What the World Needs Now

...began a radical experiment that year in upstate New York. There, they believed that they would build a perfect society. A wilderness utopia. That utopia would be so good, they hoped that what they were doing, the ideas would spread to all the world, eventually bringing about the prophesied millennial kingdom of Jesus Christ.

Now, some of you might say, wait a minute. That sounds odd to us. We believe that Jesus Christ will return and then establish His millennial rule. That's because our belief, which is what this Bible teaches, is what's called pre-millennial. I like to tell people we're Sabbatarian pre-millennialists. It means we believe Christ will return before the millennium. There are religious groups that are post-millennialist. And that was the case here.

John Humphrey Noyes believed and taught that Jesus Christ had already returned a second time in 70 AD and accomplished whatever He did and went back to the throne of the Father. And that God was waiting for mankind to establish the millennium. For mankind to make it happen.

And so the Oneida community set out to build this perfect society, one of perfect peace and happiness, of shared abundance, of moral virtue. This would be accomplished by eliminating the main sources of human conflict and dissatisfaction. One way of doing that was that all property would be held in common. Every person could work at an occupation they enjoyed with everyone sharing the proceeds. They raised a variety of crops and livestock for food, and the community also produced select manufactured goods for trading with the outside world. They became rather adept at some leather stock. They actually had mulberry trees and produced some silk. They were most successful in the manufacture of steel animal traps and of silver cutlery. If some of you are wondering why that name Oneida sounded familiar, it's because the corporation that later succeeded the colony continued to produce a superior cutlery and kitchenwares for many, many years after the colony had faded.

But long before there was an Oneida corporation, though, the Oneida community founders determined that along with removing physical property and wealth as a source of contention, they wanted to remove lust and carnal jealousy as a cause of conflict and unhappiness. They would do this by the practice of what they labeled complex marriage.

I got some interesting faces this morning when I described it. In complex marriage, every man in the community was married to every woman in the community, and so sex was freely available to any consenting partners at any time. Now, they did rigorously practice birth control, because although intercourse was free and open, they wanted only suitable couples to reproduce.

And who was suitable would be chosen by a committee, which would also choose who would raise the children. Now, the colony was never very large, but it did at first experience some dramatic growth and what appeared to be initial success. As I said, they started with 87 people in 1848. By 1850, they'd grown to 172. And if you're taking notes, don't take note of these numbers. They were up to 208 in 1852, 306 in 1878, before dissolving in 1881. There had been challenges all along, but what happened after the founder, John Humphrey Noyes, died and was replaced by his son, these problems became more pronounced and more difficult to overcome.

The younger Noyes just didn't have his father's people skills to smooth things over, nor the way to exhibit his strong faith that this would succeed. And so those problems arose. There had been jealousies over sharing of the profits, especially from those of manufactured goods. For some strange reason, the people who worked longer and harder, or the people who had superior skill, thought that they should enjoy more of that wealth. And there were disputes over sex. People did become jealous. They developed individual attachments. It turned out people didn't want to share.

As a matter of fact, when the community abandoned complex marriage in 1879, many, many couples immediately entered into one-man, one-woman marriages the traditional way.

Now, we could look at the dissolution of the Oneida community in 1881 as just the end of a uniquely oddball and bizarre experiment, or we can put it into a larger context of one experiment after another throughout the entire history of mankind, striving vainly to create a society free of imperfections, a society without crime, without poverty, without sickness, without any unhappiness.

Over the millennia, men and women have struggled to find the key formula to bring that about, to seek for whatever it is that we seem to lack. What is it that we need? What does the world need? If you're like me, when I ask that question, you might think of a song. Actually, research, because I couldn't get the tune out of my head, it came out in 1965 by Burt Bacharach.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love. I'll bet I could have a sing-along here.

Well, that's actually true. I think more than most people know if they understand what love really is.

We can address that in a moment. But the world is lacking, isn't it?

As Isaiah 59, verse 8 says, the way of peace they have not known.

We'll go there and read some of that later.

But people are going to learn that the only source of what we lack is the Creator God, the one who provided all the other things that we actually do have.

Why do we need the fulfillment of the Feast of Trumpets?

It's because mankind cannot do what we need to do on our own. We cannot find the way to peace and happiness.

We're lacking. And this day is about the world finally getting what the world really needs.

Now, the world's not lacking peace and happiness because nobody bothered to ever try. It's not because we haven't had smart people, talented people, or because men and women haven't been driven to use their skills to try to bring about such things. A lot of effort has gone into it.

