Herbert W Armstrong

   And I certainly didn't feel that any trip to Australia, if it was possible, would be complete without a trip here to Perth and to Western Australia. And I'm very glad we came.

   Now, we won't get to meet all of you, I'm sure, but after services are over, we'll try to shake hands and get acquainted with as many of you as possible. Everybody that knows you in the United States at headquarters says hello, and I won't go down the long list of names. I think we have more students from this area than any other area of Australia, interestingly enough, where more of you are here at the feast.

   We tried to have all of the Australian students over to our home for dinner. One night before we left, and the list of parents and loved ones and friends is much longer than this area than any other, at least. So, hello to all of you, and we hope we can meet those parents and friends of students.

   Say hello, especially to you. And I bring you very special greetings personally from Mr. Armstrong, who certainly wants us to extend his love and greetings to you.

   He does that personally via the tape, but he asked us all, of course, as we travel out representing him to say hello, and certainly from Mr. Tkach in ministerial service and from, as I said, all those who know you.

   You're getting, I think, a glimpse of how things are via the tape and the films and the announcements that are being made for Mr. Armstrong personally. We'll hear a pre-recorded message again on the last day from Mr. Armstrong. So I think you can gather from that that Mr. Armstrong himself is doing very well.

   He's in good health, feels good. He comes out, as you may have noticed, but he usually uses these words: he walks out to speak on his 92-year-old legs. But then you probably notice when he sits down, but we are oblivious to the years that have rolled by, except the wisdom and the inspiration he can bring us.

   It just doesn't seem like we are conscious of those kinds of things. You probably noticed, and of course, he commented in the television transmission from opening day that his eyesight now has failed him to the degree that he cannot read. And of course, that's very sad for him.

   It's disappointing. I hope we will all continue to remember to pray about that. We have certainly been praying about it as the years have gone by.

   His eyesight seems to have now gradually faded to the point he cannot effectively, in a situation like on stage, read the Bible or notes. When he came out on the Feast of Trumpets, he made an interesting statement. It was the first time he had come out without notes or the Bible to read.

   And of course we were all quite surprised because he usually comes out and he has a big, thick two-volume edition of the Bible. When he puts his magnifying glass on it, of course, it makes the print look that big. And he still, with that, even, cannot effectively read.

   So he didn't even bother to bring his Bible out, though, it was strange and different to see him walk out on the stage that way. And he sat down and he said, Well, he had bad news and good news for us that day.

   And the bad news was that his eyesight had now failed him to the degree he could not effectively read. And so he didn't bother to bring even his notes and his Bible out because they would not be necessary. But he said, The good news is that while his eyesight may be blinding from a physical point of view, that God had not left him spiritually blind.

   And we thought that was a very inspiring statement. I don't think he made that in the tape, the opening day message that said that, but it certainly I think speaks of how he feels that God is even regularly guiding him into new knowledge and truth and understanding and much greater depth. And so we can look forward to, I am sure, a great deal of time in the future.

   Mr. Larry O'Masta, who directs our television productions and I think has been here in Perth. Perhaps many of you have met him, has commented even the last week before the festival, Mr. Armstrong, I think made two or three programs right up before the feast telecast, and he went on them without any notes. So it's all in his head and his mind and heart, and it's just a matter of him being confident to sit down and to let it roll out so that he can continue to do the job, which he full well continues to do and intends to do and to provide inspiration for us.

   And another reason I wanted to come out here, I'm sure all of you at Western Australia have heard this, but I would hate to have Mr. Armstrong upon my return and knowing we were in Australia come across me on the campus and say, ask about the trip to Australia and ask if we saw Perth and tell him no.

   Because, as you may know, he said when he came here not too long back, a year or so, wasn't it ago, that he found it the most beautiful city he had been in. And I just felt like I couldn't, with that kind of publicity, how can you turn that down? You know, you've got to come and see for yourself how Mr. Armstrong, and he's been all over the world, of course, and almost everywhere.

   So we're very, very thankful to be here and spending the time with you out in this part of the country. Even though it's only for two days that we do get to be with you, will at least get acquainted with the ministry here, some of whom I had not known too well before, but will, after a couple of days of spending some time, get to know not only them, but many of you as possible.

   From editorial services, where I work most of the time, I also want to bring you greetings and just to bring you a little bit of the personal feeling. I trust that knowing Dr. Torrance, and if he were here, he probably gave a big propaganda spiel for Big Sandy.

   He usually does. He didn’t do that here. He didn’t discipline himself.

   Whichever. He disciplined himself. That's unusual for Dr. Torrance. He usually is the one-man walking chamber of commerce for Big Sandy. And he might have just said, Well, maybe I better not do that so far away.

   But he's a very enthusiastic man, as you know, and a very interesting life. He probably didn't tell you a lot about his life personally, but he's had a most interesting life. Some ups and downs in it.

   We're very thankful he could be out. This is really his first opportunity to travel like this and to be out. On an international trip away from the college in Big Sandy, so I was very thankful that he could make this trip.

   And I won't try to spend a lot of time by way of announcement, just to bring you the personal aspect of it, though, and then come to the sermon. But from the point of view of editorial services where I work, when we come out, I think it's nice that we talk about those areas that we do represent. And everyone in that department certainly wishes to say hello to you.

   Dr. Hoeh is the editor of The Plain Truth, Mr. Faulkner, who's the managing editor of all our magazines, and got his early career started in God's work down here in Australia where he worked for the first several years of his tenure in God's service that helped prepare him, no doubt, for the job that he is now fulfilling on behalf of Mr. Armstrong, editing our publications.

   The Plain Truth is a growing magazine, and you had a lot of statistics on that in the early day of the feast, and probably we'll get those that weren't maybe updated on the opening day as we try to bring you, hopefully, the inspiration of what your tithes and offerings are providing for God's work.

   Mr. Armstrong has commented that the Plain Truth magazine is the most important tool we have, and if I can just speak personally, it has been a real privilege these past now, just more than two years, that I have gone full-time and working with the magazines.

   When Mr. Armstrong called me on the telephone or had me called, he didn't personally do it, but decided that he would like us to move out to Pasadena and to join the staff editorially, it was like saying, Congratulations, you now are a writer. I didn't know that before, and so you wonder what you can do.

   I had contributed occasional articles over the years, mostly for the good news, and maybe two, I think it was, over a 20-year period of time for the Plain Truth. So it wasn't as though it was something that I considered myself doing. But as I settled into a midlife career change and began to write full-time, it has been a real inspiration to me personally.

   I think if you could put yourself in my place, and you saw me in the behind-the-work films there for a fleeting few seconds, pecking away at my word processor, perhaps. When you sit there, there writing, creating thoughts out of your head or doing research and trying to put it down on paper, and you realize that when that goes into the process of the printing and finally it's put out onto the newsstands and mailed into the homes of seven and a half million people, you know, it really does something to you. How many writers in the world have an audience of seven and a half million subscribers?

   You know, it's a real privilege. And we have to realize, in addition to that, that probably two or three people are reading the magazine for each one that's printed.

   So a family may get one copy and three or four people or more read it. So we have to have in our minds an idea that perhaps maybe even 20 or more million people could possibly read an article. That is, if it's interesting enough, if the title grabs them, if the drophead leads them into it, and if the material in it is something they'll stay with.

   And that's what we're trying to do with the magazine. And I think you'll find if you go back over the years that, and as Mr. Armstrong has expressed to us, he really now feels the magazine is doing the job. Not that it didn't do it in the past, but there were times when perhaps we were orienting ourselves to a world that we did not fully know how to reach. And we now are, we think, able to say the biblical things without appearing overly religious and turning people off.

   So they pick up the mag and they say, oh, this is just a religious tract and throw it away. But they want to read it for its content. But they find when they do, that whether they want to or not, they're finding God's instruction for their lives.

