To The Work

[McNeely] Good afternoon, everyone. Hello to all of you that are watching this on the webcast. Hope you’re having a good Sabbath. We’re having a hot Sabbath here in Cincinnati. As we have had several of those, it’s been quite a warm summer. So I hope your air conditioning is working wherever you may be and giving you moments of coolness.

I’d like to thank the choir for that absolutely lovely piece of music. That was just very, very nice. It kind of just settled all of us and calmed us down — hopefully not too much to where you fall asleep this afternoon — but very, very nice.

I, too, would like to welcome ABC students who are coming in and parents. We have an orientation picnic tomorrow and orientation on Monday, and classes start on Tuesday. So we’re into another academic year of Ambassador Bible College. Summer has gone by very quickly, but we’re glad to have all of you here. If any of you are here with your parents, we welcome you as well — looking forward to getting acquainted with you and getting into the academic year.

This is an interesting Sabbath — the Sabbath before the beginning of the Ambassador Bible College academic year. To see the new faces, we come in and there’s a lot of excitement and see what we have this year. What’s the class going to be like? They’re looking at each other and figuring each other out, looking at the faculty, trying to figure us out. It all works both ways in that way, but it’s just a very good point and moment in time.

I was thinking about this particular position of this Sabbath before the academic year, and it reminded me of another such Sabbath thirty-two years ago. Debbie and I had taken our eldest son, Chris, down to Ambassador University in Big Sandy, Texas, to enroll him in the freshman class. In the fieldhouse that day, it was all packed with members from the Big Sandy area, faculty, and the incoming class and student body. It was packed-to-the-rafters type of experience for that Sabbath.

As we were there, we were going to drop him off and then leave the next day and go back home. The sermon that day, thirty-two years ago — August of 1993 — the sermon that day was given by a young minister named Gary Antion. Gary Antion strode across the stage that day, and he launched into his message.

You might be thinking, how would you remember this thirty-two years later? You’re not even going to remember this sermon next week, see? But don’t feel bad. I don’t always remember what I have spoken on from one week to the next. But I do remember that sermon thirty-two years ago from Mr. Antion. This is going to surprise him.

He got up and he started to talk about the work. And we had Ambassador University — a traditional seedbed of laborers for the work of God. I went through that experience. I went into the ministry. Many others did through the years. And Mr. Antion started to talk about the work of the church — the work of God.

This phrase that was a very big part of our culture — the work. And that the college was a big part of the work, and that we were to preach the gospel to the world. And I went through the Scriptures on that. I don’t remember exactly the title that he had, but that was his topic.

And I’m sitting out there thinking, “Mr. Antion, don’t you know that the work at that moment was being actually dismantled? One piece at a time by the authority, the leaders of the Worldwide Church of God at that time.” I knew it, and I know he knew it. But in retrospect, I’m sure he was making a statement. Sometimes ministers make statements, don’t they?

And in retrospect, I think he knew what he was saying that day. Because at that point in 1993, I knew and he knew and several of us knew that the work that we had been a part of — given our lives to — was being dismantled. And it continued. But the sermon stuck. And you know what? The work goes on.

The work wasn’t dismantled by any one group of ministers at that time or in any given time. The work of God survived. And the work of God continues to this day.

And so I’ll give my sermon here on this particular Sabbath, in the legacy of Mr. Antion and the church, about the work of God. And so my title is To the Work.

And I’m glad my PowerPoint is working. I never give PowerPoint sermons. I use it all the time in class, but I’m glad that this one is working. This is a phrase that, as I said, we have used and has been a part of our jargon — of our inspeak — in the church.

As long as I can remember, when my mother first began coming to the then Radio Church of God, in response to hearing the truth of God preached and taught, we went and we became a part of the work. We had whole messages about that. It was a phrase that just defined what we were doing and what God was doing — the work of preaching the gospel to the world and making disciples.

And the work grew in that period of time and did go to the world. The phrase “the work” is not something that was just invented by Mr. Armstrong or anyone else. It comes right out of Scripture.

And I’ll put the Scriptures on the display here and you can follow along, or in some cases you may want to go ahead and turn and read a little bit further here. But the phrase comes out of the book of Acts, chapter 15, verse 38.

