Herbert W Armstrong

   The Catholics might find it not uncomfortable to come into the Church of God because of the nature of the government of God. There is some authority, some responsibility, as distinct from those who have always, uh, thought that the congregation was to be, uh, in charge over the deacons or the elders. And you see, you have different reasons why some people can feel comfortable. And of course, we have people who have Hebraic background, and, uh, they often see themselves in terms of being Jewish Christians.

   So what we would like to take a look at today is what distinguishes us as a people from all other religions or the non-religious world, and more specifically, how we may differ from Judaism or how we differ from Christianity. It may come as a surprise, of course, for you to realize how others see us. Generally speaking, we would be listed in a catalog of what would be called sects, S-E-C-T-S. Sometimes the word "cult" would be used, though that is a pejorative term, a very negative term, and sometimes is limited to certain groups.

   Fifty, forty years ago, the word "cult" was not a disrespectful term to apply. The Catholic Church applied the word "cult" to itself no more than forty years ago. It had to do with the form of worship. They had a form of worship; they were a cult. But now they would not use that term because the word "cult" has been applied to certain people whom others dislike or disrespect.

   But in any case, one of the common ways of describing the Worldwide Church of God, or describing you, would be that you are in some way Christian Jews, or sometimes Jewish. Sometimes we're called "near-Christian sects," uh, in that category — Mormons, Christian Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists, possibly. The Church of God would be listed as near-Christian sects. That means in some way we have appropriated the name of Christ, but in fact, we're not Christian like the others are.

   So you have these unusual ways of looking at things. To anyone who is reared in Judaism, we would, without any question, be conceived of as Christian. And that could have various terms. I'd like to tell you a little bit about a couple of experiences, uh, in defining what we believe and what we do to individuals, because there are different ways of approaching it. And obviously, how I explain what the church is, for instance, to the Supreme Patriarch of Theravada Buddhism in Thailand would be quite different than how I would explain it, uh, to a Jew who teaches at Hebrew University, or to, uh, a Lutheran, let's say, uh, who, uh, is a writer and editor of National Geographic. I've, uh, dealt with different people like that, circumstantially or thrown into a conversation, and it's interesting how people react and how they perceive these differences.

   I will take the story of Professor Tsvi Aoi, who perhaps only very, very few of you know, of Hebraic background. He's a man who is an author, uh, a Byzantine scholar. That means he understands and studies the area of Jewish-Greek relationship. He's written the definitive work on the Karaite Jews. He is, uh, a person of interesting, uh, personality and character, outspoken, uh, but very friendly, and has appreciated, uh, this work, as he remembered it in the earlier 1970s.

   I explained to him, not what we were, as others might see us, but I explained to him one day what we do, what we practice. It is perhaps less important to describe what we believe. It was obvious that we were regarded as Christian in the sense that we do acknowledge the authority of Christ, or of Jesus, and that he is the Christ, the Messiah. That was not in question. But I chose to explain to him what we do.

   There is the Sabbath, the question of clean and unclean meats, the holy days, the tithing, looking forward to the kingdom of God. And you know, when you explain any number of these things, that we recognize the authority of the law of God, he cut the conversation short, and he said, "Well, then you are heirs of the Jerusalem church." And he was right. But he said, "Come to think of it, I'm not sure I like that idea, because that means that you are like Jews and that you too, as Gentiles, can inherit the promises."

   He thought, and I thought it was very interesting, that the problem of the Jerusalem Church went away by 66 to 70 A.D. But as a person of some religious conviction, he was not a little disturbed at the same time to realize that the same sect is still here that they thought they had disposed of centuries ago.

   You will better understand it when you realize that our relationships in the state of Israel are essentially with the non-religious. We keep away essentially, as much as possible, from contact with the religious zealous — zealots of the period today — as Jesus, of course, kept away from them until the end of his ministry in the first century A.D.

   But to a Jew who listens carefully to what we do, there is no doubt we are not a gentile Christianity. There is no doubt that we are not a gentile form of Christianity. We would be seen as heirs of the Jerusalem church, and to a Jew, that means heirs of the congregation over which James, the brother of Jesus, was in charge as both bishop and apostle.

   It was much later I had an interesting opportunity, uh, when the Supreme Patriarch was in Bangkok and we called upon him after his first visit here, and he asked me who we were. Now, he knew why he was here, because he had been formally invited. And the leaders of the Southern California Buddhist community were impressed with the quality and the character of our work, and they have said they wanted to make, uh, the Thai temple here, Wat Thai of Los Angeles, to have the same character externally that Ambassador College exhibits.

