The Meaning of Holy Days and Feast of Tabernacles

Good afternoon, everyone, on this first High Holy Day of the Feast of Tabernacles. Certainly, the Spirit of God is here. The Spirit is very evident through the music, the prayers, and the full auditorium here on this very, very special time of year.

And it's very wonderful for my wife Beverly and I to be here to visit with you from Cincinnati and give greetings from the entire Home Office that works tirelessly to continue preaching the Gospel in the responsibilities, the specific responsibilities that we have been given. We rejoice in this spiritual harvest time of the year, picturing the time when Jesus Christ returns and sets up His government, His kingdom, and establishes His family, which you are all a part of, to reign forever with Him. I also want to welcome all those who are listening on the webcast today.

This is one of the sites that is webcasting all the services. And there are people who have not been able to come this distance for the Feast of Tabernacles who are listening, and a very special welcome to you. We'll be talking to you as we are talking to the brethren here in Redmond Bend, Oregon.

I'd also like to make a few comments about some special people that we have visiting here. We have a group of people from a Sabbath-keeping church, the Home of God church, in Portland, Oregon. These are people, some of them I've been working with and have visited with for 23 years, going back to our visits to Ukraine. And some of them have emigrated to the United States. And they are holding services as well in Portland on this day, as they do keep the Holy Days as well. But a group of four of them came down here to grace us with this visit on this day.

The four are Pavel from Kazakhstan, Vassia from Ukraine, and I call him my natural brother. He is almost like a brother to me, as close as a brother. There's Ladimer from Moldova, and Alexei from Tajikistan, and also Ukraine. So we are very happy to have them here and have them drive the distance from Portland on this day to visit with us. There's also going to be Ruslan, who was here last year, but he has a radio program in Portland, and he is on the radio today.

Tomorrow, we will have visitors from the other group that is a Sabbath-keeping group that we have also become very good friends with from Portland. And they are the ones who will provide the music and the concert tomorrow evening. And they also will participate in the three o'clock Bible study tomorrow afternoon that I really hope all of you can come to. It will be a guarantee that it will be interesting, because they will talk about how they came to their Christian faith in the countries that they are from.

And they have, most of them are from countries that are now Islamic countries, from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and then, of course, others from Russia and Moldova. So this should be very interesting. The three o'clock Bible study will have a panel up here, and people will tell their stories, and hopefully we'll be able to have some interaction. I'm not sure how that will work. But I've asked them to tell their stories, and we'll have some discussion about that tomorrow. And then their concert will be tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. And they will bring some of their recorded music as well. They've been rather self-effacing about accepting any donations, but we will say that the concert is for those who want to come free, but those who would like to make a donation, that we will split between ourselves for humanitarian and evangelizing projects for both organizations after the meeting.

But they will provide a concert. I've asked them, could you sing any more songs in English? And my wife says, can you ask them to sing some more songs in English? They sang two last time. Well, they've learned four. So four of the repertoire tomorrow evening will be sung in English, but their music is beautiful. And we've been promoting this. And I actually, on my Facebook page, gave a boost to this, hoping that the community, that some people would be interested in this type of music and production and come and hear them.

So that will be tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. We've been very grateful for our relationship with the people who have been very similar in beliefs. It's just been very wonderful since 1991 to be able to discover people that have the same beliefs about clean, unclean meats, about the state of the dead, the holidays and the holy days that are observed.

It's just been very, very heartwarming to see that God is not only working in the United States, but is working in the hearts and minds of people that He opens everywhere and anywhere He chooses in the world. And we have some of these people visiting with us today. Well, today is day one of the Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of Tabernacles, which begins in annual Holy Day period, pictures the one thousand year reign, the millennium of Jesus Christ's rule over this earth.

It's His second coming and is what is spoken of in Revelation, Chapter 20 and verse 4. Revelation 20 actually speaks about all three resurrections, but Revelation Chapter 20 and verse 4 is where we find the word thousand years, which we then say is millennium. It's a thousand years is what that means. And I saw thrones, Revelation 20, verse 4, and they that sat upon them, and judgment was committed to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received His mark on their foreheads or on their hands.

And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. This is that period that we celebrate. It's not some figment of our imagination or a metaphor. It's a literal period of one thousand years after Jesus Christ returns, after man has ruled for six thousand years and failed and coming to a very dramatic dramatic ending which will require the intervention of our God to stop this world from destroying itself.

This morning, as I watched a little bit of Putin speaking to the United Nations, as I saw the leader of Iran speaking to the United Nations, I said, This is foolishness. This is folly. These are people who do not understand peace. They cannot bring peace.