This is the occasion where the Apostle Paul, along with his fellow travelers at that time — Barnabas and John Mark — were in their first journey of Paul. And they had come into Asia Minor at a place called Perga, as it is described. And John Mark got cold feet for whatever reason, and he departed from them, it says.

And actually it happened in chapter 13. John Mark had left — he probably went back home to Mother. I always like to imagine that he just missed Mother’s home cooking. And he had to go home. And it was too much. He didn’t count the cost, and it was kind of rough traveling in those days.

And so he left Paul and Barnabas then to actually have to carry everything. And the work that he was to have done now was on theirs, in terms of probably a lot of physical matters on top of preaching the gospel.

And so here in Acts 15:38, when Paul and Barnabas were setting out to make what is the second journey in the book of Acts, Paul and Barnabas, as you know, had a dispute because Barnabas wanted to take John Mark — give him a second chance — and Paul wanted nothing to do with him at that moment. Because it says, “he had departed from them and had not gone with them to the work.” (Acts 15:38)

That’s where we get the phrase. What was the work? Well, the work that Paul and Barnabas were engaged in was preaching the gospel. They were traveling through the cities of the Greco-Roman world, the Roman Empire, Asia Minor, and all, as we read in the book of Acts.

Walking into a synagogue, preaching the gospel — and after a few Sabbaths, having to leave, and then find another place to meet and going about the job. And it was hard work. But it was what God had given to them.

It was what Christ had commissioned the Church to do — to go and to be witnesses of Him into all the ends of the earth. “You shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) And they were. This is in the story of Acts. This is where they were. And it’s an interesting phrase — “to the work.” It is what, as I said earlier, we’ve committed our lives to.

And it is a work of preaching the gospel. It is a work of making disciples. It is a work of caring for the disciples. It is a work of preaching and of teaching. And as it is defined in our time, it is a work not only of preaching the gospel via the Internet and all the means that we have, but providing a ministry — providing for a life of the Church and programs to care for those disciples that God adds to the Church.

And we have camps, and we have social activities in our congregations, we have the Feast of Tabernacles. We have a structure to provide for the spiritual care, nurturing of the Church — while we preach the gospel.

And it is the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God. And God calls and adds to the Church. And it’s a challenge today — just as it was a challenge for the Apostle Paul in that day.

And it goes on. And as I said here at the beginning, it’s a work that is not… God uses men and women and the whole body to do it. But if, for some reason, those men and women go astray — fall by the wayside, depart, as it says here — for a time or maybe even for a life and go off to something else, that work goes on.

It didn’t end in 1993. It shifted. Yes, it had to be reorganized. It’s still being done today. Because it’s the work of God. It’s not the work of men. And as long as we are tuned into that truth and that fact — that it is God’s work — then God can use us, and He will.

And so as we think about beginning an academic year at Ambassador Bible College, as we think about all the other different operations of the church that must be done to care for the church — the pastoral ministry, the programs that we have — we’re about to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. We’re ending up a very successful summer camp program season again this year. And from all the reports I’ve heard, all the camps have gone well.

We’re looking forward to the Feast. We have other programs and activities and plans that are being carried out by those that work in this building, by our ministers in the field, and by many others around the world. And it’s that world vision, that international scope that I want to focus on here with you this afternoon — because we have been doing quite a bit in the last couple of years to focus on, and visit, and to work with, and to train, and to teach people in the international areas.

So the work in those areas is what I want to kind of open up to you and give you a visual of here this afternoon, because I’ve had the privilege over the last couple of years of working with that — with Mr. Myers and Mr. Shabi and Mr. Elliott now, all of us, and other regional senior pastors in the church — to literally go into various parts of the world, around the world, doing this.

And looking to the state of our flocks, getting acquainted with the ministry and members, and also many of the needs. Well, let me go ahead and get into it here.

I want to take you back to a verse in the beginning of Acts and show you that the work of God has always been international, if you will — cross-cultural, cross-language. In the book of Acts, chapter 2, at the beginning of the church there, we all know the story of the Day of Pentecost. The disciples were in a room. God’s Spirit came rushing in like a wind and with lightning, and they began to speak in tongues.