   And even though God may not be calling the Masses of people in this day and age. He's calling some, and that there are many others that are at least hearing, and I'll be speaking about that a little bit later in the sermon as we get along toward the end of it, to call once again to your attention how important it is that this message go out in a way that people can understand it, at least if not now, in the future, and that those things will be remembered.

   And so we feel that God is leading and directing and guiding us to really have the kind of work and programs that you saw in the introductory film that preceded Mr. Armstrong's message on the opening day message from Pasadena: the wonderful things that God has available, and how Mr. Armstrong has been able through 50 years now to ever increasingly, as the years have gone by, more powerfully reach the whole world through the means that were shown there.

   So it is an exciting, exciting work to be part of, and I hope that you are catching that vision more and more as each time goes by, as the years roll on. I know you are, and thank you very much for your dedication and zeal and your loyalty to Mr. Armstrong. If there's anything Mr. Armstrong appreciates, it's your loyalty.

   Because as we know, there are unfortunately some who could not stay with it, who grew disgruntled, who could not understand, who grew disillusioned and discouraged, even angry in some cases, and they are no longer effectively doing God's work. In some cases, they are actually striving to persecute God's work, which is very sad.

   Mr. Armstrong knows you are there behind him and has made encouraging statements over the last year, that I hope all the brethren really understand that he does feel that you are as vital to this work as he or anybody else. It's just a matter of how we are each effectively used.

   But together and collectively, while very small in number, we do make up a very significant force in reaching people, and it's going to increase as the years go by. So, continue to do the good work. And it's so wonderful to get out here and meet people of like spirit and kindred.

   And it's, you know, it's not like walking into a strange room at all when I walk in and start shaking hands and chatting with people, and stand up here and look at you and speak. It is like I'm in any congregation of God's people anywhere in the world.

   They all are very attentive, very appreciative, and it's wonderful to be here. But I better not spend a lot of time just kind of rambling and talking and come to the message, the sermon, because we are here, as has been mentioned even earlier in the prayer, to receive spiritual food. And I hope that we can bring that at this time.

   It was May in the year of our Lord 1588. It was an unusual spring. Cold winds were blowing, and it seemed more like December than it did May.

   Some of the Spanish sailors were edgy. Ill winds were blowing, some of them said. And it was rumored the astrologers had predicted that it would be something like this: May 1588, and the history of the modern world was about to go under a radical change.

   In fact, the changes of that summer would be so dramatic that those who would study history some 400 years later could scarcely imagine the world that would have been had there been a different turn of events in the summer of 1588. In his quest for dominion of the seas, Philip II, King of Spain, had assembled the most powerful armada of ships the world had ever known. There were nearly 140 of them in the armada: Spanish galleons, Portuguese men of war.

   Corsairs, hoys, caravels, crumpsters, and galliots, loaded with port guns, muzzle loaders, and breech loaders, nine-foot cannons that could hurl a 30-pound ball 500 yards with deadly accuracy, and the latest developed culverins that could hurl an 18-pound ball more than two miles. The Armada appeared invincible. In May of 1588, the Armada lay at anchor off the Spanish coast near Belin.

   Spanish reports had indicated that the British were indeed no match for the vast armada assembled, no match at all for the trained fighting men Philip had assembled. At long last, Philip sighed, we will bring the British back into the Mother Church, into the Catholic fold that they had departed from. It was Philip's intent to conquer England, be supreme in Europe, and dominate through Spain the colonization of the world that been discovered in the previous years. Elizabeth I of England knew the importance of the coming months. She commissioned her leading admirals to ship.

   First of all, John Hawkins on Her Majesty's ship Victory, Martin Frobisher, who had reached fame by opening the Northwest Passage on HMS Triumph, and the Dragon of the Seas himself, Sir Francis Drake, on the Revenge. They appeared to be England's only hope, and the future indeed looked bleak.

   The Spanish had been well aware of these British admirals, having engaged them numerous times before. They especially were aware of Sir Francis Drake. For years he had been raiding Spanish ships in the Caribbean and West Indies.

   In 1572, only some years before, the daring young admiral had personally led an invasion in Nombre de Dios in Panama, and thereafter had gained the nickname from the Spanish, the Dragon. He was as feared as any pirate who had ever hoisted the skull and crossbones. The Spanish captain general, Duke of Medina Sidonia, was anxious to be off.

   The Armada was as ready as it would ever be. The most seasoned fighting men had been gathered and prepared. By May 30th, the fleet was out to sea and began to beat their way up the Spanish coast.

   I say beat because of those miserable winds, those strange, unexplainable summer winds. Some days they would not blow at all. Other days so contrary, they would box the compass at one time or another, coming from all directions.

   The fleet inched along. Thirteen days, 160 nautical miles. Food began to spoil.

   Water supplies consumed, and some became contaminated. It was hard to understand. June?

   Storms? It was the best sailing month of the year. And weren't we the Spanish reason sailing for God's cause to bring England back to the Mother Church?

   The weakening of the fleet was reported to Philip, and his orders from Spain came back. Forward, in God's name! It took nearly a month to resupply the ships, at least minimally, to repair the damages that had been done as they had been beating their way up the coast.

   But finally, a brisk south wind blew, and there was a mood of cautious optimism among the Spanish sailors. By July 30th, the sails of the Armada were sighted off the southern coast of England, near Plymouth. The vast Spanish crescent made famous in the military battles of naval affairs, stretched, it seemed, from horizon to horizon.

   Some of the English actually thought it was the beginning of the Battle of Armageddon. Having left the Catholic Church, many in England had come to feel that the Book of Revelation had depicted her as the great harlot, and that the Antichrist was the Pope, and now his armies were only off the coast a short distance. The sighting of the fleet was reported to Sir Francis Drake, who, interestingly enough, as the story goes, at least, was at a game of bulls.

   And the famous statement he made was, We have time to finish my game of bulls, and then we'll defeat the Spanish Armada. Interestingly enough, I've given this sermon as we've traveled around, and in the Gosford, the first site that we were over on the east coast, after the sermon was over, one of the gentlemen in the church asked my wife to come back and showed her something. And later I was able to see it.

   We meet in Gosford at the League's Club there, which is a vast sports-type complex of many different kinds of activities-from outside cricket and football pitches to inside bowling lanes and that type of thing, many other types of things like that. And there in the bowling lanes, way back in this labyrinth of club rooms in the same complex we were meeting, was a big base relief-type painting, probably nearly a quarter the size of one of the back walls of this room back there, very large, and it was depicting that very event, because it was a bowling lanes, of course, and they were in the paintings showing the history of the bowling.

   And there was Sir Francis Drake at his game of bowls, and the courier reporting to him that the Armada had been sighted off the Spanish coast. Some thought it was the prophesied end of the world. The British ships with the fading tide struck sail.

   The future of England and the modern world, of course, in their hands. For days the battle raged in the English Channel, the British inflicting far more damage than any had anticipated. And then there were those strange summer winds.

   The much larger Spanish galleons and men of war were unable to maneuver as fast and as well as the smaller English craft. And so Sidonia ordered the fleet to tie up off the coast of France at Calais. Sir Francis Drake, seizing the opportunity, set small ships ablaze.

   And into the Spanish Armada, forcing the Spaniards to cut cable and put out to sea once again. The British, determined to prevent a Spanish retreat to the south, put every ship available into the English Channel and forced the fleet northward, pursuing them until they had fired the last round of ammunition. Had only the Spanish known the British were then unarmed.

   But they didn't, and of course, by that time, were too far north. To turn southward, and the only way home was over Scotland and hard by Ireland southward. And the most formidable foe of all for the Spanish was yet ahead, and it was not the British fleet or the famed British Admiralty, it was those miserable winds, that unbelievable weather.

   Gale-force winds blew ship after ship into the Scottish coast, and then the Irish plundered by the locals, sailors killed, some, of course, living on. And Mr. Mark Ellis, who was the pastor of one of the Sydney churches, had formerly been pastor for several years of our churches in Ireland.

