Herbert W Armstrong

   You know that seven is God's complete number, the perfect and the complete number. God has set out a plan for accomplishing his purpose that is going to require time because that purpose is to first beget us and then for us to be born into the kingdom of God until we are glorified with Christ and with God, even as Christ is glorified and made, thereby very God himself.

   Now, if you ask what God is, of course, there are so very many, many answers, but one of the answers is that God is the supreme, perfect character, perfect character. And so the purpose of this life is to instill within us and to create within us with our consent and cooperation, that very character of God, perfect holy, spiritual character. And character is something that can't be created, as we say, by fiat just instantaneously. Character is something that is developed and is developed through experience and experience requires time.

   And so God created time and God has set apart 7000 years of time. Now there's the figure 7, 7000 years. There are seven stages in that plan and that program of God in accomplishing his purpose to bring many sons, not some created beings on a lower order, but actually sons, sons of God unto glory. And if you read what it means to come to glory, Jesus has been glorified. And if you study in your Bible and just make that a study to see what it means to be glorified and to be brought to glory, it means to be brought to the very station to the very rank of God.

   God is a family. God is a kingdom, a family that is, has grown so great that it becomes a kingdom. Now, since God is not the author of confusion, but of peace and of order of joy and happiness too. There is government and it is the type of family where the government comes down from the top, from the Father and where the children obey the father.

   Now, Christ is the first Son in this family. And Christ has qualified to be our Savior and the ruler of this world by his obedience to God, the Father. Whereas the archangel or rather the cherub Lucifer failed to obey God and rather made of himself an adversary, a competitor and started out on a campaign of aggression to actually rise above the angels of God and to conquer God and take over God's realm instead of obeying God within his government. Jesus Christ qualified by obeying God and resisting the devil.

   And so he is the Son of God and we become born of God through him. And he is a living Christ. To receive Christ means we receive him inside to the extent that he lives his life within us, that we are so yielded and so surrendered to God that we're not living the way this world lives any longer. We're not doing the way the world does, but we are letting Christ live his life within us.

   Now, if Christ were here today in the human flesh, would he live like the world lives? Would he participate with the world in all of its ways, its customs? Would he accept their beliefs knowing as he does that they are lies that they are false? Of course not. Well, my brethren, Jesus Christ is here in the human flesh today. Did you know that? That's one of the tests of whether a spirit being is an angel and of God, or whether they are of the devil, if they really believe that Jesus Christ is here in the human flesh, not in his body, but in some of our human bodies. I hope all of yours and mine that he is in spirit within us and living as he lived within us now.

   Now, he is, except as it says in one place, you be reprobate if you are sons of God and not bastards, as you've just heard read, you have the living spirit of God, living your life for you within you. Now, this is an obedient family. We then collectively being the collective body of the church empowered by, filled with the same spirit that empowered Jesus Christ. We then are in the category of being the wife of Christ and he is the Son of God and we become children of God individually.

   Now in God's government, the wife is obedient to her husband but not on this earth. On this earth, the women want to do all the talking, the women want to wear the pants. My, how often do I see examples of that? And women sometimes do a great deal of harm with their tongues, a great deal of harm. And then they don't want to realize that it seems. I saw one very striking example of that yesterday, in fact 2 striking examples of it yesterday.

   Now, in my last message on this subject of why we are here and the meaning of this festival and I want to continue on with it now. I was showing you that the next event now to happen in God's program in working out his plan is the second coming of Christ. And when he comes, he's coming as the King of kings and the Lord of lords. We heard that song last night and all of the hallelujahs, the shouting of hallelujahs with all the volume of that choir. I didn't get to count the number. I was so intrigued by listening to it that I didn't even think to count. But I know we must have had about 50 members up there last night. Might have been more, at least 50 I'm sure.

   And I wonder if you got the full import and the meaning as they were singing of shouting, the hallelujahs and the glory that Christ has come as the King of kings and the Lord of lords to rule this earth with a rod of iron and to bring us peace at last. Oh, what a glorious thing and what splendor there is going to be when that time comes. I wonder if you got a foretaste of it as I did last night.

   But now when Jesus comes to rule the world, as I've said before, he's not going to rule it alone. He's going to rule through us. And so I think in the last message, I read a couple of scriptures here in the Book of Revelation. He that overcomes and keeps my works, not just he that walked up and shook the preacher's hand, not he that said, "I received Christ" that didn't know what he meant by receiving Christ, went on doing his own way and Christ wasn't living in him at all. Not he that just made a decision for Christ and then went ahead doing the ways of the churches of this world and joined the church of his choice. No, it says "He that overcometh and keeps my works unto the end."

