Herbert W Armstrong

   Mr. Ost mentioned we anticipated roughly 2,400 people, and we have 2,544. There are always those who have other members of the family. They are the unexpected who are able to come. We're very happy to have this many here in Detroit.

   Today will be warmer than tomorrow. And I would say that for any of you who come from further south, it would be important for you to be able to keep warm tomorrow, especially in the morning. The temperature should drop some 10 to 12 degrees at a minimum, and not much more, of course, at a maximum. We had the cloud cover that kept it rather warmer before this morning and this afternoon, which was fine.

   I would like to introduce, at the beginning of this festival, the background for why we are here, and understanding of the fundamental concepts that underlie the distinction between prophecy and the plan of God, and what we may know from the Bible prophetically for the world today, and what is prophesied for the world tomorrow.

   The good news, or the gospel of Jesus Christ, is the story of God's action on the world scene when He intervenes in world affairs and sets the world back on track after near 6,000 years of human beings going their way. Prophecy includes what God will do, but covers a great many things of this world now in which we live. And I would like you to take a new look at what is prophecy and how it differs from the plan of God, and tie it together in a way that we have not seen perhaps as clearly before.

   The plan of God is clearly revealed in a sequence of holy days or festivals that surround what we call the harvest season of the northern hemisphere in Palestine. This is quite distinct from prophecy, as we know it from other parts of the Bible.

   We learned from what Paul said that the mind of God, the character and nature of God, may be perceived by His creation. In this sense, we may take it one step further, and to know what God has proposed to do on earth with the human family in roughly 7,000 years of human experience, we find that God gave certain periods of hallowed time.

   This is the next to the last festive season. It's the last festive season, I should say, but the next to the last festival, where this is Tabernacles, number six, followed by a one-day holy day, which is the eighth day of this autumn season.

   These festivals were given to the church when the church began. They were not given to Adam or the patriarchs before Moses, because God did not choose to reveal the plan through hallowed periods of time that are important for a large collective group. He explained the plan on an individual basis, face to face with Abraham, for instance, or Enoch. But when it came to the church, there is the need of the church understanding this plan by coming together and learning about it collectively. And so God hallowed periods of time that show His authority to command our presence and His authority over the world to determine what should be done in 6,000 years of human experience and the 1,000 years that God has set aside for Himself.

   Our keeping the holy days are an acknowledgment of God's authority over time, over us, and to lay out what is the plan governing human experience. So let us note carefully that if we want to understand what God proposed to do, that He sent Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for sin and to bring the message, we may see some prophecies, as in Isaiah about it or Zechariah. But it is most clearly laid out in time order in the holy days.

   There is no time order in the prophecies as they were given about Christ. For instance, if the first act that God chooses to do is to send Jesus Christ, then Isaiah, if he were giving it in time order, should have discussed that in chapter one, but he did not. This comes later.

   Then we have the other festivals pertaining to putting away sin, the festival of Unleavened Bread. We have the story of the first harvest of which Jesus was the first who was cut from this earth, who appeared before the throne of God in heaven and was accepted as perfect immortal spirit. And that began on the Sunday during the Days of Unleavened Bread, because Christ ascended to the Father in heaven and was accepted on that Sunday following a Saturday night resurrection.

   Our picture then takes us through Pentecost or the Feast of First Fruits. And you note that as you go through, you will never find in the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or the minor prophets or other books in the Bible in the Hebrew scriptures called the prophets, you will never find these things laid out in time order as you do, for instance, in Leviticus 23. The plan of God is most clearly seen in time order in the holy days. There may be prophecies to explain some of these things, but they will not be of themselves clear without the holy days explaining the order of events.

   We come to the Feast of Trumpets. There are many prophecies about the day of the Lord, but its relationship to the Messiah was never understood by the New Testament period of time Jewish community when they rejected Jesus. They were looking for the coming of Christ paralleling the Feast of Trumpets. They did not see the coming of Christ paralleling the Passover. And they simply, as I said in the August Good News, did not understand the holy days which were given to them to perpetuate for us who were to understand.