They moved out into the public areas of Jerusalem — the temple areas. And what we see there in Acts 2, beginning in verse 8, is something that we might not always focus on. Because as they began to speak in tongues, then those who were in the audience listened to that. And here’s what they said in verse 8 of chapter 2 of Acts:

“And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born?” (Acts 2:8)

And then Luke mentions the different nationalities that were in Jerusalem at that time on the Day of Pentecost, keeping that pilgrimage feast. “Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,” which is a region in modern-day Turkey, “in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs.” (Acts 2:9–11)

And then it says, “We hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” (Acts 2:11)

And so the miracle that we know about was there. But I want you to focus on the fact that from the very beginning of the Church, its reach was across the nations — international, as we would say today. And people from all of these areas — and these represented lands to which the Jews had dispersed.

Many of them were Jews from those lands. We will read about some of them later in the book of Acts that probably formed some of the churches that we read about there. But most of these people from these regions, we know nothing more about them. We don’t know their names, and we don’t always know what happened.

But we can be assured that because of the work that Christ outlined the disciples would do, they were reached with the gospel. In fact, many here may have been those that carried the truth back to those areas in some way. We just don’t have a complete record in that area.

But I’ve been thinking about this verse and what God is doing in the many parts of the world that we have — that, in my job, I get the opportunity to focus on and travel to and to work with the people in these areas. I am a novice in some areas, especially Asia. I’ve come late to the area of Asia — the Philippines, Singapore. We just had a conference in Sri Lanka. And I’ve got kind of a big learning curve in one sense for some parts of the world.

I’ve made several trips to Africa and to Europe and getting acquainted with everyone. But one thing that has impressed me is that God is not limited by political boundaries. And I think that’s what God is saying here in Acts 2.

Language doesn’t prevent me from doing the work. Political boundaries, ideology, other religions — it’s not a hindrance to God. And we have evidence of that, certainly today.

Through the Internet, we can access remote regions with the truth. A government that might be largely Muslim or Communist, in many cases, can’t prevent people from accessing the truth on the Internet. And sometimes rigid government crackdowns can be circumvented, as people do go online. And they find the liberty and the freedom of the gospel.

We have found people in these regions who feel they have found the pearl of great price and are pursuing a new life. We see the international dimension of those that were gathered here in Jerusalem in this particular episode here. And as we see and work with people in some of our regions today, the beginnings that we have can be somewhat small. But that’s how God works.

Let me jump to another episode here, and it’s on the second journey of Paul in Acts 16, where Paul and Barnabas were going through the area of Asia Minor — today’s Turkey. Paul thought he made plans to go one way, and God said, no, you’re not going there. So Paul said, all right, we’ll get our GPS coordinates and we’re going this other direction. God said, no, you’re not going there.

And when you look at the map, they found themselves all the way out on the edge of the Aegean Sea, at the very edge of Asia Minor, and at the area of Troas. And it was there that Paul had a vision. And here’s what it says: “And they came to Troas, and a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’” (Acts 16:8–9)

Macedonia is a region in Greece. It was a region from which Alexander the Great came. And Paul and Silas got on a boat, and they crossed over, and they came to Philippi. And the story there at the beginning of the Church is told there in Acts 16 — a wonderful story.

But here’s how God was not wanting him to go into any other regions of Asia at that point. He wanted him to go across the sea into what we now call Europe. They didn’t call it Europe at that time. It was just called the Roman Empire. Everything else was the Roman Empire in that day and age.

But that’s where they went. But Paul had to have this vision to point him there. And it was a man. We don’t know who it was. A lot of speculation. It doesn’t really matter. But it came from God. But notice what he said. It was one man that Paul saw in his vision, but the man said, “Come over and help us.” (Acts 16:9) Help us.

God was behind this vision. These were God’s words. God knew that He had more than one. But you know, Paul only saw in his vision one. Now that’s interesting. That’s interesting. Sometimes today we don’t have anybody in a particular country. Turkey is one of them. We have no members in Turkey.

Recently, we got an inquiry from somebody in Turkey. One inquiry. What would you do with one inquiry? We can’t go there. We don’t have anybody to go there. We don’t have a minister there. It’s not a church. It’s a different language, and it’s a different culture. But it’s one. It’s one.

And this is often how it happens. You know, we can look at the big job that we have, and if we let it, we think, “Oh boy, how are we ever going to do this?” Languages and translations. Do we have anybody that even speaks Turkish? Well, the answer is — as far as I know — no. Unless you got a gift of tongues right now.

