Numbers Are Not Everything

Christianity. And of course, we learn a lot by analogies. They help us visualize and see things.

We are described as the body of Christ, and we as individual members, separate members, but all one body. Paul compared himself to an athlete in training, and that stands out, especially in light of just having the Olympics. In one place, he refers to himself as a distance runner, and in another place as a wrestler. As a body, we're compared to a city on a hill, with our light shining. As a congregation, or as members within it, we hope that we're wheat and not tares. And certainly, we're all sheep. What Jesus Christ is is the chief shepherd.

There's one analogy that comes up a couple of times that I think some feel great pride in, and others might feel a little more uncomfortable, especially since it's been so long since the United States has been in a major conflict. But that is one of us as Christian soldiers.

Now, of course, that comes not only from the song, but several places in Scripture. On a site, a couple without turning there, and then we'll turn to one of them. And 2 Corinthians, Paul has the famous section where he says, though we walk in the flesh, we don't war after the flesh.

Our weapons of warfare aren't carnal, but they're mighty through God for the pulling down of strongholds. And 1 Timothy, Paul encouraged Timothy to war a good warfare. And then in his second epistle to Timothy, he urged him to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, not becoming entangled in the affairs of the world. Now, I do want to turn to this one in Luke chapter 14. We'll see that Jesus Christ also used a military analogy. Luke 14, beginning in verse 31.

He says, What king going to make war against another king does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?

Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Now, I wanted to read that passage not because I'm going to talk about baptismal counseling, which is when we normally cite that. We look at counting the cost before we make the commitment.

But I wanted to show how it tied the idea of numbers with this military analogy of us as Christian soldiers, trying to accomplish a mission. Now, we don't always think of it in militaristic terms, but we do have a mission as a church. Our mission is to preach the gospel.

Preach the gospel to the world. Let's go back a few pages to Mark 16 and verse 15. We can find it described in many places, but none quite as succinctly as it is here, as Christ was giving his last instruction to the disciples before assembling the heaven.

In verse 15 it says, and he said to them, Go to all the world, preach the gospel to every creature.

It's a very simple command. Now, we know that can encompass other things. The version in Matthew 28 says, Go and make disciples of all nations. And we understand that that's not contradictory. Of course, we preach the gospel in all nations, and those whom the Father draws, we teach and instruct.

Now, there's another facet of this aspect of preaching the gospel I want to turn to. If you'll go to Ezekiel chapter 33.

Ezekiel 33, and we'll begin in verse 2.

You could call this a facet of our mission to preach the gospel, or perhaps a sub-mission, and that is of being a watchman, sounding a warning.

It's a lengthy passage, but I want to read all of this to see, to carry this through.

Here, God is speaking to the prophet Ezekiel, and he says, Son of man, speak to the children of your people and say to them, When I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from their territory, and make him their watchman, when he sees the sword coming upon the land, if he blows the trumpet and warns the people, then whoever hears the sound of the trumpet, and does not take warning, if the sword comes and takes him away, his blood will be on his own head. Oh, he heard the trumpet, but didn't take warning. His blood is beyond himself.

But he who takes warning will save his life. So he's saying the watchman did his job, what people do after that is their own responsibility.

But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any person from among them, he's taken away in his iniquity, but his blood will require it the watchman's hand.

So you, son of man, speaking to the prophet, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Therefore, you shall hear a word from my mouth and warn them for me. When I say to the wicked, O wicked man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked man from his way, the wicked man will die in his iniquity, but his blood will require it your hand. So I say the wicked man earned his own death, but the watchman who doesn't warn him of it bears a responsibility. Nevertheless, if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, he'll die in his iniquity, but you've delivered your soul.

So there's a high responsibility in that. I wanted to read this, of course, because it connects to that military analogy, or it connects the military analogy to the mission of preaching the gospel. Now, some have argued at times over the years that, oh, well, this isn't really part of preaching the gospel. They'd say, Jesus Christ didn't mention this when he told the disciples to go preach the gospel.

I'm not sure I agree with that, but even if it were so, I would answer that we do have the mission to preach the gospel anyway, and that can't help. That mission can't help but show that man's ways are different than God's ways. Man's ways are going to earn a certain punishment, whereas, of course, God will eventually bring the prophecies that he gives us to come to pass.

Somehow those words weren't coming out. The prophecy of God's deliverance that's going to happen in the millennium wouldn't make sense if we don't see the punishment that will come before.

So what I'm saying is, no matter what, when we preach the gospel, we're going to fulfill that role of being a watchman, and we have a certain responsibility. Whether appointed or not, we see the dangers to our people. How could we not sound the warning? Now, wouldn't we be guilty if we didn't, even if this passage weren't here? In any event, we have a job to do. We have to preach the gospel to all the world. We're Christian soldiers combating ignorance. People don't know God and don't know His way. We've got the job to bring that message.

Here, I don't have the scripture written down, but in Acts, of course, when Paul was in Athens and they heard him preaching this, they said, what is this? He's bringing some new doctrine. So he said, well, you're very religious. I saw you had an idol or an altar, even to something you call the unknown God. You know, the one you worship in ignorance, I'll explain to you.

That's sort of our job, to clear up that ignorance. And it's a big job. So we might, you know, if we do, as Jesus said, and count the cost, can we with this number go out and face that number? I want to propose that we do need to count the cost, but then we need to keep in mind something very important. Numbers aren't everything.

We count, but numbers don't count in every case. We need, and I'm not saying that flippantly, we need to remember who it is that gives us the victory. Because if numbers alone are what counts, we'd be like the soldiers in a famous battle of ancient history of the Spartans at Thermopylae. I want to talk about that a little bit today. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar. Some of the younger might be because it was the focus of a movie that came out, I want to say recently, it might have been, to me, anything that came out in the last 10 years is recent.

It's funny how your memory gets compressed. There was a movie by the title 300, and I haven't seen the movie, but I've heard it was based on a graphic novel, which graphic novel is a fancy way of saying big comic book. And surprisingly, I haven't read that because I like big comic books, but I'm getting sidetracked. What I wanted to say is I'm not commenting on the value of the movie, but a lot of people would have heard of the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae, and whether or not the movie was accurate, I want to talk about the actual account.