   And he was telling me after the sermon that to this day, in Ireland, there are a number of families with Spanish surnames and with somewhat Spanish appearance of complexion and color and facial feature who claim direct descent from some of the Spanish sailors who intermarried among the Irish but have retained enough of the heredity of name and even appearance that they are to this day recognizable as Spaniards, and they are the remnants from 1588 of sailors washed ashore in the violent storms that came that time. And that two of those families are in God's church, in the Irish churches, descendants of those sailors from so long ago.

   Only about 50 of the original, somewhat near 140 ships, ever made the ports of Spain. Again, tattered ships they were, filled with thousands of sailors, stricken with pestilence and death. Philip's dream of conquering England, dominating Europe, and controlling the colonization of the New World was over.

   England was now the summer of 1588 set free on a new course. Elizabeth struck a medal commemorating that great summer and the events, and she realized the source of her victory. The victory did not so much honor the Admiralty or the fleet.

   The medal was struck, and on the top of the medal, she engraved or had engraved the tetragrammaton, the Hebrew letters YHVH, that you may recognize as the name for God. And at the bottom of the medal, these words: He blew, and they were scattered. It was 1588, and a head lay Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, the colonies of America, India, and the oil-rich Middle East that would in the ensuing years become the British Commonwealth of Nations and the United States of America.

   But our story should not properly begin in 1588. The modern part of the story does, but this is not the beginning. Our story begins some 3,300 years before, in a different time and a different place. Egypt, in the days of the Hyksos kings. An old man, well past a hundred years of age, had been reunited with his long-lost son, whom he had long thought dead.

   The last 17 years of his life were spent in great joy, overcoming the sorrows of the many previous years that he had thought his son dead. You know his name is Jacob. God called him Israel. He was the son of Isaac, the grandson of Abraham. And just before he died, he called his beloved son, with whom he had now been reunited these last few years, in to bless him.

   In a most unusual manner, he asked him to bring his two young sons with him, the grandsons of Israel or Jacob. And the story begins in the 48th chapter of Genesis, or that's where we'll turn.

   Mr. Armstrong has been talking about origins a lot. And he's likened where we are now in the history of the world to coming in near the end of the cinema. And you come in and it's reaching its climax.

   It's coming to its conclusion. And if you had not been there through the middle of the movie or the beginning of it, you wouldn't know or understand the details of the end, of the conclusion. And that's where we are in the world's history.

   And so, Mr. Armstrong has been taking us back to the beginnings of how things started, to the first or the origins of things, and fills in the beginning and the middle.

   And I think you'll find even on the Last Great Day, as he leads up to that final climax of man's history for us to understand the whole plan of God, that Mr. Armstrong will once again go to origins and middles so that we can understand conclusions. And so I would like to tie in today the origins of the two great peoples that have come to be the British Commonwealth of Nations and the United States of America, and the import of their past and the future of these two great peoples. It begins here, Genesis 48. Jacob, an old man now dying, has called his son in and explains to him and his grandson what is being passed on.

   Verse 4 of chapter 48 (Genesis 48:4). He says, That God had promised him. God said, I will make you, Jacob, Israel, fruitful. I will multiply you. I'll make of you a multitude of people. And I will give this land to your seed after you for an everlasting possession.

   Now, he had received that promise from God, who had given it previously to his father Isaac, and who had given the original promise to his father Abraham. And here the promise was being passed on. When in the days of Abraham, God reached out to one man, a single person, and he said to him, I will make of you a great multitude of nations, and in you will all the earth be blessed.

   And I will provide for you the greatest and choicest lands of natural resources, of beauty and wonder, of prime concern, of strategic location, of Seagate’s. And you will control. In the course of time, God said to Abraham, the commerce of the world, it is your destiny, it is my promise to you.

   If you remember the original story, that was because Abraham singularly obeyed God's way, his statutes, and judgments. The promise was passed to Isaac. It was passed to Jacob.

   And it was now being passed to the next generation. And it was here, in one sense of the word, to stop. That is, it was not to pass on from name to name, to name, to name, it was now being cast upon two young lads, the sons of Joseph, who now in verse 5 we find being taken into the family and having the name stamped upon them to receive the blessings. Now, your two sons, he said to Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you, are mine, as Reuben and Simeon. They will be mine.

   You grasp the significance of that statement. You see it. You know the story of Israel, Jacob.

   You know that when he began his family, he had in the course of time 12 children. Joseph, who is here having his sons blessed, is the 11th born. The 11th born.

   Now, by the laws that we call primogenitor, that is the passing of the blessing in a family inheritance down, it should rightfully go, in biblical custom, it was so to the firstborn. And then, proportionately, the blessings would be delivered down the line to other children.

   Reuben and Simeon were the first two children born. Reuben first, Simeon second, and down through the boys until finally Joseph, the 11th. And the blessing of Abraham, the promise of God, in bypassing Reuben and Simeon and Judah and Levi, Gad and Asher, Naphtali, and so on, and coming through Joseph, the eleventh born, to two young men, probably leading their teens or early in their 20s at this time. And they are being told that they have now put upon them the name of Jacob, whom God calls Israel. It's very important to understand.

   Very important indeed. Jacob, as I said, now blesses these two boys. Now, the real story, of course, can be briefly summarized of how this came to be, and I won't rehearse other than just briefly for you here so that you see the complete picture in the sermon today.

   That Jacob had gotten into Egypt by a rather strange set of circumstances. Long before he and his family were living up northward in the land of Canaan. And this is where all the boys were born and were growing up.

   But in the course of time, we find that Jacob really had a special feeling, an affinity for his 11th son, Joseph. And you remember the story of the famous coat that he had made for him, and then the jealousy of the brothers.

   You can read that story in chapter 37 of Genesis if you'd just like to make a note to kind of put together the story as it's told. Well, the brothers were so jealous that they one day decided they would kill him, that they just could not stand this anymore, that this young upstart was receiving disproportionate concern from the father, and they together didn't like it.

   And so they put him in a well till they decided how they could dispose of him. And one of the brothers then said that it really would not be appropriate to kill him, but in fact, why don't we make a little money? There was a passing caravan of Midianite merchantmen coming by, and they asked if they would like to buy their younger brother.

   They sold him for about $200 Australian. The Midianites, in turn, you can be sure, made a profit on him. I don't know what they sold him for when they got to Egypt.

   That they sold him to a captain in Pharaoh's guard. But through a miraculous set of circumstances that you'll read about in the intervening chapters that we've gone through here, by the age of 30, Joseph, through a miraculous set of circumstances, had risen to a prominent position in Egypt. Let's go to chapter 41.

   We'll read that story briefly. Chapter 41: Joseph had been inspired by God to be able to interpret a dream of Pharaoh, a dream in which it was revealed that Egypt would undergo seven years of plentiful rain and harvest and produce and cattle and sheep production, and everything would be well. But it would be followed by seven severe years of drought and famine and pestilence.

   And that would they be wise, they would lay by in store in the seven years of plenty for the seven years of famine that would follow. Now, of course, when Pharaoh realized what was happening and that God was working through Joseph, we pick up the story in verse 37 of Joseph rising to a most prominent position. It was good in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of his servants.

   And Pharaoh discussed that he had never known such a man in whom the Spirit of God dwelt. Whether he realized it was the true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob or not is unknown, but he at least recognizes that a God, as much as he could comprehend it, was with this young man. That he was discreet and wise.

   In verse 40, he places him over not. Only his whole house, but in the throne of Egypt, only Pharaoh would remain in a higher position than Joseph. What it really boils down to, if we can use a modern analogy, Pharaoh sat in the office of a king and he appointed Joseph his prime minister, his head of government.

   There was no one in all Egypt who did not have to follow the instructions of Joseph. He was supreme except for the Pharaoh. And he took the ring, verse 42, off his hand and put it on Joseph's, and he arrayed him in garments of fine linen, and he put gold chains about his neck, and he made him to ride in the second chariot, and everyone bowed to him. And Pharaoh, verse 45, gave him a new name in the Egyptian tongue that meant that God had revealed to him secrets. And then he gave him a wife.