There’s another verse later in Acts, another occasion. Paul’s had a rough spell. He’s been chased out of towns and beaten up, let down over a wall at night — ignominiously having to leave the city of Berea. He comes down to Corinth. And who’s… nobody’s hearing me, Lord. He got, you know, kind of drug around in Athens and not much response.

Paul receives another vision from God. In Acts 18, beginning at verse 9, it says, “The Lord spoke to Paul in the night by a vision.” He had the earlier vision of the man of Macedonia. Now this one is identified directly as the Lord speaking: ‘Do not be afraid, but speak, and do not keep silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to hurt you; for I have many people in this city.’ (Acts 18:9–10)

You’re not going to get beat up here, all right? Not going to be thrown in jail like you were in Philippi. Because, notice, “For I have many people here. I have many people here in this city.” And so he continued there for a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. And lo and behold, the Church at Corinth, which we read about in two letters.

God — Paul had not gone there. It wasn’t a church. But God already had looked at and knew that He had people in that city. Think about that. How did He know that? Well, He’s God. Yeah. And He looked down on Corinth just like He looked down on… what was your hometown that you came from? Your region?

My mother was the very first person called into God’s Church from our hometown in Missouri. For years, she was the only one. So we started the church there, then people moved in, and then others came along. But for a long time, she was the only one. Did God look down and see that… we’ll call Josephine McNeely? Well, I think He did. And maybe your uncle, your aunt, your grandparents — something like that.

God knows us. God does the calling, and He knew that He had people in Corinth that He was going to call. And He was encouraging Paul with this message. And the point is this — just like with the earlier vision of the man in Macedonia — we might think there’s only one, but that one just might be the tip of the iceberg.

It might be the one that leads to others. And if we diligently follow through with a serving, humble spirit and attitude, and go where we find a response, and do what we can to nurture that disciple, that inquiry, that question — then maybe God has many more that are unseen behind us.

One of the things that we’re learning is that God’s got people in parts of the world today that He chooses, in various ways, to bring into contact with us — that He’s already been working with. And they learn about the Sabbath. They may learn about the Holy Days in some ways as they read their Bible. Then they get out on the web, and they search for a Sabbath-keeping church.

And all these stories we hear as we travel, and we hear people’s stories and their path — how they came. Let me take you through a few of the places that we’ve been here in the last year and a half and show you a few pictures of some of the disciples and some of their stories that God is working with — through just a few pictures here.

Because I think that will help us to appreciate that what we are doing in this building, and in many other locations in our ministry and our membership, to reach out, work with people, to help them — is bearing fruit. The work goes on. The work hasn’t stopped.

And I hope that it will give us all a lift — lift our vision a bit — to see what God is doing. And I can give you a sense of that. And you can pray for that. But also, if you’re younger, and if, you know, if an interest in people, God, the work begins to percolate in your mind that, yeah, we’re called to a work. We’re called to do something. And that we become a part of that. We enter into that experience. God can use you.

If I can lift your vision a bit to see that God is working in some of these areas and how He’s working to do His work, to continue it on, then I hope and pray that that can result in an encouragement and inspiration for you that can impact your life — your involvement, your prayers, your support — and perhaps even, for some of you, some way to be a part of it that you’ve never even thought about.

But seeing the need can lead you to that. Let me take you back about eighteen months — nineteen months now — to an early ministerial conference that we had in Manila, the Philippines, in 2023 — December of 2023. And we brought together our ministry and others in the Philippines, and our team traveled over there.

The picture here, you see David Dobson on the right, senior pastor for the Philippines, and giving a lecture. The couple on the left are a couple from the nation of Myanmar. Myanmar used to be Burma. It’s right next to Thailand up in Asia.

And these are two individuals that I’ve met several times now in these travels. They are — his name is Seng Hong, and hers is Seng Pon. And they are both baptized members. They are protégés of Leon and Gloria Sexton — long-time members and friends and classmates of mine and Debbie’s from our time at Ambassador.

Some of you know that Mr. Sexton has had a ministry in Thailand called the Legacy Institute that has fallen on bad times, in a sense, because of health and all. It’s not what it used to be. But these two are fruits of that, and the schooling that some of our people — some of our ministers — went over and were a part of.

This gentleman lives in Myanmar, and he has — I don’t know, numbers vary — but about sixty members that he pastors in the jungle in Myanmar in their village. And because of the civil war in Myanmar and the confiscation and the military coming and going through there, they have a very, very precarious situation at times.

