Teach Us to Number Our Days

We're so grateful my son, Michael, and our son and daughter-in-law-no, the relationships are so confusing. Anyway, my grandchildren, two of the four, it was Alis, Elena, and my grandson, Ethan, and Michael. So we're going to be part of the gear grinder tomorrow. We're really looking forward to it. And we're planning on doing the 64-miler tomorrow. So looking forward to that. But also, it's just great to see all of you. It really is. I'm just so grateful to be in the church, in the congregation, where I started. Long time ago, back in 1965, this in August of 1965, 60 years ago, exactly, is when I attended my first church service in Minneapolis at the Laidlaw Hall on Lake Street and First Avenue South. So it's been a long time, and things have changed. It's just been wonderful, though, to see some of the faces that go back to that time. You all look so much younger last time. But anyway, it's just really great to see all of you. Look forward to talking at the potluck, and looking forward to the gear grinder tomorrow, and also for the time that we have there. So I'm very, very grateful, very thankful, and very emotional, to be very honest with you, about seeing and being in the congregation when I started here a long time ago. I'm thankful to Tony Stith and the crew that have organized this event. Next year, it'll be a.k.a. the Holy Roller. I love that. I love that. When I was pastor here in Minneapolis back in the, when I was in the mid, about 33 years old, this was when I got access to my first computer. It was actually a mainframe computer that I was connected to. This is before PCs. They were there, but were far out of range. We're given access to a database. And so I put a marker in the database of all those who were above age 35 and all those below age 35. So I put an X or whatever marker. So that would know. I was 33 years old, so 35 was still far off. So that was, I was able to kind of categorize the people into two groups. Well, then a few years later, three or four years later, I thought, well, if 35 is pretty young, I'll up it to 40. Those above 40 and those below 40. Well, the years crept on when I was here in Minneapolis. I upped that to 45. Well, I'm 77 now. And so I've upped it now to 80.

So those above 80 and those below 80. So that should include most people here, because I wanted to give this talk to the young adults. Young adults are defined as those below the age of 80. So this should apply to most of you. Actually, I feel very good. I'm very, very happy to feel as healthy as I am. And I do feel mind-wise also, very, very happy. I feel like I'm a Gen X trapped in a baby boomer body. That's what I feel. And I still feel very grateful for any ministry that I can continue doing. My sermon title is derived from Psalm 90 and verse 12. There are two very, very important and very touching scriptures in the book of Psalms that have to do with the sermon and the message today. Psalm 90 and verse 12. David writes, so teach us to number our days. Teach us to count our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Return, O Lord, how long have pity on your servants. I think that's a prayer that we may very easily utter. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad, verse 15, for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen evil. So we kind of look back on our lives and we look upon the good times. We also look upon the times of affliction and seen so much evil in this world. When your work, verse 16, be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord be upon us and establish the work of your hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. This is a message to all the young people in the church, which again are 80 and below. Let's establish the work of our hands. Make me to know the who I am. But there's another passage in Psalm 39, verse 4, that's a companion to this. Psalm 39 and verse 4. O Lord, make me to know my end and what measure and what is the measure of my days. Let us know how fleeting I am, the time that we have here on the earth. Behold, you have made my days a few hand breaths, and my lifetime is just nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath.

Verse 6. Surely a man goes about as a shadow. Surely for nothing they are in turmoil. Man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather.

Actually, there's a translation of this verse in a very nasty translation of the Bible, which I don't recommend, but I'll read it anyway, because it really puts a lot of guts into it. But I don't recommend you use this translation. It's the message Bible.

Psalm 39, verse 6 reads, Tell me what's going on, God. How long do I have to live? Give me the bad news. You've kept me on pretty short rations. My life is a string too short to be saved. Oh, we're all puffs of air. Oh, we're all shadows in the campfire. Oh, we're just spit in the wind. We make our pile and then we leave it. The utter frustration of just the shortness of life and the meaning of our days. Well, one thing that's interesting to note, though, is we become a congregation as we get to know each other and as we see young people, older people, and of course all the young adults in the middle, we see the kind of people that we have in our midst.

And we have, even here in the church in Minneapolis, and we do in the church that I teach in Minneapolis, quite a range of ages and development of thought. We have dependent children. We have the pre-teens. These are the people that we shelter and care for. They're the ones who are dependent on us. Teenagers as well. Now, some teenagers have made great contributions that have become quite independent in their thinking about helping out.

We have several different projects that young, that even teenagers have done. We've had eagle scouts do some amazing things. We've had teenagers that have organized events, fundraising events, and service events in the church. I've been very happy to see that. Then we have the elderly and the seniors, also in one sense a dependent group of people that we care for in the church. We have the people who are disabled who need care.

We also have widows and others who are vulnerable and disadvantaged. We have many intergenerational connections, and to make a church a success, you need to connect all the decades, all the XYZ alpha betas in the church, along with the baby boomers. If we can put them all together, we have strength in the church. It's very interesting right now that we can complain about society and the fact that we live in a very evil society. In one newsletter that I get, even caution is their ministry to stop giving sermons that are just ain't it awful?