So let me describe it where I've got a page full of notes, but a lot of it's in my memory by now. The battle occurred as part of an ongoing war between the Greek city-states. Before Greek was united as a nation, the several cities had independent governments, but they were forced to work together because of the growth of the Medo-Persian Empire, which we've seen recently.

The Medo-Persian was the second of four great empires that God prophesied would control most of the known world. Well, the Persians were on the advance, and they reached the edge of the territory controlled by Greece.

The Persians were defeated in a famous battle in 490 BC, the Battle of Marathon, which most of us recognize the name, of course, because races have been named after it. The Greeks fought the battle there, as mostly the Athenians fighting against the Persians, and then one soldier was sent back to bring news. Most of you know this story, right? It's one I like telling, even though it doesn't have to do with the Battle of Thermopylae. But, of course, he fought in the battle that the Greeks won, so he runs in his full battle armor 26.2 miles back to Athens and shouts, Nike!

Which means not a shoe, but means victory! And then he falls down dead, because, you know, modern day runners who run marathons wear running shoes and light clothes and don't fight a battle beforehand. But anyways, the Persians were not happy about this. So the Persian king Xerxes decided that he would avenge this defeat, and 10 years later he marches against Greece with the largest army that ever been put together up to that time, as far as most historians know. Some accounts that are wildly exaggerated say it was in the millions, but we believe it was probably at least 150,000 men, maybe as much as 300,000.

Now they crossed the narrow body of water where Constantinople is on that spans between Asia and Greece. The Hellespont crossed there, and they were following the coastal road with supplies being brought by hundreds of ships coming with his army.

And the Greeks, the Greek city-states each contributed soldiers to go and see if they could stop them, but they were vastly outnumbered, and some of the city-states didn't want to cooperate. Sparta, which was one of the most powerful cities, lent their king as the commander, King Leonidas, but would only send 300 soldiers, the 300 Spartans who would later become famous.

Leonidas decided the only place where he could hope to make difference against that large army was at a place called Thermopylae. Thermopylae is the Greek word for hot gates, and I'm not sure, I don't know if they were comparing it to the gates of Hell, but it's this area where the road that comes along the coast goes between two sharp mountains. It's a very narrow area, and the whole army would have to come through this bottleneck. The only other way around was going around the mountain range, which would take them too far from their supplies. Leonidas thought, if I can make them fight me there, our small numbers can match up, because only so many can get through the bottleneck at a time. And he was right. The Persians came forward thinking, we'll just steamroll over than there are so many. Leonidas stationed his best men in the front, and the Greeks had superior training and superior weapons. Their shields were larger, and they worked together, and they would put them out using creating what they called a shield wall. So the Persians came forward, full speed, and smashed! They met the army of the Greeks, and it didn't break. And then the weapons came out, and there was a huge fight all day with tremendous slaughter on both sides. The Persians withdrew. And the next day, they come forward with their best soldiers in the front, smashed together again, fighting great blood and destruction. Again, the Persians are pushed back. Of course, the Greeks are losing large numbers of soldiers, too. But it's looking like the small number might be able to stand up against a vastly larger army. But the Persians had time on their hand, and the benefit of a traitor. It turned out there was a Greek farmer in the area who told them of a little known trail that wound around from the main trail and went around the Greek position without going all the way around the mountain range. It was lightly guarded, and the Persians ran off the guard and began funneling their army through there so they could surround the Greeks, attack them from both sides. Leonidas learned this was happening. He said, well, I don't want to be destroyed like this. I've got to bring the army back. Otherwise, we'll be surrounded and wiped out. But if he were to take the whole army away, the Persians would just run them down and destroy them, piecemeal. He needed to leave a small group behind to fight a rear guard action, as they call it. And he kept his own soldiers, the 300 Spartans. He had purposely chosen for this mission only men who had already had male children. Because even before this happened, he expected that this would be a suicide mission. He knew how vastly outnumbered they were. I have no idea where I am on this page, but now this is where the famous 300 comes. The 300 Spartans who would face down the huge army on their own. I'm not sure if the movie mentions that there were about, I think, 700 soldiers from another city that elected to stay and also faced the devastating odds. But what Leonidas expected was true.

His soldiers fought valiantly. They took many, many lives for that small piece of real estate. But in the end, every one of them was killed, you know, dying a violent death.

Now, we salute their bravery, the 300 against 300,000, but in the end, they were just so outnumbered, we'd say they never had a chance. And having said that, I wonder, is this how any of us ever feel when we hear that our church has a God-given commission to preach the gospel to all the world? And then we look out and go, boy, there's a lot of empty seats here, and not just here. And I think the United Church of God may have about maybe 12,000 members.

The planet has about 7 billion humans living on it.

That's a tall order to reach all those people with preaching the gospel.

And, well, and I did make a note also, of course, I'm focusing on the United Church of God. I know there are other organizations that teach basically the same doctrines and are striving also to preach the gospel. All of them together, whatever that number might be, still a pretty small number.

And the odds seem even worse when we think that it seems that sometimes we're going backwards.

You know, there's splits happen, numbers fade away. It can, seems like we're getting weaker instead of stronger.

Now, some of us might feel that way. And surprisingly, that thought crossed my mind as part of the encouragement or what spurred me to write the sermon. One of the recent issues of the United News had a lead story about some new TV stations that the On Today program was going on and had a really nifty map showing where a lot of the cable stations, most of you have seen this, I take it. Good, because I don't, I didn't do the PowerPoint for just one illustration.

But the On Today program is now going to be airing on some new channels. People in the United States will be able to see the program on the Word Network, World Harvest Television, as well as on the WGN Super Station. And Sue and I usually see, well, Sue usually sees about all of it on Sundays, and I usually see part of it, because I usually go out running, and then I come back and say, oh, I forgot the program was on, or, you know, it took longer than I thought.