   Now, when the Supreme Patriarch came here, he came to a college, he came to a campus, and I was asked to be the host on that first visit. Later on, of course, he called on Mr. Armstrong at a second visit. It was in Bangkok where we were invited. Uh, he was on a dais and, uh, in the typical fashion, you know, where they pull the legs together. He did not sit on a chair; he simply sat down hardly more than one foot above the floor, and we sat down on the rug in front of him. And we had a conversation, and he asked, uh, what we were. Now, he hadn't really understood, because his purpose of the first visit was to pay respects to an institution that reflected the qualities and character that the leaders in the Thai community had appreciated.

   So I gave a very simple explanation. And that explanation was something like this: that we follow the laws of the God who created the universe, and those laws are manifested in a way of life that expresses outgoing concern for others, to help others when — and I never got to finish the thought because he already had understood something very important.

   Now, he grasped that we acknowledge a creator God, and, uh, Buddhism, of course, is the only great religion that is an atheistic religion. I, I think you should know that Buddhism does not have a God. It only has a teacher, and it has principles, but it does not have a creative God. But I felt it was important to understand where we perceive the source of law and principle to come from.

   But as I briefly expounded the principle of the law without defining the Sabbath or any of the other points of the Ten Commandments, he nearly jumped out of his posture and started to explain to me that we were right. Well, that was nice to have that kind of a response. He said that principle is right: when an individual or when people have sufficient for themselves and there are others who have a need, we have a responsibility to be concerned for the welfare of others. That is, as Mr. Armstrong has defined it abroad in many occasions, outgoing concern, the way of giving, as distinct from the way of competition and acquiring, getting.

   I didn't think it was my responsibility to define the kingdom of God in that case. I was merely paying certain respects, but that was very important that he got the picture. So from his point of view, I could say that when people who are not reared in the Christian world or not reared in the Jewish world, who do not have access to the Bible, when they see us and understand what we practice, then the next question is, as a Buddhist leader said, uh, to some of us, "How come you do so many Buddhist things and are not Buddhists?"

   Well, the answer, of course, is that I'm addressing them: "You have five of the Ten Commandments, and we have ten, all of them. It's the other way around. They should become like we are." Yes, there is a remarkable perception. The teacher there discovered the principles of five of the Ten Commandments, which represent the five basic principles that represents the way of life of this particular kind of people in Southeast Asia. So they look at it in terms of a way of life.

   In terms of the Jewish community, we would be perceived in terms of the law of God, the Torah, of following the law. There was a later time I had a chance to have dinner with an editor of National Geographic magazine, uh, also. And I presume he was a Lutheran — I can only perceive that, uh, but that may or may not be true, that is irrelevant here — but he approached the subject as if he were. And, uh, we were also at this occasion, uh, with, uh, professors, uh, Giorgio and Marilyn Buccellati, with whom we work in the excavation in Syria, who have been very formidable, uh, in defining the qualities and characters of the college, the church, and the foundation.

   And we were discussing some of the things that have been written in National Geographic and our role in AICF in terms of funding. And, uh, we entered into a discussion where, uh, we knew, of course, that this gentleman had been responsible for writing the article on Martin Luther, the anniversary of Martin Luther and the, and the, uh, Reformation in the National Geographic. And he mentioned, uh, what an interesting opportunity it was in his case to be able to go to Rome, you know, and to meet the false prophet — said that. Because he was, you know, referring to what, how Luther looked at it, that in this case he could have an interview. It was said with tongue in cheek. And we were discussing, of course, the Catholic Church and the Protestant sects. You can understand this approach.

   Then the question came around, uh, about the funding of the college — sorry, the funding of the foundation — and, uh, the editor of the National — this editor, there are many editors in the National Geographic — said, "Well, what is the church that underlies the foundation that provides the basic source of funding of the foundation?" And so I said, "The, the Worldwide Church of God."

   I said, and then I realized that I had to address not one person, but two other people, that I was in fact addressing both a Protestant and Catholics, or I was addressing the Christian world. Now, how does one present it when obviously this is not the primary reason for the conversation? You want to get over it as fast as you can, uh, you want to ruffle no feathers unnecessarily. You want to clear yourself of any misunderstanding.

   Now, I didn't start to explain to them what we believe. I didn't explain even to our Jewish friend all the things we believed. I explained the things we do. In this case, I chose neither to explain the things we believe or the things we do. Sorry, excuse me. From my point, as I saw it, was that that was not what they were interested in, in actuality. And I didn't want to address it specifically to ourselves.

   So I said, "We, first of all, are not a Protestant sect," and there I use the word "sect" for a special reason. "We are not a Protestant sect. We did not arise out of the Reformation." Is that first clear to all of us? Secondly, I said, "You would probably call us" — I didn't say what we call ourselves — "You would probably call us a part of Jewish Christianity. We are the heirs of Jewish Christianity."

