Solving the Unsolvable

It is to have everyone here from Northwest Phoenix, Northern Arizona, Phoenix East, those of you in Sholo, others listening online. We have a full hall here today, and it's great to be together as brothers and sisters. It's also wonderful to be together as family of God, the potential bride of Christ that God is working with at this time. Feast of Trumpets is a feast named for something that's an alarm. It's a blast. It's about warfare. It's about sudden urgency. Today, during special music, we heard a trumpet piece about a very melodic forest scene that is comforting, that is easy.

You know, the Feast of Trumpets is actually all about what you just heard in the special music as its ultimate goal. That is part of God's plan in getting humanity to where everyone can rest under his own vine, under his own victory, where people can be at peace. But it doesn't begin that way because of the adversary, Satan the Devil.

Today, I'd like to tell you a story about two families, the Gambinos in Italy and the Mullins family in Britain. Back in the 1800s, Francisco Gambino was a young man that worked in a family that marbled or that the corried marble. You've probably heard of Italian marble. You may have once seen the auditorium, the ambassador auditorium in Pasadena, that was wrapped in this special marble. It was marble on the inside. Italian marble was legendary. Today, granite and various types of things are quarried and brought to use in various construction projects. It's a beautiful stuff. But the people who actually quarry this, that drill the holes, that expand or wet the wood, that crack it out in the old days, or that have a certain expertise with explosives to crack out large sheets of these things, they work very hard.

They don't get paid very much. Back in the 1800s, Francisco Gambino was one of those hard-working quarrymen. And as a teen, he learned his craft and his trade. And then one day, he was probably walking down the street in Fontana Rosa, a little town outside of Naples. And he saw a girl, and she saw him, and there were sparks. Her name was Maria Rubino. This little village of Fontana Rosa, and they were smitten. And eventually nothing could keep Francisco and Maria apart. And so, one day Francisco went to Mr. Rubino, who was of class and of wealth and of stature and importance.

They had money. They were privileged. And he said, Mr. Rubino, I would like to marry your daughter, Maria. And he looked down at him and said, son, I think you're on the wrong side of the tracks, in Italian. No way. Maria begged her father. No. There is no way this family will marry into poverty or blue-collar work. He said, if you marry Francisco Gambino, I will not only disinherit you from the family fortune, we will disavow that you are family.

And so, Maria chose Francisco. They were wed. And she was disowned by the Rubino family for the rest of her life. A separation occurred. It was a terrible thing. It was a tragic thing. In a little village to be married and begin to have children. She had child after child to attend the same church as it were in town, go to the same little cathedral. But the other family, your siblings, your parents would have nothing to do with you.

You weren't part of them anymore. Francisco's children grew up to be older teens and the fourth oldest one, his name was Giuseppe. Giuseppe was 12 years old when Francisco found that in the New World, in America, a person could come over and get work. And you could get rich compared to what you could get in Fontana Rosa, Italy. So he took his 12-year-old and immigrated, landing up in Baltimore in the United States. And the railroads, you see, the big tycoons of the railroads, were battling to put rails across the United States.

And they needed people who were experts with dynamite, who could go in and build tunnels, who could take out stone and rocks. And so Francisco had a job and his 12-year-old son Giuseppe also got jobs with the railroad. So here are these husband and wife, the wives back in Italy, the husbands in America with their 12-year-old. When Giuseppe was 14, his father was in one of those railroad tunnels, and something went wrong. There was no care or concern for workers in America back in those days. There was nothing safety. In fact, on the railroad there was a term, that guy doesn't stand a Chinaman's chance.

Because sometimes before payday, they would let some of the workers go in and they'd blow him up and they wouldn't have to pay him. It's just the way things were. And so it happened. When Giuseppe was 14, he saw his father, he saw the accident right there, and his father was killed. Now at 14, he's alone in America. Maria, disenfranchised from all of her family, is now a widow. She said, why would I come to America?

There's nothing there for me. So she stayed and finally died alone, separated. In America, Giuseppe was separated from his mother. She's separated from her family. Times are tough. There's a lot of separation that takes place. Very, very tough. In time, Giuseppe would grow up and he would have a son. His son would be named John Gambino. John Gambino worked for the railroad as well. Here's the hat John Gambino wore. It's conductor for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. There's a pen of 15 years service there, and the Missouri Pacific Railroad pen over there. There's a picture inside of John Gambino wearing that hat when he worked for the railroad.