I mean, just ain't it awful as we look around us? Yes, things are very, very awful. And people are more and more godless. People are doing things that are very, very crazy and ungodly. On the other hand, there's this phenomenon right now that's occurring, and people are noticing it from more than one source of a return in the Z generation in particular, the Z generation. Now, the Y, X and Y generation, are about 25% atheist. The Z generation, on the other hand, is only 11% atheist. They're reaching out.

They're asking more and more questions than the others who've been spoon-fed some of the trash from society. They are people who are beginning to wonder about what's woke, what's fake. They're tired of fake news. They're tired of hearing about it called fake news, and they're beginning to actually ask questions and question that rather than question values. We do have that element in a church, and I am even amazed in our church and our teenagers as to the questions that our teenagers have.

I have been very, very pleased with what I've seen in camps and what I see in our Bible studies in Indianapolis of our young people who do think, not just there, but who think about higher values. We are filled with people who are called seekers. There's actually another group of people in society who are curious. When I was president and wrote letters of co-worker letters to the public not too long ago, just about four years ago, I did a survey or did a survey card that I sent out, and I asked people, this was to our entire mailing list.

This was about 190,000 people, about 200,000 people, and I asked them that if you would like us to write about topics, what two topics would you like to have more knowledge, information, and support for? Just list them. One, two, three, four. Number one is why is there so much evil in the world?

And usually the questions about evil and suffering are top of line. People are wondering why God allows it. But number two, interestingly enough, was I would like to understand more about the Bible. I don't know where to start. I picked up my Bible, but I have no idea what it says, what it means, what the books and how they relate one to another.

You know, every year there are still 100 million Bibles printed and distributed or sold. 100 million is by far the biggest seller. I know a lot are used in motel rooms and just out there. This doesn't even count the ones that are online, but the Word of God is out in 3500 different translations and dialects. In the English language alone, there are 125 translations, just the English language. When I went to Ambassador College, we basically stuck with the old King James and had the Moffat to try to make things a little bit more modern sounding. If you needed another translation, you had to buy it. It was not accessible. Now I go with my phone, Blue Letter Bible, I have 15, 20 translations. Not only that, I can look up the immediate Greek word in the transliterator, and I have a lot of information. More and more people are using the tools to find out they're asking critical questions. Not a lot, but it's a growing trend where people want to know more. And young people are rallying, so don't give up. Don't give up on our kind. There is a world of evangelism out there yet to explore. People are looking for meaning, relevance, and purpose. Not just hedonism, not just earning as much money as you can, or having as much fun, or going to as many countries as you can. Yes, there is that. But people are also getting tired of that and see no real fulfillment in that. And people want to know more. Young adults are a very robust element in the church.

I would like to mention a few congregations and a few things that I have interacted with here in the past year. I would just like to mention them. First of all, I've interacted with young people in the church more than usual here in this past year. For example, our Indianapolis congregation is one of the most well-balanced congregations I feel in the whole world as far as our teens, our pre-teens, our young adults, and the people that we have. Basically, our young adults are running the church, and I'm glad. Our young adults are very involved with everything from sound to giving sermonettes to leading songs to giving prayers to being apprentices for doing the work of God. And they have kind of banded together and have an energy around them. I'm very happy to see this. And I'm glad to kind of be in the middle of all of them.

This last June, or actually July 4th weekend, I went to Boise, Idaho for two reasons. One was to meet with a group of Ukrainian cemeterians that had settled there from Portland and also to ordain an elder there for that congregation. But I was there. I had young adults come to me who feel somewhat isolated and alone. What is there for us in the church?

I said, well, give me a list of 10 things that you would like. What types of things do you want us to talk about? We had some very meaningful discussion with him and with other young adults around the country that he had been talking to that would like to have answers and discussion about what they could do. Most of the things relating to young adults related to or referred to relationships had to do with friendships, not just dating, but friendships, relationships within the church. But also they had questions about other habits and other Christian living, how to do things, and what we can do.

One thing that I would like to say is that there is, and this is for all young adults, you can download on our UCG website, there is a young adults section. Now people say, okay, ho-hum, it's just a lot of text, more stuff to read. No, this one here is, to me, the most promising one that I feel that we've had, it's more interactive. You find it under the members section, go to young adults, and if you're under the age of 100, you can click on that button and ask for them to send you a daily text. And they send you a text which has a scripture, which is actually going through different books right now through the minor prophets, gives you a two to three minute read every day. I like it myself. I like to just click on it, and here's a two or three minute read, and it kind of goes through the book of Micah or whatever it's going through. Plus, there's other new features that are added to it. We could have put the gear grinder on there and other things as this thing grows. I would like to suggest, if you are not on that yet, to go there. I don't care how old you are, because I am excited and I love that feature. We have young adults that have done podcasts. Micah Gunn does a podcast. I do a podcast. I like to do them. I like to talk about things. I like to share it with the world. It doesn't take permission to do a podcast. It doesn't take permission to do a lot of these things, some of them that I'll be talking to you about this afternoon. I talked to a student from Hillsdale College and did a podcast with her. Her name is Elizabeth Ross. Hillsdale College has been compared to Ambassador College. In fact, there was an article in a national magazine about Hillsdale College carrying on the values of Ambassador College of the past, which I was very, very surprised to see. And it's compared to that because they teach those values as part of their education.

