've had to get comfortable with, I don't know. What I do have to know is, keep the commandments. Jesus said that. We could be like the young man who had a follow-up question in verse 18. He said to him, well, which ones? You know, there's a lot of commandments if you turn through the Bible. Jesus didn't list all of them, but he started reading really from the Ten Commandments. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and your mother. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. As I said, several of the Ten Commandments and the last one could be said to summarize them. We sometimes wonder why didn't he list the first four commandments? And I don't know. But I've got a guess. I think maybe because in Judea at that time, they were really emphasizing those. You didn't see a lot of Jews taking God's name in vain. They went to an opposite extreme. They were so careful about the Sabbath. They made a lot of extra rules that they probably didn't need, and such like that. So don't take this to mean that those commandments can be thrown out the window. Not at all. And matter of fact, the man answered in verse 20, oh, all these things I've kept from my youth. What do I lack? It's like, I don't need to do anything more. Jesus did add one thing, though. He says, if you want to be perfect... No, no. He didn't say, if you want to be perfect, now you're ready to go on to graduate study, and we'll get into the 70 weeks prophecy. And I'm going to teach you the right way to pronounce my name in Hebrew and Greek.

No. It's that if you want to be perfect, sell what you have and give to the poor, you'll have treasure in heaven, and come follow me. We interpret Him saying, come follow me to be... become my disciple. You know, come with these people that are learning from me. I always also like to think of it as, put God first above all your physical possessions. You know, this isn't a command for each of us to sell everything we have. That's not so easy to do, I found.

But that's what we need to do. Okay. What matters most to God are things that we do know, and we understand. Think of some of the things. We know that God exists, and He is the creator of all the universe. We could turn to the beginning of Genesis, but I'm sure you've read this number of times. We know that God created mankind in His image and in His likeness. And when we think of God is there and mankind, we know there is God the Father. It says it quite plainly, and that Jesus Christ is His Son, but we also know that Jesus Christ was from the beginning, you know, well, before all things. Maybe I should turn to John 1-1 and make sure I say it properly. No, I could say it from memory now. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. We know that. We know that man was created to be brought into God's family. If you want to back up, you could note Hebrews 2, verse 10, that God is bringing many sons to glory. And I am going to turn to Luke 12 because it's very encouraging to me. Luke 12, verse 32. I hope it'll be encouraging you because I'm going to read it anyways. Luke 12 and verse 32, Jesus says, Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Good pleasure to give us the kingdom, which includes having us born into his family. It's not grudging. It's not, oh, okay, baby, I'll let you in. It's his good pleasure because God loves us and wants us to be in his family. And we know that. We know that Jesus Christ died for our sins to redeem us from death. Note 1 Corinthians 15, verse 3. Jesus Christ died for our sins. That's one of the first points in the Gospel as Paul writes it. We know that all men who have ever lived, not just men, all humans, who have lived and died will live again. We know it. The Bible says it clearly. And those who have not yet repented and turned to God's way will have that opportunity. They're not written off. Those who are ultimately condemned, which we take as choosing not to repent, okay, they will cease to exist, but they're not going to be tortured forever. We know that.

We know and we know that we know that living by God's commandments is the way that's compatible with eternal life. I chose that carefully because I don't want to say the way that brings eternal life because we can't earn it. We can't deserve it. It's a gift. Romans 6, 23, wages of sin is death. Gift of God is eternal life through Christ paying for our sins. You know, that greatest command of all is to love God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength. And the second is like it. Love others as ourselves. Jesus said, on those two, hang all the law and the prophets.

I like to say God's law, the other commandments spell out how to love God. They tell us how to love our neighbor as ourself. I keep going on like this for a while, but I'd start repeating myself. You know, we know God sanctified the seventh day of the week. He set it aside for worship and for rest. And that is why we're here, right? We know when the Sabbath is. We know it's a holy convocation.

Admittedly, there are some questions that fall within that. I like to walk students through and say, yeah, the Bible tells us it's holy. It tells us not to work. It tells us it's a holy convocation. Doesn't tell us all the details. Like, what does it mean to not seek your own pleasure, not speak your own words? We could delve into that. People have differing opinions on whether or not a Christian should eat in a restaurant on the Sabbath, or iron a shirt, or drive a certain distance. But we know the Sabbath is holy time. We know God told us, keep it holy. We also know that God ordained annual holy days. And although the Bible doesn't specifically say these describe the plan of God, it's a pretty strong implication. And so I'll say, I know in my heart that the holy days show us how God is unfolding this plan of salvation for mankind. I'm confident of that. We know Christ told us to watch. I read it earlier in the sermon, watch and be ready. One of the ways that we be ready is by living a godly way. Yeah, I know the grammar was bad on that, but I wanted to quote it. I'm not going to continue listing all the things we do know, but a lot of what I just did is I was thinking of what's in our booklet of the United Church of God's fundamental beliefs. And I honestly meant to go next door to the postal room and pull out a copy of the booklet and show you, but honestly it looks like a church booklet. So think of a little rectangle with writing on it. I'm holding it up and telling you, you'd do well to take a look at it if you're wondering what do we know and know that we know. We know those things and they're powerful things to build a life on. Brethren, it does serve us well to get comfortable with I don't know. You know, and I've discussed just a few things that we have uncertainty about. Okay, we have some uncertainty and we can continue striving to know. Ignorance is not something to brag about. We shouldn't do that, but at the same time we can take comfort that we know a lot.

So going in, I didn't mean this message to be discouraging, never to be critical or disparaging of the ways we've taught things in the past. I want us to be hopeful. I want us to be confident, to be happy. God has revealed to us so much. There's so much in this book that we know.

It's encouraging to me to consider the great truth that God has revealed through His scripture and His Word. You know, I just listed a fraction of them. I've got great confidence in God's truth.

And I say, when we consider the things that God has allowed us to know, the things He's let us be certain of, the things we don't know seem pretty small by comparison. All that we do know is pretty great.