I'll put the hat up here right now. I want to tell you about a little bit of a different story that happened to him, because John Gambino found a gal to marry and he eventually, before that, he went into World War I. At 18 years old, before he got into the railroad, before he got married, he was gassed by the German soldiers under Kaiser Wilhelm along the western front in France. He was disenfranchised from his buddies in the war. He saw as these big shells hit and the earth went up, he saw his friends go up into pieces. 18 year old John Gambino cried, shed tears, and then the Germans gassed him, his side gassed the Germans. On the other side was a young 18 year old boy named Paul Broelich.

Paul, on the German side, now gassed, both of them.

They were both harmed and maimed for life.

Paul Broelich decided to get out of Germany afterward, leave his family, leave his home, leave everything he knew and immigrate to Canada with a young gal that he'd married. Disenfranchisement everywhere. Broken relationships.

There's another family called the Mullens family.

On the Mayflower, you may have heard the story of Priscilla Mullens.

She and John Alden had a romance. When you're on a little boat for a long time, you know what's going on.

They watched this pair fall in love and eventually get married. Her father, Mr. Mullens, was on the ship, and one of his descendants was John Mullens, who fought with George Washington in the Revolutionary War. In fact, he became known as Revolutionary John.

If you go into Clintwood, Virginia today, near the border with Kentucky, Pikeville, Kentucky, you'll see there's a statue right on the main drag for Revolutionary John. And there he is.

Revolutionary John, the interesting thing was that when the battle was won, Washington wanted to give everybody that helped out little money.

But the U.S. was broke, and Congress could never enact that. But finally, in about 1804, they gave John Mullens 2,200 acres.

Way out there. They wanted people to move west into uninhabited areas, like Davy Crockett type of places.

The Revolutionary John went out to his 2,200 acres, and one of his descendants was named James Sherman Mullens. James Sherman was out on his portion, which was 220 acres, and it was way out in the middle of nowhere. He was chopping, and he was trying to eke out a living, and he was farming, but he didn't have a wife. Back then, the women didn't like to go to places like that. So they had these things called Sunday meetings. A little town somewhere had a Sunday meeting. All the guys cleaned up, and you went. Because you could meet people, and you might find a girl. And sure enough, 1888, Sherman went to a town meeting, and he spent all day, picnic, hanging around. He caught the eye of a lady named Cordelia. Cordelia Knuckles was her name. Cordelia Knuckles. At the end of the day, he sat down with Cordelia, and he said, you know, I'm only here for one day, and I live somewhere that way. Would you be my wife?

And she said, yes, I will. I will be your wife. So James Sherman Mullins went back for 30 days, chopped trees, and made them a log cabin. And for 30 days, she took flax, broke it down, spun it into thread, and made sheets for their bed. A month later, he came back to town, and they were married.

All he rode in on was a horse. They rode out on the same horse. And sitting on the back of the horse, her mother handed her up the sheets, and her father handed up this spinning wheel.

And the maker, made by hand in June 1888, used the nail and chipped the date in it. It's the 110th linen spinning wheel, or flax wheel, that he had made.

So James Sherman carried the flax wheel. She carried the sheets. They hung on to each other, and they rode off in the middle of nowhere to his 220 acres. They forged a family there.

They had kids. One of the daughters they had was named Manila. How did she get her name? Well, these hillbillies, as they were referred to, didn't have good education, but they would get newspapers from time to time. And they saw a news story that came all the way from the Philippines from a place called Manila. Cordelia thought that was the coolest name she named her daughter, Manila. She had another daughter named, she named her Snowden. Snowden. Snowden, today is 104 years old, very bright. Bright as a tack. But, you know, this wheel is a flax wheel. This is what clothing was made of before cotton.

You look in the Bible, there's some 20 references to linen.

It was either linen or wool. That's the only thing clothes were ever made of before cotton was found.

If you think about it, Rahab had flax on her roof and she dyed it. She was able to dye it. She made linen. The measuring line of measuring the temple was made of linen. In fact, the word line or linear comes from the word linen. That's what things were measured with. It's from the Latin word for flax. So, line or linen, linear, that's what this is from. So, it's a very useful thing that a young lady would be able to make their clothes from.

Sherman was a man of character. In his lifetime, he served as a policeman. He served as a U.S. Marshal. He served as the state of Virginia's revenue inspector. He had a second cousin who was the county sheriff. Everybody respected Sherman. Nobody respected the county sheriff. The county sheriff's name was Pride Moore, was his first name. I don't know why you would name your kid Pride Moore, but obviously there was a defect there. He got involved in the bootleg trade because of all the stills in his county that he was sheriff, he was taking bribes. He was involved in it.

