For You See Your Calling

Last summer, I went to Edmonton, Alberta, to find out something that I wanted to know about for a long time. My parents and I had come to the United States as refugees after World War II. They were very good friends with another couple that moved from a refugee camp in Hanover, Germany, to North America. My parents would talk to us, siblings, about how they survived the war and how they came to the United States. But their stories came in bits and pieces over the years. Their stories were very sad. They were mixed with a longing to be with family. And many times, my mother would start talking about missing home. She would talk about the bombing in Germany, the bombing in Ukraine. And I would just say, Mom, can I go out and play ball? I just did not want to see her cry. I didn't want to talk to her about it. I didn't want her to talk to us about it. Both my parents were in the faith. My father died suddenly at age 42 when I was a freshman at Ambassador College. And my mother died before her time at age 58 of acute leukemia. And Bev cared for her as a nurse the last days of her life. I never understood or could put together my parents' full story in chronological order. I knew that the only people that had the full account was the couple that were their good friends who lived in Edmonton, Alberta. They were 78 years old. And if I was going to get their story, I knew I'd have to get it pretty soon. I went there last year and I videotaped and talked to them for hours. And a story emerged, an amazing story, of tribulation, of love, of friendship, survival, courage, liberation, and triumph. Through God's providential guidance and protection. It's a story that's filled with spiritual parallels about everyone's spiritual journey from this world to the kingdom of God. My parents were refugees and they had gone through a tribulation. They always talked about that we talk about tribulation, but we have gone through a tribulation. I was born, as a result, in the United Nations refugee camp. And we were homeless for a number of years, not knowing what would become of us. My parents couldn't go back to Ukraine. We couldn't go anywhere else in the world unless we had a sponsor and were delivered. And ultimately we were delivered. We found a sponsor and were delivered to the United States and became naturalized citizens with new identities and new nationality.

The story begins with Operation Barbarossa. This was Germany's Nazi attack against the USSR. It began at dawn on June 22, 1941. Three million German troops rolled across the Russian border with 3,300 tanks. The initial blitzkrieg devastated city after city after city. The Germans made quick headway with little resistance. The Germans then forcefully and methodically deported millions of Ukrainians to work in Germany in the factories and farms. The majority of the German men were in the army. So they needed this kind of labor to keep the country going while the country was fighting a two-front war. Young people from Ukraine became slave laborers for the Germans. My mother lived in her town with her parents. She was 15 at the time when the Germans attacked in a town 50 miles south of Kharkov called Likhacheyev. And she and her closest friend Dusia, who is the wife of the man in Edmonton, Alberta, were put on the same boxcar and sent to work in Germany. This was June 1942, one year after the start of Barbarossa. Both girls were 16 years old. Ironically, at the beginning of the war, Germany was the safest place to be in the war. It was only after, towards the end of the war, that Germany became a place that was bombed. But Germany was fairly safe. It was Russia. It was the outside areas where the Germans were waging their war that were dangerous. The Germans had subdued the city of Likhacheyev about 70,000 people months before she was taken. In the first air raid, 700 people were killed. My mother at that time was herding cows back home when the bombs came. And in her fright, she called under the cows, and she came home shaking and trembling. And she never recovered from that. When we knew her as our children, she always trembled and always shook. And that was from the very first experience of bombing. But that was not her last. She had many more times in which she was bombed.

When the Germans came, they took the teens. Of course, they had no choice whether they wanted to go. They told them, come and work with us for three months, and you'll be back home. Well, my mother didn't see her parents until 27 years later. The Germans took them to work in the city of Magdeburg, about 50 miles west of Berlin. And the two girls, 16 years old, worked in a shoe factory with other friends from Ukraine. My father was taken to Germany from western Ukraine, and he came also to work in the city of Magdeburg. When I was in Ukraine this last week to my father's village, I saw the actual place where the train station was that took them all on the cars to Germany. Walter and my father got to know each other. My father worked in a food processing factory, and Walter worked at a metallurgical factory. And the two dated the two girls. We were double dating all the time. Conditions for foreign workers were very harsh at the time. Strict controls were imposed on their movement after work and on weekends. They had to wear a patch, a big patch, that had the word ost, meaning east. They were called ost arbiters, or east workers, workers from the east. They were not allowed to walk in sidewalks and had to walk in the main street. The Germans had a caste system for whom they worked with and dealt with during the war. The British and the Americans were always treated with the highest respect. And whenever an Englishman or an American was taken captive, they were treated with the greatest respect. However, if a black paratrooper came down, he was executed immediately. We know what they thought of the Jews, and people from the east were treated like just a work force.