All they do is bring the world closer to destruction. But now we will have a period after Jesus Christ returns of peace, of peace based upon God's law and God's love for mankind. We are all a part of it. We are being given understanding of that. In Deuteronomy 14, verse 22, it's important for us to read some of these foundational scriptures that define our need to be here.

And to me, I thought, as I was listening to Mr. Walker speak last evening when he was asking for people to raise their hands who have been here for 20, 30, 40, 50 years and more, I thought to myself, This is amazing that people come year after year to learn more deeply about what God wants to do in your life, in the life of the church and in the life of the world, what God's plan for us is. Deuteronomy 14, verse 22, And you shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by year. And you shall eat before the Lord your God in the place where He chooses to make His name abide, the tithe of your grain, the new wine and your oil, of the firstborn and your herds and your flocks. And we have tithed, we have saved 10 percent of our income for the past year to be able to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, to be able to come here, to be able to stay here, and to be able to enjoy each other's company and to enjoy each other's fellowship. And the purpose of that is not to just have a vacation or just time away from work, but it's really to be here at services, first and foremost as the number one priority, to learn, to learn to fear the Lord your God always, and that you spend that money for whatever your heart desires. I understand Mr. Ben Light will be speaking about that subject tomorrow. For oxen, for sheep, for lamb, for steaks, for wine, or 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 festival only for heads of households or representatives from churches. It's for your entire family. With the Light family yesterday went to Crater Lake. You know what was wonderful to see? It wasn't just adults being one with another, but it's the entire family. They're three children, and they were considered important, and experiencing the presence of adults and the presence of this event, that they will remember for the remainder of their lives. We have had children. Maybe you were one of them, that you grew up in the church, and you've been keeping the feasts, and now you are older. It has an impact on your life and an impact that stays with you forever. And we want to inculcate that and to build that into the life of our children, in rearing them, in passing on our faith.

What better way to pass on the faith than to live an example in an environment like this, working together and talking together in spiritual ways about God's kingdom, of His values. And we will have wonderful sermons, we'll have wonderful instruction, wonderful Bible studies for youth as well, and events like the music tomorrow, and testimonials, so to speak, and stories about faith from people, about how they came into the truth. Certainly, this is very, very wonderful.

The Feast of Tabernacles, as well as the Feast of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement, for that matter, Passover Pentecost, are not Jewish feasts, are not Jewish holidays that we keep. I'd like to make that point up front, very, very clear. We are not celebrating a Jewish Harvest Festival. We don't observe Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. We observe the feasts of the Lord that have very special meaning that God wants us to understand about something far greater than just an obscure harvest festival.

These are timeless observances for mankind. When I visited with the Ukrainian Sabbatarians and with Vasya here, which goes back all the way to 1992, my first visit in September of 1992, we talked about commonalities of our beliefs in western Ukraine. But one area that we found was not similar was the keeping of the feast days, the annual festival days. Now, the things that we were had in common were the things such as the nature of God. We believed in God the Father, Jesus Christ as separate entities, the Holy Spirit not being a personage. We did not use the cross as a symbol of our faith. We understood the state of the dead, that we are dead until we are raised alive.

We did not keep the Roman holidays, such as Christmas and the other holidays that are observed by mainstream Christianity. But we found that we had a tension about the Holy Days, a tension that I could not understand. We talked about the Holy Days on a number of occasions. I talked with their pastor and talked to a couple of their pastors. And finally, after a couple of years, it became clear why they did not want to keep the Holy Days. The fear was that the Holy Days would take people away from Jesus Christ. And some who had started keeping the Holy Days were slipping and drifting into Judaism.

They were growing beards, sideburns, and the worst of all was getting circumcised. This was frightening to the society. They said, we don't want Jesus Christ to be relegated to being a carpenter. He is our Lord. We want to do all things to continue to be Christians. This is where we left our discussion. In about 2006, on one of my visits, was just after Pentecost. I believe it was the Sabbath after Pentecost.

I basically gave a sermon that I had given on the day of Pentecost back in the United States. I talked about how the New Testament church was established on a Holy Day, on the Feast of Pentecost. The New Testament church wasn't even established on the Sabbath day. It was established on Pentecost. And no matter how you calculate it, it doesn't turn out, cannot turn out to be on the Sabbath day. I talked about how Jesus Christ was the heart and core of all the Holy Days.

I said that we had commonly accepted already that the Passover, as stated by the Apostle Paul, Christ is our Passover. And the Passover, what it means to a Christian, is not what it means to a Jew. That Christ is the one to whom the Passover looked to. And my friends in Ukraine understood that. I said, why can't we go further and take a look at the Day of Pentecost, on which the New Testament Christian church was established, when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon mankind, a day in which the law of God was given, which is foundational to Christianity.