And so, Sherman Mullins cited him and gave him citations. He told him, pleaded with, quit doing this, quit doing this. Eventually, Pride Moore got a letter in the mail from the U.S. government saying, you're no longer the county sheriff. So what he did, upon getting the letter that evening, he loaded up his pistol and he went to town. In Clintonwood, Virginia, today, you'll see the courthouse. The steps come up from both sides to the main door and right on the wall in front of those steps, below those steps, is a plaque about James Sherman Mullins being shot to death by county sheriff, Pride Moore, and vice versa. What happened, James Sherman Mullins was talking to the attorney general, another official, one of the judges, and they were having a consultation that evening after dinner. And here comes Pride Moore up the street. Pride Moore yelled, you other guys get away! And they did, and he started emptying his revolver.

General Sherman, not General, James Sherman Mullins, he hit him once in the side, two other places.

James ran behind a little pillar that's there with a light on it, tried to hide out, and he shot back and he mortally wounded Pride Moore. The two of them were taken to the hospital, which, if you go from the steps directly behind, is like two doors down and up a flight of stairs. There's a little, couple little rooms, and that was the hospital for this little village of Clintwood, Virginia.

And the doctors said, what happened here? And they told him, and he says, all right, I'm going to treat James Sherman Mullins first. Pride Moore, I'll get to if I have time.

Pride Moore died 30 minutes later. James Sherman lived two more days, and he finally died.

But what happened was, remember Cordelia and him riding off into nowhere? She devoted her life.

They raised their kids. It was very tough. Suddenly, she didn't have a husband. Manila and Snowda didn't have a father. The family was shattered.

There was nothing for them, no compensation that came to them for that murder.

Families were separated. Cousins, relationships, bitter feelings emerged. You know, we have different issues that come up in families.

And this is not the story of just one family or two families. This is the story of the human family.

This is the story with different names and different faces. This is your lineage. This is my lineage. This is what's happened down through time. When you go back through human history, historians can only find 300 years that people have not been killing each other constantly.

300 years, that's it. And thousands of years of recorded history.

Separation, hard feelings, generation after generation, self-focus, carelessness, envy, jealousy, lust, war, the great icons that rise up and they want more and they're greedy and they try to shut each other down and they don't care about the employees or retirements or safety.

We live in a world today that is heavily regulated because of the thoughtless greed and exploitation that has taken place in the past in this country and extends currently to all countries of the world. This is a version of everyone's story, everyone who has been led by the spirit and man. It's a tough story. We see it continuing all the time. Have you heard the news lately? What is in the news? Terrible, terrible things.

Syria, fracturing, separating, killing, murdering, they don't care. Ukraine, separating, fracturing, killing, no one seems to care. Iraq, continual, just ripping apart of any kind of structure and relationships. Afghanistan, same thing. Country by country, we go around the world, we even see Scotland wanting to separate. We see in Canada, the Quebec province has wanted to separate and there have been initiatives for a long time. We see Europe strained relations all around the world, we find riots, shootings, drug influence, drug influence that focuses an individual to the point that they don't maintain relationships with others. And it's a very sad thing. Marriages that were designed to bring together in oneness the modern concept is not about that, it's about self-fulfillment with or without actual marriage. Relationships in the world today are simply falling apart, at an unimaginable rate. Now, how would we fix this? How do we stop this separation?

Well, Senate races are coming up. Maybe you want to be a senator, congressman, maybe you want to jump in and pass some new bills, revoke a few old bills, maybe you like to fix various things that are broken. Ever think of that? A couple years, we'll have a presidential race. Maybe you could be president. You ever put yourself in that and say, wow, if I was president, this is what I'd do.

I'd fix this, I'd do that, I'd jump in there, and yeah, this place would be, this place would really be different. You want to move things in the right direction? I think all of us at times do. We're horrified when we see something in the news. Oh, look at this! Oh, look, what's going on? We want to see things go in the right direction, not the wrong direction. Well, in trying to find a solution, do you ever think to try this? Let's go to Revelation chapter 11 and verse 15.

Revelation chapter 11 and verse 15.

Then the seventh angel sounded, the seventh trumpet blows, and there are loud voices in heaven saying, The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. How shallow it is when I think, oh, if I could make a difference, I would pass a different piece of legislation. I'd get a bigger gun or weapon. How often do we turn to this person and say, well, here's what needs to happen. The kingdoms of this world need to become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, because only he can solve these things.

The 24 elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, We give you thanks, O Lord God Almighty, the one who is and who was and who is to come, because you have taken your great power and reign. Really, when you think about it, you and I are as clueless as any other human as to how to fix the problems in the world as long as there's Satan and the demons out there. It doesn't matter how many get killed that are bad people, the demons just hop into a whole bunch of new ones and they keep on going.