And it's interesting when we think of the term utopia. The Oneida colony, as I said, has been called a wilderness utopia. When you look into American history textbooks, there's often a little subheading in one of the chapters called wilderness utopia.

But did you know where the term comes from? Utopia in English is a generic term now for a place where things are all right, where everything's good, where the ideal laws, economics, and societal relationships make everyone happy.

Most people don't know where the term comes from, so since I'm in historian mode, I'll give you a little update on that. Actually, there was a book written in the year 1516 by Sir Thomas Moore titled Utopia. He published this book, and in it he described a fictional island out in the Atlantic Ocean. The name of the island was Utopia.

And the conditions there were perfect. Everyone got along. They had just laws, a good government, good economy.

And so the title of the book took on that generic meaning in English of a perfect place, a perfect society.

And men have been trying to accomplish that.

I almost said ever since, but we'll see in a moment. It goes back much earlier than the 1500s.

But did you know that the Oneida colony was founded in the mid-1800s? It was during a time that American historians called a second Great Awakening.

Now, the first Great Awakening happened in about the 1730s, 40s, and it was a religious revival swept across the colonies. That's a period where I've studied quite a bit of. But this movement that happened towards the middle of the 1800s was more widespread. It focused not only on religion. Matter of fact, some historians say not even primarily on religion. It was a time when Americans, in their optimism and in their enthusiasm, believed they could fix problems. Not just any problems, all problems. One of the hallmarks that sort of, in a brief glance at history, sort of overshadows everything else was the abolition movement. A lot of people wanted to do away with slavery, this great evil.

But along with abolition, there were also movements to reform education, to reform prisons, to reform prostitutes, health food movements, naturally movements to clean up politics, and a huge temperance movement. I always laugh at that, because it started out as a temperance movement, and quickly, although they didn't change the name, became an abstinence movement. And after many of the others faded, it kept going strong until the early 1900s, when they thought they achieved their great success in outlawing liquor, and then later discovering that didn't work, but I'm getting off track there. But political movements to fix society and government abounded throughout the U.S. but also in Europe. The year 1848 saw a number of so-called democratic revolutions in Europe, in various countries. Sadly, most of them were brutally crushed by strong authoritarian power. It's reminiscent of some of what we've seen in the Middle East. And that led to a lot of immigrants coming to the United States. Many of them called 49ers. At the same time, people rushing out to join the California Gold Rush were called 49ers. The term has been used in two different ways in American history. Did you know that in the latter half of the 1800s, right about that time that the Oneida colony was folding up, though, Karl Marx began writing his theories of social justice through economics. Now, you've all heard of Karl Marx and his theories of communism. And when I've taught classes, I've told students, you know, in theory, communism sounds pretty good. Everybody gets what they need, and everybody contributes as they're able. The plan under Marx's theory was, okay, government would at first enforce these things, and once everything was set, the government would wither away. Because it wouldn't be needed, everybody would be happy. No one would be oppressed. Now, when Marx's theories were put into practice in places like the United Soviet Socialist Republic, or the People's Republic of China, and Vietnam, North Korea, in none of those places has there been any sign of the government withering away. Why has communism failed? Why did one utopian community after another fail? I mentioned already in Oneida how the jealousies and resentments tore that community apart. Utopia is something it's easy to fantasize about, easy to make plans to write fiction on, not so easy to bring to reality. Interesting. Mr. Call and I were thinking along the same lines in our message today. Let me tell you about a different community. Oneida was formed in upstate New York, in southwestern Indiana. Actually, I believe that it was the town, the most western community in Indiana at the time, and perhaps still. There was a community that came to be called New Harmony, where they were trying to establish a perfect society. It lasted a few years, and then it dissolved. But I found an interesting description in a history that was written of it later. It's funny that the author was Josiah Warren, not the Josiah Warren that's sitting in this community, but a coincidence of names. He was one of the original participants in the New Harmony Society, and he wrote this. He said, It seemed that the difference of opinion, taste, and purposes increased just in proportion to the demand for conformity. In other words, the more we needed to work together, the more we got diverse. Two years were worn out in this way, at the end of which I believe not more than three persons had the least hope of success. We had tried every conceivable form of organization and government. We had a world in miniature. It appeared that it was nature's own inherent law of diversity that had conquered us. Our united interests were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation. In other words, he said, it's like we had a world we could make on our own. The problem was we were dealing with people.