I said, the Feast of Trumpets pictures the return of Jesus Christ, the first set of Holy Days in the spring picture, the first coming of Jesus Christ. The second, the four Holy Days in the fall, which all fall within a three-week period, picture and look to the second coming of Jesus Christ. These are not festivals that are about something historic in the past. While they have a basis and a foundation in that, these are days which are all about Jesus Christ and what Jesus Christ is doing in our lives, what he's doing to the church, what he will do to the world, and what he will do for all mankind.

That's what these days are all about. They are about Jesus Christ. I went and talked to that pastor because I was, I believe I was staying with him at that time. I stayed with him. I stayed with different people over them.

And we had some discussions in which he said, you know something, I get something from you this time that I had not understood before about the centrality of Jesus Christ in the Holy Days. From Passover to Pentecost to his second coming to being king of the millennial period and to what he planned to do for all mankind through the last great day, eighth day of what it pictures. This was a revelation and this was an amazing opening of knowledge, which was so exciting to me. It took 13 years of discussion, of kind of holding back our thoughts to see what God was going to do with this.

We then talked about how the Holy Days are an outline of what God is doing for human beings. Actually, the Holy Days are the biggest distinctive between us and the rest of the world. People say, well, it's the Sabbath or it's clean and unclean meats. You know, these are distinctives. Certainly, those are things that are different from what mainstream Christians might do, think, or practice. But, you know, the greatest thing is the plan of God.

And what God is doing to mankind, starting with the Passover, was a very personal intervention in forgiving your sins, of coming to repentance, how God is expecting and demanding us to live a life of repentance, of how He wants to give us the Holy Spirit, without which we cannot go further, without the Holy Spirit, we're dead, just like an animal. When it dies, it doesn't exist ever again.

With the Holy Spirit, we have a new identity. We have new life. And that's where eternity lies. The Feast of Trumpets is how God will resurrect the first grouping of people for eternal life. The kingdom of God is pictured by the Feast of Tabernacles.

And I hope that these things become so real that we live them, talk them, that our faith is unshaken, and that we reinforce the coming together in a group like this, the assembling of ourselves together, encourages us to support and continue to encourage one another in these beliefs. I hope that we come out of this Feast of Tabernacles, not saying that we just saw Crater Lake, or that we did this, or we had a barbecue, or we… those are things that are enjoyable and fun, but those are side benefits. The biggest benefit is what you gain in understanding God's plan and purpose for you individually. That is your salvation, and that is very important.

And this is the biggest distinctive between us, and I would say the average person on the street, and one that we may take for granted, because we all know Christ is our Passover. Does the man on the street know that? No! It's not important to him, or he doesn't understand it. The average man on the street doesn't understand that Christ will return on the Feast of Trumpets. And while we may have a two-page spread in the local business magazine here, the vast majority of people just don't understand it. But you do. And that's why you have saved 10% of your income to come here and understand these things more fully of what God expects from us. This is the gospel itself.

The gospel is a gospel of salvation, the gospel of the kingdom of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

However you slice it, however you look at it, and however you define it, it has to do with this high time of year where it all comes together, starting with the Passover to this time when God begins to rule over this earth and where the kingdom of God will expand and fill the entirety of all the universe. What a tremendous story!

It's a tremendous story. The Holy Days explain the biggest questions about the human experience, and the Holy Days explain it in a way that no other way can. And this is a wonderful day in which the prophetic gospel is fulfilled. Now, for the rest of the time that I want to do in my presentation today is to talk to you in an outline form by taking a global perspective of what God is doing and zeroing in on various aspects of the spiritual journey that we are on. I want to talk to you about the outline and the framework. Acts 3, verse 19. Acts 3, verse 19 is a sermon that the apostle Peter gave, one of his first sermons, in the establishment of the New Testament Church. The Church was established on the Day of Pentecost in chapter 2, and this was shortly thereafter another moment in which he was preaching. The theme was the same in both. It had to do with a message of repentance, and he starts out with that in Acts chapter 3. This is sometimes called the pivotal verse in the New Testament, or actually of the entire Bible. It connects the old with the new.

It made relevant to the people of that time what was written down before in the Holy Scriptures to what the New Testament Church was all about, and what the New Testament Church was about to do.

Acts chapter 3, verse 19. Peter proclaims, Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out. And he pretty much said the same in Acts 2. Men and brethren, what must we do? said the people who crucified Christ.