But Canadian viewers can see the program on the Grace and Vision Networks, and now because of the new deal we signed with, I believe it's pronounced the LaSilla, Broadcasting, their Family Entertainment TV Network has a Far East television, which you see represented in blue, covers almost all of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. That's quite a reach. Additionally, they have the Middle East TV Network that covers the Middle East, and the one that I can't pronounce in India.

But in the Middle East will be on cable stations and over the air. Now, and over there with Arabic subtitles. So, all through the Promised Land, people will be able to see the Beyond Today program. We're preaching the Gospel. It's exciting, good news. You know, we're working to fulfill that mission. Sorry, that word didn't want to come out. We're working to fulfill our mission to preach the Gospel around the world. But, as I said, maybe it's a comparison thing.

When I first saw this, I was excited by the map, and then I counted how many programs, how many stations were on, and I gotta admit, I felt a little bit dejected. I think it came also when I was hearing some other news, but I said, boy, that's eight channels. Eight stations doesn't seem like a lot, considering how much we used to have in the past. And I looked up some of the statistics that I'd looked up for some earlier sermons. Let me recount some of those by way of a reminder.

Now, back in 1986, when we were called the Worldwide Church of God and producing a program called The World Tomorrow, our program aired weekly on 382 different TV stations and 36 radio stations around the world. We were the biggest religious TV program in the world.

The second biggest was on less than 200 stations. Now, if we go back before that, and some of you will well remember, before The World Tomorrow was a weekly TV program, it had been a daily radio program. And I was tempted to look up the exact number of stations, but it started looking like too much work. I thought it was easier to just say, there was no place in North America where you could not hear The World Tomorrow program every day. And in most of the country, you could hear it two or three times a day just by turning your dial at different times of the day.

Interesting way of comparing it. Most of you have heard of Paul Harvey, I take it. Most people, many people would argue that since the invention of the radio, Paul Harvey has been the most well known radio personality. But during the 1960s and 70s, the name Garner Ted Armstrong was pretty much just as well known. Now, Garner Ted, the son of Herbert W. Armstrong, was the radio voice of The World Tomorrow program for many years. And I stopped and thought, I said, wow, he was as well known as Paul Harvey.

That would be the same as if today you were to learn that Daris McNeely is just as well known as Rush Limbaugh. And I picked out Daris McNeely, because I know him personally. It could be Steve Myers or Gary Petty, or I would say any of the others. They're the three. Of course, the church also published. The Plain Truth magazine was published in seven languages and had nearly eight and a half million subscribers. Now, that's at a time when Time magazine was slightly under six million. So the question, do our current efforts seem to be pretty small by comparison? Well, I want to make an argument that they're not.

Being on fewer stations and those being cable or satellite stations does not necessarily make our work less effective, even though it might seem that way if you just look at numbers. It depends on which numbers you look at, but you also have to look beyond the numbers. So I want to look at numbers in a slightly different way and go back to our military analogy. I told you the story of the brave 300 Spartan soldiers who all died. They were just obliterated by superior numbers.

Let's consider a different 300-man army and what happened with them. For that, we're going to go back to the book of Judges. I'm sure some of you were already thinking along this line. Judges chapter six. And I'll be honest, well, as someone who likes military history, Judges is one of my favorite books in the Bible, and this is one of my favorite sections in the Judges. But rather than me give a lot of preface, I'll read part of the story. Let me begin at the beginning of the chapter. Judges six. Then the children of Israel did evil on the side of the Eternal. So the Eternal delivered them into the hand of Midian for seven years, and the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel because of the Midianites. The children of Israel made for themselves dens, the caves, and strongholds, which are in the mountains. In other words, the Midianites came and took over, and most of the Israelites hid when they were around. Let's drop down to verse five. For they would come up with their livestock and their tents coming in as numerous as locusts for counting. That's not a number, but that's a lot. Numerous as locusts. Both they and their camels were without number, and they would enter the land to destroy it. So Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites, and the children of Israel cried out to the Eternal. And of course, traditionally, that's what Israelites do. When they're suffering and hurting, they turn to God. This is one of the times of many that God heard their plea. Let's go to verse 11. Now the angel of the Eternal came and sat under the Terribins tree, which was an ophra which belonged to Joash the Abbe-esirite, while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress in order to hide it from the Midianites. You know, winepresses aren't made for threshing wheat. They're made for pressing wine. So Gideon had harvested a small amount of wheat, and there in hiding, he was trying to get some food for his family. And an angel of the Eternal appeared to him and said, The Eternal is with you, mighty man of valor. And Gideon said, Oh, my Lord, if the Eternal is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his miracles, which our fathers told us about, saying, Didn't the Eternal bring us up from Egypt? Now the Eternal has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.

I think if we were to compare this to our experience in the Church today, it'd be like if we felt like we got the commission, Go preach the Gospel into all the world, make disciples in all nations. And we might respond like Gideon and say, Well, if God wants us to preach the Gospel in all nations, why are we so small and poor?

They tell us of the old days when we were on hundreds of television stations and had feast sites with 100,000 people. We were on the radio every day coast to coast. Now God's let us be scattered and small. And, you know, we print a mail out a few magazines and struggle to have a website. Of course, if we were to say something like that, which I'm not saying any of you do, but God would give us an answer similar to the one the angel did to Gideon, which is in verse 14, the Eternal turned to him and said, Go in this might of yours, and you'll save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?

Now Gideon did as we sometimes do and looked at the numbers. He said to him, Oh, my Lord, how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I'm least in my father's house. He's saying, You want me to go out there? That takes money and supplies and resources, and I don't have it. And I'm nobody special. And the Eternal said to him, Surely I'll be with you. You shall defeat the Midianites as one man. He doesn't mean Gideon one man. He means he'll make the Midianites as though there was just one of them. And that's an important lesson in numbers. No matter how many is on this side, if God is in this side, it reduces them to as if they were only one.

We're going to skip ahead in the story because Gideon has a lot to learn about trusting God, and he trusts. He tests God with the fleece and let there be do on the ground and not on the fleece and the other way around. And he's got to set straight his neighborhood on which God they should worship. And he tears down the altar of Baal and sets up one for God and sacrifices the cow on it. You know, and of course they want to kill him. The Father says, No, let Baal plead for himself.