But during this time, during this time, for about two years, Walter and my father Igor managed to date these two beautiful girls, who later became their wives. One cannot understand the present-day Russian mindset, for that matter, many of the countries in the east, without appreciating what those countries went through in World War II. Soviet casualties in the war were unbelievable. 15 million military deaths. 15 million more civilian deaths. Half the housing destroyed. Of those who went into the Red Army at age 19, only one in 100 returned. When Dr. Hay and I visited the Soviet Union in 1967, Dr. Hay at that time was 38 years old, and he said, You know, one thing I really notice, there's hardly anybody my age in this country. It's old men, it's children, and lots of women. In fact, there were 100 women for every 65 men after World War II. The devastation was beyond anything that we can imagine, or that any of our countries have gone through. And the people of Russia and Ukraine are still traumatized to this day. They think often of the great patriotic wars, though they were the only ones fighting it. Oftentimes, they hardly mention anything that the Americans had done in World War II, and they still relive it, as though it was fought yesterday. Just in Moscow, four years ago, a huge monument to victory in World War II was built. The monuments and the cemeteries are unbelievably grand and huge. Amazing that Russians have a hard time honoring people in real life. They honor them after they're dead, like nobody else does.

In Kharkov, one cemetery had stones. We thought, what are these stones here at this cemetery? They were kind of interesting in their size. They weren't very big, but they weren't very small. As we walked through them, we saw that each stone represented 14,000 killed. We took our YOU there three times to experience seeing these huge monuments to remarkable past events in human experience.

I came across a few letters from my mother that tell the stories, that tell just a few of the millions of stories that people had gone through in World War II. Here's a letter I found June 7, 1943. It was from her brother in Ukraine, writing to my mother, who was in Germany. It imagines a war going on, and yet there's still some mail going back and forth. My brother, my uncle Victor, writing to my mother, says, In the first lines of our short letter, our family greets you, Nina, are you all right? You're right that you are getting lonely living on foreign soil, but you're not the only one separated from their family. Many people are finding themselves in this condition. Nina, we are not receiving your letters. In 1943, we have received only two postcards from you, one dated January 20th and the other February 8th, which we received in June. Nina, you asked about your brother Alex. We haven't heard from him in two years. He was in the service. He came back, though. If we live, we will meet again. The weather has been good for growing. The gardens look good and we'll have things to eat in the winter. The Russians came in February, but the Germans returned in March. On the front where we are, there has been no shooting, but in May, many people in the neighboring village died. The land is covered with blood and the end of the war does not incite. We're tired of the war. I find these things among my mother's effects, and it just brings to life that it's happened in our family, it's happened in our experience.

We had a family reunion in that village in 1988, and Uncle Victor took us up and down the streets, showing us what had been bombed and how they lived. For two solid years, they lived underground, because all the homes were destroyed. You said you'd like to see the flowers in the homeland again. That would be good. But now the land has been ravaged by war. I think often of your cheerful smile and your kind words, my loving sister. Mom and Dad and your sister, Tonya, work on the collective farm. I work on the railroad. Please write to us and tell us how you are eating and are the Germans good to you. We are not receiving your letters. Please give greetings to your friends with whom you are working. Then my aunt wrote, just shortly after my mother's death, which was 1984, My dear nephews and nieces, your mother had a hard life. In the years of the war, our village changed hands six times between the Russians and the Germans. The oldest and youngest were evacuated. Nina stayed behind where all the fighting took place.

