Herbert W Armstrong

   So I started out the feast in the Pocono. That's on the East Coast. There's almost no way you can get from Sequim to the Pocono. Sequim is where I live. My motto is "sink or swim." So you would have, uh, at least the right way to pronounce it, even though most people call it Sequim. It rains up there all the time, about 190 inches a year. We have tidal waves, volcanoes, terrible smog, riots in the street. Don't come there.

   Now, let's see, where was I? Oh, in the Pocono. It took me four airplanes and a full day to get there. And then I was at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, wherever that is, and it took another hour to get up to Pocono. It was very nice there. It's been raining for about 14 days before I got there, but the good Lord knew I had seen enough rain. And he made the sun shine the next day for the feast. Of course, I think the other 5,400 people who were there may have been partly responsible as well. I will send their greetings to you. There are more than 500 more than we expected there.

   I went on from there to the Lake of the Ozarks. I think there were about 9,600 there, about 1,000 more than they planned on having. I understand we have about 1,500 more here than we had planned on having.

   Now, usually I move around a lot, but I understand that, uh, unless I speak directly into this microphone, you will be able to hear me. So you people back there, I am not ignoring you. I'm paying good attention to you, you pay good attention to me. I'm a teacher and I have eyes in the back of my head.

   Now, the first thing I'd like to say is happy New Year. Because, uh, this is a new year, you know. Tishri one is the first day in the holy day calendar of the seventh month of the year, but if you go back far enough, Tishri one, which was the Day of Trumpets that we observed in this fall festival season just before coming to the feast, is a commemoration of creation. It was, if we were to believe Jewish tradition, which I have no reason not to believe, that first Sabbath that God had with Adam and Eve, the first full 24-hour period of time that our parents experienced, having been created on the sixth day, while the seventh day was the fullest day of the long 24-hour period which they had. It was God's Sabbath. It was created for man. It was the seventh day of the creation epic, but it was the first day of the creation calendar.

   So every year, the Jews always start out their civil year, Tishri one, the anniversary of creation. And I believe the Jewish year this year is the year 5,738. Now, I think they're a little bit off because I think we're a little bit closer to 6,000, but nobody really knows. And, uh, we know the date of creation beyond any question, of course, that's year one. The difficulty is knowing what date this is. We call it 1977. The Jews call it 5,738. The inhabitants call it 1,800, well let see 6 from 19 is, 1,400, 1,300 and something rather, and the Chinese have another date for it.

   We are, above almost all people, uh, ought to be more interested in new years than anybody else because we get more than anybody else. Come January one, we have to hide in the corner so that we won't be pagan and say "Happy New Year" to anybody. They smile at us and say "Happy New Year," I will frown back so that we won't partake in that pagan thing. It's really water. I'm sorry.

   I got around that quite some time ago because that season is coming up not too long after the feast. In fact I think the Christmas decorations are probably already up, and they certainly will be by Thanksgiving and probably following hot on the heels of Halloween, which is not too far off. The people will be singing, uh, "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you." We could always respond with, uh, "Merry Saturnalia and a happy Nimrod to you too." Or. They wouldn't know what you were saying, but you would be the secret inside code. You could just say "same to you, fella," you know. Uh, you know, there's always a way around it, one way or the other.

   It is amazing how in the world we, as the salt of the earth, can manage to get some points across. You know, the third commandment says thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain because God is not going to hold anybody guiltless who takes his name in vain. And it is a very stern statement on his part. Unfortunately, most of the people in the world, uh, consider that to be the poor customers who are sitting at the bar, cussing the air blue and using God's name in vain, and that is a breaking of that law, no question about it. But, uh, those people who are more responsible for taking his name in vain are those who speak in his name and don't really have that authority to speak with or speak lies or misinformation or deception. Those are the ones who are much more guilty under that law which says not to take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

   Now, there are different ways to react to people who are in the world. They're mostly completely innocent. They don't think of it one way or the other. Uh, it's a common thing for them to do. God is a forgiver all the way around, and I don't mean to condone it or join in it, but I did want to tell you about one occasion, uh, just for in the future, it might help you one way or the other.

   I remember when I was in Pasadena, I'd had a particularly hard day one day, three or four trips to the penthouse. And a number of three ringer calls. And you know, why aren't things done on time or this type of thing, and so that particular day I made three trips down to Monty's. Monty's was a bar. And, uh, so the third time I came in, the bartender said, and please understand this in its context, "Jesus Christ, is that you again?" And I said, "No, it's just me, John, but Jesus is coming."

   You know, there's always a way. There's always a way to get the gospel across. We just have to speak their language. I think Mr. Armstrong explained that. Well, I keep up these jokes, I won't have any time to talk at all. That's not even in the notes.

   My notes say happy New Year, that's where I was before. And it is going to be a happy new year. We have one now. We have another one the pagans observed in January. We have another one in the spring when the fall festival comes around because God changed the calendar at that time when he established the holy days. We have, uh, the Tet offensive, I mean the Tet New Year, and they become very offensive. Another number of New Years I guess that we could all celebrate if we were so inclined to do.

   My point is that it is not bad or evil or pagan for us to wish one another or hope that another person would have a happy new year any more than it is for us to say, well, have a good day or whatever else it might be. So we don't want to worry about that.

   Back when they were keeping a Day of Trumpets under Nehemiah and Ezra, and they read the truth to them from the Bible, explained very plainly to the people who were standing in the streets of Jerusalem and weeping and crying and, uh, feeling bad that the Day of Trumpets is not a day to feel bad on, it's a day of joy and of feasting and of a great festival activity because it is good news.

   Well, we live in a day which is pretty bad news. I would like to give you a prophecy sermon with a small "p." Because it's my own view of the next few years. I hope it will prove practical. I will throw in a few scriptures to make it biblical so that you won't feel you've lost out. Yeah, this is Sunday, you know, so it doesn't make too much difference.