And then Manasseh is convinced that God really wants to work through him, and he sends out a call throughout his tribe and the neighboring tribes to raise an army. He amasses an army of 32,000 men.

32,000 doesn't sound so bad. Although, remember that, well, I shouldn't say remember, we haven't got there yet. The Midianite army numbered about a 140,000. So 32,000, 140,000.

And I think of our situation, like I said, 12,000 against 7 billion. We'd have to increase our numbers. We need to be back to where we were in the the 70s or 80s, going against the 4 billion that were around then to be a closer comparison. But, as we said, God looks at numbers differently. Let's go to Judges chapter 7, begin at the beginning, begin at the start of the chapter.

Judges 7. Then Jeroboel, that is Gideon, and all the people who were with him rose early and encamped beside the well of Herod, so that the camp of the Midianites was on the north side of them by the hill of Mora in the valley. And the eternal said to Gideon, the people that are with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands. Let's Israel claim glory for itself against me, saying, my own hand has saved me. And some of Gideon's probably thinking, I need a lot more men. And God's saying, you've got too many men. I want you to know for sure who's the one winning this battle. And maybe he would say that to us. We might be saying, we need a lot more people to preach the gospel. And God might be saying, no, no, you need fewer people, so that everyone knows who's doing this work. So it does in verse three, it's interesting. God is going to have Gideon do what actually there's a command back in, I believe, Deuteronomy, when it's giving the civil law to Israel, where it says, anytime you're going to war, I don't want the people influenced by cowardice. So put out a call that tells anybody who's fearful or afraid to go home. And that's what he has them do here. The eternal said to Gideon that, oh, not verse four, verse three, proclaim in the hearing of the people, saying, whoever is fearful and afraid, let him turn into part at once from Mount Gilead. And 22,000 of the people returned and 10,000 remain. So he says, if any of you are afraid, you can go on home. And two thirds of them went home.

And Gideon's probably thinking, okay, I didn't think we had enough. He said we needed fewer. We're a lot fewer. But in verse four, the eternal says to Gideon, nope, nope, people are still too many. Bring them down to the water and I'll test them there for you. And then it will be that whom I say to you, of whom I say to you, this one will go with you, that one will go with you. And whomever I say to you, this one will not go, the same will not go. So he brought the people down to the water. And the eternal said to Gideon, everyone who laps water with his tongue as a dog laps, you'll set apart by himself. Likewise, everyone who gets down on his knees to drink. There's an interesting test.

It brings 10,000 people. Go get a drink. Some of them would get down and just stick their face in the water and slurp it up. But a small number would scoop the water up with their hands.

And it was only, it turned out, well, let me just read it instead of telling you. The number of those who lapped putting their hand to their mouth was 300 men. The rest of the people got down on their knees to drink water. I wonder if Gideon was saying, who? He's only going to make me send 300 away.

But of course it was the other way around. The eternal said to Gideon, by the 300 men who lapped, I will save you and deliver the Midianites into your hand. Let all the people go, everyone to his home. I lost my place there. Now, yeah, I've got a note here. As far as I know, it's only a coincidence that we had a battle with 300 Spartans and now we have a battle with 300 Manassites following Gideon. But if it's not a coincidence, keep in mind that this battle happened hundreds of years before the battle of Thermopylae. So God and Gideon came first, but like I said, I don't think the Spartans were sitting down saying, well, let's be like Gideon and only send 300. Well, you never know. There's one other similarity, of course. 300 on one side and a huge number on the other. In the case of Thermopylae, the huge number crushed the 300.

But we'll see that when God is involved, the numbers aren't everything.

As I said, numbers aren't everything. Let's go to verse 15.

So it was when Gideon heard the telling of the dream, and I'm breaking into a verse, what happened was God said, it's time to go fight, but if you're afraid, just take your servant down there and listen to what they're saying. And he overheard one of the Midianites telling someone else about a dream about a loaf of bread smashing his tent. And the other fella comes up with the improbable interpretation that that loaf of bread represented Gideon coming and smashing our army. But when Gideon heard that, he said, these guys are kind of afraid of us. So he worshiped and he returned to the camp of Israel and said, arise! The eternal has delivered the camp of Midian into your hand. He's telling this to the 300 soldiers. He divided the 300 men into three companies, and he put a trumpet in every man's hand with empty pitchers and torches inside the pitchers. Now, putting a pitcher over a torch will obviously shield the light. It also would make it only a burning ember because it's deprived of oxygen. But you can imagine, as soon as that's broken, the air can come in, the torch would flare up suddenly almost like a flash bulb going off. I say that for those of you who remember what flash bulbs are.

So he told them, look at me and do likewise. Do likewise. Watch. When I come to the edge of the camp, you'll do as I do. When I blow the trumpet, and I who are with me, you also shall blow the trumpets on every side of the whole camp. And you'll say, the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.

So Gideon and the hundred men who were with him... Now did I say that he divided them in three companies? So he's with 300. 300 over there, 300 over there. They surround the camp of Midianites.

And at the beginning of the middle watch, just as they had posted the watch, he blew the trumpet. Yeah, they blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers that were in their hands. So blow the trumpets. Smash. Hold up the torches. And they say, the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.

Yes. And in verse 21, and every man stood in his place around the camp, and the whole army ran and cried out and fled. And you can imagine, they were asleep. The watch had just changed. Probably didn't have their eyes adjusted in the dark. Suddenly there's this loud voice noise. They're probably thinking each trumpet and every torch represents a whole company, a whole regiment. They say, we're surrounded. We're about to be slaughtered. This is in the minds of the Midianites. So they grab their swords and start running and hacking anybody they can find. And of course, they start slaughtering each other. Verse 22, when the 300 blew their trumpets, the eternals set every man's sword against his company throughout the whole camp. And the army fled to Beth-I-Keshia towards Zera as far as the border of Ebel-Mohola and by Tabah. Boy, this would be a better story if we had easier to say names. But God caused this fear and confusion. Gideon's men didn't even have to draw a weapon. They were holding trumpets and torches. They were sitting ducks for the Midianite army to just kill them.