We have people that want to recapture those true values, which was a subject of us at Ambassador College.

The Gear Grinder itself here is an event. We had a recent survey that was conducted by Julie Zoots-Brown, who is here with us, who did a very professional survey here in February-March that she summarized to the Council of Elders just this past week about the various things that are good in the church and areas of growth and interest. One area, as far as young adults was concerned, that young adults still would like to do more things and are wondering what they can do. They would like to be included. They would like to be allowed to serve because some of them feel that there's no place for them in the church because it's all taken care of or done by other people. How could they be sort of let in? They would like to be able to offer their ideas. They feel that their ideas sometimes are not accepted.

I'd like to read a few quotes from the last century that I feel are very, very powerful from secular sources about what people should be thinking about going forward. Almost 60 years ago, John Kennedy, actually 64 years ago, John Kennedy made the following statement in his inaugural address on January 20, 1961. And here's what he said. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. We've all heard that for the most part. It's been a cliché, it's been a generalization, yet it's been a very, very important quote statement that could be just changed as, ask not what your church can do for you. Ask what you can do for your church. That's one thing we should be asking. What can I do for the church? Believe me, if you ask what you can do for your church, the doors will open. But another quote that I feel is even more powerful in a way is one by an anthropologist by the name of Margaret Mead. Margaret Mead. She writes this in her book, Continuities in Cultural Evolution. And here's what she said. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

The great changes that have taken place in the world have not been done through huge programs. Like huge programs make people lazy. They're going to do stuff for us. They're going to do this for us. The great changes in the world have come about by committed people, sometimes in smaller groups, that have been able to make things happen. I'd like to talk to you about one of the greatest spurts in growth in the Christian church. And this is a story of Acts 11.

This, we know that the big spurt took place right after Jesus Christ ascended to heaven 10 days later. Where the day of Pentecost came, the Holy Spirit descended upon the church, and 3,000 people were baptized. It was a great day for the church. And then a few days later, another 2,000 people were baptized. The church grew by a leap of 5,000 people in one day, or in one week, or one month. And I've always been praying that God please give us another Pentecost moment. Put tongues of fire in our head. Give us your Holy Spirit. Make it happen.

But there's another moment that took place a few years later. One that is not spoken of too often. But I feel it's just as important, or one in harmony with the Pentecost moment. And that is what I call, or what is called, the Antioch moment. Antioch moment. So what's the big deal about Antioch? Sounds like some Middle Eastern city.

Turn to Acts 11, verse 19.

Acts 11, verse 19.

Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen. What happened to Stephen? He was the first martyr of the church. He was stoned. And the Christianity suffered a setback when that happened.

And people scattered. People became frightened. Are they going to be the next?

And so those people, many of those who heard the news, or saw witness firsthand what happened after Stephen was stoned, and was stoned under the direction of Saul.

Traveled, they got out of Jerusalem. Traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch. So these people left Jerusalem, headed north to three locations. One was Phoenicia, which is the Lebanese shoreline. Phoenicia. Some of those people migrated west later on to become Venice, from Phoenicia to Venice. But anyway, that's another story. But Phoenicia and Cyprus, we know that. That's the big island in the Mediterranean, just off the coast of Cyprus, I mean, of Phoenicia. And thirdly, Antioch.

Speaking the word to no one, except the Jews. Now, what's the deal with Antioch?

Antioch was no small city. It was the third largest city in the Roman Empire. Number one was Rome. Number two was Alexandria in Egypt. And number three was Antioch. It was a city of 500,000 people, which for that time was a mega city. It was a major, major city. The city of Antioch. So they headed for Antioch, for shelter.

And they spoke the word to no one except Jews. Speaking the word of what? Speaking the word of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And this was the beginning of the evangelizing of Christianity.