They run their computers, their lights, off of a generator. And at times when the army troops have come through — whether they are the government troops or the rebel troops — Seng Hong and Seng Pon accommodate both of them.

If they want to charge their cell phones, they give them both the opportunity to plug into their generator to charge their cell phones — just to keep the peace and to not be bothered. They’ve had, at times, to flee into the jungle when fighting got a little bit too close to their village.

But he considers himself a part of us. We’re working with him and his people. But it’s not the only group that we have in Myanmar. We have another group that is worked with here by this gentleman, Davidson Labe, whose father was a minister in the Worldwide Church of God in Burma. He’s a deacon, lives in England, but he travels back and forth to Thailand.

And in the southern part of Thailand, he has another separate group that he’s worked with that is a part more of our tradition — of our culture — Church of God, from Worldwide and through to what we have in United. He does a work with them, and we support him in whatever way we can. As he supports them, they probably will have a Feast of Tabernacles in Thailand for that small group this year.

But we have another group in Myanmar that we Zoom in on — a Bible study to them every Friday night. Some of our ministers from the West Coast, closer to their time zone, regularly give messages there. David Binsinger, one of our elders, coordinates all of that and keeps a close touch with that particular group — a third group in Myanmar.

They’re separate by tribe, and they’re separate by, let’s say, Church of God tribalism. You do know we have our own tribes in the Church of God. There are three different strains, if you will, of entry or contact with us right there. There’s a fourth group that we’ve had some contact with, and they found us on the Internet — Sabbath-keeping.

We have a tenuous contact with them. So it’s a very interesting dynamic. I’ll just leave it at that as we work with these different groups of people. But they’re being discipled. They are disciples. And we are doing what we can as we work with them. So that particular conference was very fruitful.

In March of 2024, we had another conference in the United Kingdom. And it was an important one for us to bring together members and leaders in the UK to begin some organization and working with them and addressing some of their needs. And we’ve got some follow-up that we are doing and some other plans that have come from that as well.

I won’t spend a lot of time on that, but we have about a hundred seventy or eighty members in the United Church of God throughout the United Kingdom. And they are excited about the truth and the work that they can do in that region.

In May of 2024, we went to Mexico City and gathered people from Mexico, Central America, and South America — all the way down to Chile — to come for a conference in the office that they have in Mexico City.

This is that location. Mr. and Mrs. Api were there with us, and Mr. Api knows that building quite well — all of its good things and all of its bad things. When it rains, we have bad things happen in the roof of that place. But it used to be a car wash. And they rented it, and they cleaned it up, fixed it up, got an office in there, got a kitchen — got to have a kitchen, you know, to be a legitimate church building.

Not much of a roof, but it’s there. And that’s where we had our conference. That’s where the church meets in Mexico City. We had a very, very profitable conference there.

Mr. Mario Seiglie is the senior pastor for the churches throughout Latin America, and his nephew, Gabriel Garcia, lives in Mexico City and is quite capable in management of the church there and the operations. Gabriel Garcia took the series that we conducted there, and he’s just taken off like a jackrabbit throughout Latin America — holding other development sessions with people to really train people, to get them involved in so many different aspects of the work there.

It’s been a really good success story. Our goal is we don’t want to always be having to go in and do a conference. We want to teach them, and then teach them to take what they have and go and do the teaching as well. We can’t be everywhere, and that’s how you disciple. You teach, and then that person, through the mentoring, they teach others.

And this is really a goal. We’re not out to build frequent flyer miles on this operation here. I know sometimes people kind of look at us — “Well, you’re off on another junket, McNeely,” or whatever, to these international areas. And, okay, yeah. But let me tell you something — it’s work. It’s grueling. Whether you’re at the front of the plane or at the back of the plane, it’s still a fifteen-hour flight. And you come out of that looking like a zombie.

And it takes a couple of days to recover — maybe longer, depending on the direction and a lot of other things. But it’s what you do. You know the real joy of it all? The real joy is the people that you have at the end of the trip — the members — and work with them. That’s the real joy there.

This is the group that we had in Mexico City at that time. And it was a very profitable conference in that Mr. Garcia has picked up the ball and is discipling on top of what we’ve given them.