But the numbers didn't matter because God fought the battle. God wanted them there just to witness what he was going to do. And in addition to that, if numbers did matter, God can change the numbers very quickly. That's one of the things I like about this story. It shows that you don't need the numbers, but also that God can provide the numbers. Let's look in verse 23.

And the men of Israel gathered together from Naftali, Asher, and Al-Manasseh and pursued the Midianites. Then Gideon sent messengers throughout all the mountains of Ephraim, saying, Come down against the Midianites and seize them from the watering places as far as Beth-Barah and the Jordan. All the men of Ephraim gathered together and seized the watering places, and they captured the two princes, Orib and Zeb. So that makes me consider, you know, we're a small number preaching the gospel. God could add huge numbers back to us. Gideon had had all those soldiers, and then God said, No, send them home. But when God had need of them, he brought them back.

Now, this is speculation on my part, but I wonder. Are some of those large numbers of people that used to be with us who have departed, you know, perhaps because if we use the analogy of the sower and the seed, perhaps the bird came and picked up the seed or they were entangled in the cares of the flesh or the sun was, you know, tribulation, perhaps God will bring them back when he decides the time is right. As I said, just guessing on my part, if that will or won't happen. But I will say again, as actually I did last week, remember the apparel of the workers in the vineyard. Some had to work all day long for that penny or that denarius. Others came in at the last hour. If we're the ones represented by those working all day long, we don't want to gripe and grumble when someone comes in at the last hour and gets the same reward. We want to remember what we signed on for and that we're going to stick it out all the way to the end and welcome the workers coming in at the last hour, whoever they may be. Now, I hope that we just look at a number. It helps us as we face it to realize that we have a job to do regardless of the numbers, a God-given job. And I hope that each one of us would take on that job even if we were working alone. What if there was just one of us to do that job? And when we read that command, you know, Jesus said, go and preach the gospel to all the world.

Are we likely to have the same reaction that Peter had when Jesus told him, feed my lambs?

And I remember that, and this is in a different place, but they're near the end and Jesus is giving Peter a chance to redeem himself by telling him that he loves him. He said, do you love me? Yes, you know I love you. Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep. And Peter sees John sitting there and says, well, what's this guy going to do? You know, he said, if you're giving all this to me, what about some help? What's he going to do? And Jesus said, that doesn't matter. If I have him stick around until I come back, you do the job I've given you. And that's, I think that'd be a good thing, good model for us to follow when we think, yeah, I wish there were others helping us to do this job, but I read it in my Bible that says, preach the gospel. Go and do this. Well, we've got to go do it. Instead of considering how small our numbers are. And actually, I do want to turn and look back a little bit. Instead of comparing what our numbers are like now compared to, say, 20 or 30 years ago, when they were much larger, what if we look back 20, 30, or 40 years before then, what the numbers were like? I think many of us have heard several times the story of how the radio broadcast began when it was the World Tomorrow program. But not everyone has heard it that much. We've got some young people, and I think it's fun to hear again. So I'd like to review some of that. It was in September of 1933, Herbert W. Armstrong took advantage of a policy that was in place by a small Eugene, Oregon radio station. That radio station was devoting 15 minutes of airtime every weekday morning to any church that wanted to take advantage of it.

And so when he found out, hey, we've got a church, we can get on the radio free. Let's take advantage of this. It was station KORE, a 100-watt station. 100 watts is the smallest a station could be and be licensed by what was then the, not the FCC, the FRA, I believe, Federal Radio Administration. I wrote a paper on this a long time ago, but now the letters get jumbled. Anyways, Monday through Friday, and by the way, 100 watts compared to the average radio station at that time, broadcast at 5,000 watts. So this 100-watt station would reach an audience of hundreds, not thousands or millions, but that was considered a big step forward from preaching the gospel. Those five days of him doing those five or 15-minute broadcasts brought the station 14 letters and phone calls. Now 14 letters and phone calls might seem small for a whole week of broadcasting, but comparatively, no other churches broadcast before this had ever had any response. The radio station talked to Mr. Armstrong and said, hey, this is different. People like what you're doing here. How would you like to do a program every week? Mr. Armstrong is interested. Now, I'm not recreating the exact dialogue, but the station manager says, well, I can't give it to you free because if I give it to you free, I have to offer it to the others, but I can let you have that half hour for only $2.50 a week. Now, wouldn't we love to be able to get on TV or radio for $2.50 for a half hour? But this was in the height of the Depression. $2.50 was worth quite a bit. So Mr. Armstrong went back to his church congregation that he was pastoring and asked the 22 people who were normally in attendance. They had an average attendance of 22. This morning, I looked out over Prestonsburg and said, that's barely bigger than you guys. It's smaller, considerably smaller than we are here. And he said, I know you're supporting, they were supporting Mr. Armstrong with a very small salary, but he said, can you pledge enough money on a weekly basis for us to do this? The individual members, many of them unemployed or poor farmers, some could pledge a few cents, some a nickel a week, maybe a dime. All together, it added up to $1.35. He was short by $1.15, but Mr. Armstrong prayed in facet and said, I'm going to commit to the station. I'll trust God to provide the money. And according to the story, God did provide the money, sometimes at the very last minute. And so they went ahead. They began very small preaching the gospel. And as I said, it was one person getting in front of a microphone with the help of one small congregation. But there was already plans for growth. Mr. Armstrong said, well, if people listen to this, they might be curious and want to learn more. I should have something in print. So he started on a regular basis producing what he called the Plain Truth magazine. A magazine that was supposed to come out monthly, but came out whenever the funds permitted. But he would type every issue on a portable typewriter. And they didn't have a Xerox machine. That would have been considered space age technology. Of course, nobody...

they wouldn't have had the term space age then, because nobody was thinking of going to space. But they had a hand crank version of a mimeograph machine. He also saw that the need to follow up the media effort with live appearances. And so Mr. Armstrong developed a three element campaign, three parts for how they would preach the gospel. There would be the radio broadcast. There would be a print magazine. And both of these would analyze world events in the news and put them... explain them in light of Bible and prophecy. But then there would also be live meetings where people could come and sit in an audience and see a live person who could ask questions.