   And of course, that becomes very important to you and me if we want to understand our origins. A beautiful young daughter of the priest. Athemath, became the wife of Joseph. And to her would be born two of the most influential lads that would ever breathe the breath of human life. Well, now, Joseph's position was much better than it had been.

   He had first been a slave, worked his way up in the house of his Lord, and then had been betrayed by the wife in the family and had been cast in prison. Now, when you sit in prison and when you come as a slave with Midianite Merchantmen, I am sure you can realize that resentment must build up for the brothers who did this to you, and that hatred, and hurt, pain, and sorrow are part of your life.

   But now, having risen to the office of Prime Minister of Egypt, happily married to a beautiful woman, and having had now the knowledge that God was in it given to him, Joseph could begin to forget the sorrows and the hurt and the pain. So, when the first child was born, verse 51, giving the most unusual name, we often don't think about it. It's Manasseh.

   It just sounds like a name. We in God's church talk about it rather frequently. The young lad was named Manasseh, the firstborn.

   But the name means forgetting because he was now able to forget the sorrow and the bitterness and the hatred of the past. He was actually even able, to a measure, forgive his brothers because he saw that God was in it, and he named his firstborn. I have forgotten the sorrows of the past. Manasseh. And then, not long later, the second was born of his Egyptian wife.

   And he named him, because he now saw that God was blessing him and making him fruitful, and he was having offspring. He named his young second son, fruitful. Not necessarily a significant sounding name if we translate it into English.

   Somehow, Ephraim does sound a bit better, doesn't it? Than to say the boys were forgetting and fruitful. And we'll call them, for the sake of it sounding better, Manasseh and Ephraim.

   Now, the young lads grow up in Egypt in the office of their father's prime minister. So they are exposed to the best education, to the best physical and cultural setting and circumstances. And then finally, Jacob and his family, through the famine that was then to come, move into Egypt to seek relief from the famine.

   The whole thing is revealed that God was in it. Everybody Forgives everybody else, and they begin to live what would appear to be happily ever after. But the story is not just the story of Joseph and the two lads, it's the history of the world in its most significant forms being mentioned here as to origins.

   Now, let's go back to chapter 48, where we'll pick up the story of the blessing of the lads that Joseph brings. The dying, aging Jacob had to ask the boy to be brought by. It would have been most unusual because he really didn't pass the blessing on to Joseph per se at all.

   Joseph is not the one who has hands laid on him, it is his son, for some strange reason, that receives the blessing. And so, when asked to bring the boys, Joseph naturally brought Manasseh to receive the right-hand blessing, the cultural significance of it being the right-hand being the symbol of the primary source of the blessing. The firstborn blessing would be passed on to the firstborn Ephraim, so he was on the right-hand side.

   Jacob and Ephraim was on the left-hand side, and they bowed their heads in prayer as aging Israel starts to bless the boys. In verse 16, we find: well, let's start with verse 15: that he's blessing Joseph and saying, God, before whom the fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, and God who fed me all my life long to this day, the angel who redeemed me from evil blessed the lads. And let my name be named upon them. The name of Israel now is indelibly and forevermore stamped upon these two lads. And it stopped here.

   It passed from Abraham, the name becomes Isaac. It passes from Isaac, the name becomes Jacob. God changes his name to Israel.

   And it passes the name of Israel permanently and indelibly stamped not upon Israel himself, but upon the two lads, Ephraim and Manasseh. You should understand the complexity of this weapon, because it has to do with, as I said, the history of the world in a most significant manner.

   Now, prior to that time, when you read the story, now nearly blind and just barely able to distinguish light, Jacob had, when he began the blessing, crossed his hands over. And he had taken his right hand not directly in front of him and placed it on Manasseh's head, but over onto Ephraim, and then his left hand crossed over onto Manasseh's head. It appears when you read the story that Joseph didn't see that happening at first.

   Now the name is being named upon them, and in verse 17 it appears Joseph must raise his eyes to see that his aging father apparently has made a mistake, that he has crossed his hands, and the blessing is really being inappropriately being passed on to the wrong people as if it would be the blessing of Reuben and Simeon. It is being inappropriately passed.

   And so he says to his father, not so, verse 18, you have your hands on the wrong boys. And his father refused and said, verse 19, I know it, my son, I know. He shall, that is Manasseh, he shall indeed become a people.

   He shall be a great people. But his younger brother, Ephraim, shall even be greater than he, because he will become a multitude of peoples. And it is here the story that we pick up in the summer of 1588 takes on great significance.

   Because the people of Ephraim were at a certain course of time in history destined to become the multitude of peoples that would colonize the world. But that Ephraim, out of the midst, would become a singularly great nation itself. 1588, the tides of history were beginning to crest.

   But we're still not quite ready for this part of the story because we need to know the middle of the story. We have the origin in the middle of the story is going to reveal to us the most significant trends and qualities. When Joseph came to Egypt, it was approximately 200 years after Abraham.

   Thus, if you know when the Exodus took place, it was in rounded-off numbers about 200 years before the Exodus. Give or take some few years in between. A period would later be revealed in the Bible of some 430 years total from Abraham to Moses.

   So when we pick up the story of Joseph were essentially in the middle of that period of time. And for about a hundred years, the descendants of Israel who came into Egypt, about 70 or 80 of them, about 70 or 80 of them, some of the boys were married and they had children, you see.

   And so when Jacob came down to seek relief from the famine and Joseph invited them in, there were about 70 or 80 Israelites alive on the face of the earth. The tribes were not exactly large at that time. In Egypt, over the course of the next century, they multiplied dramatically.

   After all, they had choice lands, they were great business people, they had significantly contributed to the commerce of the Egyptian way, and Egypt was itself a great nation, probably at this time was the most outstanding nation of the Middle Eastern present, as a result, somewhat of the Israelite, frankly, who were living among them. If you want to know the truth of that matter, but the Egyptians themselves eventually succeed in expelling the Hyksos kings out from Egypt.

   Egypt, and an Egyptian pharaoh, this is a hundred years or so later, came to power. And he did not know, or did he care to know, the good that the Israelites had done in Egypt. They merely wanted the Hyksos expelled, and they found themselves now inheriting a burgeoning population of Semitic tribesmen from Canaan, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Israelites in their midst.

   And there were hundreds of thousands of them. And they were capable, they were intelligent, they were industrious. And Pharaoh feared the future of Egypt.

   And the only thing he could think of to do was enslave them. And so he took them from their rightful property ownerships, and he put them into jobs and tasks of more menial nature. And he restricted their movements, and he gave them unrealistic quotas of work to perform.

   And when the population seemed to be growing too fast, he would take a generation and kill the boy babies. So, that the next generation would not reproduce nearly so rapidly as that which had come. But in spite of it all, another hundred or so years goes by with Israel in captivity and slavery.

   And they grow in that period of time, the whole 200 or so years, to about probably two and a half or three million in number. So, in spite of all the Egyptians could do, Israel kept growing and growing and growing. And when they reached this time, in the 430 years or so, coming near its close conclusion, although Israel did not realize there was a significance of that time.

   God called Moses to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt and back to the promised land. It was a promise God had made. We read it briefly there, but there are many others leading up to Genesis 48, so where we were reading, where God said, I give you this land, it will be yours, it is what I intend for you.

   And it was now time to fulfill that promise. God had given it an unconditional promise to Abraham, your seed will be live here.

   Now, 430 years later, God was fulfilling that promise, sending Israel to the promised land. And so he called Moses and led them along the way. Now, in Leviticus chapter 26, we find Moses giving instruction to Israel of when they were to inherit the land, how they should conduct themselves.