It's interesting, in analyzing the reasons, he specifically said that they tried every conceivable form of organization and government. Every why we could think of, we tried. And I thought, we could say that about all of human history. And in a sense, I think that was what was intended. We're going to address that in a moment.

But the idea of trying to build a perfect society goes back, as I said, further than the 1800s, further than Thomas More in 1516. The idea goes even back to ancient Greece. The philosopher Plato wrote a book called The Republic, in which he theorized about how to set up a perfect society. He couldn't get past the idea of people living in different social strata, but he envisioned the very top level consisting of an oligarchy of the very most talented, most educated people who would be the philosopher kings. I think that's the term that we still remember from the Republic. But these philosopher kings would use their great wisdom to eliminate poverty, to eliminate deprivation and unhappiness.

Of course, Plato's theories were never put into practice.

You might guess I did a little bit of study in some of the history of utopia and the theories about it. I found something interesting. In many of the academic articles I looked at, they often, almost all of them, pointed back to what they considered the original utopian community, the Garden of Eden. Now, most of them were I-dang believed that the Garden of Eden was just some fable. And so they saw, oh, it's a place where it's perfect, but even that didn't work. But think of it, the Garden of Eden in some ways fits that. It was an idyllic dream. No one had to work too hard. There was an abundance. No fighting, no sickness. And then the perfection was broken by the wiles of that serpent. But I had asked, was it only because of the serpent? Was there something more? Well, if the Garden of Eden was the original utopian community, maybe we can look to see what went wrong there. What happened? And see what the world needs to start a new perfect community. So let's turn to the biblical account of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2. Genesis 2. I'm going to begin in verse 7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. I still like the original King James. He became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he formed out of the ground. The Lord made every tree to grow that's pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life also was there in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. These are the famous two trees. I wonder, has anyone here heard a sermon about those before? Maybe not for a while, so I thought I'd bring it up. It's interesting. The first is the tree of life. We almost expect the other one must then be the tree of death. But it was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, both good and evil present. And I think we'll see momentarily what that meant. Let's drop down to verse 15. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend it and keep it. That's good. Adam had work to do. Tend and keep this garden. So Adam became a gardener. And the Lord commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. In the day that you eat of it you shall die. Now, if we read the rest of the book, which I believe we all have done, we realize that God didn't mean that if you eat that before the sun goes down you're going to drop dead. But in the day you eat of it you become mortal. You'll become subject to what it says in Hebrews 9.27. There it says, it's appointed for all men once to die. That wasn't the case before Adam ate that fruit. Before Adam and Eve ate that fruit. When they ate, the appointment was set. It was going to happen. They became mortal.

But so, still, Adam's in a good way. He has a good job. He has food and abundance. He was still lacking one thing for happiness. In verse 18, the Lord God said, It's not good that man should be alone. I'll make him a helper comparable to him. And we know, of course, that God caused the deep sleep to fall on Adam and took a rib and fashioned the woman from this rib.

The woman from this rib. So that he would have a companion. Interestingly, he did that after he let Adam see all the animals and said, None of these are right for me, but all of them seem to come in twos. So Adam knew, okay, when Eve came along, you could say, She was the one. More than so for anybody ever since, because she was the one. So they got it perfect.

It wouldn't stay perfect for long, though. Let's go to chapter 3. A serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field. Again, we know from reading throughout the scripture that the serpent actually was Satan the devil. And he said, Has God indeed... Oh, did I skip the... Yeah. And he said to the woman, Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, Well, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, You shall not eat of it, nor touch it, lest you die. I wonder sometimes, she didn't call it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She just said that tree in the middle of the garden.

Maybe she didn't think about it as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If so, that might have been part of her problem. She just thought of it as a tree. She said, God said, Don't touch it, don't eat of it. Perhaps she'd never wondered why God told her that. What was the purpose underlying it? But now Satan's going to give her a reason to think about it. In verse 4, the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die.

For God knows, in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be open. You'll be like God, knowing good and evil. Now, the Hebrew word that's here translated knowing, I didn't write down because I knew I wouldn't pronounce it properly. But I did note that it can be translated in different ways. It can have as many varied meanings as the English word knowing. Because knowing can mean to experience something, to discern something. Also, it can mean to determine something.

And I think that might help us to understand that. For you to determine good and evil means something different than just having intellectual knowledge. Because intellectual knowledge was easily available. God said, These are good, this one's bad. So she had a way of knowing it, but now the serpent told Eve just the opposite. No, that tree's not bad, it's good.