   Now, that's a way of explaining it. I couldn't say "the heirs of the Jerusalem Church" because later on the Jerusalem Church had great archbishops, cathedrals, so that was no explanation. I couldn't use that to a Jew; the Jerusalem church only means up to the time of the Roman war. But to Christians, you know, there's a Jerusalem church today over there — Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, the, uh, Armenian — so I didn't use that approach. I simply use the general approach of Jewish Christianity before the rise of Gentile Christianity that places us not only not Protestant, it places us in advance of Gentile Christianity that arose later with the center at Rome and elsewhere.

   And I said, "Of course, we can trace the history of the church through Armenia, through the Balkans, to the alpine regions, to Britain, and coming to the United States in the latter part of the seventeenth century to the state of Rhode Island." And immediately he said, the editor, he said, "Do you mean that Robert Williams was a member of your church?"

   "No, he simply, uh" — Roger Williams, excuse me — "founded a state." And here I felt we had a very interesting way of approaching the problem that you might like to take note of. That in Rhode Island, we have the first time where a state recognized the right of individuals to their own religion without having an established religion. This was the first colony — it wasn't really a state then, but we think of Rhode Island now as a state — because everywhere in Europe, Catholic or Protestant, there was always an established church. And the reason God's people could come to Rhode Island, as distinct from any other, is that they could be free to come there, which they did around 1660.

   Now, he didn't need to know the history of the church. I just simply took it in one sentence all across Europe through fifteen centuries. You don't have to add anything more. And that Mr. Armstrong came among the people out of the world of business, and this work has grown as a result of his efforts and of many others. And the foundation reflects that aspect of the work, as distinct from the college, as distinct from the church, but where we, in a sense, use, as every responsible citizen would, uh, those sums of money for cultural, social, even spiritual, uh, means to, to help others where the, concept of the church is not, you see, a fundamental way of approaching the problem, or a small college would not be the normal means of approaching it.

   Now, he was satisfied. I didn't have to go any further, and I also made it clear, therefore, that we represent the teaching of the church that Jesus established before the arrival of Gentile Christianity.

   So this gives you some idea, some idea of how others would view us and how we can approach or explain, and the explanations will differ. To have explained to the Supreme Patriarch the brief history of the church would have been meaningless. I mean, his concern is not over the Alpine region, not over Rhode Island, not over Armenia. That would be a geography that is not relevant to his experience. Nor is it relevant to the experience of a Jew that we explain where the church has been in the meantime. It's bad enough that we're still here for those who are religious. You see, we don't have to explain that. We just crop up again, as he might see it, or they might see it, and that's enough of a problem.

   So let's take a look now at some fundamental things that distinguish, if you please, the teachings of Jesus and this church from the around. There are different ways of approaching it. I can approach it quite differently in a classroom, but this is not a classroom situation. So I propose that we take a look at the beginning of Jesus' formal explanation of how his doctrine differed from the community to which he came.

   Now, there was a forerunner, John the Baptist, who laid the foundation for what Jesus was about to say. But in John chapter 3, there was a man, he was a Pharisee, that is, a man of strict religious conviction, a man who believed in the resurrection. The Sadducees did not. Here is a man who believed in the resurrection, a fundamental doctrine of the Pharisees. Nicodemus, who was a ruler of the Jewish community and the level of the Sanhedrin.

   He came to Jesus by night, and he said to him, "Rabbi" — Jesus was a rabbi. He never denied it. That just means he was a teacher. He was a teacher — "We know that you're a teacher come from God. No man can do the miracles that you do except God be with him." But you listen carefully there that "you're a teacher come from God. God has sent you, and that God is with you."

   Now, so that he would understand, Nicodemus, where Jesus came from, so to speak, or how he differed — because that's what he wanted to know — Jesus says to him, "There's a certain fundamental area that you need to know, and I want you to know that before I formally teach in the synagogue, this is what I will teach." And remember, he had not yet gone to the synagogue in Galilee. He laid out his basic teaching to himself, a rabbi, Nicodemus. Certainly these men were rabbis without a question.

   He says, "Verily, verily," as the King James wording, or "truly, truly, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

   So Jesus' basic doctrine that makes us differ from the Jewish community — it is not that we believe in the resurrection and they do not. Not that we keep the Sabbath and they do not — that's not the point — or the law or the holy days or unclean meats. There's one basic difference between ourselves and the Jewish community, and Jesus addresses it here. It is not enough, in other words, to be born of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and simply come up in the resurrection. The Jews thought that that was what was required: to be born of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in that line, and if boys, to be circumcised on the eighth day, and to anticipate the resurrection and the restoration of the kingdom of God to Israel.