   Because while the promise was unconditional, that is, you will inherit the land, there would come then a conditional promise to keep it. God did not say, I'll give it to you, and you can do with it what you want and what you please, and I'll give it to you forever and ever. In Leviticus 26, we find when Israel inherited the land, there were two courses of action they could follow.

   And what then would happen would be based upon their conduct in the land. The first part of the chapter, beginning in verse 3, talks about if they will faithfully walk in God's law. If you walk in my statutes, keep my commandments, and do them, then you'll be blessed.

   You'll have rain. In due season, you'll have proper increase. There will be fruitful trees and produce.

   You will lead the world's economy. You will be the leading agrarian society. You will, you know, if we can use modern terms, be commercially sound and stable.

   Your commerce will be envied by other nations. Your stability will be sought. You can represent me and I will give you peace.

   There will be no army. There will be no military budget. You will not have to worry about defense, the sword will not even go through your land. All of this I will give you now on the condition you keep my law and walk in my ways. But, verse 14.

   But if you will not hearken unto me, and you will not do these commandments, then I'll tell you what I'll do. If you despise my judgments and don't walk in my law, I will do this, verse 16. I will appoint over you terror, consumption, the burning ague will consume you. You'll have sorrow of heart. You'll sow your seed in vain.

   And you'll be invaded by enemies who will take your crops and your industries and your commerce and your economy will be destroyed and your people will be carried away. And you'll serve in concentration camps and you'll become slaves. You'll be sold if you survive the onslaught of the armies that march through your land.

   That's what will happen to you...

[Tape Flipped]

   ...And it is emphasized beginning in verse 21 of this chapter. Four times as you read on through the rest of it, that this punishment is called a punishment of seven times.

   Seven times more. And each time it becomes more and more severe with emphasis: if you disobey me, seven times will come. Now, it's important that we understand these seven times because this is a prophecy.

   Moses was God's prophet, and he was warning Israel when they got to the land. They were still now out in the desert. They had not yet come to Canaan.

   When you do inherit the land which God promises He'll give you, you have an obligation to keep His law. If you don't, you will have a punishment come upon you. And it will be a punishment that is called seven times.

   Now, I won't spend a lot of time on this, but just to rehearse for you briefly, and I think it will only be a review for almost all of you: a time in Bible prophecy signifies a year. One time equals one year. Seven times, consequently, represents, obviously, seven years.

   Now, in order to understand prophecy, there is a common denominator, and that is based upon the scripture in Ezekiel 4:6 that tells us that a day equals a year in prophecy. You can look that up on your own.

   It's familiar, I'm sure, to most of you. A day equals a year. So, when we want to know an unfolding of a prophecy relevant to a time frame, we would understand it in terms of days.

   And a day representing a year in prophecy. Now, if seven years is to go by, we break it down into the number of days. For prophetic purposes, the Bible reveals that a year is rounded off to 360 days because we are using lunar terminology, not solar as in our present modern-day system.

   We have this crazy system of 365 and one-fourth days every year. And since we can't have a fourth a day, we always have to add that in every four years. God's lunar system is quite different. 360 days makes a lunar year. And then there are adjustments that I won't try to bore you with a long explanation because I'm not sure even I would understand it after I explained it to you.

   Suffice it to say that there are 360 days in a year, and you multiply then 7 times 360 to find the prophetic significance of it. And that's, of course, if you quickly multiply it out, 2,520. 2,520.

   Now keep that in your mind because. As you know, of course, I'm doing this somewhat as a way of review. Now, you realize 2,520 years would come upon Israel, 2,500 years, 20 years of punishment would come upon them should they choose the latter course of action.

   This is the middle of the story. Now, when they got to Canaan, Moses did not live. He was an old man and died on the eastern side of the Jordan River.

   And God selected Joshua, by the way, an Ephraimite, and probably one of the if not the greatest of all Ephraimites who have ever lived. I would imagine if I asked you to list all the great Ephraimites you could think of, you in modern times, of course, think of men such as Sir Winston Churchill and General Montgomery, and perhaps you think of others, kings and prime ministers, and great people of Ephraim who have lived in a modern setting. In the whole history of Ephraim, I doubt there is a greater, however, than Joshua.

   He led the settlement of the promised land. And The years began to roll by. About 400 years after they fell into the promised land, through a period of ups and downs, we call that the period of the judges, in which Israel sometimes obeyed God and were blessed, but a lot of times didn't obey God.

   And sure enough, just like Moses had said in Leviticus 26, there would be all kinds of bad things happen. And then there would come a righteous judge who would lead them back into God's way, and God would bring them back into prosperity and peace again. This continued for 400 years.

   Finally, the nations that existed at that time under the leadership of God's judge a prophet called Samuel, looked round about them. And for hundreds of years now, they had observed that Edomites and Philistines and Ammonites and Amorites and Syrians and Lebanese and Medes and Persians and Babylonians and so on all had kings.

   And they all sat at the entrance of their gates in regal splendor. And they had thrones and they had palaces and they were governed by these great kings that everyone respected and looked up to. And Israel didn't have such a government.

   It was just kind of a judge. And the judge could have been a man who came from first one tribe and another, and his sons didn't pass along anything to it. And they wanted to be like the other nations.

   And so Ephraim and Manasseh, along with all the other tribes, went to Samuel with representation from each of them and said, We want a king like all the other nations. And this displeased Samuel, and it displeased God, but God said, okay. Let them learn some lessons.

   We'll give them a king. Who would you like? Well, they all wowed a salt that Saul would be a good king to have.

   He was tall and handsome and seemed like he was the kind of a man that would be prestigious in the communities round about and have respect. And so they selected Saul to be their king. Well, that didn't work out too good.

   And so God gave him David for a little while, 40 or so years, and then Solomon, his son, succeeded him. But now Ephraim and Manasseh come to the forefront again. Solomon died, and one of Solomon's servants.

   Had made himself influential enough in the northern part of the territory that he could influence the peoples up there. So Solomon's son and his servants, Rehoboam and Jeroboam, had a problem. And when it was decided they could not get along, they divided the kingdom.

   And the Northern Federation of Israel was formed and set up their capital at Samaria in the land of Ephraim. Judah remained. The southern peoples and only had a couple of other tribes unite with them.

   And so there was a separation of Israel and Judah, with Ephraim and Manasseh participating in the northern federation. And they immediately departed from God's laws more than they ever had before. Their kings invited pagan religions in.

   Their people were permitted to marry out amongst the surrounding tribes and peoples, bringing in with them ever-increasing numbers of idols and statues and temples and groves were planted in which worship services were held, culminating finally, perhaps in the worst period in the history of Israel, I suppose, when Ahab married Jezebel, and she brought with her not just a handful, but hundreds. Hundreds of priests of earth pagan religions of Tyre, Baal worship.

   And from Dan all the way to the borders of Benjamin, there were temples and idols set up, and the children of Israel went into idolatry such as can scarcely be imagined. They Came so far as that in a period of time they were expected to sacrifice their firstborn sons in the fire from Molech or Dagon. I can't imagine such a thing, but this is what Ephraim and Manasseh became, along with several others.

   This is where they degenerated. This is how low they can't think when they turn from God. And so God sent His prophet, Amos, first of all, selected a herdsman from out in the fields, and he marched into the towns of Israel, showing them their sins, calling out to them to change and to repent, to turn from their evil way, prophesying gloom and evil would come in their lives if they didn't.

   And they wouldn't listen. God sent Hosea. And Hosea marched the length and breadth of the northern territory and spent great time in Ephraim, calling out to Ephraim to realize where he was headed and what he was doing.

   And they wouldn't listen to him. And then God sent Isaiah after that, one of the great prophets, not that he's greater than Amos or Hosea, but we look to Isaiah as a very special prophet of God who had a message for Israel to turn and to repent.

   And he stood and he cried loud and he spared not. And he showed his people their sins. And you know what they did to him?