How could they know who was telling them the truth? Well, one way they could, they could have chosen to simply believe God. Accept His word as truth. God said it was bad, don't touch it, I believe that. But Eve decided to try another way. Well, she decided to try to discern, or to determine for herself if it was good or evil. So she conducted what some have called the first scientific experiment. For scientific experiment, basically you start with observation. You look at things, you form a hypothesis as to why you think it is the way it is, and some type of experiment that lets you test it, ideally with a control group, but I don't think she would have opportunity for that.

But we'll see that she does this in verse 6. The woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes. Okay, she's making an observation. This looks good, it's pleasant to the eyes. And so she forms a hypothesis. The tree's desirable to make one wise. I hypothesize that it looks good, and it probably will bring good results if I eat it. So here's the experiment. She took of the fruit and ate, and gave to her husband. She experimented on him. I think most women are smart enough to experiment on him first. But she gave to her husband and he ate, and we know what happened.

The eyes of them both were opened. The story goes from there. They realized that they had not believed and trusted God. And so they became ashamed. And it's said that they saw that they were naked. I think they were ashamed not only of the fact that they didn't have clothes, but they were ashamed, they realized that they had not trusted God who made them, their father in a sense.

And so they hid when he came to look for them, and they would suffer the consequences. Let's go to verse 22. Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us, to no good and evil. Now lest he put of his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever, therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden to till the ground from which he came.

So he drove out the man, and placed the carobim in the east of the garden with a flaming sword, turns every way to guard the way to the tree of life. That's interesting. That tells us that the way to the tree of life had been wide open. As the man had decided to accept God's revelation and trust him, life was available. But once man had decided to determine for himself what was good and evil, God cut off the way to the tree of life.

Have you ever wondered why? In essence, most of us know, but it's very important to the meaning of this day. And it'll become clear, and it is related to why all utopian experiments ever tried have failed. This one failed, in a sense. I wanted to read from you, I think, what was going on when they were put out of the garden, what God was thinking. Herbert W. Armstrong summed it up best in his book, Mystery of the Ages.

And so that came to mind. And so let's describe, let me read to you the way he described what God had in mind, in the words that Mr. Armstrong theorizes that God said. God didn't write these down, but if this isn't exactly right, it's got to be pretty close. I'm starting on page 120. This is God speaking. He says, Go therefore, Adam, and all your progeny that shall form the world, produce your own fund of knowledge.

Decide for yourself what is good and what is evil. So decide for yourself. Produce your own educational systems and means of disseminating knowledge, as your God, Satan, shall mislead you. Form your own concepts of what is God, your own religions, your own governments, your own lifestyles and forms of society and civilization. In all of this, Satan will deceive your world with his attitude of self-centeredness, with vanity, lust, greed, jealousy and envy, competition and strife and violence and wars, rebellion against me and my way of love. After the world of your descendants has written the lesson in 6,000 years of human suffering, anguish, frustration, defeat and death, after the world that shall spring from you shall have been brought to confess the utter hopelessness of the way of life you've chosen, I will supernaturally intervene.

By supernatural divine power, I shall then take over the government of the whole world, with re-education, I will produce a happy world of peace. I'm going to stop with that. Of course, there's much more in the book. But that's the meaning of the Feast of Trumpets in a nutshell. When man has tried everything else because we've tried to determine for ourself, we think we can decide what's good and evil or figure it out on our own, and we keep going that way, and it keeps not working. History has shown us a long record of man's results of his self-rule.

Now, we already talked about some of the attempts to produce a perfect utopian society. I didn't mention one. Now, most people don't call this a perfect utopian society, but if you think there's one nation where God Himself gave them the rules, He called out the nation of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, and said, Okay, let me tell you how you ought to run things.

I'm going to show you how to set up a government, a society. I'm going to reveal to you how to worship the one true God. And we see that. I'm going to go to several scriptures in the book of Ezekiel, starting in chapter 20. Ezekiel 20, beginning in verse 11. I noted this. I was thinking in terms of what I would do with the sermon and studying the book of Ezekiel, and I started noting scriptures that I thought I could use.

And I discovered I can cover the whole sequence of God's dealing with Israel easily in the book of Ezekiel. Now, we're not going to read the whole book, but we'll pull out a few scriptures. Starting with the description of what I just said. Ezekiel 20, verse 11. Here God is speaking, and He says, I gave them My statutes, showed them My judgments, which, if a man does, he shall live by them. He's saying, You follow these laws, these judgments, you'll live. You'll have a good life if you do it the way I say. Moreover, I gave them My Sabbath, to be a sign between them and Me, that they may know that I am the Eternal who sanctifies them.