   The holy days were given to the New Testament church to understand. The Old Testament church that did not have the Holy Spirit were meant to preserve, and among them were those few who were called that represent one of the two wave loaves offered on Pentecost, the New Testament church representing the other.

   Now, this picture is very important. Then we come to the putting away of Satan and his role we shall see momentarily on Atonement, and then the Festival of Tabernacles, which represents a period of time in which the world will see that this life is meant to be temporary. As we were meant to dwell in not in our regular houses normally, but to come and assemble in a place away from home, because our experience, even in that 1,000 years, is meant to be temporary in the flesh, that the ultimate goal is immortality, as God in the song is immortal, as you heard this morning.

   We go one step further, and we note that this is the last harvest, of the major harvest of those who are living. But what about all those who lived and died before the major harvest in the millennium occurs? And that of course is pictured by that eighth day.

   Now, you will be hearing the festival explained and these things explained once again throughout each of the days of this festival. But I want to have you note that if you want to look in the prophecies of the Bible alone, you will never clearly understand the plan of God, because God never revealed them in time order.

   If you want to know why the world that studies — that is the religious world, the theologians, the ministry that study prophecy, and some of them do — do not understand what we do, you will discover a church, people, theologians, ministers who do not observe the holy days.

   If I may summarize the one point that Mr. Armstrong understood most importantly of all that came to be revealed to him, it is not even the national identity of this people which others have. You could have learned that from other groups. But the one thing that you could have never learned from any other group is the importance of the meaning of the seven annual festivals that God gave to His church, which the Jews without the spirit of God do not understand, and which when Mr. Armstrong began to keep, he did not understand, because the test was not whether you understand the plan of God and then decide to keep the holy days. The test is whether you acknowledge God's authority and keep the hallowed time He set aside, which if you do, then He reveals the meaning of the days. That's very important.

   He has stated in scripture, Yahweh, the Lord of the Old Testament, that our purpose is to submit to His law, which reflects His character, to copy His example. And He set an example when He became Jesus, whom we know as the Christ or Messiah. And when we copy and follow that example and acknowledge His authority, then He reveals clearly His plan to His church.

   Now, in contrast, I want to take a look at prophecy because as I told a few people yesterday evening in front after services, I do want to dwell on where we are in human events. And it is important that we take a look at what prophecy is and what we cannot learn from it, because it is revealed in some other part of Scripture, and what we can learn from it.

   Prophecy we commonly think of as history in advance. But prophecy as a whole does not give us a time order unless we come, of course, to certain chapters in Daniel and in Revelation. God did not choose to give most prophecy to ancient Israel in time order. He didn't give it to Moses. He didn't give it to David. He didn't give it to Hezekiah. He did not begin to reveal a time order of events as we know it until we come to the time of Daniel, over 800 years after Moses.

   Let us take another look at what prophecy is. Prophecy is not so much the story of what God's plan is. It is the story, in fact, of the role — listen carefully — of the role of Satan in governing this world his way in opposition to the kingdom and government of God, and as man seeks to do his own will under the motivation of Satan or fulfills directly, as some few leaders have, Satan's role.

   If you look in the Bible, prophecy is normally the story in one way or another of human beings who transgress the law of God, who are not under the law of God and the government of God, and who are told — you heard as an illustration of the story of Jonah. Jonah said, "In 40 days, your city Nineveh, the capital of ancient Assyria, will be destroyed." Because the Ninevites couldn't discern spiritually their right hand from their left. That is, they were in complete ignorance of the laws and the government and the way of God. And the consequence was a penalty, in this case, the consequence of war from neighboring powers.

   So they repented on the basis of what little they knew, fasted, wrapped themselves in sackcloth, and their cattle as well. That's how little they knew. What was remarkable is that God turned the story around, and you remember Jonah sat there and it didn't happen in 40 days.