Peter says, Repent and be baptized. Here he says, Repent and be converted, so that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. Notice what he says, that the times of refreshing, of rebuilding, of re-establishing, can come from our Lord.

He goes on further to explain in greater detail, and that he may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before. He's already speaking now about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, and prophesying, and proclaiming Christ's Second Coming. Whom heaven, verse 21, must receive, and Christ had ascended to heaven in the first chapter of the book of Acts, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, this time of refreshing and a time of restoring God's government and God's kingdom, the kingdom of God, on the earth, the restoration of all things which God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. This is an entirely powerful scripture. That's the transition between the old and the new. That explains what was in the old and how it was to be now proclaimed in the new covenant. And are the marching orders for the church today things that were spoken of and prophesied by all the prophets of old. Not a single one is excluded, but what God is doing.

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, which we talked about on the Sabbath, Hosea, Daniel, and all the information and all the stories that they had told and all the predictions that they had made will all come to pass and God will restore what was lost from long before.

We are looking ourselves as a church to give a message to the world that will proclaim this with power. I just wanted to break away a little bit with perhaps a promotion for something that we are doing that I want to have your prayers for and even your help.

We are going to do a public appearance campaign in Texas about two weeks after the feast.

We did one in Cincinnati a year ago with limited success. We've tried to learn from what we did.

We're trying to correct and modify, expand and magnify, and ask God for His will and what to preach. We've spent considerable time this summer in preparing for this public appearance campaign. I want to tell you a few things about its content. What should we talk about? Certainly, there are many things to talk about, but we thought, what would the apostles be preaching?

And what did the apostles preach? What was their message? And what would they be doing today?

What have we been deficient in? And what should we come out stronger in?

Well, we have come out with a program, and again, with much prayer and a lot of discussion among our group at the home office, with media and the ministry working together about what message to give. And we came out with this particular plan. The plan includes three parts. First of all, what is God doing in this world? And it seems like a theme scripture for us has been Habakkuk 1.5, that I will do a work that you won't even believe in your time. God is going to do something that we couldn't possibly even imagine. That's Habakkuk 1.5 and something that the apostle Paul quoted in Acts 13, through the work of Jesus Christ, through the name of Jesus Christ.

What we're showing in this first segment is that God is fully aware of what's happening in the world today. He's fully aware of what Iran is doing. He knows what Putin is up to. He knows what the Syrians are doing. God is fully aware of what Donald Trump is doing, what Fiona is doing.

He knows exactly who's going to win the election. He's going to determine the election. Sorry.

Don't waste your money, much less your vote. Because God will determine how things will work out. And as the book of Habakkuk says, he won't be one day late in fulfilling his purpose. So we want to show people that God is in charge of what's happening in this world.

Because it's been prophesied, as the Apostle Peter said, and a time will come when a transformation will come based upon all the things that have been spoken by the prophets.

Number two, second part. Second part of the presentation will be, what does your life matter? People have so little hope. 41% of people taken on the street being asked about, do you think that we live in turbulent end times? The answer is 41% says yes. There's something big about to break. Of course, so what about a survey? But it shows that people are concerned and people may have a feeling that, what does my life matter? What does my life worth? And we're going to show that your life is worth a lot. This is the, why were you born segment of our presentation? Your life does matter.

God has a plan and purpose for you, just as he has a plan and purpose for all mankind.

And in the way things will work themselves out, he also has a plan and purpose for your individual life. And those of you who have been called, received, have been baptized and received the Holy Spirit, God has been working in a very direct way with you. I look back at my life, take a look at my wife's life, took a look at life in the church, and I see a history of divine intervention and divine providential guidance of things I couldn't possibly have planned, or doors that I could have not possibly opened. But God has been working a specific plan for us in doing what he wants done, to do his will. So we're going to be talking about why were you born, and we're going to give the booklet out. What is your destiny? We're going to rename it, why were you born. The third segment, which will also be extremely important, which I demanded we put in there, the segment about repentance. Because when Jesus Christ began his ministry and talked about the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel. Jesus Christ began his work with repentance. The New Testament church began with the Apostle Peter saying, what must we do? The question, the answer, repent and be baptized. And even here in Acts chapter 3, another sermon, begins with repentance. We're going to show people what they now must do, the steps that they need to take. What is important for them to do next?

Because there are things to do next. So the first part is what is God doing, and that God is in charge. Number two, your life does matter. Why were you born? What is your purpose? That is to become part of the very family of God. And number three, what must you do? You must come to repentance. You must come to forsaking the way that you have lived, that has brought out all the misery in this world, and come out of that into a new way of life. That is part of what the Feast of Tabernacles is about. To learn to fear the Lord your God always, to live a life of cleanliness.