   I'll tell you about some of those things that I think you can expect in the next few years, and they say forewarned is forearmed. Uh, I may give you a wrong hint because I'm a human being and I've been wrong one time before. When I thought I was wrong, but I wasn't, so, uh, you just never can tell. And this is my view anyway.

   We're told to watch as well as to pray always that we might be accounted worthy to escape all these things which will surely come to pass, and we have to live in this world between now and the time of the end, whatever that is. I don't know whether it will be in the next three to five years, and neither do you. I don't think it will be. Um, 'cause we don't know whether we'll be alive tomorrow or this afternoon, so we don't have to worry too much about that.

   Our life is made up of several major areas. The first one I would like to address is the economy. You have to face economy one way or the other. I would like to turn to Matthew 6. You don't have to, I promise I'll read it the right way. And you can always check it up later like the Bereans did. The biblical example, of course, was for the Bereans to quietly sit there and listen. With their heads up, not bowed down so he can have good eye contact with Paul, who did not bring a donkey full of codexes with him, but just ripped it out of his head whenever he, you know, thought of the scripture to use.

   But I will use this one and we won't have to worry about all that noise that 10,000 people make as they turn to Matthew 6 and verse, whatever it is here, 31 (Matthew 6:31). I found it. "Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed?" I knew that this would come up in your mind if I discussed the economy because the economy is made up of what we eat and what we drink and how we're clothed and how we're sheltered and cared for in our jobs and things like that.

   I would like to point out that the scripture should more properly be rendered, "take no anxious thought" about such things as that. God knows that we have need of them as he goes on to say, "For all these things the Gentiles seek after," they make it their chief thing in life. "For your Heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things." It isn't as if God expects us to be a hermit in a cave. Good. He knows that we have need of all those things, but goes on to say, "Seek first the kingdom of God." That's our main aim. "And His righteousness, and then all these things will be added unto you. But take no anxious thought for tomorrow because every day is evil enough all by itself."

   So in that context, I would like to give you the information that I have for you. There are also other scriptures, of course, which point out to us that we should look to the ant and notice that he works hard in the summer and stores up for the winter, anticipating future tomorrows and things that are to occur, so it is not wrong for us to...

   Thank you, Bill. Is you're beautiful. I, I needed that lemon. I'm so sweet, I need a little sour put in there on the side. And besides that, the air up here is so dry. Don't tell me that's rote gut. Oh. It's just some more water. Pardon me, watching, watching salivary glands now. Oh, I bet you we've got four gallons of saliva running in here. Boy, that's good.

   Food. We don't have to eat food in order to survive. We've noticed a number of artificial crises along with the real ones that we have. There are genuine and real and horrible crises in the world. There was a Ph.D. writing for Scientific American back in the early '70s and said we live in an age of a crisis of crises. Nuclear proliferation, pollution, overpopulation. All the overthrows of government. The possibility of really every kind of a way to kill mankind that there is known, those are all crises. We had a fuel crisis and it was quite real, though it didn't have to be. But they are along that artificial crises because a long time ago, about 10 or 15 years or so, they started to put a finger on when it was.

   People discovered that the Jews or whoever they were, and I bet you there was a Jew or two in the woodpile, who cornered the diamond market a long, long time ago, created an artificial price for diamonds. If the true law of supply and demand were to be applied to diamonds, they would run about 5 or $10 a carat because there is a vast supply of diamonds in the world. But the people who sold diamonds figured that they would somehow initiate people into feeling that diamonds were worth a whole lot more than they were, and the only way to do that was to create a control of their sale. And, uh, just let them out a little at a time, keep the price high enough so that people couldn't buy too many anyway. But when they did the really paid through the nose for it.

   So the people who are in business look at that concept and they say to themselves, if they can do it, why can't I? And so they did. Last year the price of wheat went to phenomenal heights, as many of you farmers know. And so the people who were making bread said, and I know you shall not live by bread alone, as the scripture which is in the book, but fortunately, it says, you know, we have to eat and it said bread alone, don't intend to live by bread alone, but, uh, if you don't have any bread, you don't live too good.

   And so the people who made bread said, "Hark, the price of wheat riseth. Therefore, let us riseth also our prices." And they did so phenomenally. So that if you go to the store now, the price is so close to $1 a loaf that, uh, there just won't be $1 a loaf. You know, you can buy some of that stuff that you wonder whether it's bread or not. No, uh, the good bread costs quite a bit of money. And the prices went skyrocketing when the price of wheat went up.

   But lo and behold, if you look and watch in the newspapers and the news magazines, you'll notice the price of wheat went down pitifully low, so that many of our farmers are being wiped out of business. And the agricultural bulk of this country is standing on the brink of ruin. Did the price of bread also drop? No. So they have created an artificial crisis. They've got more wheat now than they know what to do with despite the fact that it looked like it was going to be a bad year.

   For those of you who do live in the Midwest, you see it stored in streets. And, uh, all the storage facilities are full up and they don't know what to do with it and the price that they get for it is less than the amount it took them to spend to reap it. So there's plenty of wheat, hence the price of bread ought to go down, right? No. That price stays up there. You know what the cost of the wheat used in a loaf of bread is? It's between one and two cents. The rest of the money goes to the dough maker. The dough maker, you get that? I need dough also.

   As all of you do, and if you have any second tithe, as Mr. Lai has said. Why, I'd be happy to pick some up myself. You don't let anybody know tough. And we will keep it an artificial crisis that way.

   The price of sugar went up phenomenally. People started hoarding sugar, went out and bought up by 100-pound sacks when it cost an awful lot of money and then felt bad when the price dropped back down. The price of soft drinks and all the sweet goodies that anything that sugar goes into, uh, is made with went up. Now the price of sugar is back down and what it was before, but the price of all those products has not gone down.