In Australia of 2024, we had a conference for the Australian ministry. And that was a very helpful one for us and for them to address their needs and issues — doctrinal matters and other administrative matters. Barry Williams is the gentleman on the right, a longtime elder there in the Melbourne congregation. He gave us a brief history of the United Church of God period in Australia, which was very informative for us.

But it was a very, very important conference that we had at that time. We went on to South Africa, and we had a major conference in South Africa with people from South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Angola.

George DeCampos came with people that he’s been working with in Angola, which is quite a story. I think you know about the four thousand people that we have an association with in Angola — people who had a Worldwide background. But post-1995 — again, because the work didn’t really end — when the church in Angola kind of got cut off, they kept the Sabbath and the Holy Days.

And then they just went out and started preaching the gospel. And just a few years ago, they came in contact with us — Mr. DeCampos, who speaks Portuguese, which is what they speak there. And they have four thousand people in Angola — eighty ministers.

And that wasn’t because of us. It was because of God. It was because a group of disciples in 1995 didn’t abandon the truth, and they kept preaching. They kept the work going. When I say that the work doesn’t stop because of human beings, God’s work continues on.

So this was a very helpful conference for us to bring people together from all of these areas at that time and just build relationships. There were late-night meetings, discussions over a meal — things come up, and you may have to go off while somebody else is giving a lecture and go to a corner of the restaurant and talk for two hours with a situation that might come up, and just kind of work through and explain and come to understanding.

Face-to-face contact in meetings like this is really invaluable in building the relationships to accomplish the work that we have.

On that trip, Debbie and I went on down to Cape Town, and I was very pleased to be able to spend a weekend there — a Sabbath in Cape Town.

And this was July of a year ago, and you see that we’re all bundled up. If you can see that, we’re in coats, and I have a sweater on. It’s because we’re down at the other side of the world — in the Southern Hemisphere. And I had not had that experience. In July, I’m wearing a coat and a blanket, and I’m huddled over a heater in July to stay warm.

And they don’t believe in heaters down there — not quite like we do. And they say, “You come to church, bring a blanket.” So that’s the way it is.

On that trip, we also stopped off in Singapore to work with our people there. Grant Chick from Australia takes care of the brethren that we have in Singapore. He’s recently begun to work with a group of people in Malaysia, just north of Singapore.

If you don’t know what Singapore is, Singapore is basically a city-state, and it’s got an interesting history — it’s a fascinating place. But it’s part of Malaysia to the north, and we just had a group of people begin to migrate to us. And Mr. Chick is beginning to work with them — increasing his workload, but that’s okay. He’s up to it. He’s more or less doubling the size of the people that we have in Singapore and Malaysia.

Last December, we had a conference in the Netherlands for the continental Europeans — Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, the Baltic States came in — a couple of our elders came over from the UK. And it was very productive to be able to get everybody together from the European continent to talk about the work, shared resources, and a lot of things going on.

There’s one story out of that region that I wanted to highlight to you, and that is the work that has been done in the Baltic areas of Estonia, Latvia, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, and all through the Baltic areas of northern Europe.

Johnny and Hazel Lambert have worked tirelessly for twenty-five or more years in that region, along with Victor Kubik. And because of their health and all, they’ve had to kind of take a step aside. But if you know the Lamberts, they don’t completely step aside — and that’s fine. We don’t want them to completely retire. They’re still involved.

But James Ginn, one of our elders, has taken on more of the responsibilities of this region. And he has a passion for the international areas, and he’s been doing a lot of traveling and creating a website, meeting people.

This is a disciple — I don’t know that this individual is a member — but she’s from Latvia. She left from this particular visit with Mr. Ginn there on the right, or on the left, and she went back to the Ukraine. She’s a refugee from eastern Ukraine, and she’s attended a Feast with our brethren there in Estonia for the last few years.

But she had a nineteen-year-old brother that had lost his leg stepping on a landmine just a few days before this visit took place with Mr. Ginn. And so — refugee from Ukraine — because of that war we all know about, and many, many other people that we have in the region.

Here are some other faces of people from Latvia that Mr. Ginn visits — members and disciples there, people that we’re nurturing, building relationships, bringing them online. He started online Bible studies and, importantly, an online website that has slowly grown with translated material into the various languages of Estonian, Polish, Romanian, Norwegian, Ukrainian — on the Nordic-Baltic website.