   They ran him out of town and he hid in the trunk of a hollow tree that had been rotted out, trying to hide from those who were pursuing him, and they found where he was. And they got a saw and they sawed the log in two and him in it. And thus God's prophet came to an end.

   God had said through Amos in Amos 3:3: Can two walk together except they be agreed? Now, that verse, of course, has a great deal of importance in many aspects of life. But it's first of all importance is that God, who had given Israel all these great blessings, who had put Ephraim in that beautiful land just north of Judah, who had put Manasseh just north of him, on either side of the Jordan and south of the Galilee, who had given them choice territories, God had said to them, Can two walk together, except they be agreed?

   And Israel was not walking with God, and he could not walk with them. And so in 721 to 718 B.C., God sent them into the Assyrian captivity. Marched in the Assyrians, a fierce and warlike people, and many, many Israelites were slaughtered mercilessly in the battle, because they were no match for the superior Assyrian strength.

   And the living were carted off almost to the last man, woman, and child of them out of Ephraim and Manasseh and the other northern tribes of Israel all the way over to the Iraq-Iran area today. And there they became residents of a foreign country. And to this day, the Northern Federation of Israel has never returned to their homeland in Canaan.

   The centuries were to roll by, and they were to move bit by bit, people by people, family by family, tribe by tribe, into Southeastern Europe, and finally settling in northwestern Europe in the course of time in countries that would later be called France and Belgium and Britain and Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, and so on. And they would then from there to move round about the world, populating the choice lands.

   Now, we talked about a period of time when we read Leviticus 26, 2,520 years. 2,520 years. It was to be a period of punishment.

   God let it start 721 to 718 B.C. He put up with Israel for hundreds of years, but Leviticus 26 was just as certain as the rising of the sun, and they had gone astray, and they would not repent, and they turned out the prophets and wouldn't listen to them. And God said, okay, I will be forced to bring Leviticus 26 upon you.

   So, 721-718 He did. And it was to last seven times, 2,520 years.

   Most of them bring that out, sell those numbers together there, and you come around about 1800 A.D. 1800 A.D. We began our story today in 1588.

   That's a little more than 200 years ahead of schedule. But what you find is in 1500s, in the 1500s, the 16th century, God began to prepare Ephraim and Manasseh for the year 1800. I'm rounding out the figures now, late in the 1700s, early the 1800s, we're closing that time out of captivity, of punishment, of curses. And beginning at about that time, the curse was to be removed. And Ephraim and Manasseh, and the other tribes to a lesser degree, but remember the name of Israel about Ephraim and Manasseh.

   They can, in about the year 1800, be or be found to be fulfilling the prophecy. And so it took a couple of hundred years for them to prepare. And that's what the 16th and the 17th century, provided in the history of the world. It was Ephraim and Manassas' accent to greatness. Henry VIII had led England out of the Catholic Church in the early part of the 1500s.

   On the continent, Martin Luther had led the Protestant Reformation, and it was spreading throughout Europe. Some remaining dominantly Catholic, others creating new religions. Church of England was formed, Lutheranism was formed, Presbyterianism was formed, other Protestants and bodies or evangelical groups. The world was undergoing the Renaissance. Gutenberg had invented the printing press.

   And God's Word, the Bible, interestingly enough, was the major printed work now being distributed in the 16th century. It was in 1611 that an English version, not the first English version, but the English version that could be distributed to the masses, printed now, made available for homes and people to read and to understand. And that the sacred word of God was going to be in the hands of Ephraim and Manasseh.

   Not just a handful of them, but throughout their land. The sacred Word of God was going to be available in 1800. Had to have some time to be ready.

   And you'll find if you read your history books, and it probably won't be said in many of them, that by 1800, most Ephraim and Manasseh did indeed possess individually in their homes, the sacred and holy scriptures. Up to this time, Spain and Portugal had really been the leading explorers of the world.

   Some British, of course, had sailed the world, but the Dutch and the French were out colonizing even greater numbers. And you know that it was, of course, the New World being discovered under Spanish financing, Christifer Columbus sailing into the New World, and then Spain, and to a degree, the Portuguese sailors now settling and colonizing from the Florida Peninsula of America, where Fonso de Leon was trying to discover the famous and non-existent fountain of youth, on through the Yucatan Peninsula, where the Spaniards found the wealth of the Mayan and ancient civilizations of Mexico, the colonization of Central America, the movement of the Portuguese into Brazil and South America, and the Spaniards otherwise throughout most of that vast territory.

   Where was Ephraim? Well, it was out and about, yes, but what were they colonizing? Very little.

   The 1600s, now, however, because you see, they've all got started in 1492, you remember. And the British were not out colonizing in 1492. Henry VIII had his own problems, and then we come into finally the days of Elizabeth of England when the spread can begin and it opened the doors after the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

   What happened after the Spanish Armada was defeated? In the 1600s, Britain moved into the New World, the West Indies, 1612, Bermuda, 1622, Barbados, 1629, the Bahamas, 1655, Jamaica, 1697, Trinidad.

   Now, if you know your geography, you'll know we control everything from off the coast of the United States at the Bahamas all the way to South America at Trinidad. And the whole Mediterranean, the Caribbean, West Indian area is under British dominion. And of course, this wreaks havoc with the Spaniards, who are bringing their galleons to the New World for the gold and all of the goods that they can take from the Mayas and Incas and what they can do themselves.

   Meanwhile, they're trying to colonize of course, everything from Florida to Argentina, the Spaniards and the Portuguese. But they have their problems.

   In that same course of time, of course, a group, a small, very small group at first, of persecuted religious peoples who could not find their way clear amongst the Catholics or the Anglicans or the Lutherans, had to flee the persecution of religious tyranny in Europe and come to the colonies of the New World, eventually settling in 13 of them, forming, of course, the Colonies, as they more commonly were called, the American colonies. That was in the 1620s. 1704, that famous rock that guarded the entrance of the Mediterranean, Gibraltar, came under British control, forever more has been.

   Malta in the eastern Mediterranean, 1800 came under British control. La Falklands in control of the South Atlantic, even though the population was Spanish and Portuguese in 1765. And then there was Canada.

   Now, the colonization of the New World was being dominated to a large degree by British and by, to a lesser degree, Dutch, and then other tribes, too, were coming in of European extraction. The French, though, were also gaining a strong foothold. Brother Reuben.

   You remember Reuben? The firstborn. It's interesting how Reuben came to and tried to possess the territories that God was to give Ephriam.

   Finally, making its really last desperate struggle and attempt in the early part of the 1800s, in the days of Napoleon Bonaparte, to dominate Brother Ephraim, but he couldn't because it was not his destiny. But Brother Reuben had established a great many of the territories. They had purchased from the Spanish the Louisiana territories, that vast ink blot of space that came from New Orleans and worked its way all the way up to the borders of Canada and out westward to Montana.

   They also held much of eastern Canada, almost all of it, until 1763. When the British finally took the port of Louisburg and then Quebec in 1763.

   And then there was July 4th, 1776, a day in American history, of course, of great importance, because the 13 colonies on that day declared themselves independent from the crown. And the American Revolution began. You see, it was Manasseh who came to settle the 13 colonies, not Ephraim. No one knew this at the time, but it was God's intent to give it to the younger brother. Well, the older brother who was to receive the inheritance of the younger.

   And Manasseh began in 1776 to fulfill its destiny. Now, 1776 should not be construed as a date to end the empire of Brit. By no means did it do that.

   It was the time Manasseh could begin to fulfill its destiny. It was only the beginning. It was now near 1800, you see. The 2,520 years were over. Britain had then, throughout its colonization time, after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, set the scene and now took possession of the great Seagate’s of the world.

   Singapore, perhaps the most important of all British Seagate’s, 1819. Aden, in control of the Middle East in 1839. Hong Kong, the finest natural port in all of Asia, 1842.

   Was the Crown then in 1898? Signed a 99-year lease, and Britain took possession of Hong Kong as a crown colony. If you've been following the news, you'll notice there's been a great concern that we're approaching the end of that 99-year lease now, and Britain has agreed to return Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997.