   Jesus said there is something fundamentally lacking in your understanding. Partly it was never clearly explained in the Bible before, though it was certainly alluded to. David said when he awakens that he will be in God's likeness. Now, how do you get in God's likeness? Is the resurrection adequate to account for that verse? But nowhere else in the Old Testament do you ever have such a statement: "except a man be born again."

   So one may say that the Church of God — that this is information for you. This is not information for everybody else. But Jesus explained it so that when Nicodemus would tell the rest of the Jews, they would understand that Jesus did not differ in any of these other fundamental areas. He was simply adding something of spiritual dimension that they hadn't thought of before. You have to be born again, or you cannot see the kingdom of God.

   Now, let me just pose a question here so you understand. Do you think that you have to be born again in order to be resurrected? There are a lot of people, of course, in the Christian world who think you have to be born again, and then comes the resurrection. No, it's not that at all. What Jesus is saying here is that it was not sufficient to be born of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and to be heirs of that remarkable family. What one has to do if one is going to see the kingdom of God is that we have to be conceived and in gestation mature to that point where we are in fact born again.

   Now, Nicodemus didn't misunderstand this term. He says to Jesus, "So how can a man be born when he's old? What a funny — I mean, you explain that to me now." You see how Nicodemus is approaching it. "How could this be possible? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?" "I never heard of such a doctrine." Nicodemus, after that response, listens to Jesus' explanation.

   "I say to you, except a man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Now, water is clearly a reference here to what had been going on: John the Baptist, came. And he ordered the children of Judah to be baptized unto repentance. So the nation was told, as John himself had already said before, there is one thing you have to do to admit that even though as men you were circumcised as little boys, or as women you were part of the community but were not circumcised, even though you were a part of that community, John said, "You all must repent, or you will perish."

   It wasn't enough to say that you've offered the sacrifices, that you have done your best, that your good deeds outweigh your evil ones, and since we're born of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we will automatically be heirs of the kingdom. John said, "You all have to start over again. You have to be baptized in water to repentance. You come to an attitude of acknowledging your guilt by repentance and not merely by penance."

   Or did you hear me? A word that we normally don't use in the church. John the Baptist said, "You must repent; penance is not enough." Did you know what those rituals are of the law of Moses? They are appropriately designated as a form of penance. You acknowledge what you did. You don't have to repent. You simply acknowledge what you did. You either offered your animal, or you took your wallet out and you paid for an animal or a bird, and you offered a sacrifice. And as far as the community was concerned, you were forgiven. There was nothing stating that you had to repent. You will not find that in terms of the rituals.

   Now, if you were guilty and you knew it, the rituals could not prevent you from being executed if the death penalty were in order. But John was addressing a question. He was saying it is not enough to do penance, that is, to offer the sacrifices and to go on in your old way. You have to do two things: to be baptized in water, to acknowledge you want to die to the past, to acknowledge that you're going to be burying your past, and you come to a new state of mind called repentance.

   Now, John was not asked to preach anything more than that. So Jesus, in alluding to the fact that the first birth has the fetus in the liquid in the mother's womb — you know, we were all in that sense, uh, carried in water before our birth. So in, in terms of birth, the expression is "the waters burst." That's just a part of the process. All right.

   Jesus was alluding to that natural phenomenon, and John the Baptist, of course, had come and given the symbol for adults that we have to go down in the water. Now, Jesus' baptism, of course, went further than this. Jesus was baptizing not only to repentance, not only in terms of the Messiah and the forgiveness of sin, but for the receiving of the Holy Spirit.

   So Jesus is saying here that his doctrine involves the teaching that man must be born again, which commences through, if you please, the waters of baptism to acknowledge that you are spiritually dead to the old way you are living, and you must be born of the spirit, which is a simple way of explaining that you have to receive the Spirit of God into you till it so that it becomes a part of you. And at the resurrection — I'm getting ahead of the story, he didn't explain all this — that you actually become composed of that spirit.

   So the spirit of God joins with the spirit in man and begets a new life, just as the physical body involved a sperm and an ovum, and that began the first life which we all are as individuals. So Jesus said unless there is this process of baptism, of acknowledging the death of the old self and coming up to live a new life by means of the power of the Spirit of God — Moses' law never promised the Holy Spirit. Moses' law never told you that you could call on God's spirit for power to keep the law. Moses' law simply had the rituals to help you learn the habit of obedience and to be a penalty so that you wouldn't commit the same thing again, because most people take their pocketbooks seriously enough that these offerings were costly.