   Do you realize that a six-pack of pop costs the same as a six-pack of beer? What a hideous state we've come to. Fortunately I don't drink pop. So that makes my other beverage cheaper in comparison. They better not create a shortage of beer. They'll hear from us, right?

   Coffee the same way. About two or three years ago in the Reader's Digest, there was an article about Brazil complaining about their economic conditions. They said they had enough coffee stored in their warehouses to feed the world's supply for 10 years. Now we're told there's a shortage and the price has to go up and maybe they might have a freeze this fall, so the price goes up some more. The American people rebelled. They brought the price down back a little bit, but the size where it is is ridiculous, and I think you have to go into the store and pay anywhere from 30 to 50 cents for a lousy cup of coffee is just ridiculous, drink beer. It's better for you.

   Now those will continue to go on, I think in the next few years. So if you hear any noises about any shortages that are going to occur and there is a possibility of setting a little bit of that commodity aside. I don't mean to stock your warehouses and rely on those physical things for your sustenance, but just to be a little cautious and wise as serpents and harmless as a dove. Don't spend all your wages and certainly don't spend your tithes and offerings on it, but I imagine you all have a little slush fund set aside where you can buy goodies from time to time. It would be a good idea to pick those items which appeared or are being lauded by the press as running into a shortage and catch them before their prices go up.

   It will continue to get quite bad, as the book of Revelation says, to the point where, uh, a drop of oil is so precious and just a little gram or pinch of wheat flour is so precious, "hurt not the wine and hurt not the oil" as the statement goes. That we have only just seen the beginning so far.

   What about shelter? We all have to live in shelter that deals with real estate. You live in a house, an apartment, you live on a farm or ranch or whatever it is. We've seen the price of real estate skyrocket ridiculously, particularly in California, where the artificial cost of housing compared with what you get for the dollar spent is utterly ridiculous. It will probably continue to rise for a short time, but I think personally that the homes will either level off or get cheaper, whereas the premium land that everybody is going to be looking for is going to be agricultural land. Anything on which you can grow a crop, because believe it or not, one way or the other, famine is coming to the United States of America.

   There are an awful lot of people who are going to extremes and they are stocking their homes for a year, two or three years of food because they're afraid of riots and civil disruption and to the breakdown in the government is going to make that necessary and we don't realize that when they do that they live in double jeopardy because it will be known that they have that and the people who are rioting will come seek it and it will be the focal point of violence. So I am not recommending that you do any such thing as that, but just be aware that if you have investments and you are planning on buying or selling, I would advise you to buy agricultural land and not high rises and condominiums and etc. etc. etc.

   One big reason for that is the horrible situation with the farming lands of this whole United States of America. We are the bread basket of the world. We produce more food than any other country on the face of the earth. Our single greatest industry is farming. It beats out General Motors, IBM, and a half a dozen other companies all put together, Exxon, Freon, whatever else it is, uh, by far, many billions of dollars of agricultural goods produced by the single largest industry in America. And the amount of money that that single largest industry's workers have been receiving back for the labor and the effort that they put into it has decreased steadily over the years, and the farmers who have great patience, because it takes patience to be a farmer, you have to do an awful lot of work before you see the end product of that work in the crop, and so they are patient. But they have just about run to the end of their patience.

   If you've been reading lately, you'll notice about 3,500 of them drove in their trucks and tractors and cars to Pueblo, Colorado to meet with the, I think it was the Undersecretary of Agriculture. And to register a complaints and a threat. Now it hasn't caught on yet. They are not organized as factory workers are. They don't have a union of their own, but they're thinking about it and they're thinking very seriously about it. And what they said in effect was, if you, the government, do not either give a subsidy for the crops we grow or create a climate in which the farmer can make more money, namely that he can make more than he has to pay to plant the stuff in the first place, then we are going to strike. And we're just not gonna plant the food. We're going to dig up a couple of acres behind our house and put us in a good garden, and we'll eat and those people in the city can just sit there and starve.

   Now you know there can be a famine more than one way or another. This country lives largely in metropolitan areas. The farming force represents something like four or six percent of our entire labor force. It is a phenomenal situation in the history of the world. There is no other country that I know of that has that few farmers for the rest of us, and they are beginning to recognize that they have a genuine stranglehold on you. Most of the people in the cities live in man-made environments. They don't see the beauty that God has created. They don't see the miracle of the planting of a seed and the growing of it to maturity and the good food and the nutritional value that comes behind it. They just go down to the grocery store and in many cases don't realize that milk comes from anything but bottles or cartons for an awful long time and so they go to the fair or they see a TV show on it or something like that.

   So the farmers are getting fed up. Now, if they do that or to whatever extent they do that, and they just don't plant one year, and if then so be in the following year, if there is such a thing, uh, left over from the food riots and the violence and the breakdown of government that might well come in the process of that, there is a bad year, even if the farmers planted, the famines would continue to go on with the resultant factor, disease and all of the ravages that come behind famine.

   Now, I'm not saying that this will happen in the next three to five years, but I hear the first inklings of it and I think it's something to be aware of. So if you are going to buy any property. I would suggest it be a possibility that you were able to plant something on it. People all around the world, in Europe and in the United States as well, the affluent countries of the Western world are more and more digging up their lawns and putting in food there for two reasons: one, for the general fear of a lack of it, and two, because the cost of every item of food has so skyrocketed they can't afford it anymore.

   The clothing is another thing of interest. Uh, I don't know if there's anything prophetic about it one way or the other. We, we came to an age, I think here about six or eight, maybe 10 years ago, even the concept of clothing was sort of for everybody to wear his own thing. There are fashions and styles, but they are not, uh, really pursued by the total crowd anymore, so, uh, you can wear whatever you want to wear as long as you wear something that will continue to be ambivalent and, uh, a lot more anachronistic things coming in like throwbacks, you know, the caveman styles, and the 1929 look or the 1980s look. And going back even earlier to the kings of England and whatnot. I hope they don't come up with pink slacks for men, but, uh, if they do I'll just keep on wearing my Levi's because that will be accepted as well.