So, I gave them laws how to govern their society. I revealed true religion. Let's go back to chapter 11, though. Instead of a perfect society, let's see what God did find in Israel. Did they accept the laws and the religion that He revealed? Ezekiel 11, verse 5, The Spirit of the Eternal fell on me and said, Speak. Thus says the Eternal, You've said, O house of Israel, for I know the things that come to your mind.

You've multiplied your slain in the city. You've filled its streets with the slain. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, Your slain whom you've laid in its midst, they are meat. The city is... I've not seen... Oh, yeah. You've filled its streets with the slain. I was going to leave there. I wanted to drop down to verse 12. It gives the cause of this. Verse 12, it says, You shall know that I am the Eternal, for you have not walked in my statutes, nor executed my judgments, but have done according to the custom of the Gentiles that are all around you.

God's saying, I gave you my laws. I showed you how to live. But you've got all this blood and violence because you're not doing it the way I said.

You're following after the Gentiles, the stuff that they made up. Let's go back to chapter 22. Ezekiel 22. We'll see where this led them. Ezekiel 22 and verse 4. You've become guilty by the blood which you've shed. You've defiled yourself with idols which you've made. You've caused your days to draw near and have come to the end of your years. Therefore, I made you a reproach to the nations, a mockery of all countries. Let's move down to verse 9. You are men who slander to cause bloodshed, and you are those who eat on the mountains. And by the way, eating on the mountains is representing false worship. Of course, the idol worship, they set up groves and idols and altars up on the high places and went there and sacrificed an eight.

It's not a nice, casual picnic. It's false idol worship. And in verse 10, In you men uncover their fathers' nakedness. In you they violate women who are set apart during their impurity. One commits an abomination with his neighbor's wife. Another lewdly defiles his daughter-in-law. And another in you violates his sister, his father's daughter. In you they take bribes to shed blood. You take usury and increase. You have made profits from your neighbors by extortion and have forgotten me, says the Lord God.

There's more, there's much more, but that's a picture of what happened to ancient Israel. But it also sounds like modern Israel. Sounds like our nation today. Extortion, bloodshed, perversion. And this is the nation to whom God revealed the ways to do it. What about the other methods man has tried over the years? As I said, if we can see going through history, if what Mr.

Armstrong said that God told Adam is true, we would see them try one thing after another. Man's tried autocratic rule from the top down with kings and emperors. He's tried oligarchies with a group of people given supreme power. We've tried democracy where everybody gets to vote. And each one of these has been tried in every conceivable variety. Man's tried capitalism, socialism, communism, fascism, and any other isms I'm forgetting. And look at the state of the world. Winston Churchill once said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others we've tried before.

And that's true. We're confident. We believe the United States has a good form of government, and we do have a good constitution that's brought very good results. But it's good for us to remember what John Adams, one of our greatest founding fathers, said. He said that our form of government is suited only for a moral people, and that it's completely inadequate for any other. When our people had more morality, our government worked well. But democracy, in democracy when a majority of people learn that by the power of their vote, they can award themselves benefits and financial rewards simply by taking it from those who are smaller in number, the downward spiral begins.

And that's happened in the United States. The majority says, well, just take from those who have. And of course, then those who have say, why should I work so hard to produce? And it goes from there. Putting aside the ideal of a perfect government, many people would be happy to just have peace. If we had peace and no more wars, wouldn't it work to have one powerful government even force peace on the world by conquest, if necessary?

Well, it's been tried. Most of our wars of conquest were started by people who thought they were bringing good to the world, fighting for the overall good. And we have the most fabulous prophecies foretold of a succession of empires to rule the known world. First, the Babylonian led by Nebuchadnezzar, who might have said, maybe I'm a tyrant, but I'm doing this to end the wars and fighting.

He was succeeded by the Persian, then the Greek, then the Roman. If we look at Asian history, we would see similar things happen in the Chinese dynasties and the Japanese and others. We were composed for a while. There was a Pax Romana, the piece of Rome, for many years. But even the most powerful empires will decay and fall. And war always comes. It's endemic. I found an article written a couple of years ago in the New York Times.