Our Bible study courses, any of our booklets — he’s put together a translation team. They use AI, and then you’ve got to check that for accuracy as well. But it’s growing — a website with material of the gospel in these various languages.

This is our Russian-language edition of Beyond Today, having been done very faithfully by Natasha Teague for a number of years here in the office. Booklets, Bible study courses — the Russian content that we have, thanks to her efforts, is enormous.

We’re gearing up in these other languages and on the website that Mr. Ginn has created in order to disseminate this, and then using other means — social media and otherwise — to get it out. We’re probably going to be putting the actual server in either Ukraine or Russia at some point, because it’s more advantageous to have those things hosted in the particular area.

So a lot is being done — that’s my point — in these areas. And I know we all know, we’ve known this horrendous war in Ukraine has been going on since February of 2022.

President Putin and President Trump met yesterday in Alaska. We don’t know where that will lead. We certainly pray that it will lead to an end of the killing. And some type of a ceasefire — it may not be perfect or whatever — but one of the things, as I look at that and think about it, is we’ve got literature that teaches the truth, that teaches the gospel, that gives hope.

And if people can begin — quit killing themselves long enough — then that may be an opportunity for us to reach people with a message of hope in a region of the world that needs hope.

And so we pray, “Thy Kingdom come.” (Matthew 6:10) We should pray for our leaders — that they make wise decisions, and in this case, that the killing can stop in what is a horrendous tragedy.

Why? So that the work might reach them. And it may be that God has more people there. We don’t know. We have to go, and go where we have that opportunity. That’s the nature of the work.

This most recent conference that we had, just last month, was in Sri Lanka. And that was one we’d been planning for a better part of a year. And some of you have been to the Feast in Sri Lanka — a very dynamic church, a very nice, friendly group of people in Sri Lanka.

We had a very, very helpful conference there. We focused on translation again in this area. This is a member from Australia here — Martin Kush. Martin’s son, Matthew, was here at ABC last year. Some of you will remember Matthew. This is Martin.

Martin is at a point in his career with his job that he’s got time on his hands. And so he’s had an interest in Asia. He came to the conference, and he’s working with the people there. And he’s got some ideas with AI to translate into some of the dialects in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh — to get our material in front of people there.

This is another success story. This is a member from Wisconsin, Julia Benson. Julia Benson has been teaching English as a second language via Zoom to our people in Pakistan and Bangladesh for several years, helping to bring them along. She does a Zoom Bible study — Sabbath study — with children every week. And this is a screenshot of that, and to hear her talk about what she’s doing and the passion that she has.

As she’s teaching them English and interacting with these children of disciples that we have there in Pakistan and Bangladesh, it’s remarkable. It’s truly exciting. She, along with others — their team — are working to move this AI translation project along to speed up. AI’s — well, you know — that’s the future. And we’re harnessing that with translation, checking it twice to make sure that it’s accurate and all, but using that to speed up the process so that the work reaches the people there.

I want to show you a picture of the few gentlemen that were at the conference. The gentleman in the center looks like an Indian guru or mystic or a Swami. My new friend, Matthew — he’s been attending for about a year. David Scriber, our senior pastor in India, Sri Lanka, in that region, did a Beyond Today lecture about a year ago.

Matthew came. Matthew had been watching our website — watched all of the Beyond Todays and reading everything he could, learning about the Sabbath and the Holy Days. He used to work for a multinational company throughout the Middle East and Europe. A few years ago, God began to work with him. I will just tell you, to hear his story — it’s not the traditional story. I’ll just leave it at that.

I had breakfast with him one morning. He was telling me all of this, and I looked at him and I said, “Matthew, your journey is different from my journey.” But that’s okay. I’m thinking, well, this is India. And God’s not — you know — He’s not time-bound even by some of our own traditions. He’s learning the truth.

And he sat on the front row of our conference and, you know, he had questions. And every question that we answered, he accepts. Reminded me of kind of what it must have been like when Priscilla and Aquila took Apollos aside to instruct him more fully in the Word — there in Ephesus (Acts 18:24–26).

And remarkable story. The gentlemen he’s got his arm around are two elders from the state of Mizoram in northeast India — largely Christian state in that Buddhist nation or Hindu nation. They have been associated with us since 1997. They were a Sabbath-keeping group, and somehow they got one of these directories of Sabbath-keeping organizations, and they looked through what everybody believed. They looked at the United Church of God, and they said, “That’s it.”