   I understand that the most chic fashion for you women, uh, coming right out of the [inaudible], uh, I believe is the word of San Francisco and such like places of advancement, is for you to wear knickers and high boots. Now, I don't want to pick on anybody just in case you have knickers. I'll close my eyes. But I remember when I had to wear knickers. I went to school with knickers and, uh, got the living [whistle] beat out of me because of it. And, uh, so I hated knickers. Knickers are those puffy looking pants, you know, when you stick in the socks and the socks come up to your knees and about the ugliest thing you ever saw in your life. At least that's my hang up on it.

   I got around that, uh, my mother was going to force me to wear knickers. She's a little... Most mothers are. She's 87 now, by the way, I'm doing well. I know a lot of you know her. And, uh, so in order to get her to get me out of knickers into pants, I, uh, wet my knickers. Every day. Until I got my way. Oh what a dirty trick. You like it over. I don't know whether it was worth it to this day. But it worked. So, I don't know. Uh, well, whatever you want, it won't make too much difference one way or the other.

   Speaking about food, there was one more thing I wanted to tell those of you who are dieters. It seems incredible that we live in, uh, uh, such a world as we do, and mostly the women are all anxious to get rid of a few pounds, no matter how skinny they are, they always figure they have to lose another 5, 10 or 15. Oh, my wife thinks she's fat. I keep telling her, "Honey, you're not fat. I enjoy every millimeter of it..." Oh you know more mature, and there's the difference, you know. So, uh, for those of you who are dieters and you've been seeing the television ads on this new bread. You know, back in that, well, I'll just tell you what it says back in Isaiah 55, where it says come and purchase food without any money, you know, in God's kingdom and his government, the way it's going to be in the wonderful world tomorrow which is represented by this feast, where the supply of food will be both abundant and nutritious, and for those who genuinely can't afford it, they can just have it for nothing.

   And, uh, I think that's a much better system than people looking around to see how they can gouge their neighbor for a little bit higher price. But in order to take care of trends, the people in the bread baking industry have come up with a new bread. And that has more fiber and less calories. Now, of course, uh, everything you eat has calories except mushrooms and olive oil. And people don't have that as a steady diet usually, but, uh, that new bread that has more fiber and less calories, the fiber in it comes from trees. It's cellulose, if you'll notice. In short, it's sawdust bread. And it has no nutritional value whatsoever. However, the new thing is roughage. And boy is it rough, and then it goes right through. There may be one advantage to it. We don't need a newspaper. Well, whatever. Oh no. My wife is gonna hear about this and say, "Why did you ever say that?" I say, "I don't know, just came in and came out and that was all there was to it."

   What about jobs in the future market that we all have to live in, because, as I might remind you again, I know the scripture which says you cannot serve God and mammon too, and that is definitely true, but those of us who do serve God, do it with mammon. It takes mammon to run the work. It takes the guilder, the money, the, the guilder, the yen, the dollar whatever it is, and that's why we take up offerings and that's why God requires tithing. And giving of generous offerings. So it does take mammon to do the work and to serve God, we’re not to serve the mammon, but rather in turn use it to serve God. Now the way that you make mammon to serve God with is by your jobs.

   I don't think we'll have any difficulty with our jobs, but I think as far as unemployment is concerned, we're going to see it continue to rise despite whatever I mean what Jimmy does. However, at the same time, there is going to be a peculiar phenomenon taking place which is already present, of course, as we know, and that is a phenomenal percentage of unemployment, we're also going to have a vast number of jobs going begging, absolutely begging.

   Now I'm sure you read about the retired colonel this last week or so, 61 years old, not exactly the prime time to go out and get a job, who in a period of one week applied for 24 jobs and got hired for 20 of them. And in the area where there was like 14, 15% unemployment and among black youths, it was up to 40% or so. Now he didn't tell him in his application that he was a retired colonel, but he did tell his age and he put in for jobs like box boy or gas pump jockey or, you know, the common ordinary whatever was in the paper type of thing that was offered.

   It is an unfortunate situation that we live in a kind of a nation where it is better for your pocketbook not to work than it is to work. That's one of the big reasons we have that unemployment situation. But for anybody who is really interested in the job, I think you'll find the economy will support you. And there is going to be more and more people in a conservative trend that I feel is coming along, um, who will want honest workers to put in a good long hard day's work, and they will give you for that a good salary. So I think our time is yet coming as far as the job situation is concerned to make more mammon so that we can get more work done and serve God better.

   It would be better, I know if we do it God's way and in the kingdom, that is if somebody doesn't work, they don't eat after three or four days, five days, six days, you'd be surprised what a guy will do for a piece of bread or a glass of water or a glass of milk, even if it's half cellulose. So, uh, I think that's a very effective tool. Don’t you? If you don't work.

   Government, government is something we all live under. There was a wise man one time who said he is governed best, who is governed least. I know that a wise man said that because a wise man told me that a wise man said that. He forgot to tell me who it was or I had forgotten who it was he said it was, who was the wise man who said it. But anyway, Mr. Herbert Armstrong told me that a wise man said he is governed best, who is governed least, and I believe that.

   If you will look at the goal of the kingdom of God, if you will look and see what it is God wants us to be, He wants us to be God. Right, as God is God, His Son, and living life self inherent within ourself, having all power and love and concern and majesty and all of those attributes which are God's. And when you do become a Son of God, born again, changed in that moment of an twinkling of an eye or resurrected from the dead. Then you will no longer need to be governed. You will govern yourself. You will never allow yourself just as God does not, to do anything for which you would have to be governed. You will be your own governor.