Verse 18, the nations were angry. Oh, yeah, you start to do something right and it infuriate. What kind of solution is that? Even if you're the king of kings and your wrath has come, and the time of the dead that they should be judged, the first fruits to stand and reign with Christ, as we see in Revelation 14, first few verses, that you should reward your servants, the prophets and the saints and those who fear your name, small and great, and should destroy those who destroy the earth. This is big. This is really, really big.

The title of the sermon today is Solving the Unsolvable.

And this is how God will do it. It is unsolvable. As long as things are as they are, it is unsolvable. It's the ultimate Gordian knot. In verse 19, Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of his covenant was seen in his temple, and there were lightnings, and noises, thunderings, and earthquake, and great hail.

In our little scenarios of how we would fix things, how many of us think of those things?

Lightnings and great hail and earthquakes. As just part of a solution.

This really is about the great day of God. Of God the Father who has this planned out. Who alone knows the day and the hour, knows the time, knows when it's right to send in his Son, and knows when it's right to reach out to those whom he has chosen to be his Son's bride. It's going to be quite a powerful time. It's going to involve a period called a Great Tribulation, Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24, where in no flesh would be saved alive.

That is the ultimate separation of all things, of all relationships. When you read about the Great Tribulation, you walk through Matthew 24, you walk through Daniel 11 and 12, you walk through Revelation all the way through chapter 19, you seek just a decimation of all relationships.

Between nations, between religions, between humans and God, between Satan and the demons and humans, between humans and humans, between everything, except on this day, that this day pictures there's a forging of relationships that begins.

Let's look at it in chapter 14. Revelation 14 Verse 1, I looked, and behold, a lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000, having his father's name written on their foreheads. That's as one as can be.

That is as unified, that is as together as anything you and I can imagine.

So while the remnants of Satan's evil age is fracturing and breaking apart, this is the time that God begins to fully, completely, spiritually create oneness with the first group of children to enter his family.

When we look at the autumn festivals, it's important to call them the autumn festivals, by the way, not the fall festivals. Here in the United States, we have the term fall, but most of the rest of the world doesn't use that. So it sounds like something, the festivals are falling. They're the autumn festivals, is a maybe a less used term in the vernacular, but these autumn festivals really are about the not the restoring but the creating of divine harmony among all things at all levels. The Feast of Trumpets is the start of godly relationships, the harmony that we just see here in chapter 14. The good works that will flow from the family of God, that spirit of peace. Let's look at Micah chapter 4 in the first four verses.

Micah chapter 4 beginning in verse 1. Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain or the kingdom of the Lord's house shall be established on top of the mountains, on top of the other kingdoms. It certainly will be up in Jerusalem as well, which is up high.

It shall be exalted above the hills, perhaps the smaller nations and countries.

In verse 2, notice the impact. Many nations shall come. They're not going, they're coming now to God. And they'll say, come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord. There's a drawing, there's a unification there. To the house of the God of Jacob. And He will teach us His ways.

And we shall walk in His paths together with Him. For out of Zion the law shall go forth, and the word of God from Jerusalem. And He shall judge between many peoples and rebuke strong nations afar off, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares. You know, instead of nations and peoples dividing and conquering and killing and hurting, now they are feeding each other. It is something that is just wonderful about sharing food, breaking bread. Whenever you stop and you offer someone food and they offer you food, it draws you together in a relationship. That's what God's feasts are about. They are feasts where we sit and we eat, and we rejoice, and we bond. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

The events of the Feast of Tabernacles is, again, a starting point. It's the entry point where God starts humanity and the environment and God all towards a unified, very happy relationship.

You and I, however, don't have to wait until the Second Coming for that to happen.

Here we are today with God's Holy Spirit drawing us together in agape love, the joy that comes from that, the peace. The Greek word for peace, Irene, means to stitch, to join. God is about joining. We don't have to wait. We should be about joining now. We should be ambassadors of joining. We should be ones who are not only proponents but examples of it. And doing that, every opportunity, as the Bible tells us, as you have opportunity, do good to all. Doing good is the works of agape love. Do good to all, especially those of the household of faith.

I've shown you some artifacts up here and talked about some shattered relationships. Let's go back and pick those up. We have John Gambino injured in the war, decimated friends in relationships, a bit maimed.

We saw Sherman Mullen's daughters, one of them named Manila. It so happened that, somehow, and I'm not sure how it happened, but John Gambino met Manila Mullens, and they were nuts over each other, kind of like his grandparents had been. Manila, from this family without a father, and John Gambino, whose grandfather was killed, forged their own little family, and moved to Texas, moved to Palestine, Texas, where he got a job in the Pacific Railroad.