This is not a party time. This is not a time to visit ancient ruins, or this is not a time to primarily go see things. This is a time of learning. And every year I learn new things at the Feast of Tabernacles, just as I learn new things at the Passover every year, the depths of Christ's wisdom. And hopefully you take this very, very seriously at this time of year.

The times of restoration spoken of by all His holy prophets since the world began. I'm concluding in Revelation chapter 3 and verse 21.

God's people and God's saints have always been given understanding about how things would work out. That's the purpose of prophecy. The purpose of prophecy is not to give us inside knowledge on how to get out of this life without responsibility. The purpose of prophecy is to show that God's purpose will stand. Prophecy is fuzzy enough not to give us definites. But prophecy is also clear enough to show by many prophets over a wide span of time that God has a singular purpose and that that purpose will be one that will be fulfilled.

I'd like to zoom out from our lives here on the earth here. Some of you who are Android users have the program Google Earth. I like Google Earth. How many here have Google Earth and have used it? Okay, so you kind of know what I'm talking about. Then Apple has a version. Actually, I kind of like it a little bit better. I'm not an Apple iPhone user, but it's one that actually goes beyond just showing the entire earth. It shows the earth in the solar system. You know, you can actually leave this earth and see it from, you know, further out. And that's what we really need to have is kind of a Google Earth and ability to be able to zoom out from just our personal little lives and kind of see a greater purpose of what God is doing. Because one reason we're brought together here for the Feast of Tabernacles is for us to be able to get away from our daily chores, or the daily grind of our works, of our work, the daily tribulations that we go through to be able to rise to a higher level of existence and thought, to see something greater and bigger than ourselves.

You know, with Google Earth, what I enjoy is to be able to go to my old neighborhoods, you know, and see where I used to live. And I like to go to Ukraine. I can actually see the city of Khust, where my friends lived, and see their homes. I can go to Africa and see, maybe not as clearly, you know, where we work in some of those areas. It's a fascinating program. But then you can zoom back out and see the whole earth and see the beautiful blue ball and don't see the little things that are down inside. What happens in our lives is that we're never really zoomed out enough.

We're just so much into little things, into our own personal petty little things that we go through life. We don't get our priorities correct. We make mountains out of vole hills. The unimportant rises to the top in priority and time. I find even with the church work, it's one of the biggest jobs I have as president is to be able to prioritize what is important and try to push down the priority ladder. Those things are unimportant. It doesn't matter.

Just like what they say about trying to cure cold. If you take medicine, it takes seven days. If you do nothing, it takes a week. I mean, it doesn't matter, you know. No matter what you do, it's not going to fix that at all. We have too many things that are comparisons and grievances.

And through the Holy Days, through God's Holy Day plan, we can zoom out and see a much broader picture. People get lost in little things. You know, to me, some of the most amazing things about the greatness of God have been just the universe itself and just what man has come to understand about the universe. At one time, man thought there were only like three or four thousand stars. That was it. There's heaven. There's the stars. That's it. With telescopes, we found tens of thousands of more stars. Through refracting telescopes, until the 1930s, it was determined that we were part of some type of a stellar system. We called it the Milky Way. And that was the universe. That was the whole universe. It was awesome and great.

Until Hubble, in the 1930s, from Mount Wilson in California, just above Ambassador College in Pasadena, California, found little fuzzy nova that he thought were just some unknown clusters of stars. And the first one he found was another galaxy just like the Milky Way, the Andromeda galaxy. But then, yeah, there's another one, and another one. It was found out that we're not the only galaxy. There are at least maybe a dozen more galaxies. And then, more and more galaxies were found, and the universe became millions of times bigger than we had thought. Not just a factor of double the size, but many times bigger than what we originally thought.

And then Hubble was launched in the early 1990s. And what a story that's been.

One of our members has let me see a book called The Finger of God. It's called some of the beautiful pictures. Of course, you can see that they're all public domain pictures of what Hubble sees. And the magnificence of the billions, not just two, three more galaxies, but billions of galaxies. And to me, one of the most exciting things was when Hubble, as one of its projects, just zoomed in on a totally empty spot of the universe. It's called a deep star field, or universal star field. I don't know exactly what it was called. They just took a spot and had the Hubble stare at it for over a week, about two weeks, just aimed at it to bring in as much light as it possibly could. And all of what it discovered, 600 cepthillion more stars!

An amazing array of galaxies that had never been known. Take a look at the deep star field.