The Germans bombed our village. Then they took Nina to Germany. My father's story was quite similar. His family had moved from one village to another, and the Germans, when they came into the former village, rounded up everybody that village, put him in a barn, and lit it. Everybody was incinerated. There's a memorial there right now that we've gone to back a few times in the last times we visited. Back in Germany now, while the foursome is knowing each other, dating, and living, my father was arrested by the Gestapo and put into a concentration camp. This was very upsetting to the foursome because you could never find out what the charges were or any information about the person. And of those who went into a concentration camp, many did not return. Walter tried to visit the camp and see what was going on, but to no avail. He was not able to see his friend, my father. Sometimes you would see him marching in a long column to work because their job was to clear rubble after air raids. The Germans used East workers, Ostarbiter, to dig for people and for unexploded ordnance after an air raid. The ordnance would sometimes explode, but Ostarbiter's were expendable. But one day, Igor was in a long column of prisoners going to work. Walter waved to him, threw him a piece of bread. Months went by, there was no help from my father in his imprisonment, but one day a miracle happened. Walter was walking on a street that was bombed just the day before, and he heard a voice. Walter! Walter! Walter turned around and saw a shadowy figure in the rubble. It's me, Igor. Walter looked around, he could hardly recognize his friend. His skin was all scratched up from picking up stones and working through rubble. He had a striped uniform of a prisoner, an unshaven face, and scratched from head to toe.

After a brief hug, he took my dad to an apartment, to a friend's apartment. There was so much chaos in the last days of the war that my father's absence was just construed to be. He was lost. Walter had to wait until nighttime to find a place for him, but then he moved him out into the country and got him to work on a farm, got him a job on a farm. Nobody asked questions. Everybody was waiting for the war to come to an end. Germans, the slave workers, everybody knew that liberation was near. There was a lot of confusion and disruption with the bombings. Everybody was just wanting to survive and just live. In the last days of the war, the Americans were coming through with carpet bombing. Americans bombed all day long, the British bombed all night long. And the city of Magdeburg was a very important strategic city because it was where a lot of the fuel was kept for German vehicles. The two men were now out in the country, but the girls were working in the factory in town. They were so afraid that the girls would perish or would have or had perished. My mother recollected how many times she had to flee from her dwelling and go into bomb shelter. The bomb shelters were zigzagged so that when a direct hit occurred in one of the zigs, somebody in the next section would not die, but the people in that section's got a direct hit, died. A lot of her friends perished.

My mother said that after a while, that even bother going into the bomb shelter. It was just surreal. They were just like watching fireworks. And yet, the Americans were bombing all day long, the British all night long. At that time, they didn't have the kind of precision bombing like they did over the cities of Serbia and in Iraq.

As the Germans saw the Americans advancing and destroying all the bridges across the Elba River, they were beginning to use the Oscar biters as human shields. They were beginning to put them on bridges and basically sending a message to Americans, you want to kill these people? Well, you just destroy the bridge. My mother and Ducea were in a long column that was headed towards a bridge. And Eger and Walter spotted them and snatched them from the line when the guards were distracted and took them out to the farm and hid them in the attic. The Americans finally came, April 1945. Liberation. Finally, there's chocolate, food, all kinds of wonderful things. The happy American spirit was there. A very interesting event took place at this same time. My father, after he came into the church, met a fellow spokesman club member in Minnesota and invited him over to his home. This man's name was Frank Muehlbauer.

Well, Frank Muehlbauer saw a picture on Dad's wall in the house and said, you know, that looks familiar. Because they talked about the fact that they were both in Germany. Frank Muehlbauer was a sniper in World War II. And, of course, my dad's story, he told Frank, he said, that farm building sure looks familiar. My father said, well, yes, I recollected, I painted a picture of the farm that I was staying at. Frank said, I can't believe it. Exactly where was it? And he got the coordinates down to where Frank Muehlbauer was assigned as a sniper to watch over this farm of any suspicious activity where my father was staying. And Frank said, I had you in my gun sights day after day looking for suspicious activity. This has been a Spoken School of Speech many times there. The two meet, both members of God's Church.

The war was over. Freedom at last. Oh, no. A few days later, my parents woke up and they don't hear American voices anymore. They hear Russian voices. What's going on? Well, according to the agreement at Potsdam, partitioning Germany after World War II, no matter how far the Americans got into the German territory, the land was divided as it became the East Germany, which was the Russian zone, the British zone, the French and the American zone in the south.

And even though the Americans advanced past Magdeburg, the agreement was for them to pull back to the old border of East Germany and the Russians rolled in. Things got bad very quickly. The Russians treated the Austarbiters very badly. They considered them collaborators and traitors. They were herded into trucks and put into transition camps, and they were interrogated incessantly. It was unbearable. And all these were kids, ages 19 to 21.