   Jesus said, "Not only can you not see the kingdom of God, but you cannot enter the kingdom of God." So the kingdom of God is explained by Jesus as something invisible to man. Further, he said, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the spirit is spirit." So he was distinguishing not that we're born a second time of the flesh, but the first time we are born of flesh, composed of flesh. The second time we are actually going to be born of spirit because we are begotten of spirit.

   The new man or woman is in a sense beginning to be composed, beginning, by being composed of spirit, and ultimately the whole body, if we live to that time, will be spirit. He says, "The wind blows where it wills" — that's a better rendering for more modern English. "You hear the sound of it, but you can't tell whence it comes. You don't see it anywhere; you only have the effect. And you can know where it goes by the sound of the rustling of the leaves, but you don't see it. So is everyone born of the spirit."

   Now, Nicodemus knew that God is invisible unless he manifested himself. They knew that much, and Jesus was defining spirit and using the wind as an analogy. But yet he said, "How can these things be?" And Jesus said — he didn't say that you can't teach them. He said, "My, I just don't get it." And Jesus said, "Are you a master in Israel and don't know these things? We speak what we know."

   Jesus is testifying to the fact that he had been in the presence of God and testify what we have seen, and you receive not our witness. He had come and explained. "I have told you of earthly things, and you believe not. How shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" And here he's not addressing Nicodemus alone; the plural "ye" rather than "thee" means that he is talking to Nicodemus on behalf of the Pharisaic and Jewish community. "No man has ascended up to heaven." This is all part of the explanation. "But he who came down from heaven," and John in writing adds, "even the Son of Man, which today is in heaven."

   So Jesus was showing, you see, that speaking of God, his father and himself, that he was carrying God's message and he was a representative like Nicodemus was a representative of the Pharisees. And he was testifying to them, "We speak what we know. You don't seem to understand it." And then he explains that as he came down from a place to which no man has ascended, so he is also going to return.

   Jesus therefore made it quite clear where he got his doctrine. He made it quite clear that he descended from heaven and was born of Mary and is now announcing what he remembers. Because his memory is what was characteristically God in him. By nature, physically he was flesh that he inherited from Mary. But most people say, "Well, how could he be God as well as man?" Now, the person and the memory — and your memory is what makes you what you are. That's how you identify yourself. People lose their memory, they don't know who they are. I hope you know that. You know who you are because of your memory. If there's nothing you can remember, all you can say is "I don't know who I am."

   And of course, apparently there are a lot of people who are trying to find themselves today, to use this modern term. Uh, it's ridiculous. They should know who they are. But Jesus' manifestation that he was God is the fact that he remembered. He remembered what it was to be with God, and he knew that as a person he had been there and he recalled it. So that his person, his memory, his personality all reflected this experience.

   The teaching therefore of Jesus is fundamentally different in this particular aspect. Jesus might have taken away some of the prohibitions on the Sabbath that were extreme, but those things were inconsequential. The basic difference between true Christianity, the teaching of Jesus, and Judaism is that Judaism had no way to promise how you could inherit or see the kingdom of God. They didn't realize that if the kingdom were to be r

   Those who come up in the second resurrection do not enter the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God will rule over them, but unless that kingdom is manifest to them, they neither see it nor can inherit it until they themselves are begotten and born of God.

   Our relationship, therefore, does not differ fundamentally in the Jewish community with what we practice, as with the fact that we ourselves are the sons and daughters of God by baptism, the acknowledging of the death of the old self, being in possession — if we have repented and believed in the Messiah and his forgiveness — we are in possession of the Holy Spirit. And the spirit of God leads and guides us. And at the resurrection, we're going to be born of God, and we shall be like Him, as David perceived himself to be like him in the resurrection. This is a fundamental difference, and the Jewish community has never understood it to this day.

   Now, let's look at what happened as time went on. We can pick up a verse in Acts 9:2, and there's some other verses, but this is the first time that Jesus' teaching is defined by others as written by the church. They desired of him letters to Damascus. This is a story of Saul who was breathing out threatenings, went to the high priest and asked the high priest letters to take to Damascus to the synagogue, so that, uh, if he would find anyone of this way, whether man or woman, he would bring them bound to Jerusalem where they should be punished.

   Christianity — Is called here what we call Christianity — is called here "that way" or "this way," depending on the context. This way, it is a way of life. Now, when Jesus spoke of the water, he was really saying you must change, that is, your past is past and you have a new way to live. And it is built on what John said, that it must involve repentance.

   Now, the nature of this way is later on expounded in the Book of Acts by Paul, so we'll turn now to chapter 24, very important quick summary. When Felix, verse 22, heard these things, having a more perfect knowledge of that way — verse 22, Acts chapter 24 (Acts 24:22) — he deferred them and said, "Now when Lysias, the chief captain shall come down, I will know the uttermost of your matter." He commanded a centurion to keep Paul, to let him have liberty, that he should not forbid any of his acquaintances to minister to take care of him.