   Now this illustrates an important point: that as Jonah prophesied, so many other prophecies are based on the fundamental principle all the way through that if a people, an individual, a nation repents and turns around, that what might have happened would not. Prophecy, therefore, is really the story of the consequence of sin. And in some cases in Daniel and Revelation, it goes further by giving a time order of what God allows the devil to do in the 6,000 years of human experience, beginning with the days of Daniel.

   Now if we look at prophecy, we can see a far different perspective than merely a God who thought it interesting to tell us about every event in advance. Prophecy is not a series of mysterious clouded sayings that only the wise understand so that we may know of everything that is going to happen in advance because there is no choice for man.

   There are those who would like to ask, "Well, is the present struggle between Iraq and Iran prophesied in the Bible?" That would be the same as saying that every single event was inevitable, that a nation has no choice, which is not true. Human beings are basically following the ways of the devil. They're also motivated to do whatever they think and like to please themselves. But human beings do have fundamental choices. Man is a creature who is commanded to choose, commanded in a sense to choose life and right.

   To broader, more broadly understand prophecy, we need to look at what is prophecy in the Hebrew Bible. The Old Testament as we know it comes through the Jewish church, that is the congregation of Israel, that generally in its later years was only the house of Judah and the people associated with it from Levi and/or Benjamin.

   You will discover in the Old Testament the Jewish Bible has law, prophecy, and writings. And we commonly assume from the King James Version the prophecy starts with Isaiah. And before that you have history and you have the Psalms and the Proverbs, but not so in the Jewish Bible.

   If you were to look in the Jewish Bible, you would find a threefold division as Jesus referred to it in Luke: the law and the prophets and the writings. The law, of course, is the first five books. But the prophets, interestingly in the Bible, begin as it was given to the Old Testament church by the prophets, the judges, the kings. The prophets include Joshua and Judges, and I Samuel and II Samuel, and I Kings and II Kings. Those are the former prophets. The latter prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve.

   Now, this is very important because most people read Joshua and Judges and the books of Samuel and Kings as if they were history. But they are given as a part of prophecy, because it means that God started prophecy out in the form of looking back into the events and experiences of a nation, and beginning with Isaiah, looking forward into a series of events in which God intervenes from time to time. And it will be also the story of what man will continue to do in the future.

   The history of this nation, in a sense, is best understood by finding out whether as a nation we are making the same mistakes that ancient Israel made in the days of Joshua or Judges or Samuel's, the books of Samuel, or the books of Kings. Prophecy, therefore, in a sense, as I said before, is an illustration of whether or not men will go God's way and the consequences when you don't.

   Now, if you want to know the opposite of prophecy, you really need to look in a chapter perhaps of Leviticus and a chapter of Deuteronomy, where God gives in a different form within the law, the blessings and the curses. Now, the curses in a sense represent the way most prophecy is: that if you go your way, then these will be the penalties you will suffer. But God's law is different. And the law says if you go my way, these are the blessings you will have.

   If you go my way, God says, you will be blessed in terms of the weather. You will be blessed in terms of the nature of your soil. You will be blessed in terms of your vegetables, your fruits, your livestock, and your human family. He didn't say you would be blessed in your auto factories, of course, because industry in a sense is not the basis of the greatness of a nation; it is the consequence of either good or evil. It has to be based on a great agricultural society, which we are blessed with by nature, having inherited the blessings to Joseph. But our physical blessings are turning sour in the weather because we have not followed the law that God revealed through Moses and at Sinai Himself.

   Prophecy, though some of it was history, much of it is history in advance, is really the story of man cut off from God, without a true knowledge of the authority of God's law. You may have a knowledge that there are Ten Commandments. You may have the Ten Commandments on the school wall, or used to, but you will not find that they are recognized as having authority over the nation, because the authority rests in the Constitution and in human law and in the human executive and judicial decision. It does not rest on the basis of the law of God.