   And unless he's being corrected and chastened by God, because if Christ lives in you, he's going to chasten you. Listen, the way Christ lives in his brethren is by the spirit of God and the spirit of God is the divine nature. And it's a new nature that comes within you. You've been born with human nature and human nature has as its very foundation and the very essence of it, vanity, selfishness, greed, self-desire. You want to be amused and entertained. You want to please self, you want every moment to be pleasing or sometimes you like to seek some thrills and some excitement. You like all of that sort of thing. You want to please the self, you're looking after number one, the other fellow take care of himself. That's human nature.

   But now when you are converted, you will receive a new and a different nature altogether. And that is the nature of God, the divine nature. But you know, the mind is something apart from human nature. You can't say when you try to analyze and dissect what is human nature, you can't say that human nature is the human mind because your mind can take hold of human nature, can see that to nature, the desires within you, both the mental desires and the emotional desires as well as the desires of the flesh.

   Pride - that's more or less of a mental and a spiritual desire. Then there are the lusts of the five senses that are fleshly. But your mind can realize that and your mind can realize that that is all wrong and that you have an impulse and a desire to have something or to be vain about something. And your mind can say no, I have seen by the word of God, I must not do that and your mind can begin to resist and God has given you a will by which you can resist that sort of thing.

   Now, when you receive the Holy Spirit of God, it doesn't mean that the spirit of God absolutely possesses you as a demon possesses one who is demon possessed. A person demon possessed is often out of control altogether. The demon has just taken over the mind and that person has no power of resisting the demon at all. But when you receive the Holy Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit within you is something that does give you the divine nature.

   First of all, let us say it is, uh first in time order, but not in importance, perhaps the spirit of understanding. And now you can begin to understand the Bible where you couldn't before. Of course, it's the spirit of love, I think, first of all, in importance, but it's the spirit of faith and you receive faith from God. You don't work up faith yourself. Faith is something that comes as a gift of God. The spirit of love is the love of God shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit. The love which fulfills the law of God and love is the fulfilling of the law.

   Now, the law of God, the 10 commandments merely show you the direction in which that love flows out from you. It's like a riverbed and the 10 commandments are the riverbed and the Holy Spirit, the love of God is the water flowing down that riverbed. Of course, we always want it to flow off in some other direction.

   Now, when you receive the Spirit of God and this understanding that comes into your mind and in and with your mind, you can understand what you ought to do. You can begin to see and understand that the lust of the flesh and the pulls of the spiritual pulls and the mental pulls of vanity, for instance of wanting to exalt yourself over others, of wanting to just put your best foot forward and wanting to brag a little bit. The big I and the little you and then the spirit of resentment when I got stepped on. Boy, that's when you don't love the fellow that did it. You just love yourself so much because yourself got stepped on. Someone else did something you think wasn't quite right to you. And you're just going to look out for number one right now because you're very, very indignant. And so you let resentment well up and then bitterness comes and that is the worst disease, the worst mental disease or poison. I should say it's a poison. When you let it get into you, it's really going to drug your mind.

   I think that's the greatest thing we need to guard against letting resentment dwell up within us. If you love others, you're not going to resent what they've done. You love them so much, you may be sorry they made the mistake because you love them. But that isn't human nature. Human nature is mad at them because they hurt self that you love. There's a difference.

   But now the mind can understand and the new nature within you, of the spirit of God will lead you one way. It opens your mind to see the way you should go. But are you going to follow the way that the spirit of God shows you? It opens your mind to understand the Bible. And here in the word of God, you see this is the way walk ye in it. But sometimes you don't want to walk in it. Everything in human nature wells up against it. Human nature doesn't want to be humbled. And the Bible teaches the humbling of the self. Human nature doesn't want to resist these lusts and pulls of the flesh. It wants to yield to them, it wants to go according to impulse. Human nature doesn't want to resist the ways of human society. Human nature has so much vanity. It wants to be well thought of by society and to be well thought of it must go along with society. It wants to belong, it wants to be a part of society. It thinks, first of all, what are people going to think? What are people going to think? It's looking out for number one all the time.

   Well, now your mind sees these things and your mind can set its will to follow the Holy Spirit or you can just yield yourself to the lust of the flesh. Now, as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God. The spirit of God is going to show you, it's going to open your mind to see the way that you should go. But from there on, it's up to you because your mind is independent of that nature of God. It's independent of human nature. It can yield to human nature or it can decide I'm going to resist this natural nature within me. I see now by the spirit of God that I should do so. And so, but within me is something that wants to go the other way.

   But you always make the decisions. God himself said that he had set before us the right way and the wrong way. "I have set before you," he says back here in the 30th chapter of Deuteronomy in the Bible. Wording in the King James translation here, he words it this way: "I have set before thee this day life and good" on the one hand, "death and evil" on the other. Or the good way, which is God's way, the way of his law and which leads to life on the one hand and the wrong way, which is the transgression of the law, which is the way of vanity and the way of the lust of the flesh, which is going to lead to death.