   And after certain days, Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was a Jewish. And he sent for Paul and heard him concerning the faith in Christ. And here is what Paul summarizes before a man of prominence, a political leader in the community. He reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, and it was so well reasoned that Felix trembled and said, "Go your way now. When I have a convenient season, I will call for you."

   He was concerned in his own mind. He didn't want to have to listen to this anymore, and he thought maybe, uh, if Paul wanted to talk again, Paul might get the idea that a little money would help. Because he had hoped that money should...

[Tape Flipped]

   ...he could have known that he could bribe his way out of this. He chose not to. That was the wrong way to go. But it does tell you a lot about justice, uh, in that world, doesn't it?

   Now, look at this story in simple terms: righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. The judgment to come in this sense for those who are God's people has to do with award of responsibility in the kingdom of God. But we won't dwell on that for the moment, but that looks forward to the time when the Messiah comes.

   But righteousness — now, all God's commandments are righteousness. So Paul clearly reasoned that Christianity is a way of life that is based on the commandments. This is fundamental. This is where we share with Judaism the principle of the Torah or the law, the instruction, the teaching of God.

   Temperance now is something that I think is very important here, and we're not just talking of alcohol consumption. You know, you've heard of the Temperance League, the Temperance Union, and so forth. Righteousness is that which is defined by the law. Temperance is a term that covers many things that are not specifically in the law.

   You see, if this is a way of life, you don't look at it in the following way. You don't say, "Well, if the law didn't cover this, then that leaves me free to do it." Mr. Armstrong said long ago, when he was first converted and began to think of who would be interested and learned about the Bible, so much of it is law, he said, "Well, from this point of view, lawyers should be the easiest people to teach and to understand the Bible because they understand law." Well, lawyers understand loopholes. That's what their understanding involves.

   It is not enough to have the righteousness required by the law. What is required is the righteousness that reflects the intent of the law and the recognition of the principle of temperance in all things. Even that which God permits. This therefore covers every possible area that isn't covered by the law of God. If the law allows you to do something — and the law allows you to do something as well as forbids you — you also must learn to be temperate in what you do. That is, don't do things to an excess. This is a way of summarizing the way of life, summarizing the way of life.

   There are people who can get over-righteous. They give so many, so much in offerings. For instance, they're not temperate, uh, that they don't have enough money, uh, to back up the check that they've written out. You know, I had to deal with a lovely person in the church, and, uh, she didn't understand that there's no reason to give more to the church than is in the bank account.

   Now, that might sound a little strange because most of you wouldn't be that zealous. So I explained to her that what she needs to do now is simply — and we looked over the books — we'll wait a while, and then you start to tithe two or three months downstream because what you've done is simply gone beyond any reasonable use of your money. And so she picked up tithing a little later, because what she had done is simply given in tithes and offerings beyond what she was actually receiving.

   Now, that was not being temperate in handling one's money. The same thing, of course, can be true in terms of eating quantitatively. The same thing is true in terms of drinking. The same thing is true in using your time. You need to be temperate in everything. So this reflects Paul's summary of the way of life and goes hand in hand with what Jesus understood by the ultimate meaning of being baptized in water and coming up out of the water to lead a new life.

   Later, after Acts chapter 9 and before this event, the followers of Jesus were called Christians. You know the verse in Acts 11:26. We don't need to touch upon that further. We just know that there came a time when this way that we live, this way of life, was no longer a term generally used, but Christian came to be used, that is, a follower of Christ. So in the New Testament, the word Christian is not uncommon. There is nothing wrong with making it clear to a Jew that you are a Christian. But that's only a part of the story. You are a Christian in the sense that you follow Christ. But you're not a Christian in the sense of the Christian world, because the world has its false Christianity. And I make that very clear whenever I explain anything to any Jewish friend.

   But let's go to another side of the coin. In addressing the Gentiles and Jews at Rome, who were involved in the fellowship there, we turn to chapter 2:17 — 2:17 (Romans 2:17). "Behold, you're called a Jew, and you rest in the law," that is, you rely on the law, you have gotten the teaching there, the instruction. "And you make your boast of God," you know God. You know the Creator. The Greeks had their idols, and the closest they ever got to God, they called him unknown. What wisdom? "You know his will and approve the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law." You, you understand there the, the background. I think that should be clear.

   But now look what this means. We must drop down a little bit further. 28 (Romans 2:28): "He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly. Neither is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. He is a Jew which is one inwardly. Circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not of men but of God."