   One great concern over the future of that colony is at hand. The British took Suez, completed by a French Corps of Engineers, interestingly enough, brother Reuben on the scene again in territory that did not belong to him. Look to Ephraim.

   They took it in 1882. And then there is the land down under: New Zealand and Australia. Important colonies they would become, important indeed to the development of the Commonwealth of Nations.

   You know, in 1606, the Spanish, those ever-present Spanish, explored this part of the world, sailed through the strait between Australia and New Guinea. Had they been blown slightly off course. Had they known that this continent existed down here, there was suspicion that there was a land down here, but no one knew for sure.

   1606 it was, and the Spanish sailed right by. Later that year, the Dutch, brother Zebulon, took it upon himself to explore these territories, but took little or no interest in them in the 1600s. It was two territories that God intended for Ephraim.

   Then in 1770, Captain James Cook claimed Australia for the crown, and the eastern shores of this great continent started to be populated. It was not until after the American Revolution of 1776 that a lot of attention was paid to this part of the world. But now, losing the colonies and the wealth of the colonies of America, and having, frankly, no other place to send some of the prisoners of a very overcrowded population in Britain, which had heretofore often been sent to the Americas.

   They turned their attention in Britain to this continent down under. And in 1787 a fleet of eleven ships sailed with somewhat near a thousand settlers, many of them, of course, convicts. And so thus by that magic year, 1800, you see, we're just preceding it, the Commonwealth would be settled, or would be settling.

   It would take time. But by that famous year, 1800, Ephraim set his course to colonize this continent, New Zealand, South Africa had already been colonized, first of all, by the Dutch, interestingly enough. And Brother Zebulun once again tried to get one of the brothers into the territories that didn't belong to them.

   And to this day, the Dutch culture, of course, is to a degree even dominant. But it is a British crown colony. It was part of the Commonwealth. It is Brother Ephraim who is in control. It is what God intended. It was 1800.

   Now, what did Israel do with their Bibles and with the territories that God had given them. What did they do with them since 1800? You know the history of the world from 1800 perhaps quite well.

   And you know where we are today. There was a warning given in Deuteronomy 4:5. There was a warning that our people should adhere to, we should listen to, we should know, and we have not listened to it.

   And there is a cycle of prophecy because you see, remember, we read there in Leviticus, as you're turning there to Deuteronomy, that if you didn’t disobey, when I give you my promise, I will bring upon you all these things. And our people would not listen in the 8th century B.C., and they went into Assyrian captivity.

   And our people are not now listening in the 20th century A.D. And the same thing is going to happen, brethren Deuteronomy 4:5, we are admonished by Moses' service, God's servant. I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do go into the land and possess it. And when you do, keep the law.

   This is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nation. They shall hear all the statutes, and they shall say, surely a great nation is a wise and understanding people. And when in the American colonies and the settlement of Australia, the people possessed the word of God, there was at least some semblance of a religious federation that began, and people knew. And in their own way, and while it wasn't God's way, totally, there were the original founding fathers of your nation and mine who had in their hands the Word of God and who should have built all of their society on it. And they tried.

   We made the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the right to establish and to practice freely religion. But, our peoples have turned their back in the last two centuries, ever increasingly each generation on the word of God. Verse 26 and verse 27 of this chapter (Deuteronomy 4:26-27): I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that you will perish off the land where you go to possess it.

   You will not prolong your days on it, you will utterly be destroyed. And the Lord will scatter you among the nations, and you will be left few in number among the heathen, whether the Lord your God shall drive you. Now, for 200 years, modern Ephraim and Manasseh, who could have been nations of destiny to lead the world to God because he gave them unconditionally the land he had centuries before intended for them.

   Because you see, God, from his vantage when that old man crossed his hands onto Ephraim's head, knew that this land existed, and he knew that there was gold. And he knew that it would support sheep and cattle, and it would grow wheat and produce, and that its interior had beautiful opals, and that it could be significant to the economy of Ephraim, and indeed would be. He knew that when he crossed his hands over and had that blessing passed on, Jacob didn't, but God did.

   And when God gave this land to the peoples of Ephraim, and Manasseh took possession of the United States of America and became itself singularly great. The two peoples Ephraim and Manasseh should have led the world into God's way, and instead, frankly, brethren, our people have led the world down into a moral morass that God can’t hardly stand to view any longer.

   And we are reaching a time in the history of the world that Jesus said in Matthew 24:22, except those days should be shortened in which Ephraim and Manasseh would lead the world into, except those days would be shortened, no flesh would be saved alive. And that is implicit within it the meaning that human annihilation would ultimately be made possible. And I'm sorry to report to you that Ephraim and Manasseh are the leaders in the technology that have made that possible.

   The leaders in the technology that have made it possible. Like our ancestors of 27 to 2,800 years ago, we have left God's way. And just as God in that day sent Amos and Hosea and Isaiah to Ephraim and Manasseh before their captivity, God is today sending the same message.

   Isaiah 58:1, says that these prophets of God must cry loud and spare not and lift up their voices like a trumpet and show God’s, people, Israel. Israel, their sins. And a modern Isaiah and Hosea and Amos is proclaiming that message today.

   Amos 3:8 is an interesting analogy. Amos 3 and verse 8. For God, through his prophet, tells us how we ought to be viewing the time in which we live.

   How you and I, who are the people of God in today's society, need to know and understand where we are. Now, if you walk out into the bush and you hear a wild animal roar, now maybe you don't have lions down here, so let's say you see as you walk out into the bush a tiger snake. And if you ever do, I am sure your heart skips a beat.

   And you fear what might happen to you. The lion has roared, it says, verse 8 of Amos 3. And who will not fear?

   It's just a natural reaction when you hear a ferocious beast or a poisonous, venomous viper see it and view it, and you know that it's about to strike you, you fear it is the only reaction to have, and the Lord God has spoken. What an interesting analogy: the Lord God has spoken, and what's the result?

   Who can but prophesy? You and I have a commission because we know where our people have been, we know their origins, and we know their middle, and we know what happened, and we know that in 1800 the curse was removed, and the peoples of Ephraim and Manasseh became who they are today.

   And I'm primarily focusing, just for the purpose of who we are today, on your nation and mine: Australia, and its part of the Commonwealth, and the United States of America. The lion has roared, and I fear, and God has spoken, and you and I better be prophesying because you can't just stand there. Once you know what God says, it becomes a responsibility to take His word.

   Amos was out in the fields, out in the sheep station, if you please, and minding his own business. And God said, Amos, take my word and preach it to Israel.

   Amon said, I'm a herdsman. I'm not a prophet. God said, No, you're a prophet.

   You go take my word. In the 1920s, God said to an advertising man, take my word and proclaim it to the world. The advertising man said, I'm not a prophet.

   I'm an advertising man. God said, No, you're a prophet. You take my word.

   You will fulfill a commission. And if he says I can't do it, he said, I'll provide the help for you to do it. Like he always did.

   And you have become a vital part of that fulfillment of that commission. Amos 4:12; there's a message we've got to get to the people of Australia, of Britain, of South Africa, Canada, the United States, throughout Israel, the rest of the nations, and to the world to a degree. But I'm focusing today on the responsibility interesting enough, it's also being fulfilled that Ephraim and Manasseh should receive the bulk of the warning. When God's servant goes to the Gentile world, he doesn't get it to the masses of the people, he gets it to the leaders, and they become responsible whether they will or will not do something with it. Most are not.

   In fact, I don't know any that are. But in Israel, and especially in Ephraim and Manasseh, God is not just taking it to the leaders. In fact, he's not doing anything special at all, to any significant degree, get it to any of the leaders, some of them.

   Casual acquainted with it. But the people of Ephraim and Manasseh are receiving it.