Actually, I found it online from the New York Times. It's written by Chris Hedges. He did a study that showed, out of the past 3,400 years of recorded history, the world has known peace everywhere for only 268 of those years. 268 out of 3,400. I'm not sure what the percentage of that is, but I think it's maybe around a tenth of a percent. It's pretty low. In the last century, about 108 million people died in warfare.

And some scholars have tried to estimate how many people have died in warfare since man was created. Estimates range from 150 million to perhaps even as many as a billion. And that's in war. That doesn't count disease, famine, starvation, or violent crime. Let's turn to Isaiah 59. I referenced this earlier, but this describes the state of the world. Isaiah 59 and verse 6.

And that's what God sees when he looks down on this earth. What he's seen from the time that Adam and Eve left the garden right up till today. Man has tried everything. Every method of government. All types of religious systems. All the education we can gather. And as a result, or the result has been almost constant war with millions dying. How many are going to die in warfare in the 21st century? I wouldn't put a number on it, but if we turn to Matthew 24, we can get what I think is a pretty good summary. Now, I'm not going to go on record to say that I know this will be fulfilled in the 21st century, but I'll be pretty surprised if it's not. I'd be surprised if it's not fulfilled within the next decade, the way things are going. Matthew 24 and verse 21. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved. Remember, we've often quoted the Moffat translation that says, no flesh would be saved alive. He's not saying no flesh would accept Jesus and be saved spiritually. He means, unless God would intervene, man would sterilize this planet. We're on track to extinguish all life, unless God does something. Jesus spoke this prophecy about 2,000 years ago.

And from what we understand, the men who heard it in their own ears thought it was going to be fulfilled in their lifetime. Now, we've wondered, they probably said, wow, could mankind really kill everybody? You'd have to all go insane and everybody would kill everybody they see. They couldn't envision nuclear war and radiation and, I'm thinking of, super diseases and things like that.

But after Christ's crucifixion, when they got to see Him again, they asked Him, are you going to restore the kingdom now? They had that question. What they meant is, are you going to take charge and rule the world? And His answer said, no, not time for you to know about that, but pretty soon you're going to receive power.

That might have taken them by surprise. Let's turn to that in Acts 1, because that answer gave them a hint to the answer we've been looking for. What does the world need now? What are we lacking?

Acts 1 and verse 7. So they asked Him, are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel? And He said, it's not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own authority, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you'll be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samara, to all the world.

As I said, I don't think they realized it immediately, but Jesus had just answered the question of, what does the world need now? Once the Holy Spirit entered them, I think they got it a lot more, because what the world needs now is for Jesus Christ to establish His kingdom. What the world needs now also is the Spirit of God.

And we especially need the Spirit of God. Well, let me say that backward. We need Christ to rule because we've not had the Spirit of God, and because we've shown we're not capable of ruling ourselves. Looking back to the very first humans on earth who chose to decide for themselves what was good and evil, if we go from that point forward for thousands of years, man has tried and man has failed.

We've tried and we've failed, and we've tried again and again and again, no matter how we organize, no matter how we govern, no matter how we educate, how we worship, no matter what, man fails. We fail because we're lacking the essence of God. God alone can truly determine what is good and evil. Adam and Eve didn't believe that, but God determines because what is good and evil is determined by what God is. He's the standard by which anything is measured. If it corresponds with God, it's good. If it's contrary to God, it's evil. Man needs to turn his back on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and instead take the tree of life.

That way hasn't been open to us for about 6,000 years from when Adam and Eve were put out, but the time is coming when the way is going to be open, when man is going to choose to let God reveal what's good and evil. Let's look at 1 Corinthians 1.

Remind us that man can't figure it out. Man's own wisdom at trying to determine what's good and what's not and how to work things is completely inadequate. 1 Corinthians 1, verses 20 and 21. Paul writes, Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disfeuder of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? And think back to all I've been describing. Our best minds trying to determine how to make life work. And it just looks like foolishness because it doesn't work. For since in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God.

So all man's wisdom doesn't know God. God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. It pleased God through the message of the foolishness of the message preached. I know I said that wrong. But basically, that's referring to revealed knowledge. God said, I'm going to make it so you can only know if I reveal it to you. That's how you can get it right, finally. Let's look across the page, chapter 2, verse 9. 1 Corinthians 2, verse 9, As it is written, eye is not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered in the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.