The Russians were going to send them off to Siberia and the men they were going to put into the service because Russia had just now declared war against Japan and was mounting an offensive. The foursome were in a transition camp, and they said, we've got to escape. My father volunteered to work with horse stables with the Red Army and had a path to go out. And he scouted out what he might possibly do. And he actually took a train all the way to the British zone and talked to the border guards and tried to arrange for an escape on a lark.

They had nothing to lose. The border guard said, yes, you can have your freedom if you bring a watch, a suit, and a bottle of vodka, and we'll let you cross the border. My father came back to the transition camp, and where they were, the part of the camp they were facing was the outside, and they convinced the person to look the other way as the four of them climbed out the window and left.

But there was an additional problem. They had to cross the Alba River. All the bridges on the Alba River were destroyed by the American bombers. Of course, the Army Corps of Engineers, this is good American friendship, put up a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers bridge across the Alba River that they just gave to the Russians. But they had to get across this bridge, because there was...

it's a major river, and they had to get to the British zone, but they had to cross the river first. The girls walked together, and they got across the bridge just fine, because they had strict security at the bridge. The men, though, who came together later, they turned away. Now what? They found a German coal wagon, and they crawled into it, and they were taken across the river. The four of them got on a train and headed for the border. All they had with them was a few personal effects, a bottle of vodka, a suit, and a watch.

That was to be the price of freedom. They had nothing else. They didn't know what they were going to do if they could even get across the border. And as the train came to a halt, they found a purse with 300 Deutschmarks in it, which was just enough money for them after they got off the train. If they were to get off to the side to get to someplace. At midnight, the guard had to pay off two of the guards.

That's why there needed to be three gifts. He had to pay off the guard to his right and the guard to his left. And right at midnight, at the changing of the guard, my parents leaped across the fence into the bridge zone. The Russians noticed the noise and started firing. But my mom and dad and Walter and Deuce ran and ran and ran and ran and ran several miles, and they finally said, I think we're safe.

They were surprised that they were even alive. They were free at last from slavery, communism, oppression, and evil. They found their way to a Hanover United Nations refugee camp, which was all set up. And they said that the news they heard that day when they came to the camp was that Hiroshima was just bombed. So this was August 1946. My parents were married in early 46, and I was born in that camp in 1947.

But what now? There were millions of refugees in Europe after World War II. Different countries were accepting quotas of people. Australia, Canada, Brazil, Argentina were taking refugees from Europe. Where could they go? Obviously not back to Ukraine, because they would be shot. Walter, however, found an uncle in Edmonton. Walter knew he had an uncle in Edmonton. What he did was he told a Canadian soldier to put an ad in the paper and the personals in all over Alberta and see if his uncle would respond. Sure enough, his uncle found that personal and sponsored him to Edmonton. But my parents did not have any sponsor. Walter said that he would try to get him across when he could.

My parents were trying and trying and trying for different countries, but nothing was coming through. But they finally found a sponsor at the University of Minnesota, a Ukrainian professor who sponsored them to Minnesota. So my parents and I came over on a troop ship past the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the United States of America. One of the most poignant moments of my life was second grade, when I became a naturalized citizen of the United States, just like Peter Eddington will become here soon. When I had a new nationality, because I had no national status at all. I was a refugee, not even a German citizen. And now I had a status. I was an American. I had a country. My parents were naturalized. At that time, becoming naturalized and becoming a citizen required a little bit more than it does now. First of all, you had to know the English language. It's not required anymore. You had to know who George Washington was. You had to know who Abraham Lincoln was. You had to know who Dwight Eisenhower was. You had to know how our nation was governed. You had to explain to the person who was interviewing you for citizenship that there was an executive, legislative, and judicial division in our government. You had to pledge allegiance to this nation and forsake all other allegiances.

Knowing this story and hearing this story, which deeply, deeply affected me when I finally got it all together, made me understand and made me appreciate some of the parallels that we go through spiritually in our lives. Because we don't have as dramatic a story as what I had told you about my parents. But spiritually, our story is no less dramatic than what my parents had gone through, what millions of people had gone through. First of all, as Paul preached through the New Testament world, he said and spoke as part of what it means to be a Christian. Through much tribulation, you will enter into the kingdom of God. Through much tribulation, it's not something which is minor or that you become baptized and you're so happy and excited that it's going to be just a free ride to the kingdom of God. Every single one of us has a battle, has a war, has a campaign to live through in life. Our tools are different and our warfare weapons are different. They're not carnal. The weapons are the spiritual tools that God gives us to live with and to work with. Acts 14, verse 22, Through much tribulation, you will enter into the kingdom of God. This was a statement of, this is what to expect. This is what you will be looking forward to.