I looked at it again this morning on the internet. It is absolutely phenomenal. And it's something that it took Hubble weeks of drawing in a light just to see that. And you see, how great is what God is doing? How great is this great creator? And how wonderful are the forces in all these galaxies that create the systems that they are? And many, many unknown things about these galaxies. Why are they flat like pancakes when they should be little balls?

The laws of physics say they should be balls, but they're not. They're just pancakes.

What are the forces that science doesn't know? There are so many things that we don't know.

And to me, what this does, it just helps me understand that there is just a whole lot more out there that I don't understand. And that what I'm understanding in my petty little life, in my jealousies, and misunderstandings, and aspirations, and the limited number of years that I have, is nothing. It's all vanity. And I better change my way of thinking and take a bigger look, a bigger view of life, take a bigger view of life.

Let's take a look at the Bible now from space.

Now we could get caught up, too, in our little scriptures that we might have that we may study sporadically. Actually, the Council of Elders established a new program for ministers this past year called the Labor in the Word Project, because it was felt important to refresh our ministers in the bigness and depths of the Bible, based upon three passages in 1 and 2 Timothy. Labor in the Word, rightly divide the Word of Truth, and then preach the Word. And we as ministers could get stale. I'll tell you, I had not read the book of Habakkuk in a long, long time. No one asked how many people here have read the book of Habakkuk. It's stuck in there as the eighth book of the 12 in the minor prophets, and most people couldn't tell what it's about or who it addresses.

You know, I took a look at the book of Habakkuk, which is kind of our theme book for the upcoming public appearance campaign, and it contains a wealth of knowledge. It has a whole starfield of wisdom and plan that God has in working with us, how He will work with us as Israel, how He will redeem us, and even how He will work with those who punish us.

It is a plan for all. The Bible is an amazing book. As much as people want to discount it, tear it apart, stomp it out, burn it, still more than 10 million copies are distributed in the U.S. every year, but that's miniscule compared to how many copies are available on tablets and smartphones.

Your version now is on 200 million, almost 200 million smartphones and tablets. It's a church that has had its mission to put the Bible, all versions of the Bible, on 1 billion phones and tablets. The Bible is available. You can get the King James for free.

The most you have to pay for a King James Bible is 99 cents on Amazon. Gutenberg would freak out.

At least there are a few copies available to the monasteries.

But you can have anything at any time, listen to it, Bluetooth it in your car, and have the Bible available to you completely at will.

It was written by many diverse authors, more than 40 authors, over a 1500-year period. So there was no one big human being that decided, here's a table of contents.

Now it was put together over centuries by different groups. Right now, my access to the Bible. I work on a sermon and I hardly even turn to a Bible. I use my address line in Google. And I just put type in the word Bible and just a couple words that might be in the Scripture. It hits me every time with the right Scripture. It goes to Bible Hub or Bible Gateway. I have the Scripture. I insert it into my text. It's just amazing what we have right now. The Bible has a chronology and a design and a story, just like the universe has a story. It has a plan. It has order and it has meaning. At the very beginning of the Bible, we have God creating the heavens and the earth. What more simple words could you use to start out with? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It was an initial first cause. Then in Genesis 2, verse 8, we have a tree of life, suggesting that there was a tree, that there was some mechanism that God had to give life. It had the job of perpetuating life and making it come to pass. In Genesis 2, verse 17, we have the first tension between this tree of life and responsibility to continue having the tree of life. Chapter 2, verse 17, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was another tree that God had in the Garden of Eden after creating Adam and Eve. You shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. And in the beginning, God already revealed the force of evil was on the scene.

We have so many questions, and we as ministers are asked hard questions and tough questions about life, death, fairness, evil, good, etc. You know, by studying these passages and thinking about them, you get to an understanding about how the whole thing works and how God is going to work itself out.

In Genesis chapter 3, verse 1, we have the story about the interaction between the force of evil and the image of God. Mankind made an image of God. Now, the serpent was more cunning, that means 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, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? He was a master salesman. He started asking questions that had very obvious answers.

Now, salesman, the way to draw you into his confidence is to ask obvious questions that have a very, very simple answer of agreement. Isn't it cold out today? Isn't it warm out today? Boy, what do you know? I mean, isn't sunny outside? Well, of course it's sunny. Okay, you've got yourself answering a lot of questions. Yes, yes, yes. And he asked the question exactly, has God had asked it? The woman said to the serpent, Genesis 3, verse 2, we may eat the fruit of the tree of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God had said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. And she was transparent, but she was also very naive. She started talking to this guy that already had her saying and agreeing with her on a number of points. But she's engaged. She's engaged to the conversation that she has with the serpent. Then the serpent said to the woman, she's already on the hook, and he's beginning to close the deal. You will not surely die. He makes his move. You already had her agreeing with a lot of things, and he now comes out with 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.