   Now God the Father will always be in charge, but you know, he's in charge of Jesus today, and I've never read anywhere of any argument between the two. Uh, where the Father had to slap down the Son because he was doing something wrong, right? And Jesus, independent as he is, and an individual God Himself, always lives in the same code with the same mind and thought and concern as his Father. His Father governs his own self, and Jesus governs his own self, as you and I, ultimately entering into the kingdom will be required to do and also capable of doing. I think that's good news.

   This is not the kingdom, however. This is the United States of America. The very best nation on the face of the earth. At present. But we've got a lot of lousy nations. And so whenever I travel overseas, even if it is to beautiful New Zealand or Australia, which I certainly enjoy or Norway, where my fathers came from, or Switzerland or England or Germany or wherever it is I've been around this tired sick poor old world. I always jump for joy and then kiss the ground when I get back to the good old USA because lousy as it is, it's the best place on earth. Now that's my [inaudible] message for the day. We'll let it go at that.

   However, it's getting lousier and lousier as time goes on. If you think government, I said, what we're gonna have is more government. Now I know Jimmy said we were gonna have less, but you know political promises. All you do is look at him in a mirror and turn them around the other way if he says more it's less. He says less, it's more, you know, so that's what we're gonna have, we're gonna have more.

   He was going to reform, re-establish, put back together again the government agencies of the United States. He has spent a great deal of time focusing on his bank balances and since he's been in office, of course, and not been able to concentrate on some of those projects which you had in mind. But he has meanwhile established a whole new department. The department of government has not been established in about 11 years, I think. Lennon Johnson was the last one to establish a separate department. He is going to employ, I don't know how many thousands of people, and it's gonna cost you and me in this first next year, its infant budget year, 20 billion dollars more. And who knows what pain and suffering and having to fill out more forms in quadruplicate and sextuplicate in order to be able to function or to do something else.

   If you think the cost of government was high in the past. Then I think you will find under this administration that the past cost of government will look like peanuts. Oh, that's there getting worse all the time, aren't they? Go to this next one, whenever it comes. There it is.

   Uh, you know, when our founding fathers created the United States of America and put together that fantastic Constitution, which is the only thing that stands between us and socialism, and they're chipping away at it on the edges, uh, I think they would be very disgusted with the world in which we find ourselves. Now we know it's one world and we have to live in it, and there must be some controls put on people because they are human beings, they're not God. They're not governing themselves and so they have to be governed. And the more you don't govern yourself, the more you have to be governed. But it is a sad circumstance that we have come to. We are surrounded by so many pieces of legislation that, uh, there is not much left of the human effort which is not put into, uh, rut by some law. Executed unfortunately not by God but by mankind. And so everything that we have around us is subject to some form of law one way or the other.

   I bought five acres about four, five, six years ago back in the hills. It's got a few pieces of timber on it and, uh, it was a shock to me to find out when I went up there one summer and figured I'd camp out for a little while, and if you camp out, you have to have the necessities, at least a pit and a pole, you know, so that you can take care of nature's needs and the, uh, high protein, I mean high fiber bread. And you know, I couldn't do that without, uh, going to the government and let them give me a permit to put in a pit. Uh, in five acres.

   Now you know the law back in Deuteronomy, you have three million Israelites out on the desert, and he says, look, the only permit you need is a paddle. You take it with you and bury what you do and, uh, that.

[Tape Flipped]

   It is certainly a switch wandering all over the Sinai Desert. I think so anyway. I really don't know that for sure. But it is unfortunate that we are surrounded with so many of those things.

   I looked at the trees and I thought, when I was up there, well, I, I believe I'll sell some of these. They're my trees after all. No, they weren't my trees. I had to go to the government and get a permit. I filled it out in sextuplicate. They sent it to five different governmental agencies and granted me a permit to take those trees down. I say, "Well, that's all fine. We have to keep track of that," but it's just one more little bind one way or the other. You want to put in a well, you have to get a permit. You want to put up an outhouse, you have to put a permit. You want to put up a house, you got to have a permit. Now look, I reckon and I see and I know, but you do have to have regulation and law, but it does get a little bit ridiculous.

   We do believe that the oil and gas situation. Of course there is a vast amount of oil and gas still available to mankind, and it's partly an artificial crisis which is being created there and it's not as real as it appears to be, and there is, to my knowledge an engine which has been perfected to the point of a prototype which works done by Stanford University, I believe, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Which runs on water. That is, it separates hydrogen from oxygen in the water, burns the hydrogen, releases no effluence or pollution whatsoever.

   But now if you were in the gas business and the oil business, you wouldn't want to see somebody come onto the market with an engine that burned water. Would you? So that has to be controlled. And that won't come out until we run out of gas and water and buy, gas and water, gas and oil, and by that time those same people who have a stranglehold on the fuel that you burn in your car will have found some way by law or by whatever trick of the trade they come up with to completely control your water consumption.

   Now you live in California and you know how that's possible. The very fact that we have a drought here has given government more power over you, and whenever government gets power, it never lets it go. So even in the crisis and the necessity of rationing of water, which we do have, and it is a real and genuine crisis and live here in this state. You know that it is entirely possible, particularly those of you who live in Marin County, near San Francisco, for them to determine your total usage of water. And they tell you how many gallons you can use in a day, and they put a meter on you, and if you exceed that, your either finded or your water is cut off, literally, you know, we use that expression, we'll cut your water off while they've come to the point where they can do it. And they are executing that.

   Now, it is very simple to control your usage of water for running your car. I understand it would cost even now about $400 to convert your car to burn water. And came into the service station. We're really frustrating. You know fill your tires with air and gas tanks with water and burn out of there with no pollution behind you at all. Uh, however, if you had to have a government permit to buy water to put in your tank, then they would have the control of it. So I presume if everything goes on long enough so that we do run out of gas and oil, and I don't think we've got that much time left. They will have come up with a control for that so that you'll have to pay a premium price for water as well.