Here Paul was strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, saying, We must, through many tribulations, enter the kingdom of God. And you know, actually historically, the tribulations physically have also been terrible. We live in some of the most wonderful, exciting, and safe times of all human history. We're just a razor's edge away from oblivion, but nonetheless, we live in peace and safety. And one thing we thank God for in this country is the peace and safety that we have. But Christians in many other periods of history lived through much tribulation. I could tell you many stories about the Sabbatarians that I've been working with in Ukraine, of what they went through between 1946 and when Ukraine became liberated in 1991. Their stories of tribulation were dramatic, what they went through physically. A ministry that was outlawed, the Word of God outlawed, and yet they were driven, they were moved to obey God, to obey His commandments and laws, and to be faithful to Him. What we live through right now is an exception rather than the rule, historically. When you see the writings of Paul and what they went through in the book of Acts, and what the history of the first century New Testament church was, it was not a safe period. And there were martyrs, and there were some who died for the faith. Through much tribulation, we enter into the kingdom of God. Our citizenship and our politics, if you will, are of God. We have been called from this world into another political system, into another kingdom.

In Philippians chapter 3 and verse 20, our citizenship is in heaven or from heaven.

Our citizenship is in heaven from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. The reason I use the word politics is because the word citizenship is from Palatima, which is the word from which politics is taken. It means community. It means citizenship. And just like my parents had to be able to tell back the interviewer what the basic structure of the nation was and who some of the leaders of the nation were, we have to, as part of becoming a citizen of the kingdom of God, be able to understand how it's organized and set up, how the government functions and works. What are the laws that define how that kingdom rolls and functions and works?

We have to be able to speak that kingdom's language. We have to forsake all other allegiances to be a citizen of the kingdom of God. We also need a sponsor. We all need a sponsor to enter into the kingdom of God. Just like in coming to the United States, and for that matter to any country, you can't just come into a country to become a resident. You have to be sponsored. You have to have somebody who will vouch for you, who will speak for you, who will be your advocate, who will guarantee you. That has happened. In the case of my parents, the University of Minnesota professor did just that.

We are sponsored by Jesus Christ. He's the one who speaks for us, who vouches for us, who guarantees our citizenship in His kingdom. And we are being called, we are being asked by Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, to be sponsored, and we have all been sponsored, into the kingdom of God.

Once we've become a sponsor, or once we have accepted sponsorship, one thing that was interesting among all the immigrants, is that they became sponsors themselves. My parents felt a deep obligation because of gratitude to sponsor other people to come to the United States. Actually, most of these sponsored people from South America because you were fortunate if you got to go to the U.S. or Canada or Australia. But going to Brazil, well, that was kind of like a consolation prize. And so, my parents sponsored several families from Brazil who had already gone there because they needed a place to stay to the United States.

Even I have sponsored a family from Ukraine last year to Portland, Oregon. Somehow it's just in my bladder system. It doesn't cost anything. You just have to guarantee that something goes wrong, that you'll speak for them and pay for them for six months.

Once the immigrants came to the new world, to the new land, they stuck together. The first thing they did was establish a church. Surprisingly, many of these people came from the USSR where they had no church affiliation or regard. They were from atheistic communism. But I hardly knew of any atheists after they came to the United States. They assembled neither organized Catholic churches or Orthodox churches. But one thing about them is that they stuck together. They all valued each other's experience. This, of course, wore off with the second generation, including me. Because I had no interest in my parents' past. It was interesting, but not something that I was drawn to.

It was the fact that my parents died young that I could never really get the story that has caused me to want to understand all of what they had gone through in their history. I do know that the immigrants all helped one another. They supported one another. They overlooked a lot of things about each other because they were a special group that survived.

And so many times in church when I was attending as a youngster, the priest would talk about how God had taken a shovel out of a miry pit of mud and taken this group of people, and just flung them over to this country, and how thankful we should be that we weren't there with all those who died or who were left behind.

Interesting that I went back to visit in a family reunion in 1988 and saw some of the friends of my mother who went back. They were the Austarbiters who didn't go west but went back east. And all I would never, never want to be like they were. I would hate to live in that society, in that country. And how thankful I am for being given a new nation, a new land, as Abraham was, and as he was promised physically and also spiritually how we are promised a new kingdom and a new country of peace.