Boy, did he have a lot of poison in that. He had truth and error. The error was the fatal part of what he said. There was some right, there was some wrong. Deception 101.

The total fabrication and death was passed on to all of us. God says in the day you eat of that tree, the woman said, well, you know, you said it's a nice day. And God said, yeah, I can't eat of it, but he said it's okay. And, you know, God certainly were made in his image, but maybe there's something that's been left out. You know, we've had a lot of people in the church deceived in the same manner. People who have tried to tell you certain things that you agree with, and agree with, and agree with, and then they tell you a lie. And you don't know exactly, you know, if that's right or wrong, but you already have confidence in that person.

We're not as big a church as we used to be. We've had a lot of people who have eaten the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Well, Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, as God had said they would be.

Man listened to the lie, and death was passed on to all of us. And that's where we are right now.

All of us are subject to die. This has been with all of us now throughout history, and an age of regret has set in. And we entered into an age of groaning, where there was a Garden of Eden, there was a relationship, invisible contact with God. This was now stopped, cut off. God said, you want it this way? You make the choices. God has always given man the right to choose.

We can choose anything we want to do, but God has not given us the choice of consequences.

We have the right of choice of what to do, but we can't choose what the consequences will be. Remember that. And so man wanted to have it his own way. He had to make his living in the sweat of his brow. Before he had a garden that was well watered, now it was thorns and soil that was hard, and had to be tilled with a lot of sweat. There was a lot of economic groaning.

Cursed is the ground that Adam and his family were on.

The fields, the growth, and the garden of Eden was beautiful, well watered, but now it's thorns.

Mankind was facing mortality, which he wasn't before, because before he could eat of the tree of life, suggesting perpetuation of life. He had just to go over there, and he could eat of it, but now he's cut off from it. You know, to me, this whole story, as simple as it is, is so profound about our purpose and where we're at and what we're to be doing, and what God has given us as things that we are to continue accomplishing. Mankind also had to figure out how he was going to govern himself.

No longer wanted God. No longer wanted to have a relationship with Father.

Now he had to figure out through warlords, who's the strongest and who's the pushiest, who would now dictate how people would work. That's the beginning of the story. Okay, let's take Google Earth now and move over to the other end of the Bible, to Revelation 21.

To me, this is brilliant as to just how the Bible comes to an end.

Now, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. Verse 21 of Revelation 21.

I saw a new heaven and new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.

Okay, we see the restoration. This is what Peter spoke about, the restoration of all things, the refreshment of everything. And he showed me, verse 22 of, pardon me, chapter 1 of Revelation 22, he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its streets, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life. The tree of life is back. It's restored. The earth is restored with the tree of life that is missing from Revelation 3, but again, this is 3 to Revelation 22.

Isn't this fantastic a story with a beginning and an end, and a shell, an outline, which bore 12 fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. This is to look back upon man's mess of the past 6,000 years, of his inability to govern himself, and now these leaves will be used to heal the nations.

This is how the Bible ends. This is a story that the apostle Paul preached. Let's take a look at Romans chapter 8 and verse 18. Romans chapter 8 and verse 18, because the holy days put all this together from Passover to the Feast of Tabernacles and beyond. The apostle Paul, to encourage the people to whom he was writing, said this, I consider the sufferings of this present time.

This is living in this world that has been passed on to us by Adam. I doubt worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Verse 19, for the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God, the whole creation, the galaxies, the constellations, the nova, the whole universe, is waiting for the sons of God to be born, of which there is only one Jesus Christ right now who is immortal, no one else. You have been called to be the next wave.

For the creation, verse 20, 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. How eloquent about the whole universe being transformed and made subject to the children of God, of which we are part of.

What other creation of God has a higher value than humanity?

Not the angels, but humanity, you who have been created in the image of God. You look like God. You have the traits that God has of creativity, the ability to reason, the ability to love, the ability to create the children of God. That is what is the prime focus of God in this universe. We, as tiny as we are, have this focus. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now, starting with Adam and Eve, and they were expelled.

Not only that, but we also who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we, even we ourselves, groan within ourselves eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.

All of us, those of you who have been here for 50 years at the feast, you don't walk as fast as you did before. You have chronic pains that you had not had before. You are groaning even among you as the first fruits, eagerly awaiting your transformation and change and resurrection.