   It is entirely possible for the government through regulatory agencies and licensing to control the sunlight that lands on your land and permit you to only use so much of it. I mean, after all, it's not very easy to hide a solar collector and you know if it's got to have a tag on it and a number. And it's registered and you pay tax on it, and so on, and you know, we are at an age where literally not even the sunshine is free. It can be government controlled and the air. Well, I don't know how they're going to control that, but they'll think up some way if they're given long enough. But certainly the land, the water, and the natural resources which are on that land are totally controlled, and that is, that means more government.

   Now we're looking around internationally. Of isolationism, a move on our part to withdraw behind our borders. We're sick of the crimes of Vietnam and the nation as a whole has turned inward and said, look, let the rest of the world take care of itself, and we'll take care of ourselves. This is all very much predicted in the Bible [Tape Skips]… [inaudible] and, uh, our commitments to foreign nations such as Israel and Iran and things of these sort that I think you see in the newspapers. We're pulling back from our commitments around the world and sticking our head in the sand as a nation. And as a result of that, we're going to discover ourselves beleaguered. At our gates in trade wars. And all of those things which we have heard so much about from the pulpit in the past which we see happening in the pages of the newspapers around us today.

   In the future, and we're only one nation of Israel in God's kingdom and his government here on this earth, as far as the physical nations of the world are concerned, it says back in Isaiah, I believe it is that the three, the triangle of three nations that are going to be the greatest are Israel, Egypt, and Assyria. Now if Assyria is correct in our calculations is the modern day Germany and, uh, it is certainly apparent from all of the scriptures that Israel, all of it gathered together in their scattered places around this world, are going to be the dominant nation of the world physically speaking in, uh, under the kingdom of God on this earth, and it struck me that, uh, you know, we have that song where we sing. That comes from the old German national anthem. The German national anthem goes "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles." I would love to see the looks on the faces of those who perhaps at some future time are going to have to sing "Israel, Israel über alles." See, he told you I sing. I'm gonna save the dancing for later though. But I think, uh, the Germans will have a hard time choking down Israel, Israel overall.

   What about privacy? I think that comes up next and I, I have in that particular segment because, uh, when we talk about government, we talk about law, we talk about regulations, we get down to the point of losing what little privacy you have left. Most of you don't realize that you have as little privacy as you do. We do not live in a private world.

   Now, it's one thing for God to see the thought and intent of our hearts and to look into, the marrow of our bone to determine the difference between our intent and our, uh, what we do and to see our sins before they even become sins and also thankfully to see our repentance as it's coming along and to know what we have need of before we even ask, and it is quite another thing for a human government to have the same control over people and yet that is of course what we're going through all the way through.

   How many of you know by heart, your Social Security number? Gotcha. Now as those of you who can remember dear old FDR, they go back in the dark ages of the depression. Social Security, and he said, "My fellow Americans. Your Social Security number will never be used for anything but your Social Security." Bushwa. And you notice the need that you have had for your Social Security number? You just think it's John Hill up there talking to you. Actually, it's number 538-28-7798. Now I never should have given you that number. So this is my real one. I said alive, but I have an aversion to that.

   As a result of a phenomenal thing that happened in your lifetime and mine, the invention of the computer. It is now entirely possible and almost to the point of full completion to bring George Orwell's vision of 1984 into reality, the total control of people by keeping track of everything they do.

   You saw a show called 60 Minutes which comes on on Sunday nights and it was quite a fine television show, a documentary type. I saw in the newspaper or television, the new on a segment here not too long ago and the fact that every single check you've ever written is on microfilm and available not only to the government but to many other private industries, and it is held by the banks, of course, at the request of the government.

   Now, that's not too bad. So you wrote a few checks. But if you just look back at your check record, they can pretty well keep track of where you go and what you buy and what you prefer and how much you spend on what, and that turns out to be good information for business people because then they can know how to make you tempt you to spend even more in the areas where you evidently have a, a liking to spend it anyway and so it boils down to a control of you which is, uh, sort of hidden and not seen.

   Now we are fast approaching that point where we're going to be a cashless society. I said, me, I'm already cashless, you know. And that's my problem. What do you mean excess second tithe?. Uh, I haven't got enough myself, but, uh, you know, I hope many of you do because I'm sure you do. And I don’t want to make fun of that either one way or the other, there are those who are in genuine need, and I hope you will share whatever excess that you have with them.

   But in the cashless society which is coming up with most of the money doesn't exist anyway, if you look at your paper money, you will discover that it says it is a Federal Reserve note. That's exactly what it is. Now, fortunately, in fine print, I think I have a $1 bill here. I'll take it out and read it for you. Well, goodness sake, that's a $10 bill. Well, it's the same thing. It says the same thing on everyone.

   I talked to, I don't know how many people, and when you've experienced this yourself. One fellow was, uh, I think it was in New Orleans or somewhere like that, and he wanted to rent a car. He had $1,000 cash in his pocket. And he wanted to rent an automobile. And the people who were renting the automobile says, "Oh no you don’t, you have to have a credit card, some kind of a credit card. We can't rent you this car for cash." And it took him about three or four hours calling around to finally have somebody give them because he didn't have any credit cards, he was used to paying cash for things. The, uh, people finally relented and used somebody else's card number so that he could have it because cash was no good for them.

   If anything like this ever occurs to you, read the fine print on your money in the upper left hand corner. On the part with a face on it. You know George and Abraham, Hamilton and some of those others, all right. You will note that it says this. "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." And you look at in the eye and say if you don't accept that than I am going to sue you. Big. And then you won't be able to, uh, try harder anymore. So it does get you a little bit upset, but it's a, it's a wave of the future type of thing, you know.

   We had to have a law come in so that all these credit agencies wouldn't send you credit cards that maybe you didn't even know you received until you got a bill for it because little Johnny down the street got it out of your mailbox and you've been using it for three weeks. Even before you found out you even had one. So they had a law about that and you have to ask for it anymore. But you've asked for enough of them, and if you come through your billfold, you'll probably run across somewhere between four and six little plastic cards that has a, has a number on it and allows you to purchase things at different stores of your choice.