They agreed. So they wrote — and I think it was Matthew Fenchel that was their first contact here when he was working for the president’s office at that time. Probably it was Les McCullough. And they’ve been — David Scriber’s been working with them. They have over 450 members. And they want to be a part of us. They call themselves the United Church of God, Mizoram.

Vic Kubik had visited with them a few years ago. David Scriber has regular contact with them. And we talked about their association with us. And we’re going to take some programs to them. We’d like to take a youth camp up there to them. We’d like to take kind of a three-day workshop — training workshop — to them as well, to begin to work with them even more in this way.

They have buildings, 450-plus members. This is a group of them in Mizoram. Nice building. They have an infrastructure. They consider themselves part of the United Church of God.

What’s God doing? Here’s our group in Pakistan. Martin Kush — two weeks ago — he went and spent a week in Pakistan after our Sri Lankan conference. And that’s Martin down in the lower corner taking his selfie of our group in Pakistan.

We have two baptized members. The rest of those are disciples in various stages of development, as they’re being worked with by the gentleman on the right there, Kashif. And this is a picture of Kashif and his wife, Miriam, on the left. And the gentleman on the right is Manik and his wife, Rita, from Bangladesh.

So these are the four members we have in the regions of Bangladesh and Pakistan. They’ve had problems. We’ve told you their story in the past. What’s God doing? He’s doing something. And we’re probing in other areas.

We’ve had a contact from somebody in Nepal who has translated, of all things, our Clean and Unclean Meats booklet. And I’ve got a contact with Rod Foster, a minister down in San Antonio. And we’ve got a dialogue going — no visits or anything yet — but we’ll see where it goes. One person in Nepal.

David Binsiger left this conference in Sri Lanka and stopped off in South Korea to look into what could be done to reach that nation that we have nothing going on into. My point is that we’re probing, we’re looking outward. The work hasn’t ended as we take the gospel to the world according to the mission that Christ gave to the Church.

And we have, as a part of our entire structure — we walk by this installation here in our lobby, here in our office, every day when we work and when we come in here on the Sabbath — but this very beautiful installation that basically has our mission statement on it, that we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God and to all the world, making disciples and caring for disciples (Matthew 28:19–20).

That’s what we do. We make disciples, as God adds to the Church, and then we have to follow up and take care of those disciples. And that’s what we’re doing. In all these international regions, we are about that business — and making sure that they’ve got the resources that they need. They’ve got the teaching. They’ve got the encouragement. They’ve got the contact.

We’re disciples ourselves, going out to work with those who are those disciples. And we have to think about how that was done, as we’re told in the book of Acts, and how we translate that into the various resources, the means that we do it in our modern world.

The work has not ended. It didn’t end in 1993 or ’95. And we continue to work because, as Christ says, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” (John 5:17) And we continue to do that until it’s night, when no man will work (John 9:4). And that’s what we do.

And to the question of “What is God doing?” Well, the same thing He’s doing here with you and I. He’s doing it in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh — regardless of ideology, regardless of the language barriers. He is bringing many sons to glory (Hebrews 2:10).

Bringing many sons to glory. God has firstfruits in those regions. And while we may not have a vision of somebody standing and saying, “Come over to help us,” or God saying, “I’ve got many people here,” when we get a contact from a place like Nepal, or as Mr. Finchel did a number of years ago — Mizoram — or Mr. Scriber from Bangladesh, we go. We respond. We help them.

Because it may be that God’s got others — many more — in those regions of firstfruits to add to His Kingdom. That’s the thinking we have to have.

In John 14, verse 12, Christ said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.” (John 14:12) The work hasn’t ended.

And yes, we’re small. And yes, we have our challenges. But we are not to despise the day of small things (Zechariah 4:10). We are to continue to work because Christ has greater works than these He will do, because He goes to the Father.

And Christ is the Head of His Church. It is His body, and He is adding to that. And so, Mr. Antion’s sermon from thirty-two years ago talked about the work. I hope this sermon today, as I’ve talked about the work, helps us, encourages us, inspires us, motivates us to pray and to be a part — in whatever way we can — to help with translation, maybe a youth camp, maybe something else that can be done to care for our disciples and to disciple those whom God is calling, because we are all called to the work.