But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also. In other words, they spoke not only to the Jews, but to the Hellenists. And some of your translations may use the word Greeks, but also it could be Jews who spoke Greek. Preaching the Lord Jesus. That's what these people did. They got out of Jerusalem because there was no future there immediately. In fact, you could get stoned. So they headed for Antioch, Phoenicia, and Cyprus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. I mean, this is a great moment of growth. I feel it's just as important as the one on the Day of Pentecost, where it was an immediate transformation of people. But here's a work being conducted by these people who left Jerusalem to preach. And that's what they were moved to do. The report of this, verse 22, came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. Now what this suggests is that the work that was being done by these disciples was not done by the ministry. Because after hearing what had happened with people coming to believe, they sent a minister. They sent Barnabas up there. If they would have had a minister up there, they wouldn't have had to send Barnabas, or would have mentioned they sent Barnabas to help out with the ministry that was up there. No, the church started with deacons, and one was killed, and the people scattered. They were talking about Jesus Christ, about His resurrection, about what had happened in Jerusalem, and many believed. And people, this group, was growing, and the people were excited about the growth. And as word got down to Jerusalem, to Peter and John and the others, let's send Barnabas, a new elder, to Antioch. When he came, when Barnabas came and saw the grace of God, he saw the tremendous work that was being done, the favor that they were given, the open ears of the audience that was there, as I feel that there may be an opening right now of people who are tired of woke, tired of fake, wanting something of substance. He was glad, and he exhorted them to all remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose. He saw what these people had become, and he said, stay with it! Continue to stay faithful. Don't quit. Go forward. For he was a good man. Barnabas was a good man. He was called the apostle of encouragement, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And again, and a great many people were added to the Lord. In the Roman Empire, it appears that not only were there Jews that were added, but there were Hellenists, Greeks that joined the group. And they said, what is this? What's happening? What a wonderful story! Jesus Christ, his parables, his teachings, his death, his resurrection. They believed that.

So then Barnabas, verse 25, went to Tarsus to look for Saul. Saul was not there. Saul was the one that God had blinded and led him to Antioch, but then he appears to have left Antioch and had gone to Tarsus, which is his hometown. And I looked up on Google 83 miles between Tarsus and Antioch. And when he had found him, when Barnabas found Saul, Saul, Saul, he still still saw there, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year, they met with the church. They started doing work. They met with this group for a whole year. And you know, it was more than, you know, when people think that the Apostle Paul started headed out to Cyprus and headed for Greece and Asia Minor to do work. It was another 10 or 15 years before he started his evangelistic journeys. He was still in preparation, and the area of the crucible of where this was taking place was Antioch, this huge city. So they met with the church and taught a great many people. To me, this is, when I read these words again this past week, I thought I got excited again about people being able to do a good work, do a work. People who were lay members, people who were not ministers, not that that's our new model, but they were so excited about the work as they talked about what Jesus Christ did. And as people believed, they said, we got to call down to Jerusalem and have them send somebody else up for support. And when Barnabas came, even more people became believers. And in Antioch, the disciples were first called Christians. This is the first time the word Christian appears in the New Testament in the Bible. First time right here. Interestingly enough, the word Christian is only used three times in the New Testament. Once again, in the book of Acts, and third time in the book of Peter. Three times that the word Christian is used. The term that's used most to define Christians is the word disciple, which appears 250 times. 250 times. Yes, Antioch was a very, very important center. In fact, it's his side story about Jerusalem. Jerusalem was important to the Romans, but nowhere near like Egypt or Syria to the north. Jerusalem was in the middle. And when Pontius Pilate, who was the Roman governor for that area, was dealing with the Jews that were really upset about Christ, he didn't have a big Roman army there. The big Roman armies were in Antioch and Alexandria. Jerusalem had a modest garrison. So Pontius Pilate kind of played the middle in trying to appease the Jews and trying to see this kangaroo court for what it was regarding Jesus Christ.

Antioch became a Christian hub. And it was from Antioch that the apostle Paul launched his journeys into Asia Minor and into Europe. So what about us? What can we be kind of turned on about and excited about as far as the Gospel and talking about what we believe?

Sometimes I feel, and I've compared this in talking to people, that we as a church are like goldfish in a goldfish bowl. We're in a confined space. We swim by each other and wave to each other, but we don't get past the glass to the outside. The church has to go beyond being an aquarium, but being a place to where the fish are released into a larger pond and lake. It's okay to be in an aquarium where we just know each other. Basically, that's who we know, and that's the only ones we can talk to about the Gospel, about our faith and others. But how many of us have been able to develop a relationship with someone outside the aquarium, outside the goldfish bowl, and be able to talk? How many of us have talked about this in clubs, could be garden club, could be some other type of club, where people see the way you live, people see the way you talk, people see the way you dress, people see your attitude?

I have been a member of Rotary Club since the year 2000 or so. I've been kind of on hold here the last year or two, but I feel like getting back into it. But I found that experience to be very, very healthy, because I would talk to them. Usually, I had a program to deliver every year, and I would talk about some trip that I would take, visiting in Africa or Ukraine or whatever. People knew what I did. People saw how I lived. People saw the activities that I did. One time they said, you know, Vic, next time you speak to us, tell us about what you did in those meetings. Tell us what the message was in the Feast of Tabernacles. I talked to them about the Feast of Tabernacles. Tell us what you said. They weren't becoming more curious as they saw your life, and they took you at a higher value than just somebody from a strange religion that believes things differently. Believe me, there are other religions that are far worse than us, as far as how they appear. Go to the temple in Utah and see the times for things they believe, and yet they have great impact on the people around because of the things that they do. Can people say that because I know you, you, you, there must be something to this group? And I have found that I've been able to talk about my faith. I had at one point, one of our members was a judge in Batavia, and she contacted me and said, you know, Vic, I want your help. She was, she dealt with cases with family, with divorce cases, and she wanted to do more than just issue a statement or judgment on division of property and dissolution of the marriage. Vic, can you organize some type of means that we could have one more shot at these people, you know, before they make this decision of the things that you believe? Because she knows what we believe. She saw how we live and how our church believes. We saw what the United Church of God was in Cincinnati, which is actually not very well known outside the walls of us where we are there. We could do far, far more. We would have guests at Rotary Club that had their offices right by us and said, I've been driving by your place for 20 years and I always wondered, what do you do there?