   Now, God set that way before us. God created human nature. Now, God is responsible for all of that. He isn't guilty. He isn't to blame. He's just responsible. He's a responsible party. And in God's program, he's going to bring it all out. The purpose being worked out here below is to bring many sons unto glory by Jesus Christ. In this way that we have to be brought to see this nature that is within us. We have to be brought to abhor this nature within us and abhor ourselves as Job did until we're so fed up and so disgusted with ourselves that we want to get rid of this old self and have the new self of Jesus Christ, the new nature of God to live within us.

   Now, here again, in the 19th verse, God says, well, I'm about to say Jesus and it is Jesus. He is the Word that said it, "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you that I have set before you life and death." Now, those are the two end results: life on the one hand and death on the other. Now, the way that leads to them or the result of the way of living that will bring life is blessing on the one hand and curses on the other hand, because if you go the right way, it brings blessings. If you live the wrong way, it's going to bring only curses.

   And the peculiar thing is that to the normal human mind with human nature, the way that will bring curses, the wrong way always seems right. There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, that ends thereof are the ways of death. Now to the people of the world, the right way always seems wrong. People believe if they're going to go the right way, it's going to bring them curses and unhappiness. They believe that the law of God is contrary to them and to their best interests. It's contrary to that self that wants to be pleased. It's contrary to that self that wants to exalt itself, that wants to lift up itself, that self within them that wants to resent other people when they don't just praise you and do all that sort of thing. They want to give in to all these impulses of the flesh.

   Now, what is character? That's what we're here for, to build character. Character is that something in the human mind that sees how wrong we've been and will cry out to God for mercy, that will really repent and can see enough of the truth of God that they come to really believe in Christ as savior and that they do receive him as a savior who does the saving from the inside.

   Now, maybe Christ in his person is at the right hand of the throne of God in heaven. Indeed, he is, but Christ in spirit is in you if you are his child. And if Jesus Christ is not in you, and if he's in you, he'll live like he lived 1900 years ago because that's the same way he lived 6000 years ago and it's the way he's going to live 6000 years from now. He's never going to change. Christ in you, the hope of glory. That's your only hope too. And glory means that we are made very God.

   Now, then when you do repent and you want this old self crucified and crushed out, you don't want to go that way anymore. You see the two ways God has set before you and all of nature and everything within you cries out to go the wrong way, but your mind finally becomes opened up to it and you have made the decision to go the right way. It isn't just a decision that you believe in a person. It's so much more than Billy Graham seems to know. You've made a decision to live a different way. You've made a decision you're going to be a different person. You're going to be turned right side up. You've been upside down all this time. You're going to forsake this rotten society that's only bringing rottenness and sickness and headaches and heartaches and suffering and anguish and poverty and war and every wrong thing on it.

   You're sick and tired of that way, and you want now the way of light and the way of God. And you come to God by and through Jesus Christ, and you receive Christ and let him come by His spirit to live your life for you henceforth. And then even though that old nature is still going to be there, now, your mind sees that this pull of the flesh and that desire is wrong. And no matter how bad is the craving, no matter how intense is that desire, now your mind and your will is set against it. And because you know of your limitations and the flesh and of your weakness, now you cry out to God knowing you've got that high priest on the throne of grace. And you come boldly to the throne of grace and you put yourself on God's mercy, and you trust him to fill you with the power to master yourself and to overcome.

   One was just saying to me last night, "Well, I guess I just have too much self in me. It's too hard to overcome. I guess I just can't do it." It sounded a little discouraged. Of course you can't, but Christ in you can. And Jesus Christ is our high priest at the throne of God. Why don't you go to him more in prayer? Why don't you cry out to him and say, "Lord God, I'm weak. I can't do it but you can. You're strong. Lord God, give me your power, give me the strength that I may overcome." Why don't you get desperate about this thing? Get down in earnest about it instead of saying, "Well, I guess I'm weak and I do enjoy this world and I do enjoy its pleasure so much. I guess I'm just so weak, I'll go on and enjoy this world a little while longer." Now I'm going to burn up and be ashes under the soles of the feet of those that were a little bit stronger in Christ. Which way are you headed?

   Character then comes from coming to a knowledge of the right way, making the decision to go that way, having the will to go that way, and then having both the humility and the good sense to rely on God for the power and the strength to see that you do go that way. And then gradually overcoming, overcoming, you're not going to do it all at once. Oh, yes. You're going to stumble and slip and fall time after time, I suppose. Yes, you're going to meet defeat many times. Then what are you going to do? Just give up and quit? "Well, I guess I'm too weak. Well, I failed. So I guess now I'm lost. I guess I've committed the unpardonable sin. I guess God won't ever want to have anything more to do with me. I guess I better go off and commit suicide or I better go back into the world and have it over with."