The people all valued one another because they were co-survivors. They treated each other with the deepest respect, as we should. Because, brethren, we are survivors from this age. We've been individually called by God. We all have our own experience of how we've become part of the Church and how we have been brought together.

But do we sometimes forget the fact that we're just survivors, that we're an infinitesimal small percent of this world's population that has been spared and saved and given frontline first priority citizenship in the kingdom of God? What that should do is to make us draw closer to one another, appreciate one another, and help one another, support one another, and treat each other as co-survivors in a world where we have the devil, we have society working against us to destroy us, to deceive us, and we have each other besides having our Savior, Lord and Master.

God has called each one of us out of the world for salvation at this time. We live in a world that's suffering, Romans 8 and 22. Because this is a world my parents came from physically, but spiritually this is a world that we're coming from right now. Romans 8 and 22. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.

This is the reality of what it is to be a Christian. If there's somebody here who's had an easy life as a Christian, please talk to me, because I'd like to find out exactly what you did or how you rated or whatever.

But I know from my friends, from my fellow workers, from experience in the Church, it's not always easy. We have so many pressures against this from society. And we have a responsibility to fight a battle, but not using the weapons of this world, but to use kindness, to show appreciation for one another, to lift each other up, and consider one another as co-survivors. That we have survived this world. We've been brought together here into this safe zone. We have been spared. And we're being given an entry point into the Kingdom of God before the rest of the world knows about it and express that gratitude.

I know my parents, my mother, one thing she told me about. As far as people supporting and helping one another.

She said that when they lived in the refugee camp, there was hardly enough food even for them and our family of three. And they said they gave me all the sugar. But they said that sometimes a box would come that had the word C-A-R-E on it. Sometimes we'd make fun of care packages, that sort of thing. But they would get a box and there would be a name from Hastings, Nebraska or Chicago, Illinois. And it would be full of food. They would cry because here's somebody on the other side of the ocean who they don't know giving them life, giving them food and caring for them. To talk so many times about how the kindnesses of others helped them and supported them.

Ephesians 2, verse 1.

Ephesians 2, verse 1. Here's what we've come from spiritually. And you, he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sense of disobedience. We have been made alive. We've been spared. We've been spared destruction that faces this world. We've been called. We've been given the tools. We've been given hope of salvation. The rest of the world lives in a different attitude and spirit and marches to the beat of a different drum. Among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, just as the others. But we've been spared, and we've been saved. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 26.

For consider your calling, brethren, that there are not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong, and the base things of the world, and despised God has chosen. That's whom God has chosen. Now, actually, it says that He hasn't chosen many of the greats of the world, but He actually hasn't chosen many of the weak people of the world either. It's just that we are the ones whom He's working with. And we need to appreciate and honor that. And the things that are, the things that are not, that He may nullify the things that are. Not many people have been called, but God has brought us to this calling and this salvation. And He says, consider this. And the New King James believes that wording is, for you see your calling. I'm reading from the New American Standard Bible in this particular verse. Consider where you've come from. And consider the salvation that you have received. And compare yourself to the rest of the world that is going to go through a serious tribulation, which we have been spared from. 1 Peter 2, verse 9. This is who we are, and this is how the language came forth from the apostles. It was a language that was a very excited language about the status of the people that we need to apply to ourselves. 1 Peter 2, verse 9. You are a chosen generation. This church is a special select group of people. A royal priesthood, a holy nation. We've been given a new citizenship, a new identity. A royal priesthood. We have a function spiritually for this world. We are his own special people. My parents always felt very, very special. If my mother said her co-workers, somebody who would work side by side with her, would be found dead in a bunker the next morning. But they'd have to move on and go ahead. But she felt I could have been that person very easily. At so many places along the way, they were spared. Spiritually, we've been spared that as well. There are so many times where God has brought us through as a church, as individuals, that we need to be grateful for and appreciate. And we can show that appreciation, gratefulness to God, in thanksfulness, and in the way we work and deal with one another. His own special people that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Who once were not a people. One time we were nothing individually. But now we're something. We're special in God's eyes. We've been called to salvation. We've been granted citizenship. We have a new country before us. But are now the people of God. One time we were nothing. Now we are the people of God. Who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.