So, I wanted to point that out, not only because that's the plan he had, but because it's the plan we're still basically following today. Today we have the Beyond Today TV program. We have the Good News magazine and various booklets. And we have the Kingdom of God seminars. Now, the church over the years has sometimes had the live presentations and sometimes not. And it's been an effective thing when we have. I've been trying to remember what was the one for several years that Garner Ted Armstrong traveled. And I think it was called Listen America or Wake Up America. Does anybody here remember? Nobody in Prestonburg remembered either. And the funny thing is, I was speaking of it recently when I was talking to Guy Cornish on the phone. He had been getting the magazine and listening to the program. And they had an announcement of one of these programs at the music center in Cincinnati. Large thousands of people came in. He went there and listened to the program. They said, well, we're going to have some follow-up public Bible studies. And so he came to some of those. And then after two or three of the Bible studies, they said, anybody that's interested in attending church services, that's when they finally let them know that there was a congregation in the area. But those live programs yielded results.

Now, for several years, the work of preaching the gospel was done by a man and his wife with the support of one congregation and later a few other small congregations. But they worked in a small interior office in a building where they were pretty much given the space and they would pay the rent when they could afford it. But I remember in the autobiography, he says, when they could move to where they had a window on the outside and could get fresh air, that was a huge step up. They were in the small window with two old tables that doubled his desks and work benches.

Mr. Armstrong wrote all the, typed all the Plain Truth magazine on his typewriter with stencils for the mimeograph. And Mrs. Armstrong would hand crank them. She would label the envelopes by hand with an ink pen. And then they'd put them in a box. And by the way, the cardboard boxes were their filing cabinets. You know, they didn't have nice steel file cabinets. I say like I have in my office. Actually, I've got a wooden one. But, you know, they went to the grocery store and said, do you have any old boxes we could have? Those were the filing cabinets for years for the whole mailing of the Plain Truth. As I said, Mrs. Armstrong would hand write the address. They'd put them in the box and then they kneeled down and pray over the entire mailing before the two of them would carry them across the street to the post office. That's exciting to me, in a way. Because I think of that and I thought they would love to have an army of 300. When Gideon was saying, only 300? Mr. Armstrong probably would have said, yeah, 300! But of course, we all know, the church would grow and expand quite a bit over the years. But it's easy to overlook how long it took to grow. And I put some of this together. I've heard other ministers speak on this. So you might have heard some. I'm sure you've heard this story I've given so far before. I was surprised. I thought when I heard this, I thought it's all in one place in the autobiography. But I had to actually dig, find several different references and put it together. The first expansion would come in 1936 when two more 100-watt stations were added to what they started calling the Oregon Network. Now remember, average station, average radio station broadcast at 5,000 watts. Now they've got 300 between three stations. They couldn't afford the AT&T network lines that the like NBC and CBS used. I think back then they had NBC red and NBC blue before. I'm not sure if it was red or blue that became ABC. I'm supposed to remember those things. But there were CBS. They had really high-quality network telephone lines to connect radio stations with boosters and all that. Since the World Tomorrow program couldn't afford those, they were able to use telegraph lines through the postal system that charged a much lower fee. But also, Mr. Armstrong would speak in Eugene with his voice carried to a station in one in Salem and one in Portland. And with the telegraph line, sometimes a voice would fade down almost to nothing and then come back and static would be on the line. But they were growing and they planned to grow more. Mr. Armstrong had dreams of expanding all the way into Washington State, which would be a pretty big step forward. But we know he was also hoping to go even further. And in time, things did open up in Washington.

They had the opportunity to get on a Seattle Washington station at 8 30 on Sunday mornings, which would be great. They could hook up by the network, except then the Portland station changed its time that it would give them to 4 p.m. And so in 1940, Mr. Armstrong began a weekend routine that would continue for years that really is kind of mind-boggling when you think through what he did. So I'd like to describe it. As I said, I put these together.

And it's good for any any member who thinks they drive a long ways on the Sabbath or any minister has a tough circuit. So this was Mr. Armstrong's normal weekend routine. On Sabbath morning, he would have a morning service there in Eugene, where he lived. Then he would drive to afternoon services up in Jefferson, Oregon. Now it was only 50 miles away, but because of the roads at the time, it would take about an hour and a half to get there. So it was a commute similar to my coming from Athens to here. Now 50 miles an hour was the maximum speed on any of these roads, but he wasn't finished after doing the circuit. After afternoon services, he would get in his car and drive 235 miles up to Seattle, Washington, normally arriving at 1 a.m. Sunday morning. So he's had morning services, afternoon services drive until 1 o'clock, check into an inexpensive hotel room, sleep for four hours, then have the alarm wake him up at 5 a.m., shave and shower and get dressed, go across the street to an all-night diner where he can get an early edition of the newspaper. Of course, during the drive, at least there's time to think about what you want to cover in the World Tomorrow program tomorrow and start putting ideas together, but because you're analyzing world news, you want to see the latest news. And of course, well, I shouldn't say of course, but 1940 World War II is already broken out, although the United States hasn't entered it yet. But because the war is broke out, there's a lot of news and there are security regulations that say he has to turn in a typed script before he can go in the on the air. He can't just have some loose notes and be impromptu. He's got to have a specific script. So he goes to the newspaper, then sits down on his portable typewriter and types out a script, having it finished by eight o'clock so he can get to the radio station by 815 and hand over a script to the sensor. While the sensor is looking at a script, he goes to the teletype machines. That's what they had before Yahoo News and other internet services, a clattering thing that gets the latest news that there is. And he's looking to see if there's any late-breaking news, and if so, retype part of his script. And actually, I think he mentions in his autobiography that that's how he was one of the first people in the country to learn of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was at that station early morning after having been up most of the night and it comes across. And of course, he retyped his script for that one. But then, no matter how much he had to scramble at 830 sharp, greetings friends, and he would go on with that enthusiastic voice, as if you remember it, which carried well into his 90s. He would do the half-hour program of full energy, race out of the station, and jump in his car ready waiting to begin the drive back south. Quick breakfast in Tacoma and then moving on, pushing those 50 mile an hour roads to their limit. Remember, he started at services the day before and has been going almost non-stop. He reaches Portland, Oregon by 3 o'clock. That gives him an hour to sort of unwind, look at the teletype machines again, adjust the script if necessary, and then at 4 o'clock he goes live on the air on KWJJ Portland.