   You know, you have to sort of learn to creep before you can learn to walk. We're babes in Christ when we start. You see, a little baby - my, one of my grandsons here just in the last week or two, we saw him beginning to take his first steps and they held him out a ways and I held my hands and he finally managed to take three or four steps and get to me and he was just falling into my arms. Now, he could have walked further if he thought he could, he didn't have enough confidence to know he could do it. I was over there a day or two later and here the little fellow was walking six or eight steps. I presume he's walking all around everywhere now because we've been here almost a week. And in fact, I guess we have been here. No, no, we've been here a week tomorrow morning though. And so I presume he's just walking everywhere. I haven't seen that particular little grandson now for several days, I guess he's around here someplace.

   Well now. Did he get discouraged? Because he fell down after one or two steps did he say "I'm going to give it up. I don't want to ever try to walk anymore. I'm all discouraged and I'm going to quit." That's what some people say when they fall down once or twice, they look at that scripture. If we sin willfully after the knowledge of the truth has come, there's no more sacrifice for sin. "Well, I guess I knew I did it. I must have done it willfully. So there's no hope for me. I, I guess I've cut myself off from God or God has deserted me. There's no more chance." Why every little while someone comes to me with a tale of oh about like that. Why do you call it self pity, discouragement or what? That isn't the unpardonable sin. When will we wake up? That's only stumbling and falling down once more while you're trying to learn to walk.

   Listen, there are some things I've been trying to learn to walk over now for about 55 or 60 years. I'm not quite telling you just how old I am in that statement because I didn't start it. You know, the first few years I wasn't old enough and some of those things I haven't quite managed to walk yet, but I might still stumble once in a while, but I won't give up. I won't quit. I didn't do it intentionally. I didn't just figure out deliberately. I don't care. Here goes nothing. I'm just going to do it. I didn't say "God, I'm against you now. I've made up my mind. I don't want any more of you. I think this world's way is the best way. That's the way I want to go." I didn't think that. I just didn't resist quite hard enough, I guess. But on the other hand, many other things I have overcome and so I take a little bit of encouragement in that. Sure I've overcome this and I've overcome that and something else, then I can see one or two things I haven't overcome yet. I'm not going to tell you what those things are. That's between me and God. But God knows it and I know I can't kid him about it and I know that you're all in the same boat too. You've all, every one of you have got plenty of things you haven't overcome yet. So don't start throwing any stones at me. I live in a glass house. But so do you, so don't get discouraged, don't quit and give up.

   Well, I want to get back on this subject anyhow. We're here to build character and it requires time and God has given us, that is. He has set apart 7000 years for it. Now, if we are to rule, we have to learn to rule. That's the thing again. He says here in the third chapter of the Revelation, the 21st verse (Revelation 3:21): "To him that overcometh, will I grant to sit with me in my throne." Brethren, if you don't overcome that self of yours, if you don't overcome the world that you live in and its society and its temptations, and if you don't overcome the devil, because we wrestle not against other people but against the devil and his demons and these wicked spirits that are in high places of authority. And in Ephesians 6 chapter tells you what to do about that. God's word says, flee from the devil and he will flee from you and he's got to flee from you. When you do that, draw nigh unto God and he will draw nigh unto you. That's in your Bible. And it will always work out every time.

   Now we're to rule and we are called to be trained to rule this world. We are going to judge the world. I tell you every time I hear of the way judging is done in this nation here, we've had this case up at Little Rock, Arkansas. And it isn't a little case and it's nothing but a lot of politics. We had this case and I think I mentioned it the other day in Los Angeles where a woman in our church was being tried because they claim because she believed the Bible and followed it. And when they asked her why she had done what she had and quit living in adultery, she quoted the Bible for it. "Oh, well, she just quotes the Bible. Well she just a religious crackpot. She's gone off her rocker. This woman needs to be committed, committed to an institution." And the judge was perfectly willing to go along with it. He wasn't looking for what was honest and right, he wasn't looking for truth. But here were these psychiatrists there and he wanted to keep in their good graces and if we hadn't had an attorney there sharp enough to get hold of the law that the judge didn't realize it was on the statute books, which claims that if a person is receiving treatment from a minister, now they call this treatment and she's under prayer treatment by the prayer of the minister that well, the authorities just can't take her out of his hands. I forget just how the law is worded, but it's words to that effect. So the attorney says we have this woman's pastor right here in court and she is in his charge and has been since before you laid hold on her. You violated the law. And the judge began to see that maybe they were liable to sue for false arrest and maybe we could sue them and take some money away from them. And then he began to look for a loophole to get out and the psychiatrist hadn't signed their recommendation. They merely typed their name on it. So that was a legal loophole. And he says the case dismissed for lack of evidence.