   Now whichever the store of your choice is, whether it's Macy or Sears or let's pick Sears, that's everywhere, and I do mean everywhere in the whole world and you’re all familiar with it. My Sears number, uh, I couldn't remember if my life depended on it. 9487635-42046987300-, you know, have to carry with your suitcase. It's so huge and it would be much more convenient for them if they could use your Social Security number. Now you might have to sign a little thing that permits them to do so because according to the law, it is not supposed to be used for anything but your Social Security. And, uh, but wouldn't that be more convenient. Then you wouldn't have to remember one credit card number and another credit card number and another one. And you just, you just always know what your number was, whatever your Social Security number was. It's only nine digits. It's easy to remember it, three little segments so that you can remember it. You've got a sing song there that just spouted out, you've had to use it for so long. Everybody knows your Social Security number.

   Now if you went one step beyond that, wouldn't it be fantastic, if you didn't even have to carry the cards. What if Sears, you know, really stepping out on a promotional. Said, "Well, look, all you have to do is come down where the helping hands are and, uh, come to our little office there and with a simple and painless situation there, we will tattoo, visibly, of course, so when you're in your lovely hands, your Social Security number on your hand. See and then whenever you come in here, you just pass on the black light and we. You know, so, yep, that's you. That's good old 538-387-798 if I ever saw him. I can remember faces, but I never can remember numbers. Well I'll say or something."

   Uh, wouldn't that be terrific, you know, then you can just throw your purse away, then you wouldn’t have to carry money, uh, you just carry your hand around with it, which most people do. Then of course, if, uh, you happen to be an individual who who accident or both did not have a hand, they can always put it on your forehead. I read that somewhere. I think it was in the book of Revelation, about the sign in your hand and in your forehead. No, no, I didn't really say that was that. I said it's a possibility. No, I don't think your Social Security number is the number of the beast, although it is a beast of the number.

   But it is entirely possible within the realm of computers to control everything that you do, and it would make it much easier for the computer to do so if they just did it with one number instead of a vast different number of numbers, you see, I see that coming. Uh, whether or not we'll live long enough for it to happen, I don't know, but I don't like it. I don't know that there's anything I can do about it except grip and complain. And there's other words that I can't use up here about it, but I think it's there.

   Now, what I would like to ask your cooperation is, is just for kicks because I would like to say something about it editorially in the pages of the fine magazine that I write for called The Plain Truth, uh, maybe in the, uh, Why Not Section. I put in there. If you ever hear about any kind of a story which offers this fantastic service of giving you an invisible tattoo on your hand, even if it's their number. Uh, people would shy away from that though, we've sort of cozy up to our own number, but they have some department store number, there's another thing. But if it's your very own number and nobody else has it, why then it might not be so bad attaching that on there. So if that ever comes, let me know. Well yeah, I don't care if it's the grocery store down the frame there. It's possible, it's scientifically possible and technologically possible. And I think sooner or later that's what's gonna happen.

   What about your taxes? They're gonna go up and say, so what's news? You're some prophet. I knew that. They went up last year, they'll go up next year. What about taxes in the kingdom of God? And even here on earth today, where those of us who are trying to live according to the rules of the kingdom of God in a lawless society. We are trying to manage with our finances.

   Well, there's many you mentioned, you know, you look back there in Micah about the fourth chapter or Isaiah 2, either one of them they both say the same thing about the kingdom of God. It talks about the legislative, the judicial, and the executive branches of the kingdom of God. It doesn't say anything about taxes. It says there's going to be plenty of activity going on an education program for the whole world, teaching them not to go to war anymore, uh, a powerful force that doesn't seem to have to be paid, uh, that is going to rebuke strong nations a far off until they beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, many not just as a motto of the United Nations. And yet there doesn't seem to be much of a cost involved.

   So what about the tithe? Well, that's for the priesthood, which will be reestablished, you know, as Ezekiel explains in the last eight chapters of his book, and they're going to have to be paid for and subsidized and taken care of somehow, but there's one good thing about tithe as opposed to taxes. You know what that is? Tithes never go up. Taxes do. A tithe is a tithe is a tithe. A tithe cannot be 20%. It has to be 10%. Now, it can't be eight either, but it's 10. It starts out at 10 and it stays at 10. It will be 10 in Moses' time, 10 in our time, and 10 in the middle of the millennium. So if it is a tax that you think about the tithe is gaining, then it will always be 10%, never any more, never any less.

   I said, "But we got a second tithe that makes it 20%." And I said, "Well, hey, hey, hey, wait a minute now, you're cheating because that you spend on yourself and you allow yourself the joy of the Feast of Tabernacles and the other annual holy days every single year. It's good for you. You really do enjoy it, and if you weren't commanded to save it, you probably wouldn't come and you wouldn't have any fun, and you'd just be deeply in debt and owe a little bit more to the company store and not have the fun of the feast anyway, so it really cheats. You can't count that one."

   Well, how about the third tithe. I mean that's a governmental regulation of the kingdom of God in the millennium, but that only comes once every three years, so it only boils down to about 3%, and that's for a good cause for those who literally, because there will be, I suppose even in the millennium, a few who are widows and orphans and those who are helpless and cannot care for themselves, genuine people who cannot work and who must eat and not malingerers. Who the law [inaudible] says if you don't work, then you won't eat. Uh, I wonder if 100 years or so into the millennium we won't just suspend the third tithe. I think everybody living all around the world after two or three generations and living according to God's laws. Well, we'll have so much so much third tithe piled up, we don't know what to do with it. And, uh, well, that'll be something interesting maybe you and I will get to help legislate on as members of the kingdom of God in the future.