I said, come by and stop by and visit us. We have a great salad bar for the ABC students. Come, come and see us. We need to be more open about who we are. One of the greatest evangelistic things that we did was during COVID, which was the most difficult time in my being president. It was a terrible time as we were shut down and arguing over things like masks and vaccines. But one thing is that we got involved with a program through one of our members who contacted me and said, hey, there's a USDA program that wants to give away fresh food because farmers have to keep raising it. It won't keep and we would like to have it distributed. And would you allow for a semi-trailer truck of food to come on your grounds here in Cincinnati and you give it away to the public? This is one of the greatest PR things that we had done.

We marshaled members together. I told my Rotary Club about that. We had a whole line of cars. We had them come into our parking lot. We had even big signs set up there. United Church of God, welcome to, you know, you're welcome signs. As we had people who loaded up food boxes, 20 pounds of fresh food to people that drove through. That made people feel positive about us. Just straight telling them, as one person said, I tried to go on social media and talk about my faith. I wrote a statement about how evil Christmas was. I thought, oh, this is the dumbest thing you could have done. She said, I alienated my friends. I said, of course, I would be alienated too. That's not where you start. So anyway, are we ready to be able to spread beyond our goldfish bowl? One thing that's important, and I felt this from responses from singles, that some feel discouraged, worthless. On one end, then there are people on the other end who can become narcissistic and delusional. We've had people like that too, that feel like they're special in that way, self-proclaimed. But if we take a look at the two passages that I read to you in the book of Psalms, help me to number my days and help me to know how frail I am, we can now start a context for how we move forward. Number our days. Help us to understand the meaning and the purpose of our existence.

There's one program I want to tell you about that has been started that's been international. You probably don't know about it. And that's been started by people like the people of Antioch, who, hey, we got to do something. We can really make something that makes a difference. And this is a translation of literature program. Okay, well, what's the big deal there?

We have our new senior pastor, if you want to call it that, he is not a senior pastor, but he's over northeastern Europe, which includes the Baltic countries, Scandinavia, of course, Russia, and the former USSR are sort of off-limits right now. But he and his wife have developed a program. We wanted to have literature translated. We have 23 languages that are spoken in the countries that we work. We only have languages in the major languages. English, no French, German, Spanish. So what's going to happen between now and the time we die? Well, probably not much with those languages. And it's going to take a lot of effort to have each one of those languages translated by people. But something very, very exciting has happened just in this past month, is that he and his wife, and this elder is relatively new, he was in the radio business, media business, and his wife was, I'm not sure what she was in, but we call her the spreadsheet queen. She really is able to organize things exceptionally well. And we found a way to expedite the translation of literature into many languages. What do we do? We have found that we've been able to assemble quite a number of young people to help us in this project. And I want to tell you about it.

We take a booklet in English and translate it first using AI into another language, such as Ukrainian. I say, oh, sure, sure, AI, that'll fix it all. Ah, it's not that simple. So we strip out the scriptures in the booklet. We translate it with AI into Ukrainian, or Swedish is the two languages that we've started with. Then we put the scriptures back into the text from a known source or a known translation of the Bible so that AI doesn't randomly translate biblical scriptures and who knows what they'll have have them say. So we have now the raw, translated AI to be read now at this point by someone who knows the language.

I've been surprised. You know how it is when you have things translated from Chinese into English instructions? They sound so goofy. You know, we thought that maybe that's the way it would come across here. But I was surprised. We had things translated. The first booklet was the final superpower. And I read it, read it, and it sounded pretty good. The AI. Oh yes, there were a few words that weren't quite right, and I changed them to make it sound right. You know, it has to sound normal speech. The narrative has to be like flowing speech. Some cases I would take it and ask AI to copy edit already when we had translated to see if it was any better. Sometimes it would be. Sometimes it would be just the same. Most of the time there was not much improvement. In some cases, then, I took some of the paragraphs and translated them back into English to see if, indeed, I get back what I started with. And surprisingly, it was excellent. It was excellent. But I still had to go through word for word to make sure that that translation was fine. I did the two booklets, The Final Superpower, and I did the one on the fundamental beliefs. So we got the first one done. That's where we've been posted on our UCG Europe site.