   Now, here was a case last Friday and one of our ministers had to go with one of our members up to Kansas City to appear before a judge. And I've heard a description of how that judge judged. He came in with his very pompous robes on, he swaggered around and he daydreamed, he yawned, he didn't pay much attention while a lot of the arguments were going on. Then he'd pick sentence when our young man came up, he wanted to continue and say "You can't have any con-" "I don't hear any more about a continuance," he says, "You've had enough time already" and the church was going to get a lawyer says that "Your church has nothing to do with it. I don't want anything about the church." He was very pompous and all that. He was not looking for right or wrong or for what were the true facts in the case. Here was a man that claimed to be a conscientious objector, but naturally he isn't one because they don't think anybody is and he hadn't reported. So therefore he is the worst traitor that there is. Now, here was a person who had stolen a lot of money and here were people that had committed bad crimes. He let them off with 30 days in jail. You know what he would have given this young man? If he had had an opportunity there in court, he would have given him a minimum of four years in the federal penitentiary at hard labor. That's what he would have done and what has this young man done? He's had the courage to face prison in order to obey God in what God said to do. Here is a young man who four years before was getting ready to enlist, perfectly ready to go in. He wasn't any coward. He wasn't afraid of going in. Then he began to study the Bible and he saw that God said he must not do it. And when he saw that he was willing to obey God and pay the penalty if necessary. But the way this world judges, that man is worse than any rotten, dirty, foul smelling skunk or anything that ever came out. And I think that's the way they judge all of us too. If we believe in the word of God.

   Brethren, I tell you, we're one day closer now than we were yesterday to the time when we are going to judge this world in righteousness and in equity and with justice, not according to prejudices and wrong ideas of men and the vanity and the egotism of judges. I want to tell you something. I know that some of those judges are going to sit in front of me someday and be judged. But I've got to qualify and pray to God that he will give me the wisdom to give them a little more fair treatment than they're willing to give some of God's people now because we're going to have to have compassion and mercy and wisdom. But we're also going to be just justice. Justice may be occasionally tempered with mercy. But let me tell you, there's going to be justice and it's going to be right.

   All right. Now you read back here in Daniel in the second chapter in Daniel's prophecy about the Kingdoms of this world in verse 37 (Daniel 2:37), after this dream that Nebuchadnezzar had had giving the interpretation. You know, Daniel had said here in verse 28 there is a God in heaven that revealed secrets and maketh known to the King Nebuchadnezzar. He was the king over, you might say over all the world, it was virtually a world ruling kingdom at that time, the Chaldean Empire. And God had made known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. That's now in our time. What's going to happen now? We're in the latter days. Now, you know, we saw this great image with its head of gold, its breast and arms of silver, its belly and thighs brass and its legs of iron and its feet part of, well mix, between iron and a miry clay. Now he saw until a stone came supernaturally from God and smote the image on its feet. Now, there's a time element. The time element begins with the head and goes down to the feet and the feet are in existence in our time now. And those feet are to be then smote, or smitten on the feet and they're going to completely disintegrate. They're just going to go to pieces all over the world. All right, that's the dream. "And we'll tell the interpretation thereof before the king. Now, O king, are the king of kings" that is a king over other kings, an emperor, a world ruler. Now he was the king of kings. Christ is going to be the King of kings, but there's the man sitting on the throne of the world at that time. For how did he get there? Has God gone way off? Is God concerned about this world? For the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom. How did he get that kingdom? God permitted him to have it. God allowed him to have it. God is the supreme ruler, but this is part of the time that God has marked out for men to make their own decision, whether to live the way of God or resist the way of God and reap the results. In other words, we are writing the lesson of experience, but the world has not learned the lesson. And as one of our ministers, I think explained to you here the other night, we're going to be - the world is going to begin to learn that lesson just prior to the second coming of Christ. When God arises to shake terribly this earth, and he's going to shake a lot of the rotten nonsense out of it and shake a little sense into this earth. They're going to see supernatural events happen that are going to just startle them.

   "Thou king art a king of kings for the God of Heaven have given thee a kingdom, power and strength and glory." God allows all of that. Now, there was another one to follow him and another one after that. And finally coming down to our day, there are to be 10 kings over in the territory of the Roman Empire. They're going to be lined up with the Papacy and the religion will be Roman Catholic and they will be church and state united and the secret police, whether they call it a Gestapo or what will seek out and arrest everyone that does not take up with the Catholic religion and embrace all of its tenets, its beliefs and practice whatever it lays down. And if they don't accept it and go along with it, they're going to be tortured, the torture so fiendish that your mind can't conceive of it. And I don't want to bring such a terrible picture here as to describe some of them that probably will be in force and effect. They will torture people until they finally die and millions are going to be killed for their belief. Now, there are some of us that God says because we have not denied his word, but have kept his faith and his patience and have gone through the door when God opens the door to carry the gospel to the world, he's going to protect us from this terrible time. But that time is coming and then notice here what he says in the third chapter. If you just turn pages, I have to in my Bible, at least in the 44th verse "in the days of these kings," there are going to be finally the 10 of them down on the 10 toes. "Shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom." Now, God allowed him to have it and gave him this kingdom. But now God is going to set up his own kingdom. That's at the second coming of Christ, "which shall never be destroyed. And the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms and it shall stand forever." And he says in the next verse that the dream is certain, it's absolutely going to happen brethren and we're beginning to see it happen. People still resist it and refuse to believe it. But I tell you, Germany is getting armed again right now and it's coming and everything we have said is right on the way and it's right on schedule. And let me tell you another thing, there's nobody else on earth that I know of that is proclaiming that truth. Nobody else.