Mankind, from the time of Adam's expulsion, has tried to figure things out for himself, has tried everything possible economically, governmentally, ecologically, medically, educationally, to care for himself. Man has been able to create wonderful things, but has not had the morality to be able to hold it in check. In fact, everything that man has created, which is a part of the traits of God, has been used to destroy himself and really does need help.

We have been living in a period of groaning from the Garden of Eden to right now.

This world is seconds on the big time clock from extinction, and everyone knows that.

This world will not continue. All the great minds and even responsible Christians know that we live in a time of the end of human civilization. But you and I know that it won't end, that there will be an intervention from it. We have lived in a period of groaning, and now we are going to be redeemed. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 2.

The Apostle Paul again writes, For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be closed with our habitation, which is from heaven. I hope that we came to the feast with a real sense of need, that I am groaning, I am not what I should be, and I need to be clothed with something that comes from God. If indeed, verse 3 of 2 Corinthians 5, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked, that we don't find ourselves, I am worth nothing, I am not clothed properly. For we who are in this tent, in this temporary dwelling, this body, groan being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. We don't want to die. I don't want to die. There's so much more I want to do. I'm 68. How long am I going to go on from here?

I don't want to go on under 10 years. I want to go on forever, and so do you. That is salvation. Salvation is living forever. Salvation is not just some term of going somewhere.

Salvation means to be eternal, is to be like God is, without end, by His values, having His image stamped on us, and where God is love and God is Spirit, we will be the same. Our lives have been a life that has been filled with many good things, but has also been filled with lots of groaning. We are aging. We've had our groaning with our children, maybe with our marriage, our friends, and even with the church. We've had lots of groaning, as the Apostle said, even among the first fruits there is groaning. The work of the ministry is to deal with people who are groaning. That's what gives them job security, from talking to people who are going through hard times. Our health can be literal groaning, making a living, and uncertainty about the future. But the Feast of Tabernacles and being here and learning the important things about eternity is something that is what this Feast is all about. Make this Feast one that really will be big, because honestly I don't know how many more Feast of Tabernacles will, this planet will be able to sustain. Things that are moving just far too quickly, and there's no way to figure it out of how it will turn out. The only way to figure it out is to study the Word of God and His promises of salvation for us. Our hope is only in the resurrection and in the Kingdom of God. You know, on Facebook you are given a profile to fill in on what are your political views.

And people have, I'm a conservative, I'm this, I follow Glenn Beck, you know, blah blah blah, you know, all this kind of thing. My political views are, Thy Kingdom, come. That's where I stand.

Are our lives right? And do we have the right priorities? Can we zoom away from our lives, take a look at the Bible as a story of God's creating mankind, and then having Him expelled, but then having Him restored at the end, and the ministry of Jesus Christ as one being a restoration, and all that's been spoken of by the prophets, by all the prophets coming to pass and being made right. Are we preparing for the Kingdom of God to come to this earth? We should be praying daily, Thy Kingdom come. That is one of the elements of the model prayer that Jesus Christ gave His disciples. And after we praise His name and Thy will be done, Thy Kingdom comes next.

Thy Kingdom come is so important that Jesus Christ said, that's the next thing that you say after you say, and praise God. Let's get that big picture. We're coming into a time now where we'll see a world that is not distorted, not bait and switch, not colored, clouded, occluded, or hidden.

God will no longer be one that we just pray to, and we just see how He works in our lives. We will see Him face to face, as John said. Everything will become clear to us. We will see Him as He is.

In my next sermon, which will be the webcast sermon on the Sabbath, I'm going to zoom into our personal life more. I basically, in this sermon, wanted to zoom out and get the big picture of the panorama of what God is doing from the time of Adam to the time when the tree of life will be restored in the Garden of Eden and the people that He's worked with. We could take a look at the entirety of the Bible, the whole story of how He worked through a family, through a nation, how He worked through various forms of government, judges, kings, how people failed, how the New Covenant came into play. But then we will see Him face to face, is how it will all work out. And I will talk about that more in my sermon about the important things about character and what it means to be prepared as the bride before Jesus Christ, what it means to be the one qualified to dwell on God's holy hill. Well, it certainly has been wonderful to be here. My wife and I will be here today and tomorrow, Tuesday, and then we have to leave on Wednesday morning to Seberville, Tennessee. We have to leave here at 6 a.m. The flight leaves at 6 a.m. We have three flights to Salt Lake, Detroit, Knoxville, then we have an hour drive. And then we'll be there for the second half of the feast. So we'll see you, or you'll see me, you know, I'll be thinking about you on the Sabbath day. Certainly is wonderful, and I just wish God's grace and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ to be with you.