But God has revealed them through His Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, the deep things of God. It's only by the revelation of God that man can finally get it right. The scientific method fails because what we need is spiritual. I found an interesting quote. I found this quoted in one of our old booklets, and now I can't remember which booklet I quoted it from, but I do have the name of the professor. This is from a speech in 1964 by Dr. Benjamin Mays, who was president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.

He was addressing an academic conference at the University of Michigan, and he said, We have more educated people than at any time in history. We have more people with college degrees. Yet, humanity is a diseased humanity. It isn't knowledge we need. Knowledge we have. Humanity is in need of something spiritual. When's the last time you heard a college president say, We don't need knowledge. What we need is something spiritual. But he put his finger on it. That is what man needs now. It's what the world needs now. Not love, sweet love. Well, yes, love.

Maybe not sweet love. Maybe a different kind of love. But the question is, if we know what we need, will man accept it? The answer to that, unfortunately, is no. God's word shows that man wants to continue trying. Trying his own methods until they lead to worldwide annihilation.

We need good government. Are we going to get it? Well, when we have a king who comes and brings it to us, we will. And that's what this day reminds us of, once again. It's amazing how many people who call themselves Christians in the world, who want to talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ, who look what Jesus Christ actually said. We've cited, many times recently, Mark 1, verses 14 and 15. So I won't turn there. But we remember that Jesus came and started his ministry saying, it says, Jesus came preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.

Let me say that again, the gospel of the kingdom of God. Saying the time was fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel. He came to talk about a kingdom. And we know that Jesus Christ is the king of that kingdom. I wonder, some people might look and say, well, if Jesus Christ is king of the world, he's not doing a very good job. But that's because he hasn't taken his throne yet. Jesus Christ qualified to take that throne a long time ago. But he explained to his disciples that he was going to go to the Father and prepare a place for them and then he would come again.

And then he would reign. So, his kingdom is not for right now. Let's look at John 18. John 18 and verse 36. Because we're among those disciples. He had disciples right then when he lived before he was crucified and his church has grown and continued up to today. But Jesus Christ described the situation we're in now. John 18 and verse 36. He said, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews, but now my kingdom is not from here.

Now, some people misinterpret that and think, Oh, no, it's not because we've got to go to heaven. I attended a funeral earlier this week. It's been a long time since I've been to a funeral not conducted by one of our ministers talking about going to heaven. No, that's not what Jesus was saying. His kingdom is not from here, but that doesn't mean it's not going to come here.

It will. That's what the book of Revelation tells us about. But Jesus' servants, we don't fight to establish it. He's not waiting for us to establish the millennium as those going and setting up the Oneida colony thought. They thought, we've got to establish a perfect society and entice Christ to come back down.

It's not going to work. Mankind can't establish a perfect society. But nevertheless, Jesus Christ will come to this earth and He's going to bring that perfect society. Until then, we do what the song in our hymnal says. We wait and hope and look for God. All the while knowing that that time will come. Jesus Christ will return to this world and He'll return at a time of crisis. He'll return at the time that the Feast of Trumpets represents. It's going to be a time of the seven trumpets, the sea turning to blood.

Sirens going off. Hail and fire coming from the sky. And I didn't memorize all the sequence, but you know that's going to happen. The River Euphrates dried up and the evil spirits bringing massive armies, warfare. It's going to be a time when if Jesus Christ didn't return, mankind would go extinct. But at the coming, the sounding of that seventh trumpet, then the world will have peace. The world will have a perfect society. We'll have good government. Let's go to the book of Revelation, chapter 11. Rather than go through all the plagues today, I wanted to focus on why we need what the Feast of Trumpets represents.

Because we can't do it on our own. Revelation 11, verse 15. Then the seventh angel sounded, and there were 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. Even when I try to say that loud and powerful, it's nothing like when you hear it sung in the Messiah. If you have a large choir and it just makes you feel those tingles. The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever, and it goes on and on.

But it does that to you. But that's how we should feel when we read that. That's what's going to happen. Let's go to Revelation 19, and we'll begin in verse 11. This is when it happens. All this build-up, and especially with 6,000 years of history, Adam and Eve being put out of the garden and told, Go, try it on your own way. Try every way you can.

When this moment happens, that's when that experiment ceases, and we get it the other way. Now I saw heaven open, and behold, a white horse. And he who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire. On his head were many crowns, and he had a name written that no one knew except himself.