4.30, he's finished broadcasting, but he's not finished with his day. He gets in the car, driving south. He reaches home in Eugene at 7.30 in the evening, but he doesn't go home. He goes back to the church hall to speak in a live evangelistic meeting that's scheduled. He never wanted to let drop that part of the three-pronged plan, broadcast, magazine, and live appearance.

I've wondered about that. I think I would have not had Sunday night appearances.

I'm suspecting that was one of the best nights for attendance, but he normally kept that up five or six nights a week. They would have the live public appearance, and during the days, on the, you know, not weekends, he would be in the office writing articles for the plain truth, answering letters that came in. He got a lot of letters with questions or comments.

That makes me think that driving a circuit down to Preston's Bergen back in the morning is a piece of cake. I'm not going to complain about that one anymore. Now, of course, over time, the work grew. People responded. Coworkers and donors pitched in, and as the income grew, the work could start using advanced technology. When they could afford those high-quality network phone lines, he wouldn't have to travel. Or, of course, they could eventually afford high-quality recording equipment and record programs in advance and send those out. And that's one of the lessons I wanted to draw from this. First of all, to show that the responsibility of preaching the gospel must go on, even if it's only by one person, but also larger numbers of people provides the means for better technology. So it's not that more people have to be the voice, although we all have to be ready to give an answer if anyone asks us, and many of us do, and we should, but that financial support can bring the best communication technology. And that's where I come back to this. Today, the United Church of God is using cutting-edge the best technology available. We don't have a huge budget, but we can use a lot of the best stuff. It's making it available for us to preach the gospel to all the world and fulfill the Church's commission. Now, sometimes I wonder, and I'm going to tell you something that might not seem related to explain why it is, and that's about cell phones. I was listening, I think it was a story on NPR. I used to never listen to NPR, but I listen to it on the Sabbath sometimes because when I'm driving the car, it's calm and relaxed and doesn't have all those commercials, which is nice. But I learned that in a lot of developing countries, they have better cell phone service than we do.

I said, really? Well, they explained that most of these countries adopted early one particular system. Instead of, as in the United States, where we like to have choice, we would have various different systems, and they would compete. But they have to have a rigmarole for one system like Sprint to be able to talk to MCI and it to communicate with AT&T. So it draws down the effectiveness. Whereas in other countries where they had one, it was more effective. Plus, they never had landlines in the first place. Some of the places in Africa, they never had phones until cell phones. So they skipped a step and went right to the best thing available. So they've got really good cell phone service. Now, you might wonder what's that got to do with anything? Well, a similar thing can apply to television. And that we went through broadcast TV, first in black and white, then color, and you got to make that system match. And of course, you remember with digital, where they said, well, we can't change it. So where people can't get digital, so we're going to offer converter boxes, and you can get this, but you can have a type of satellite or you can have cable.

Well, most of the world never had all of that. A lot of them never had any TV to start with, and they kicked off immediately with satellite TV. Matter of fact, it reminds me of, I don't know, 20-25 years ago, I was in Britain. That makes it sound like I'm this great world traveler, but it was when I was a college student, I was still serving at SEP Scotland. And this one year, I remember, I did a travel study class, and then was going to camp. So I had some time in between, where they put me to work in the office to get ready for camp. It sounds really glitzy. I was working in the church's office in Britain. But what they did is they sent me to the warehouse, and I was sewing patches on tents, so we could use them for camp. I was doing the work, sewing those patches. What I'm getting at there is, I would take some walks in the neighborhoods, and on almost every house, I saw these weird round things. Sometimes on the roof, sometimes outside a window, and I said, what are those round things on the houses? Well, those are for satellite TV.

That's not a satellite dish. A satellite dish is 12 feet around, and has a special mounting station in the backyard. Only rich people have them. You need a computer technology degree to be able to operate it. Do you guys remember when satellite TV was like that? Well, other countries never went through that phase, and they didn't go through many of the cable. A lot of places where you see this blue on the map, they jumped directly to what now is or what became for us dish TV or direct TV.

So they didn't have to go through the change. Now, you could argue whether it's better or not. I like having my cable, but why it matters is, if we're going to preach the gospel to all the world, to those places, being on a satellite TV channel is a good idea. Now, for me, it seems kind of off because I've never had a satellite dish, but for a lot of them, that's all TV has ever been. And so, if we want to reach them, it's good to use that avenue. It will be most effective using the methods that work for them. And, of course, I'm turning my page, so I'll make sure I'm not leaving anything out, which I'm not. That doesn't even take into account the internet. And, of course, the internet has a... well, it goes everywhere, but you might say, well, not everywhere. Somebody living in a hut in Africa doesn't have the internet. Well, remember that thing I said about cell phone service? Now, the internet is largely wireless. A lot of people are getting iPads in parts of the world where you think, well, they would never have access to the internet. But because they've got advanced cell phone technology and because of, you know, wireless computers and wireless internet, yes, they do.