   Now, let's take note of something that doesn't automatically come to mind in reading English. If Paul were speaking to a Jew, this would be immediately apparent. "Whose praise is not of men." That means whose Jewishness? Do you know what the word Judah means? The name Judah means praise. But any Jew who doesn't live according to the spirit and the intent of the law does not deserve the praise of God and is therefore not a Jew inwardly. That's Paul's argument. He's making a play of the word Judah. He could not have done this with any other tribal name because only Judah had the word — Judah, which means praise. Only Judah had in his name the thought of the praise that should come from the fulfillment of the law according to its intent and purpose.

   Paul says he is not a Jew, or he cannot be praised, which is only one in appearances outwardly, verse 28. Neither is circumcision meaningful if it is only in the flesh. But he is a Jew, one worthy of praise, who is one actually inside. So what Jesus said to Nicodemus is now reflected also here. What Paul said to Felix is now also here. Though the order of events is different, ah, what we have here is an explanation that Paul gives to the Greek and especially the Jewish brethren that you have to be a Jew inwardly.

   A person who is a follower of Christ is to become a Jew inwardly. He must adopt those things that are characteristically seen as what every Jew does. But the Christian must do it inwardly, not merely externally. The first and most apparent thing that any Christian must do, therefore, to be a Jew inwardly is to begin to do the first thing that God commanded man, and which the Jews have remembered: the Sabbath day. You must take hold of that which characterizes the Jewish nation, so to speak — Israel, uh, but I mean, wherever the Jews may be. You must take hold of the holy days. That is something that outwardly characterizes the Jewish nation, that is, Christians see Jews as hallowing certain days and a certain day of the week. To be a Jew inwardly, you must do the same thing but understand it according to its intent and purpose.

   And that's why Christians look upon us very often as Christian Jews. I didn't say Jewish Christian. A Jewish Christian is someone of Jewish background who is labeled a Christian. A Christian Jew is someone who has Christ in his mind or whatever form as it's seen, but has adopted, uh, let's say the law or the Torah. These are terms that are used. We are sometimes plainly called Jews by Christian, and no Jew would ever accept that. But these are the problems of other people, not our problem.

   But I think it is very important that you realize that when Paul said, "whose praise is not of men," that is, whose name Judah, whose praise — being a real Jew inwardly doesn't come from men who see what you do externally, but who can see what you're doing internally.

   I had not learned of the holy days. Now, I had to decide in that first year of college, what it meant. Now, most of you don't have to make that decision. You were either brought up or it didn't seem to matter. But I realized that if I started to keep those annual holy days, that made me a Jew inwardly, and I had to ask myself, do I want to become a Jew? Have you ever thought of that? Well, maybe that's because you weren't German. But I had to ask myself that question, because it means you depart from what you were doing and you have in fact adopted the law as your way of life, and that means to the world that you're Jewish. And to keep the law according to its intent and purpose means that you suddenly can also be called a Jew inwardly, whether you were born so or not at the house of Judah.

   From Paul's point of view, we must be Jews inwardly. We must also, as Christians, look forward to that time when we are ultimately born again and can inherit the kingdom of God. And the good news that Jesus brought was the good news of the kingdom of God.

   Now, Christianity never paid attention to being born again, not until the modern sects wanted to emphasize something different. But I'll get to that in a moment, not right at the present. Essentially, Christianity as it came to be known traditionally was Gentile Christianity. This gentile Christianity adopted as its premise the concept of the law of Moses in the sense of rituals, but now the rituals were something at the altar. Not the laws of Moses, but the principle of penance.

   The Samaritans, who were the basic root of Gentile Christianity, they acknowledged the law of Moses and the rituals, and they highly honored Moses. We have that in their own literature. So the Samaritan idea also was penance. And the Christians who ultimately became a part of what we know as this world's gentile Christianity, they laid aside the rituals pertaining to the temple but adopted the principle of penance, abandoned the concept over the years of repentance, and changed the law.

   Now, it is not true to say that Christians teach the Ten Commandments are done away without defining which Christians. That is an overstatement. There are a few Christian sects which teach the Ten Commandments are done away. Most of them do not. Most of them follow the teaching of a woman — with quotes around that — who thought to change the time and the law. But you can read any of their literature, and they acknowledge that the commandments have authority. But we have even more authority to alter them. We'll change the numbering, split the last one in two, and knock out the second one and change the day of the fourth — of the fourth that we now call the third. That's what's happened in Christianity.

   Then later on, a group of sects rose out of this system. They have given lip service to the law, but they have changed whatever part of the law they wish so that they could become like the Gentiles around them. Out went the Sabbath, in came Romans — the Roman custom of Sunday. Remember Sunday was instituted formally by a decree in 321 A.D. And it was instituted as a decision of the Roman Emperor, and the Christians laid aside any remnant of the Sabbath that they might have had in order to conform to the new Roman custom. Otherwise they'd have the problem of the job — on losing the job if you chose not to work on the Sabbath day. So they simply didn't work on Sunday.