   The people of Ephraim and Manasseh are getting this message and they need to get it a lot more. Amos 4:12. Therefore, thus will I do unto you, O Israel, and because I will do this, prepare to meet your God.

   Now I can't walk out of services here and down into this mean area first and stand on the street corner, down at the yacht club, and start shouting out to the people of Western Australia that they better prepare to meet my God. I'd rather be on the first plane back out of here.

   And if you did it, they would lock you up in whatever places they locked the funny people up around here. But through his prophet, through his work, through the message of a modern Amos, we can reach the people through a program, through literature, through personal example, if you please. There is a message to modern Israel, and they need to know that they're going to meet their God.

   They also need to know him Amos 5:4. For thus says the Eternal God to the house of Israel: Seek you me.

   Seek you me, and you shall live. You see, Jesus has said in Matthew 24:14, a very familiar verse to you, that this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world. Not just in Israel, in all the world for a witness.

   But in Israel, in Ephraim and Manasseh, when we tell them to prepare to meet their God, and especially among those people, it just may be that some will listen to the message. Seek God, and you shall live. And you're here today because at some point along the time you heard the warning message, you were exposed to it to a friend, a relative, a worker, a neighbor, to a program on the television, a radio, to a literature you received, or whatever sort you heard.

   It's taken some time to get it through some of our Ephraim and Manasseh heads, which we have. But it got there in your case. And here you sit today with understanding of where you are and who you are and what your destiny is.

   I'm talking about physical as well as spirit destiny. You know the greatness of the people, you know the source of the greatness. And you know that it was the Eternal God who looked down and said at or about the year 1800 that this nation should be colonized with Ephraimites.

   Reuben tried it too. Zebulen tried it too. The Spanish could have, but it wasn't theirs to possess.

   They tried it in the New World and the Americas and Canada. God gave them Mexico, he gave them Brazil, and Argentina and Peru and Uruguay and Paraguay. It was theirs.

   It was for them to develop. But not Australia. It was Ephraim to develop.

   Not Manasseh. It was to be the United States that would become those peoples. And we've got to get the message: seek God and you shall live.

   Verse 6: Seek the Lord and you shall live, lest he break out like a fire in the house of Jacob and devour it, and that there'd be none to quench it. Because you see, if we get this message, maybe the fire won't break out so bad, or maybe some can be spared from the fires.

   In 1588, God blew, and the Spanish were scattered, and they could not defeat Ephraim. Sometime in this century, in all probability, God is going to blow once again. He's not going to blow on the Spanish fleet off the coast of England.

   He's going to blow among the peoples of Ephraim and Manasseh, and they are going to be scattered. The Bible says so.

   Throughout this world, they're going to be scattered away. And you and I have a message to get to them. Maybe the fire won't devour them all.

   Maybe some will heed. Maybe some will listen. God said in Jeremiah 30:7, that the time we enter into is the time in the Bible called Jacob's trouble.

   Jacob's trouble. Who is Jacob today?

   Who has the name of Jacob upon them? Ephraim and Manasseh. Therefore, if I read that verse correctly, it is the time of America and Britain and Canada and South Africa and New Zealand and Australia's trouble.

   That's who's in trouble now. Matthew 24:21 says, at this time, Jesus prophesied. Would come would be called the Great Tribulation.

   A time such as was not since the beginning of time, nor to this day, nor ever shall be. Our people are going to enter into the worst of all human experiences. And if you've read your history books, you'll know there have been some terrifying times in the past.

   It's going to be worse because our people who brought the sacred Word of God to the shores of Ephraim and Manasseh didn't keep it. And God says, I will blow and scatter them.

   And they will have to learn once and for all the source of their strength and power. And they'll have to learn it wasn't their greatness. It was not their great navigators and explorers and colonialists that made these nations great.

   It was the Eternal God who did it. And he describes them in Amos 6:3. As a people who put far away from them the evil day, and don't our peoples today.

   Maybe you've tried to tell a friend, a loved one, a relative about the times in which they live, and they look at you with strange and glassy eyes and maybe question your sanity and think that you are some kind of a religious nut or crackpot. They put far away from them the evil day.

   They lie upon their beds of ivory and they stretch themselves on their couches and they eat the lands of their flock, and the calves from the midst of their stall, and they chant to the sound of the vial, and invent to themselves an instruments of David. They drink their wine by the whole full, and anoint themselves with ointments, and they are not grieved with the affliction of Joseph. Because Joseph, Ephraim, and Manasseh, see, the two lads that came from his loin have left the world in affliction, and we are the most morally decadent society that has come onto the scene the days of Noah.

   And we're leading the world down that path. And these people don't know it.

   Now, there is a group of people in Revelation chapter 7. I won't turn there. You're familiar with it.

   Mr. Armstrong talked about it in a recent take you where he wants you to go. A group of people prophesied to be the great innumerable multitude.

   And I think it's very important that you and I understand, because I've tried to bring to you today our origins. Our middle, our present, and our future. And I've tried to emphasize to you in the concluding moments of this sermon that there's a responsibility as the people who have the knowledge of God, and the only people who have the knowledge of God, the Church of God in this age in Ephraim and Manasseh, to proclaim that word.

   And I'd like for God's burden to be lessened, but it is still going to come. You see, God is going to blow and he's going to scatter once again, just as he did in 1588. And the real fruit of our work, in all probability, is not going to be what happens next year or the next few years until it all begins to climax.

   But there is a fruit of our work that you and I have to have on our minds, and that is there is a vast, innumerable multitude of people. It may be that the fruit of this work will round out at about 140,000 or 50,000, you see. Just 140 or 50,000 people who are going to come in contact and know and be responsible for the work of God going to the world or primarily to Ephraim and Manasseh, the warning of Israel. But there is in Revelation 17 a vast throng of people pictured prior to the second coming of Christ, who, when this comes to pass, and you want to turn down to Ezekiel 33 and verse 33 in this context. Ezekiel 33:33.

   When all of this comes to pass, and just as surely as Ezekiel wrote it in the days of the Jewish captivity, it shall come. Then they will know that there has been a prophet among them. And when the peoples of our dearly beloved Ephraim and Manasseh have it happen, and they find themselves scattered into captivity, they will know that what they read in the pages of that magazine they picked up on that newsstand, or that man they heard on the radio, or those neighbors they had, or that aunt or uncle or grandmother or grandfather who were members of that strange church who kept telling them that there was something about the end of the world and the time of the end and the great tribulation, and that the peoples of Australia and the rest of Ephraim and Manasseh would go into a national captivity. They're going to know it was right. They're going to know it was right.

   And you and I have the responsibility to reach them because I won't see the fruit of it probably until that time. But I know it's there. And it drives you and me onward to continue to publish the good news of the kingdom of God and the bad news that unfortunately has gotten to proceed. And unless our peoples wake up, they're going to go into it. And don't we ever think this can't happen?

   Because isn't it Great Britain? Isn't it the United States of America? Isn't this the great land down under? Because it's going to happen for Ephraim and Manasseh. And it is our responsibility, Hosea chapter 5 and verse 9.

   Hosea 5:9 to make known among the tribes of Israel that which shall surely be. I assume you're here today because you know to the depths of your heart what is coming upon our people. And I hope you'll never forget what's coming upon our people.

   I hope you know that Ephraim is old and gray-haired, and even though he doesn't know what we do, and I hope you know that there is a voice crying out in the spiritual wilderness of this world, and that there are magazines going now by the millions into the homes of Ephraim and Manasseh and throughout the world, and that the way is being prepared for the coming down of a curtain on an era that began in Egypt 3,300 years before the defeat of the Spanish Armada, when two young lads were born in a land strange to them and grew to maturity and grew to the millions and populated and colonized and control the greatest of all lands that men have ever known. But the curtain is coming down, brethren.

   The curtain is coming down. And you need to know and understand where you are in the course of human events. You need to know who you are and what God has called you to perform. And you never, you must never forget the work that God has called you to proclaim to the people of Ephraim and Manasseh.