He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed him on white horses. And out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it he should strike the nations. And he himself will rule them. As I said, he's a message of government. He will rule them with a rod of iron. He himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and the wrath of Almighty God. And he has on his robe and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

That's exactly what the world needs now. It needs proper leadership and government. And yet it does need one thing more. Something that ancient Israel was still lacking when God told them, this is how you do your government, and this is how you do your religion. Let's turn back to Ezekiel. I want to look at a couple more scriptures there. Ezekiel 11. Because what the world needs, the world is going to get. It needs Jesus Christ. It needs God's government. But it needs something more than just a government. Ezekiel 11, verse 19, says, I will give them one heart.

I will put a new spirit within them and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh. God is literally going to change human nature. Oh, I wanted to read in verse 20. That they may walk in my statutes and keep my judgments and do them, and say, I'll be my people, and I'll be their God. He's going to make it so that we can obey those laws.

So I said, He's going to change human nature. That's the one thing that remains the same and has remained the same throughout all of human history. And I've had fun, as a history teacher, you know, in a former life, I'd have students say, why do we have to study this? Why do we care about what happened? One thing I'd tell them, it's like, okay, one reason you need to study is you're going to learn about people. Because a lot of things change over time.

Our technology changes, our tools change, our toys change, our entertainment changes, but people stay the same. Human nature hasn't changed since Adam and Eve left that garden. And so it's good for us to understand how people work. But when Christ returns, human nature is going to change. He's going to change our very nature. And because the fact that man couldn't change it on his own, that's why we've never had peace and happiness.

Let's turn over to chapter 37 of Ezekiel. Ezekiel 37 and verse 13. We know this is the dry bones chapter. I'm not going to read through all the resurrection, because I'll be disappointed if we don't hear it at some time during the feast coming up. So just know this is a physical resurrection. And God is speaking to these people that he's raised in verse 13. He says, Then you shall know that I am the Eternal, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you out from your graves.

I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land, and you will know that I, the Eternal, have spoken and performed. It says, the Eternal. God is going to put his Holy Spirit in people. He's put it in just about everyone in this room, and it's working with everybody in this room. That's why we're in this room. That spirit is what enables us to see things a little differently, to realize that the world is lacking something. We have much of what that world lacks.

In some senses, we have everything it lacks. If we're submitting to God's government, we have him dwelling in us, because that's what the world needs. But some would say, well, this is only talking about Israel. What about all those other people? Just to make sure we don't leave that hanging, let's turn over to the book of Joel, Joel 2. I went too far. That's early on in the Minor Prophets.

Remember when the Holy Spirit was poured out on that famous Pentecost, 120 people were gathered, and it looked like tongues of fire sitting on their heads, and suddenly they began to speak, and everybody could understand them in their own language. And Peter, and probably several of the other apostles, got up and spoke powerful sermons. They explained what was happening, and he quoted Joel. But let's read the original, Joel 2 and verse 28.

Joel 2 and 28. This is an end-time prophecy. It says, it shall come to pass afterward... After what? Well, we could say, after those things we read in the book of Revelation, and after the dry bones are raised and given back to life, it will come to pass afterward, I'll pour out my spirit on all flesh, not just the Israelites, all flesh. And your sons and daughters will prophesy, and your old men dream dreams, and young men see visions. Verse 32. And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Whoever will turn to God and accept his spirit will have that opportunity. Now, calling on the name of the Lord means more than just saying, Lord, Jesus... It means accepting him, accepting his rule, living the way of life he wants us to live. But of course, with that spirit in us, we can do it. That's the only thing that makes it possible. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Mankind has been trying to save itself, and it cannot do it. And we never could. But that hasn't been for lack of trying. That's one of the things I wanted to bring out in the sermon today. Time and again, in the many years since Adam and Eve took it upon themselves to determine what's good and evil, and got themselves ejected from the Garden of Eden for it, ever since then, man has tried to restore the ideal conditions that existed. Empires have been established to bring peace and happiness. And empires fell, and war continued. Utopian communities, some of them in the American wilderness, have been set up to achieve an ideal society. But they couldn't do it. Something was always missing. We've tried all different sorts of governments, all different types of economies, every imaginable type of religion. But mankind never had what it takes to succeed. Because what the world needs now, and what it is always needed, when this day is fulfilled, is what the world will get. The world needs God. It needs our Maker. We need God to rule. And we need God to dwell within us, by the power of His Spirit. The Feast of Trumpets tells us that that day is coming. It tells us that Christ will return to this earth. He'll bring peace. He'll bring happiness. He'll bring an end to man's failure. And on that day, what the world needs, the world is going to get.