   And they abandoned the holy days that God had given to show His way of life, His plan of how things would be done. I don't need to go into that at all, but you recognize, of course, that instead of the Passover, instead of the Days of Unleavened Bread, there's Pentecost, instead of Trumpets, Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles in the Last Great Day. We have a very important series of days that have been substituted.

   Now, they came to latch on to the name of Christ, to the person of Christ. They had forgotten his message and they focused on him. They didn't understand his message of inheriting the kingdom of God because they lost sight of what it meant to be born again. They had penance and not repentance. Well, obviously, if you receive the spirit of God because of repentance, there was no possibility of focusing on the spirit of God if all you had was penance.

   And so they began to commemorate not his death in the form of the Passover, but they began to think of an Easter resurrection. Wasn't called Easter then, it was called a Passover, uh, but the Germanic world gave the name Easter centuries later. And they began to commemorate the events in his life. So they commemorated his birth. They commemorated his circumcision. They commemorated his death. They commemorated his resurrection. They commemorated his ascension.

   And then it would be nice not to forget his mother, and so they commemorated her, uh, a birth — the immaculate conception was not Jesus' conception, but Mary's, remember? And after all, there was John, and he was very important. He was the forerunner, so they commemorated John's birthday. They commemorated John's conception day. You may not know that. But they highly honored John the Baptist, they highly honored Jesus, and they highly honored Mary. They focused on these personalities because that's what Gentile religion had always involved as personalities.

   And so you have not only these, you have the annunciation to Mary pertaining to the conception of Jesus. And then you have the baptism of Jesus which came to be celebrated. The purification of Mary after 40 days. All those things came to be days that were celebrated in place of the others. I don't need to go into that any further. That's the whole subject which I have given elsewhere at the Imperial AM, I believe, or at least the Imperial congregation, and, uh, that is remarkable how those things developed, you see. As you get away from the good news of the kingdom of God, you have to have something else to offer the people.

   Christianity today is a religion that focuses on the person called Jesus Christ. But they do not know that the person they are talking about didn't go through many of these experiences, that they are in fact preaching what Paul said is a different Jesus, and they receive a different spirit that imbues their churches. They have a different form of the law, if they have the law at all. There are a few Protestant sects like one that says God knocked in the head all ten, then he thought better and brought back nine. Now, that's a brilliant deduction. But there are all kinds of ideas.

   In any case, Christianity as we know it has departed from the law of God. From the point of view of what the law actually says, we are much closer to the Jewish community than we are to Christianity. But the Jews refused to listen to Jesus, so they did acknowledge — did not acknowledge him as the Christ or the Messiah. We acknowledge him as the Messiah. Christians talk about their Jesus as if he were the Messiah, but they have him doing things that he never did. They have him doing away with the authority of God's law as it was given and giving their church the authority to tamper with, alter or throw out the law, and substitute a whole array of other days instead of those which Jesus himself kept and which God, his Father, and he himself as Yahweh of the Old Testament commanded.

   We are therefore in that sense Christians because we follow Christ, but we are not a part of this world's Christianity. And it is important that we distinguish between ourselves and this world's Christianity that has a different gospel, which is not really a gospel at all. It has another Jesus who died on another day and who gave his authority to a church as they see it to tamper with and to alter times and the law.

   We differ, therefore, fundamentally from Christianity around us. We acknowledge the Messiah, and we obey God's law. The Jews stopped with the law and didn't receive the gospel. The Christians have perverted the gospel so that what they have has nothing to do with the restoration of the kingdom of God and what it means to be born again. But the devil has deceived them into thinking that a religious experience is called being born again, so that they are now confused even on that term which they have introduced into their sectarian religion. We know what it means to be born again. Modern Christianity doesn't have the faintest idea.

   Now, with this in mind, I hope that you can spend some time and think about how different we really are from the people around us who may use the names that we use but who don't live in the same way that we do. If you want to know the difference in history between the conduct, the practice of the church of God, the way we should be living, and the way this world's Christianity is, I would say you look into the Bible and look at the life of Jesus, the prophets, and the apostles. That's the way the church should be.

   And if you want to know the fruits of this world's Christianity, I suggest you simply examine the history of Christian Europe, and you don't have to look at more than the last 85 years. But if you want to look at the previous centuries, you can. That kind of Christianity has given us World War I, World War II, and is going to give us another World War. That's the fruit of that kind of Christianity that has lost sight of the law of God and lost sight of the kingdom of God.