Now, I noticed that the comments and the translation of work was done by someone called Justin. Justin had their marks and comments and scriptures and how part of a verse was used in part. I mean, Justin, Justin, Justin. And then I asked James Ginn, I said, who's Justin? Oh, no, it's Justine. It's a woman. Oh, okay, nice. And where is she? She's in Australia. She's a new member. She's been a member for two, three years. Well, I was just enthralled because I'd been working with Justin all this time and didn't even know that she was a woman. So I wrote to her and said, hello, Justine, I hear about you. Thank you for your excellent work. I've really enjoyed what you have had. So she wrote to me and said that she was a new member. She really enjoyed doing this. And she's now done the fundamentals of belief. But here's the thing. What I found in translating fundamentals of belief, and I wanted to make sure that that was really exactly word for word, especially fundamental belief number one. So we didn't get the Trinity there. Some translations made it sound like it was a Trinity. Well, I want to make sure that we didn't have the Trinity in Ukrainian. Sure enough, it wasn't. It was good. I may have touched up a word or two, but I was able to touch up. It's a lot less work than to start from scratch. But the fundamental beliefs I went through word for word. And the booklet itself not only has the fundamental belief, but also has commentary, which usually runs about two or three pages. The whole booklet itself was 73 pages on the fundamentals of belief. I spent about 20 hours on it, going through it word for word for word. It's built for me spiritually, what that did. I hadn't read that booklet in 20-some years. Have you read your fundamentals of belief? Have you taken it down off the shelf and see what it says? I think that many of us don't even know or are familiar with or is sharp on what the church teaches. And I was telling Bev, I have gone through a spiritual revival this past week. Spiritual revival by going through it word for word of the teachings that we have in our fundamentals of belief. And so I've been on fire. This is part of my youthfulness. But I have enjoyed doing that very much. We'll have fundamentals up on the website. But all of a sudden we have two new booklets. We have people translating into Swedish. Justine doesn't even know Ukrainian. She doesn't understand a word of Ukrainian. Well, maybe a few words.

But she's been doing an excellent job of getting the text to me as a copy editor to take it to the next step. So we've been so excited about this. We have two Swedish booklets done now. And we're looking for somebody from other languages who could help us out. We're looking for somebody from Hungary. If you know of anybody from Hungary who speaks Hungarian, I would love to talk to them. Actually, I think that we may have some in Western Ukraine among the Sabbatarians who could help us. And by the way, I've run some of these booklets past the Sabbatarians to ask for their thoughts and to have their comments. So it's been a project that's been evolving a lot of people. It's not been dictated, installed by, or done through committees by some proclamation. Here's what we're going to do. It was done by people who are trying to do it themselves with clean hearts of service. I feel this is part of the Antioch work. We're self-generated, we're able to preach the gospel and to make a difference. Then we found that once we posted these two books, it had thousands of people that saw it. I don't know how much they saw of it. You know, a lot of times they download it and I have no idea how much they read. But unless in the first week, there were thousands of people that took an interest in what we had in these other languages. So I just wanted to tell you a little bit about that because it's been so exciting to me to use AI in this way. We had before, Johnny Lambert, our minister to Estonia, didn't know Estonian. And he wrote letters to the Estonians all the time in English that they translated word for word, time-consuming project.

And then he always signed the letters Agape, Agape, Johnny. Well, after several letters, the Estonians wrote them and said, why do you always end your letters with my mouth wide open? Agape. No, no, no, no, it's Agape that we had explained that. So there was a major error in translation. We had three or four of our young adults go to ABC last year. They were so excited about one particular class called apologetics, which is understanding scripture, being able to explain it to various groups that they formed in an apologetics club after services. That didn't go very long on three or four meetings, but nonetheless, they organized it. I came to it. I really enjoyed hearing what they had to say, and I was amazed as to the level of maturity of taking something that they had learned in class, wanted to share with the other young adults or anybody who would come to that meeting and pass it on. We had another person. He's not quite a young adult, but who's written a remarkable book called The Enlightened Law of Moses. How many of you have heard of that book? The Enlightened Law of Moses? Okay, no matter how much I talk about it, nobody knows about it. Anyway, The Enlightened Law of Moses. He's a deacon in the church in Brisbane, Australia. It's a 500-page book, but it explains the law of Moses really in what he had in mind, not to a church audience, but to a non-church audience about the validity of the law of Moses. He does an outstanding job. I've done five podcasts with him that you may want to hear about the book and about five different sections of the book. He explains slavery. He explains the health laws. He explains the civil assistance laws. We could do a lot more discussion about that, but it's an outstanding book. In fact, we want to be able to take some of that material and use it perhaps as material that we could use for furthering what he wrote. But it's an amazing book, The Enlightened Law of Moses. I was so excited about it that I sent several copies of this book to friends who have deviated from our faith, from the necessity of keeping the law of God or the validity of it. I sent one to my brother, who was a minister at one time. I sent another one to another minister who I ordained back in Paducah, Kentucky, 40 years ago. I sent to other people the book. Both of those people have written back and said, thank you. That was insight that I had not seen before. I don't know what it's going to do to them, but one of them said, no longer need to keep the law. Jesus Christ kept the law for us. And this book explains that in terms that make it very, very clear and beautiful, what those things really mean. And some of the very, very strange laws in the book of Deuteronomy is excellent. So you can pick—I'm not trying to sell the book. I'm just saying it's an outstanding book that you may want to consider if you want to hear the podcasts for free.

We have another one of our—this is a teenager—it organized a swim event.