   Now, turn over quickly to the seventh chapter of Daniel where Daniel had his own vision this time. And instead of a metallic image, Daniel saw the four wild animals and they represented the same thing: those four Gentile world-ruling empires culminating in the Roman Empire, which fell in 476 A.D., but it's been resurrected six times and it's going to be resurrected again and it's in process of resurrecting right now. Before our eyes. If we have eyes to see.

   Now, Daniel, the seventh chapter in the 17th and 18th verses (Daniel 7:17-18), where he had described these four wild animals that represented these four empires and they are like wild animals, not tame animals. Now, Jesus Christ is pictured as he came 1900 years ago. As a Lamb, a lamb is peaceful and harmless and meek and humble. And that's the way Christ was and other animals kill lambs and Christ let these wild animals of the Roman Empire kill him. He was our Lamb Passover sacrifice for us. But then again, as he comes again, Jesus Christ is pictured as the lion of the tribe of Judah with the kingly splendor of a lion, but not as a wild animal because at that time, the lions are going to be tame, but he's going to have all the strength of a lion.

   Now, when we come to these governments, they are portrayed as wild animals that devour the flesh of others that go out to take and to consume and to destroy the other animals. And so they are empires or nations that go out to destroy other nations and just take away from them all that they have to take the spoil.

   Now, "These great beasts which are four, are four kings" or it's synonymous here with kingdoms "which shall arise out of the earth, but the saints of the Most High" - now something new is brought out here that was not in the prophecy in the second chapter - "The saints of the Most High" - brethren are you saints according to Bible language? If you say you're no saint, you better get to be one, you better get to be one. "The saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever." That's these worldly kingdoms that are pictured that are now existing in the world and pictured by these wild animals.

   Now, then let me see. Now we'll drop down to the 27th verse and "the kingdom and the Dominion and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and all dominions shall serve him." Speaking the "him" there of Christ and the saints are going to rule the world and we're going to judge the world as the apostle Paul tells us we're going to judge angels, I Corinthians the 6th chapter.

   I think we better read that. I was going to pass it up. Let's read it, the first nine verses, (I Corinthians 6:1-9). "Dare any of you having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust and not before the saints?" What does the Bible say about the courts of this world? They're unjust, they are unjust and brethren. Remember that, they are. I want to tell you that even judges. Now when you're there, remember God permits it and you have to respect the judge, we have to respect them. Don't misunderstand because Jesus taught, they had to respect the Pharisees that were in positions of authority. But he said do not after their works. And he told the people that they were liars and whitened sepulchers and hypocrites like these whitened sepulchers that are painted beautiful white on the outside. You can see some of them down in New Orleans, the rotten foul, filthy stinking bones inside.

   "Do you not know that the saints shall judge the world? And if the world shall be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?" Now, is there anything of judgment then in the church? That thing that Jesus said, "judge not that you be not judged." Some people misunderstand that and they think, well, we must never judge anything. No, that means condemn not that you be not condemned. Don't go around falsely judging and accusing and condemning. Now, we should never accuse. Satan is the accuser and he comes around accusing the brethren. Let me tell you, Satan is accusing you and me to God right now. Now, of course, God knows, but if Satan can really accuse you truthfully why God knows that too. So you better be careful.

   "We shall judge angels. Know you not that we shall judge angels? How much more are the things that pertain to this life? If then you have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church. I speak to your shame. Is it so that there is not a wise man among you" that is in the church? Don't we have any wisdom? Wisdom comes from God. James says, if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God and it shall be given to Him. Do you have wisdom? Well, if you don't, why don't you? You can ask of God and receive it.

   Now, I learned years ago early in my Christian experience that while I had craved understanding and was beginning to get a little of it, I just lacked wisdom. And there's a great difference. Knowledge is one thing, a lot of people have knowledge without understanding, they don't understand things, others have understanding, they can grasp the meaning and understand facts and knowledge and principles. But when it comes to applying that knowledge to come to a decision of what to do in an emergency and how to act that takes wisdom and they don't have it. And that's the way I found I didn't have wisdom, but I began to ask God for it. And I know that God has given me now a good share of wisdom which I didn't have at all. Now, he hasn't given me anything he won't give you. I'm just as human as you are. I'm no bigger in God's sight than you are, but he has given it to me because I asked him and I asked him in faith, believing and not doubting.