   The Feast of Tabernacles, and we're gathered here for a celebration of it, is looking forward to what shall be and reflecting back in contrast to what has been. When it comes to the time frame, what we have is essentially the story of the role of the devil's government. There's really no time frame in the other prophecies which merely reflect what human beings do from generation to generation, collectively or individually. But when we have a time frame, and we have that story laid out in Daniel 2, Daniel 7, Revelation 13, Revelation 17 — you're familiar with those — you will discover that a key lies in chapter 12 of Revelation which says that the devil himself appears symbolically having seven heads and ten horns like the governments that he has established, which is the same as saying, as we find in Revelation 12, that this spirit being who should have administered the government of God and decided to go the route of competition and strife, jealousy, looking out each one for himself, he gives his power and seat and great authority to the beast.

   Now, the devil cannot do anything but what God permits him. And God permits him to do certain things. He permits the world to be broadly influenced. But more specifically, God permits the devil to establish among men a certain sequence of governments that God has allowed, so many and no more. When they shall appear, God determines. And the devil is given permission to go ahead and to stir the world up to do it. The devil knows he has permission from time to time.

   I doubt that most of us have taken the perspective of looking down on the earth from heaven to see the implications of prophecy in this light in the sequence of events from Daniel and Revelation. They represent what God has allowed the devil to do. He said in a sense that the devil would be allowed to institute his government in four fundamental sequences: one centered in Mesopotamia, which was Chaldea; another centered in ancient Persia; another centered in Greece; and another centered in Roman Europe. There would be individual characteristics of each, and that last one was to last a very long time with a series of ups and downs. Ten sequential revivals the devil was allowed to create. Three were uprooted early and seven were to succeed one another. The last one of those ten, or the last one of the seven after the first three were uprooted, is yet to come. It is to be made up of ten units or nations or groups of nations. This much the devil has been allowed. When he will do it is determined by God. God determines the boundaries of nations and the times of their dominion.

   Mr. Armstrong said last night very clearly that God has restrained certain events from happening in order that the work that He asks the church to do may be accomplished, in order that the work that we are given could be done, which cannot be done in a time of major war. We can do it in a time of minor skirmishes in different areas of the world that pique people's interest and concern, so they listen to us. Because if it was all peace and harmony, our message would seem to be irrelevant.

   Prophecy then in terms of a time frame is really the story of what God has allowed the devil to do. It then reflects in a sense that God is still supreme, that the devil has no ability to do other than what he is allowed. God is therefore responsible. And being responsible, He has a plan to solve the problems that the world is in. And that plan is revealed through the holy days.

   We ultimately discover then that in our picture that we are developing, that God is the supreme ruler. A very important point. When God made man, a series of events had already happened. We have to understand why it is that God, who has supreme authority, is forced to allow the devil to do or to exist, so to speak. This is one of the mysteries why people ask, "Do we have suffering and do we have hate and war in the world?" Because before human beings, the die was cast as to the potential that the world would go. And when the first human beings on Earth, Adam and Eve, chose to follow the route of the devil instead of the way of God, then we could basically predict what has happened since.

   You see, when God made angels, He made them with spirit. They were composed of spirit. They were created spirit. Now, you and I are offered the opportunity also of having spirit enter us at conversion so that we may become sons and daughters of God. The spirit that we have at conversion is the spirit of God. Repentance is that state of mind which we want to get rid of carnality in the human spirit and of the flesh, and let the spirit of God dominate our lives and direct the state of our thinking and be the source of the power of our action.

   We as human beings have within us Holy Spirit if we are converted, and our children are to be influenced by that as long as we keep them in authority, and they come and assemble peaceably with us. And of course, if they want to go their own way, God allows.