As a fundraiser to raise money for scholarships in Africa. He did a great job. He got friends, he got people in his class to join in. He was able to raise money and bring awareness of needs like this. More and more people at a younger, younger age are beginning to question and wonder how they could become more relevant in a world which is filled with so much emptiness—emptiness of the soul. You know, you might feel, well, who am I? What qualities do I have? I'm not a very, very good person, or I'm not a person who really has a lot of good qualities. But you take a look at the men and women of God that were used throughout history. They all had some flaws. In fact, those flaws are spoken of. We all have flaws.

I'll tell you some of the flaws. If there was a search committee to hire a new pastor, here was the search committee's report to the Church Council. We talked to Noah. He had a pastor of 120 years without one convert. He's prone to unrealistic building projects.

Elijah, prone to depression, collapses under pressure. Deborah, strong leader and seems to be anointed, but she is a female. Isaiah, on the fringe, claims to have seen angels in church. Jonah refused God's call into the ministry until he was forced to obey by getting swallowed up by a great fish. He told us the fish later spit him out on the shores near here. We hung up on him.

Melchizedek, great credentials at the current workplace, but where does this guy come from? No information on his resume about his former work record. Every line about parents left blank, and he refused to supply a birth date. Timothy, too young. Methuselah, too old. But we did find one person that really we'd like to talk to. His references are solid. He's a steady plotter. Conservative. Good connections. Knows how to handle money. We're inviting him to preach this weekend. Possibilities here. His name is Judas. So we don't always see the whole story. We may not see the whole story about yourself and think that I can't because of this flaw or because of that problem. Moses was not even able to speak publicly. He had to have Aaron do the public.

I just want to mention a few things about my life. Because I'm from the Twin Cities. From right here. Just probably 15-20 minutes away from here. And I was a teenager. I heard the world tomorrow at age 14.

I worked at a miniature golf course on South Robert and Highway 100 at that time right by the Corral Theater, which is probably not there anymore. And as I was collecting money, I was listening to radio on the AM station, which I got that was coming in by skip from Little Rock, Arkansas. K-A-A-Y, Little Rock, Arkansas. The Ken Knight Show, Top 40 Music. But then at 7.30, this religious guy got on and started talking for half an hour. I turned it off until 8 o'clock to where I could get back to my music.

I did that several times. But then all of a sudden, he started talking about our beliefs, about the fact that Christ prophesied certain things about his second coming. Did you know that Christmas was observed 2,000 years before Christ? What is all this? And I still listened. Little by little, I began to put this information together and send off for literature.

Of course, there was no internet there. There was only a way to order anything. It was by sending a letter to box 111, with at that time a five-cent stamp. Well, I got more involved as time went on.

Then I wanted to apply to this Ambassador College. I was 14, but at the time I was 17, I found that getting the Plain Truth magazine and sharing it with my mother primarily, I thought that this is where I wanted to go. But it was a long shot. I had no money. My father was against this. My mother didn't want to do anything until my father made a move.

I still wanted to go to Ambassador College. I applied, and I was accepted, not knowing about any church. Shornick Michael, who was the minister at that time, called me and said he was a representative of Ambassador College, that he would like to visit with me to interview me for Ambassador College. When he came over, I said, I got accepted already. I said, really? I'm supposed to be interviewing you. While we talked, he invited me to my first church service at Laid Law Hall.

And then that year, that tumultuous year, it was difficult because my parents really wanted me to go to the University of Minnesota. I had no money. I was 17. I was trapped. Vietnam War was raging. I had to register for the draft. That year went by, and I applied again. In that meantime, though, my father and mother both requested visits, and what would you believe, became baptized at the feast. It was really, truly a miracle, miraculous event that took place. I went to Ambassador College, not having any background. I only attended a few services just in the spring and summer of 1966. I went to Ambassador College, and all of a sudden, the fortuitous thing happened in my freshman year.

Is that Dr. Hay, one of the instructors, evangelists, came to me and said, I'd like you to go to the USSR with me. They're celebrating their 50th anniversary of the Great Communist Revolution. I said, I need a photographer, and I need somebody who speaks the language. Would you be able to go? Would your parents let you go? I said, of course.

Anyway, that was fortuitous. I did not expect anything like that to happen. I just wanted to do well in classes. I didn't really think that I would be one for the ministry, although I thought that would be good. But I never was good at speaking. I was just afraid of speaking. I'm afraid of crowds. I never got things straight. Never passed my attack speech because when I got mad, I couldn't think. I mean, I just, you know, it just really was not a speaker, as the great evangelistic types were.

So I went to Russia, came back. A few months later, there was an event where the choir from Big Sandy and Bricket Wood came to sing a concert at Pasadena, and a whole plane was charged from England to the United States. But a few days before the plane was to go back, one of the students became very, very sick, and they wanted to send them back to England as quickly as possible, and they sent them back with two others. They announced on Sabbath breakfast that there are three empty seats available for you to go if you wanted to change campuses, but you have to go tomorrow.