   Well, that's, uh, what, 23% roughly every year. That and with an offering or two thrown in, which is not a percentage one way or the other is your total taxation system that's visible in the Bible. Now, maybe there will be taxes. I don't know the build roads and public services and things of that sort, but it seems that the economy of the millennium is rather decentralized than centralized, and even though there will be a great and vast highway built between Assyria and Egypt and Jerusalem, uh, it doesn't say exactly how that's going to be built, and then we get to thinking about the statement that Jesus made that if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you can speak to that mountain and say be moved into the sea, and we can move a heck of a lot more than the biggest dirt movers on the face of the earth if you just got one grain of mustard seed's worth of faith, and I think that each of us will be handed out our grain in the kingdom, so making those will probably not be as difficult when you are God, as there is now. Where an I?

   Uh, the tax that God requires in the perfect world in which he lives or wants you to live, is completely different than that burden, and it seems so often that our enemies claim it is a burden upon us that the taxes of this nation put on you. You know how many pennies out of every dollar are taxed, hidden, or open to view? 47 percent of every dollar is tax money one way or the other. Now you say 47 and 23, let's see. 47 and 23. Why that's 70%. And that only leaves me with 30% to live on. You see, it's a tough world. And it's even tougher for those of you who are in the church because you have the added burden, responsibility, joy, whichever way you look at it, of supporting a unique work on the face of the earth.

   Religion, I see a conservative trend coming along that scares me to death that looks like it's possible sometime in the near future for those horrible scriptures to be fulfilled which says they will take us into their synagogues and before their governors and kill us thinking they do God a service. I do not like what I see.

   What about the rulers around us. God says that the small are going to stand up and, uh, act or act as if they're great. Well, it comes right down to the clinch at the end. Now I begin to think about people like Torrijos, who was a dictator of Panama. And Arafat who was the head of the PLO. And General Amin, who was the imperial emperors of the world. And I began to think, uh, you know, some of those prophecies seem to be coming true.

   You know what happened? You know, General Brown, who was the head of the chiefs of staff of the United States of America, just under the president, who was the supreme commander of all of our forces. Supreme Commander Carter, you know him. And, uh, Brown was talking to Torrijos one day and he said, "Do you realize that it would take 100,000 troops and vast amounts of money to secure the Panama Canal against any possible sabotage." And so Torrijos said.

   Now why did our chief of staff talk to a skinny little dictator off in a Latin American country that wouldn't even exist if Teddy Roosevelt hadn't walked softly and carried a big stick and decided he was going to have a ditch across that canal. And so created the banana republic of Panama carved out of a piece of Colombia. Uh, you know, most people barely know where Panama is, and this little red-tinged dictator is standing up and shaking his fist at that giant of the North, the United States of America, and saying if you don't turn the canal over to us, we're going to bomb it. No, I'm afraid I'm going to say that directly, but that's what he means. He said, "I feel if the treaty is not signed, that there will be sabotage."

   Now he's already been assured by our chief of staff that if he tries sabotage, it will probably succeed because we don't have anywhere near 100,000 troops there to control and to protect the Panama Canal. That's a small nation standing up for the biggest, most giant nation on the face of the earth and getting away with it. And you've seen that happen with one after another, it's a sad world that we live in. We're gonna see a whole lot more of it.

   One world is, whether it bears the title of communism or fascism or socialism or Nazism or any other kind of -ism, is a sad counterfeit for the kingdom of God, which is none of those, uh, but is God's kingdom and yet rules over this earth as one world. May that kingdom come.

   And now in that kind of an atmosphere. What is the situation that the work is going to face? And how can we in the chaotic events that are coming to pass and the sad situation which I have only briefly outlined here this morning, going to get the work done and there's going to be shortages of this and crises of that and a breakdown in government and all of that sort of thing.

   But what happens in a situation like that is that people have more problems. If you think back on your conversion, as most of us when we meet each other think. Uh, what happened to you? How did you come to the truth? How did you get into God's church? What did he do to you or for you that brought you to your knees and your temps and made you see yourself the way you are? And those stories are fascinating. And individual are different as there are numbers who are here, and yet they carry one overwhelming similarity in most cases, and that seems to be that something bad happened to you. You lost your job, you lost your wife, you lost your health, you lost your mind, you know, whatever it is you lost, there was some blow that occurred to you that made you stop short in life and say, hey, why am I here anyway? Where am I going? And this world around me is crazy anyway.

   Well, that's going to occur more and more and more in the years ahead indefinitely in the three to five, which I've been trying to talk about more than others, so I see my predictions have gone wandering on until to the end, whenever that will be. But the worse things get, the more chaotic they get, the more problems that occur, the more breakdown of the services and government and whatnot that is around us, the more people are going to come stock still and say to themselves, why am I here?

   And that's what we're here for, brethren, to fulfill the commission which has been given to us. You've read it in the last couple of verses of Malachi with which you are very familiar and sure. Remember the law of Moses with all its statutes and judgments, and God promises to send Elijah before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord and turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers. I think that's basically been the theme of the feast so far. I don't hope to disrupt that theme one way or the other. I guess Mr. Ted Armstrong has already spoken here, so those afterward feel free to speak as they did.

   But what we saw on the stage before I got up here, didn't turn the hearts of a few parents, adults and fathers to their children and in that lovely song that we had from those cute little people... I don’t know who it were and I think we've got a head start on the world with our YOU activities, with our concern about the family, which is certainly breaking down around us all the way, and out of those concerns and out of those efforts, out of our mammon that we give to the work to run the work of God is going to come a harvest in those next three to five years, I think that we will far exceed what we have seen in the past because the people are ready and they're going to be more than ever before simply because of the chaotic condition in which this world is going to have to suffer and to live.

   And a little advance warning of some specific areas that are going to have to suffer. Perhaps you'll be forewarned and forearmed. At any rate, however bad the new year is ahead, how a happy one.