   But in contrast to human spirit, angels have created spirit. They do not have Holy Spirit or God's own nature. And this has led to a most remarkable thing. It is possible to create beings like God in less than 1,000 years for any one individual. No individual has ever lived more than 1,000 years. And most of human beings today don't live more than approximately 70. And in the church, of course this is true today, and for those who live and die and die at a ripe age, they will be given 100 years after the millennium, Isaiah 65.

   But you see, it's only measured in something less than 1,000, mostly less than 100, and for some of us, you know, it centers around 70 years of age as an average for our own human experience. With Holy Spirit, God finds it possible to create His character in us and creatures who are able to be born into the kingdom of God in less than a century of human experience.

   But angels without Holy Spirit took untold ages for their testing. And God set an entirely different experience for them. Their spirit depended upon themselves. It did not depend upon Holy Spirit in them. Is that clear? This is why angels were given eons of time.

   From the basis of physical science, which reflects the mind of God, we may draw the conclusion that since angels were here before the earth, and the earth has been here a few billion years, on the basis of all that we may know of the laws that God set in motion pertaining to radioactivity, we perceive — and that's the best way to describe it — we perceive that angels were tested over such incalculable long periods of time by the very nature, I should say because of the very nature of their spirit. They had to prove over such a vast period of time.

   And remember there was a world before Adam. Adam is late on the scene, very, very late. They were tested time and again. Job says at the test that God in a sense could not put trust in His angels. He discovered that angels, given the mind to choose, to whether they would go God's way or not, that angels could not be entrusted with the highest form of responsibility in the universe. One-third ended in sin of such a nature that it has degraded them to fallen angels or demons. Two-thirds seem clearly to have obeyed God, greater or lesser zeal, and have proved that they were willing over this length of time to keep the commandments.

   You remember when John fell down in the presence of an angel and the angel lifted him up, the angel said, "Well, I'm in a sense one of your brethren of those who keep the commandments." The angels that obeyed God and did what is right keep God's commandments. The others did not. They decided to go the way of competition and strife. They would like to persuade God to change His mind about His law and the penalty.

   When angels who were dependent upon their own strengths, they were dependent upon their own spiritual strength, their spiritual minds or spirit minds might be a better term, God had to test them to see what the nature of that spirit was as to whether those minds would follow His law or not. And it took so much longer a period of time. God in a sense opened up to them by the nature of the fact that they were spirits, continuous life. And the penalty they suffer from is spiritual insanity. And that's why we know of no angels that are demons who are today of sound mind. Their penalty was mental insanity, the consequence indeed of hate, of lust, of competition, of strife, of the rejection of love and cooperation and respect for authority. And in spirits, it warps their minds.

   There's nothing worse than what hate can do. Hate warps the mind. Disrespect for authority warps the mind. The unwillingness to exercise authority over one's will warps the mind. We have asked demons why they don't repent. They just simply don't want to. They are unwilling to exercise authority over their minds any longer to do God's will. They just do what comes natural, unquote, today, and that's the way they want the world to go. If it feels good, do it. That's the philosophy they've introduced into the flesh in modern psychology.

   It was this world of spirits that had fallen and had followed the devil's philosophy that lay behind the experience in the early years of human sin after Adam yielded to the devil that brought about the flood. It lies behind the human experience since.

   Human beings, by contrast, when Adam sinned, were cut off from God. Mr. Armstrong has emphasized that. This is not the age in which the world as a whole can be saved. It is the age in which the world as a whole is cut off from God, and into which God has from time to time intervened by calling individuals or a church.

   Prophecy is the working out of human experience under these angels and the devil who were tested and found wanting, but who were in authority because God gave them authority over the earth. Had they proved themselves, He would have given them authority over the universe. And not of course until the human family qualifies will they be displaced. In the meantime, God left them here.

   God kicked the devil out of his throne in heaven when the devil and the demons attempted to dethrone God before Adam, and they were kicked back to their estate which they had abandoned, having left it in ruins. And the result, of course, is that God chose to put the human family here and to create in this human family what should rule the universe. And the angels supporting the devil ultimately got control of the human family by getting to Adam, as Mr. Armstrong said last night, through Eve. That is to subvert the government that God intended within the human family.