There they had some kids. It's an interesting story. Paul Brolic and Mary, up in Canada, had some kids. They got along very well, those enemies back during World War I.

Manila and John Mullens, themselves, herself, and five generations, continue in the Church of God today.

Five generations currently attending God's Church today, except for her. She died a few years ago.

Those relationships are all very solid, very stable. Marriages are sound. Kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, great-great-grandkids. God's way is a way that promotes oneness and unity without division and without fracturing. Paul Brolic and his wife Mary came into God's Church, and they celebrated with us for years and years. They were a loving couple in the Church until their deaths in their 90s. This is not, again, just one family story. John Gambino, Manila Mullens, or my grandparents. I'm named after John Gambino.

But this is everyone's story in the family of God. This is what happens when God reaches out, puts his spirit in us, and this is what is intended to happen. None of us can take any credit for it.

But the Autumn festivals talk about the family of God and its development over time.

Think about it. With trumpets, yes, it's about some difficult things, coupled with a very exciting thing for the first fruits. Feast of Atonement, the very name, at one, meant, is intended to facilitate the bringing to oneness of people under the reign of Jesus Christ and the bride, being overseen by the Father in heaven. An important aspect of that is the removal of Satan the Devil and the blood of Jesus Christ, forgiving everybody of the wrong that they've done.

Jesus said in John 17...let's go to John 17. Because if there's anything in his mind right before he died, this was his goal. This is what he looked forward to. He wanted at one man. He wanted a bringing together, a stitching together, a harmony, not just an absence of war. He says in verse 21 of John 17 that they all may be one.

That's what I'm about! That they all may be one. It's like he said there in Matthew 18, he was saying, if anybody is putting relationships back together and you ministers are there helping facilitate people who have been offended or offended one another, I'm right there in the middle of you. Where two or more are gathered, I'm right there. I'm going to help you put those relationships back together. That's what Matthew 18 is talking about. And woe be it to anybody who breaks apart or causes offenses or causes people to offend because I'm going to put a millstone around your neck. Well, you wish I would. You're actually going to burn.

So that clearly shows what he's about. And he says, look, that they may be one as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us. In verse 23, I in them and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one. That's the goal.

A piece of tabernacles, which we are going to go celebrate, pictures that thousand-year reign of Christ in the bride. And what happens? Well, the environment just blossoms with special animals and greenery and plants and rain and new season and so much abundance that the planters are overtaking the reapers. And everybody is comfortable and at peace, kind of as we heard in the special music. Wouldn't it be nice when the trumpet sound with that kind of tranquility, which is what God wants. That's the purpose. For a thousand years, the bride will assist the Messiah in a beautiful reign. Then comes what we call the last great day or eighth day. And that festival shows an opportunity for oneness for everybody who's ever lived and died without being able to sample God's Holy Spirit, without being able to be one of the joiners, without being there for the harmony. And that's most of everybody. Most of everybody in this age of Satan, where relationships have been fractured. As you go through these autumn festivals, remember that you have the opportunity. This is your time to be a proponent of oneness and involved in oneness. We're speaking of helping others in the future with that opportunity.

And we'll go celebrate those things. But God needs you. He needs you desperately to assist with that. To be part of the solution. To be involved in bringing oneness and unity to all who have ever lived, ultimately. And if you and I are doing the work that we've been given now, which is overcoming our human nature, dying to the old self, getting rid of those wrong attitudes, wrong deeds, wrong desires, and replacing them with God's mindset of agape, then you can expect, as the Apostle Paul did, to be resurrected. To be given the power that God will give, the glory that Jesus Christ wants you to have. That he says right here in verse 22, and the glory which you gave me I have given them, or I will give them, that brightness that would blind or kill a human being. This day is exciting to us for the sense that, hey, we actually can be part of a solution. We will be part of the solution. We will be part of God the Father and Jesus Christ's profound solution for the unsolvable. In conclusion, once again, what is God's goal in all of this physical realm, all of this creation, all of this agony that's gone on throughout time, including his own Son, a separation between the Father and the Son through his Son's death? What has all of that, including all of what humanity has gone through, what's it all been for? Let's conclude by reading Revelation chapter 21 and verse 3.

Revelation chapter 21 and verse 3.

And I heard a loud voice from heaven. Somebody in heaven is excited.

Something's finally going to take place after all of this is finished.

Behold, the tabernacle, the dwelling place of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

That's the purpose of the Autumn Holy Days. That is what we celebrate. That is what you go to celebrate. And as we convoke on each of these Autumn Holy Days, let's endeavor to be counted as firstfruits, to participate as spirit beings in bringing harmony.

To all that exists forever.