The plane is leaving tomorrow. So I thought, well, that's a great opportunity. I was able to go. I had a passport. There's lots of others who wanted to go, but nobody could. Nobody had a passport. So I went to England to college. I had one wonderful event after another. Then, in my senior year, I was seeing that while I was very, very technical and did things a certain way that was pleasing to my bosses, I was not a minister.

That's one thing for sure. Ron Dart, who was our men's guidance counselor, told me, you're not going to be a minister. So I said, why should I even take speech class in my second semester of my senior year? He said, yeah, I don't see why you should. I mean, not encouraging at all. Okay. Well, what happened was that they sent out the list of who's going to be in the class.

My name was still on it. They forgot to take it off. I thought, well, maybe I should just go to class. I should just, maybe that's God's will. So I did. I went to class, but I never was among the people. I'd never given a sermonette. I was never asked for one. And again, I just felt I was not that type. When they announced who was going to be sent into the field ministry, which was always done at the Days of Unleavened I was passed over, and I expected that to be the case.

I was given another job to work in a Jerusalem office as a photographer, whatever office person. Then in April or May, in Bridget Wood, they got a message. The church in the U.S. was growing very, very quickly. New congregations were springing up, like Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Other congregations, numbers were growing by hundreds. They needed another half a dozen or so men to be in the ministry. Guess what? I got on the B-list. And so I was just ecstatic about that.

I was sent to Sioux Falls, and I was very happy with that. I still feel that that was not really my calling at first, but I loved the ministry all along. But I was not one of the very, very obvious ones. Then in 1990, while I was here, just out of the blue, Mr.

D'Cotch Jr. called me, and I said, I need an assistant for church administration. Would you be willing to be my assistant? I thought, why me? I just don't know why I would be the one for that job. There are some of the other people who are so able and so eloquent. Nope. He says, I would like to have you. So that's where I started. And I went to Pasadena at that time. It was just one wonderful experience after another.

Then, the United Church of God started as a whole story of its own. I have my whole story. I've written 13 chapters about, called Ground Zero, of working at the Ground Zero of the Homa Headquarters and Home Office. I wrote this. They're all on my website, cubic.org, under Ground Zero.

Then I found that I was on the board of directors because I was among the very first, called the Council of Elders, and I'm the only one left from the very first group. I'm the only survivor from 1965. Then I found that one of my favorite, loving people, Denny Luker, was president, and he died very suddenly. He was a very, very close friend. He was one who I admired because he truly had the heart of a minister. He died. He died in office. And then there was a search for a new president. I had absolutely no intention. I was not that kind of person.

And so one person put my name forward. He said, can I put your name forward? I said, I don't know. I'm, it's just fruitless. Nope, I'll put your name forward. I said, okay, we'll see what happens. Guess what? I was chosen. I could not believe it because the first thing I told Bev after I came out of that meeting was, now what? And one of the greatest compliments I've ever gotten was from a minister from worldwide church of God who wrote to me or called me. He said, I'm so glad they chose you because you're so normal. That's quite a compliment. I'm normal.

The point I'm trying to make to all this is that we don't always know where God is leading us. I truly feel, as I look back on my life for all the events that have taken place, that God has seen something. He's seen something in the way, I think, not because of my greatness, because I've always, for the most part, have felt like I'm inadequate. Still do, in many ways, feel very inadequate. You may feel the same way, too, but that's good because that's whom God can use. He could use a Moses. He could use a Jonah. He could use an Elijah. All these people had their issues, but God can use you. God used the people in Antioch to do his work, and we need to get to the point of where we are opening ourselves to what God can do through us. There was one graduation speech that was given by NBC, I believe, News Anchor, to a class to, I believe, Yale University, and she made a statement that was really telling that some of you are accountants, some of you are lawyers, some of you are this, that, and everything else. Pray that you don't rise too quickly because that could be your undoing. People think that they can get into life and start mastering things and rise very high. Many of those people collapse. The people that climb more moderate face and go through the lumps and hits of life are the ones that tended to be best suited. Gary Petty is one of my good friends. He's written three books. I've interviewed him about all of his books, but one that I found especially interested was his book called The Mercy Effect. And I'll talk to you about this because he said it publicly. The book The Mercy Effect is about resolving issues and conflict resolution. He said, I wrote the book not because I was good at it, but because I needed help myself. I wrote that book because those are things that I needed to learn. I learned them by writing that book, which is an excellent book, one of his three books. So it's not a slam against him. It's really talking about the humility that we have or should have in doing the work. So here we are, young adults, pretty much everybody in this room, if there's somebody over 80, excuse me, but we can maybe add you to the club. You can send for the newsletter. We have great opportunities ahead of us as a church, as a group of people that can preach the gospel by our actions, by our example, by the words that we speak, by the wisdom. If anything on this passage in this sermon, go back and read Psalm 90 and Psalm 39. Help me to number my days to see how frail I am and help me to understand who I am. Anyway, it's been wonderful talking to you. I look forward to the gear grinder tomorrow and the pot luck here and talking to all of you. It's been a wonderful group and you've been a very, very special group of people to me over the years.