   Now, the angels have the chance to rule the physical universe that we see at night in all its beauty, or certainly would have seen last night, the stars and the full moon. That universe is physical. We measure it in terms of physical instruments. The angels were given charge over this physical world. They blew it.

   As I said a year ago at the Feast of Tabernacles in Tucson, I talked with the spirit, not so long before, who had been there at the beginning. He came to my office in a human body of a man. The spirit was all emotionally shook up. There was one thing he wanted to know from me: how I could help him to persuade God to change His mind.

   I said, "That's very simple. Repent, and God will change His mind towards you."

   "No, no," the issue is, "I want God to change His mind so that He will do what we do, and He will support our philosophy."

   He said, "I've been here a lot longer than you." I agree. He was here long before I was born.

   He said that when God opened up the plan of the universe, that we should rule the universe, it blew our minds. This was his quote. He said there was only one problem. When God told us the way we should do it, he said, "We had nothing to compare it with." Interesting thought. Nothing to compare it with.

   So they began to reason. Remember the devil before was a light bringer, administering the government of God, doing what God said and everything was working out right. But when he now was no longer at the presence of God's throne, and he was put on the earth with greater responsibility as a testing point, with a certain number of angels, what we discover is that he thought instead of going the way of love and cooperation and God's law, we should go the way of strife.

   As this spirit and this man said to me, "Cooperation allows the cripple to survive, the incompetent to be in positions of authority." That was his reasoning. It isn't true. He said, "Competition brings out the best in someone." That's his philosophy.

   Competition may bring out the best in you if it's the right kind of competition. But cooperation in God's law produces far more than competition and strife. But he wanted to persuade God to change His mind, and he wondered how come God changes His mind to us who are sinners — and there isn't a single one of us who has not in one way or another many times transgressed the law of God — yet God shows mercy to us and answers our prayers, and He seemingly doesn't show mercy to the demons and has cut them off from Him.

   Now, as this spirit said, "God's personality is such that if we ever could persuade Him, all the rest of the angels would follow us because He's got that kind of personality to change their minds."

   This was the most interesting conversation I have ever held in my life. You know, some spirits come for other reasons. This one came for the peculiar reason of wanting to know how he could cause God to change His mind, to turn over the government of the universe to the philosophy that the devil has been standing for ever since he sinned from the beginning. That means that from the time when the earth was made and everybody was shouting for joy, there popped into his mind at that time, at the beginning, the idea that he could run it some other way than God's way.

   Prophecy is the story of how the devil's way has worked through human beings, because the demons and the devil are not allowed to be in charge of the physical world as they once were. Man was given authority over the atmosphere in terms of flying in it, over the earth in terms of cultivating it, and what's in the sea. We have been given dominion over the physical.

   Now, the devil has certain dominion yet in the upper atmosphere to regulate the weather. But otherwise the world is governed by natural law, and the demons do not intervene except human beings ask them to. And that's why spirits are very limited today in what they can do in the physical world. What they do in which they have no limit to speak of is through the human mind, and they get the human mind to do what they are not directly allowed to do with nature. They get us to pollute nature, to corrupt nature, to go to war against nature and ourselves.

   That's what's happening now between Iraq and Iran. Instead of cooperating with each other, they are blowing each other's natural resources up and your sources and mine of energy. Cooperation, you see, by the devil's philosophy is supposed to determine who's the more important, and that's exactly what the Iraqis want to demonstrate, who's the more important. Previous to that, under the Shah of Iran, the Iranians wanted to demonstrate who's the more important.

   Now, that should tell us that this kind of strife and competition is not really beneficial. It's the wrong way to go. So it is remarkable to see in prophecy that we really have the story of the result of the devil's character and why human beings suffer what they do, with the one out that if the people repent, it doesn't have to happen. Otherwise, prophecy is the unfolding of the consequence of the devil's government.