   "So now if then you have judgments of things pertaining to this life. Yes, I speak to your shame. Is it so that there is not a wise man among you? No, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren but brother goeth to law" that's in the courts of the world "against brother and that against the unbelievers." Are they better than we? Does that judge on a bench who puts on a great show of vanity on his face? It's nothing but a lot of vanity. It isn't anything that is of any importance in his mind. That's just to impress you. He's so full of egotism and vanity. He wants you to think he's a big shot. You think that a man putting on an act of that kind has any more real wisdom than one of our ministers? Well, I know that he hasn't.

   "Now, therefore, there is utterly a fault among you because you go to law one with another. Why do you not rather take wrong? Why do you not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?" This is speaking with brother against brother though now not the outside world. "Nay, you do wrong and defraud and that your brethren know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Now, there you see, we have to learn to judge, we're going to judge the world, we're going to judge angels, but we have to learn to do those things brethren.

   Now, in Luke, the 19th chapter and beginning with the 11th verse (Luke 19:11), Jesus gave this parable that you should all be entirely familiar with because they thought that the kingdom of God was near at hand or immediately to appear. Then 1900 years ago, Jesus spoke this parable. He said, "Therefore, a certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return." Now he called his 10 servants. And that means our people that is referring deliberately to the 10 tribes, the house of Israel, not to the Jews who are the house of Judah. And he said to them "occupy till I come," you see practically no Jews are being converted today at all. A very few were at the very beginning. And then even Paul had to turn away from the Jews into gentiles, but the lost sheep of the house of Israel, many of them are being converted but not the Jews, but his citizens hated him. You see, Jesus came to his own, who was the house of Judah and his own received him not they were his citizens. They hated him. They rejected him the Jews and they sent a message after him saying "we will not have this man to reign over us." Well, they've rejected him and Jews are not accepting him to reign over them now. But they will with plenty of weeping and supplication and much sorrow when he does come as their great messiah.

   "And it came to pass that when he was returned." Now, this is the second coming of Christ. What's he going to do? Here's the beginning of the millennium that we're here to picture "having received the kingdom. Then he commanded those servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money that he might know how much every man had gained by trading." Now this is using material things and material training, trading to represent or to picture how much you are doing with the word of God, with overcoming, with growing in grace and in knowledge and with developing so that you are fit to teach, you have the knowledge of the word of God. You can teach others, you grow in wisdom so you can judge others. You are developing an ability to manage, to judge, to accomplish.

   I tell you brethren, so many of you are still bound in the grip of some of the false teachings of this world that God loves the poor, that a man who has ambition and who forges ahead is wrong. Now, that isn't necessarily wrong in the world any more than it is in God's work or in the church provided he's not doing it dishonestly. We get the idea that the one that God loves is the person who's lazy indolent, idle who lets his mind wander. What is it that God gave you above any other creature that breathes? It's a mind and God intended that mind to be sharpened, to be educated, to be developed, to be used.

   Now, some of you, some of you didn't get an education while you could, it may not have been your fault. It may have been circumstances society, maybe your own family ahead of you. I don't know. And some of you are not able to begin now and start to study like youngsters because I'll tell you one thing, a person who is middle aged or passed in life cannot go back and pick up new knowledge in the same way that a young person somewhere between ages 16 and 25 can. The ages between 16 and 25 are the ages when the mind is most alert. If it has been trained properly up to that time to begin to acquire real knowledge and come into the knowledge of mature things. Now, if you have used your mind and kept your mind active and used your mind and study up to age 25 then if you continue to do so after 25 your mind continues to be alert. But even so you can't acquire knowledge of new subjects that are strange to you as readily later on in life as you did when you were younger. I can't acquire knowledge of new things like our students in the college can, I can't do it. I passed that age. That if I had not been using my mind, if I had not been studying when I was young, my mind wouldn't be active today and I couldn't be learning as I am. Now, that's true.

   Some of you because of that neglect when you were younger are handicapped and you can't study as much, but every last one of you, no matter what your circumstances can begin right now and you can start to use your minds and to study and improve them. And at least they're going to be improved over where they are now. And I want to say that any one of you that is not doing that is not on the way into the kingdom of God. If you think that just having pretty thoughts in your mind and heart and saying I accept Christ and I want to please Him and you have good intentions. They say hell is paved with good intentions anyhow. And you believed in Christ and God wouldn't be fair if he didn't get me into his kingdom. Maybe you still think you're going to go up to heaven and be there in idleness and ease all your life. I tell you brethren, you're called to be trained to rule and to judge and you've got to be trained how to do that. You can't do it unless you learn how and most of you are letting your mind stagnate. You aren't developing your minds like you should. And I tell you, brethren and I'm fearful that a large number of you that think you're on safe ground that you're standing, you're not progressing, you're not growing like you should, you're not using your minds like you should. And I'm afraid that God in heaven knows that many of you are going to be disappointed. And on the outside, when Christ comes to set up the kingdom and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

   Now you better heed this while you may. If you're 60 years old or past and you've neglected developing your mind, you cannot begin now as actively and learn as much as a young person. That's true. But you can begin now and make progress and God expects you to make the most progress you can at whatever age you are and listen, education is not something you get in school or in college. It is not something you get in school or in college. Education is something that is a lifelong process. You don't get it when you're young and then bottle it up and say I've got it and I can keep it. I've known a lot of people that went to college and they got what they thought was an education. They said now I'm educated so they quit studying, they quit using their minds and today they're just as uneducated as if they had never gone to college in the first place. There's another thing you get old and you die a lot quicker if you don't use your mind. That's a fact. Our minds are given to us to use and we should keep them active and use them. Think about the thing you're doing when you're doing it.