And the internet is a fabulous way for us to satisfy two of those prongs on our three-prong plan. They can watch the Beyond Today program. They can listen to it. They can see the short videos. I wasn't expecting Mr. McGee to be here, but earlier today I was commenting on how we not only have a half-hour long... that's relatively long-form program, we have several short videos that grab the attention and have the potential to go viral. Now, I'm wondering... in Pressensburg, most of the people I said, have you heard a viral video? And they looked at me like, does that like catch... catching a cold? I think a couple people understood what I meant, but how many... are you familiar with viral video? Or when a video goes viral? I'm feeling young and hip. Okay, Mr. Shoemaker knows. That's basically where, you know, nowadays with Facebook and a lot of social media, if you see something on YouTube or something like that and you like it, you can really easily share it with someone else. And if they like it, they share it with their friends and share with others. And I didn't have this in my notes, but it occurred to me yesterday morning, I was... Sue and I often watch the Today Show, you know, we like Matt Lauer and whoever's on there now. And obviously we don't like them that much, I can't remember who's on there, but I like the coverage of the Olympics. But I think it was Friday morning they had a pair of one-year-old twin girls. And they were on there because they were on a video that had gone viral. What happened is there's a video that you can find somewhere on the internet of them dancing. Their dad plays the guitar and the two kids are in their seats and they look at each other and they start going like this. And they're smiling and they're dancing to their dad's guitar. And it's the cutest thing you ever saw. Millions and millions of people have seen it because people share it. It's that easy now with the communications technology for something to go around the world just like that. And that could happen. I mean, for all we know, well, I don't think it's happened with any of our videos yet, but it's possible. I say if someone wants to learn the Ten Commandments, how to sing them with a muppet, we've got a video that's perfect for that.

It could go viral just like that. Or if God starts, you know, doing some miraculous healings publicly. Now, God does miraculous healings on a regular basis, but often it's not where we can see. But something like that on video could go around the world. And next thing you know, Matt Lowers got you in the studio saying, well, how did this happen? Oh, I'm part of the United Church of God, and we believe in preaching the gospel. You know, avenues can open up. And sorry, I didn't have this in my notes. I just talked about how exciting it is and how technology has made it possible for a small number of people to do what it used to take a large number of people to do. We can do the work now in some ways far more effectively than we could when there were 100,000 of us, and we had many millions of dollars in our budget. We still have millions of dollars, but that doesn't go as far as it used to. But I want to make the point, of course, that it's not technology that's most important. It is important. It's effective. But God's participation is the most important thing. If God is leading our efforts to preach the gospel, we'll be like Gideon's 300 soldiers. If he's not leading our efforts, we'll be like the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, engaged in a lost cause. But I don't think we're in a lost cause. I think God is leading our efforts.

And there's one part of our strategy that can't be done by communication. They can't be done over the internet or over TV. That's a live in-person presentation. And I wanted to bring that up and specifically wanted to do a sermon on the subject the week before we're having the Kingdom of God seminars because that's where we all come into play. We'll all participate in preaching the gospel in a live format. All of you won't have to get up and preach. That falls to just a few of us. But all of you being there or being here will make a difference. Now, of course, you know, we're bringing in some new voices this time so we can do the presentation two places at once. Kevin Call and Daniel Evans will be presenting here at the same time that Jim Call Jr. and I will be in Athens. In the following week, Kevin and I will go down to Prestonsburg. So the four of us will be speaking, but all of you will be there and supporting. You'll be like the 300 soldiers with Gideon holding up your torches. Now, metaphorically speaking, you don't have to bring a torch.

And that just gave me an image of concerts. They used to do the cigarette lighter thing. We're not planning on doing that here, but you can all come and let your light shine.

If our light is shining, we'll be like Gideon soldiers who didn't even have to draw a sword.

Now, we can stand back and watch the miracles happen. Now, of course, it's still for God to decide how many people to bring, who he's going to call into the church, things like that.

But we want to keep in mind we'll hardly have a light to shine if we're not focusing on living godly lives and if we're not in close contact with God. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter 6.

You were probably wondering if I was going to use the Bible again, but I've got a couple more scriptures. Ephesians 6 and verse 18.

Other important thing that we need all of us to be doing.

Paul says, I certainly hope you'll pray for Daniel Evans and Jim Call and Kevin Call and me that we can be effective in for all the ministers. Of course, that's only covering three congregations. There's going to be hundreds of these presentations. Let's go to Colossians chapter 4.

Colossians 4 beginning in verse 2.

2.

Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving, meanwhile praying also for us that God would open to us a door for the word to speak the mystery of Christ for which I also am in chains.

Of course, we pray for all the men who will be speaking in the kingdom of God seminars, but I'm sure the men in the media department and those who are not in the media department in Cincinnati. I think Scott Ashley, the editor of The Good News, is in Colorado, another benefit of that technology. He can be editing our magazines and pastoring a congregation in Colorado at the same time, but I'm sure they'll appreciate the prayers of the members. I'm not saying that you don't do that. This is a reminder. We need to continue doing it, and it does matter. We want to convey the message that God wants delivered, the good news of the kingdom of God. And we must never forget that God gave us a job to do. Jesus gave His disciples the job of preaching the gospel, and we want to be His disciples. We need to be, no matter how few of us there are or how many. So this has been sort of a rather long roundabout way of encouraging you to get excited about the kingdom of God seminars again and to encourage you to pray for our success. But I think it's good now and then to stop and take a look back at where we've been. And as I said, you know, and I wrote the sermon more for me than for all of you. I have to say there's sometimes when I look at the numbers diminishing, and it feels a little depressing.

Then I have to think it through and say, wait a minute, look at what God is doing. Look what He's done before. You don't have to get down about this. You have to focus and say, even if I'm the only one, I'm going to be, you know, if I have to be like Mr. Armstrong driving a car from radio to station to radio station, or nowadays it'd be one person operating a website from the computer in his basement, which I have a computer in my basement. I don't know much about operating a website.

But we're small. The body of Christ now is relatively small, and we're definitely scattered.

But that doesn't mean we're not going to do the work. The job of preaching the gospel to seven billion people might seem overwhelming, might seem like 300 Spartans against 300,000 Persians, but really we're like the 300 soldiers with Gideon. The battle is not ours, it's God's.

He gives us the victory regardless of the numbers. And so the church will preach the gospel.

Whether we're a few hundred or a few thousand, we're going to let our light shine. We're going to do the organized work, and the church will preach the gospel. So I encourage all of us, let's make sure we're a part of it.