   The holy days reflect in that sense the contrast of the plan of God to solve this by reaping human beings from the earth and making them spirit in 6,000 years or less of time, who will be able to rule the world in peace with Jesus Christ. In some prophecy is the story that this should be, but in the holy days is the time frame. Now, in prophecy is the time frame of the devil's government and how much he has left that he is going to be allowed.

   In the 1940s — '39, '40, '41, '42, '43 — in fact, as late as 1944, when I first listened to the World Tomorrow broadcast, which is longer ago than almost all of the rest of you — there may be a rare few who heard it earlier than that — Mr. Armstrong puzzled in 1944 whether the end was so near that Mussolini was the sixth revival and whether Hitler would be the seventh and last and would be able to pull out a turn of events as a result of what he did then not know.

   He knew that the Germans had developed a rocket. What he did not know was the Germans were working on a secret weapon that would be carried by the rocket. The weapon was the atomic bomb. Now let me correct that. The weapon was the hydrogen bomb. The Germans sought to bypass the atomic bomb and go straight to the hydrogen bomb and would have done so had Americans inadvertently and by accident not dumped their bombs on the German hydrogen bomb plant at Peenemünde on the Baltic and blew up the plant and the scientists.

   Mr. Armstrong then realized that Hitler and Mussolini represented two parts of the same sixth revival, not one followed by another. And undoubtedly it was around this time that he began to see more clearly the significance of Daniel chapter 2, that Rome, the last great power, was divided into two legs, and it has always had two parts. Once it became an empire, the East and the West.

   I will not go through history, which is not the purpose here, but I will pick it up in relatively modern times. You can go through the history of the Middle Ages, and you will find one centered in Byzantium and one centered in Western Europe. And when we come to the 1930s, we found that one part of the empire was centered in Rome and another in Berlin. One was the German restoration, the other was the Italian restoration. That this system has been in two parts. That is, God did not allow the devil to have a system of government that had one part only unified. Because if it were possible with man's technology, with the commercial revolution, with the industrial revolution, with the ability of linguistics and electronics, it would be possible to create one world that would not allow His work to be done.

   So the devil was never allowed to establish his government in the heart of Europe, continuing the Roman system apart from a twofold division where they would work together and cooperate on the one hand like an axis and yet would be quarreling on the other hand in terms of who's the greatest. Because the devil thinks that way, the people whom he used think that way. Even as late as near the end of the Second World War, the Germans and Italians were quarreling over who shall have the most influence in the Balkans, as if it were going to matter when it was over.

   Now that second chapter of Revelation — of Daniel — is very important. It tells us that now we are face to face with two things. One, first, the completion of this work. And two, the revival of a final restoration of the Roman world. That revival will be reflected by ten nations or groups of nations like Benelux might be a group. And Mr. Armstrong has pointed that out for years, that it can be a group of nations. Benelux is a common market within the common market.

   There will be ten according to Revelation 17, ten groups of nations or nations, rulers, in other words, who give their power and authority to a supreme ruler who has not yet come on the scene. But Revelation 17 does not tell you what Daniel 2 tells you. Daniel 2 tells you that those ten nations are like the ten toes, and since this was the image of man and no abnormality is described, we may assume that those ten toes were five on each foot. That's very important to note. Five on each foot.

   Now the common market has nine. It did have six, and in January we have ten with Greece. Now, this ten is really essentially a common market of seven nations of Israel and two Gentiles. One might assume that even Luxembourg is a mishmash of numerous people. But there are six fundamental nations of Israel and two fundamental Gentile nations in tiny Luxembourg to which poor Greece has been invited.

   There is England and France, Holland and Belgium, and Denmark and Ireland, to which have been added to France — sorry, to which have been added Italy and Germany and now Greece. It is essentially an economic union of the modern nations of Israel in northwestern Europe, whether we realize it or not. And because it is, we have the freedom to propagate our message in Ireland, and England, and Denmark, and Holland, and Belgium, and Luxembourg, and Germany, and France, and in other countries of Europe, and in Greece.