   I don't know whether you think I'm educated or not. My wife always tells me, don't tell people how far you went in college because people think if you didn't get a college education, you didn't get an education. That is not true. And let me tell you something brethren. I did not get a college education. Thank God. If I had these young people wouldn't be getting the right kind of a college education today. If I had had a college education, I would have been rooted and grounded into it and so steeped in the things that are taught in the colleges of this world. We couldn't have founded the new kind of college that is God's kind. But I thank God. God caused me to get an education. And frankly, I'll tell you this, I don't believe we have any college professor on our faculty or payroll and Ambassador College with all their doctor's degrees and masters degrees and all the rest of them from the number of hours they sat in an armchair of a classroom and a college that have any more real education than I have. Now, I've got enough egotism in me yet to believe that. And I think they know it too. I didn't get it in college, but I got it. And as you read this Autobiography that's coming, you will learn how and where I got it. And I think God was steering that life for the sake of some of you and a lot of others, but I studied.

   I was writing some more on that Autobiography this morning. There was something that I had forgotten and I had to go back and write it. You know, I decided once I was going to be a school teacher, I got a job as a school teacher. I'm not going to tell you any more than that about it. But, and you'll see what happened. It got atom bombed. But then I became a school teacher years later. I was just getting ahead of my time then that was all. But that was when I'd had only two years of high school and I had to pass a county teacher's examination to get a certificate. I didn't have to have a degree in those days to teach out in the country school. That's what I was going to do. And I had to pass a teacher's examination. Well, I'll tell you what I did. I think I was using my head a little bit anyhow. That's what it's for. You know, it's going to drop off to some of you if you don't use it a little more. And so I managed, I don't remember how now, but I managed to get hold of four out of five exam questions that had been given in previous years. Well, that showed me the trend and the nature and kind of questions they asked. Now I had to pass one in physiology, but I had never studied physiology. When I was in a grade school, I taught physiology in high school in Des Moines, Iowa. And then when I got to high school, I shifted it back into the seventh or eighth grade. And so I missed it.

   Well, what did I do? Well, I guess I can't be a teacher then I couldn't pass it. I didn't study it. Well, I didn't say that. I went and got one or two textbooks on physiology and I boned up. I burned the midnight oil. I got probably 97, 98%. They were on a percent basis in those days on the teacher's exam on physiology. There was one or two other subjects that I had never studied. So I got textbooks and studied them later on. I found there were some other things that I would have gotten if I had gone on through college. Well, I got textbooks and study them anyhow. But I was out in the realm of Business where, I studied nights and what I learned at night I put into effect and practice in the daytime and experience. And, you know, education comes by experience as well as by books and education comes from dealing with people and it comes from travel.

   Now, the first year of Ambassador College, we had a man who came there that had a very good academic mind. He's a true scholar, but he was a bookworm, and I could see that that fellow was just going to be, uh, what I would call a four-eyed bookworm someday. Of course, he'd soon have to wear glasses the way he studied.

   And I remember in those days, you know, that Thanksgiving Day, we always sort of reserved for a family dinner at home. That was one time we could have the family together, and we only had four students. And one of those was Dick Armstrong, our own son. So we invited the other three out to our home. And I think the second year we had three more students, and they came too, as I remember it, and for Thanksgiving dinner because they were away from home.

   And so this young bookworm scholar was out there, and while the rest of us were singing songs, kidding, laughing, having a good time, what do you think he was doing? Well, he got into my library and he got out to copy our volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. He was right down in that, and, you know, before he came to college, on his physical examination, his physician wrote in, "You'll have to give this lad special attention. He's never been anywhere in his life. He knows a lot about books. But outside of that, he's ignorant. He's never been as far away from home as San Francisco." And he lived up in the next county north, I think.

   Now, I saw he was a bookworm. Now, you know, that fellow would never have been any use in the work of God if I hadn't seen something and had to do something about it. So I began to see that he began to travel a little bit. And after he graduated, I saw to it, he went over to Germany and all over Europe. Of course, he still spent an awful lot of time in those libraries over there, and he spent a lot more time in the bookshops, buying books and bringing them back. I tell you, he does love books, but just the same, he got to talk to a lot of people, and he talked to people at the head of colleges and schools and people at the helm of big, big industries in Germany and places. He and Dick Armstrong, they went together, and I saw to it that Dick would see that he got a lot of that.