   This is an economic union. And when it becomes ten, we must not assume that the beast has already arisen come January next year. I want you to listen to what I have said. We must not assume that the beast has already arisen when Greece happens to be added.

   Because the picture that Mr. Armstrong has seen and many of us over the years is that some nations from Eastern Europe must break loose, and some nations in the West must either withdraw or be kicked out. We wondered for a while if Hungary or Poland or Czechoslovakia would come out separately.

   I would like to have you contemplate the simple reality that neither a Hungary or a Czechoslovakia or a Poland has any capacity to leave the Eastern European alliance on its own. Soviet troops are in the country. The great Soviet Union is at the border. The Soviet Union may have its problems in Afghanistan, but there is no way that those nations in Eastern Europe will ever come out one by one. They've tried it. '53, '56, '68, and now 1980 in a unique fashion, where the issue was the right of the Catholics in Poland, not merely economics. That they're using an economic basis to determine the right of the people who make up the labor movement who are Roman Catholics to have some measure of freedom.

   What we will expect, and where we are today, is the likelihood that we will see Western Europe, as we know the common market, to change its character in the future, when religion will play a major role, as it is not yet playing. That some of these nations will go out. And that in all likelihood we will be left in Western Europe with five nations or groups of nations. And out of Comecon in the east will be five nations.

   We will not discuss at this point the role of East Germany. Every reason would lead us to believe that there will be some unification within Germany of the two Germanys. But that there will be five countries of the socialist communist bloc and ultimately five countries or groups of countries of the socialist capitalist bloc. There never has been a revival of the Roman Empire that was ever a united system. It always was twofold.

   Mr. Armstrong has said that the story that he has told us and written from Justinian, Charlemagne, the Ottos, Charles the Fifth, Napoleon, and Mussolini are only the story of one of the two legs. The other story is what was happening in Byzantium, what was happening in the Austro-Hungarian Empire when there was one in the West, what was happening in Austria when there was Napoleon, what was happening in Germany when there was Mussolini.

   And so we should be aware that what we are looking for has not yet appeared in its ultimate form. We know that what is coming is an economic basis that will make the political power possible, but the political power will not be possible without the role of religion.

   And so we must, one, keep our minds on the job that we have yet to do within the church to carry this message to a free world, a communist world, a third world, while we watch and warn that crises brewing in the Middle East, of which the present one is only incidental. It is only incidental. It's only one of a sequence, not one of which is prophesied, but which is the logical result of competition and strife and hate and animosity between two neighboring nations. That all of this will lead to an ultimate crisis in Europe in which Western Europe will take a new shape and Eastern Europe will take a new shape. And the Soviet Union will have to allow Eastern Europe to link up with the West. And ultimately, one political leader will be in charge of it all.

   And then, as you know, the rest of prophecy, which I will not repeat here as we're drawing to a close, will work out. And there will be religious persecution because religion will take advantage of this great power that is centered in Europe. Our freedom to operate will be terminated except for the two witnesses. And then God will intervene and finally send Jesus Christ, will imprison Satan and his demons, and we will establish the kingdom of God and bring peace on earth. And we will have, when Christ returns, been made immortal and will begin to rule with Him for 1,000 years to teach the world the way it ought to go.

   We are now at a critical juncture in history. We are almost 2,520 years from the fall of ancient Babylon in 539 and the end of summer and early autumn, which brings us to 1982. Before which time it is most unlikely that a final Babylon politically referred to in Revelation, Chapter 17, will rise to prominence. If the prophecy of Daniel 4 of seven times or 2,520 years — that's seven times 360 — has any meaning at all, it means we should have perceived that a final political event could not take place before the summer of 1982. Nor does it mean that such a political power that might rise would necessarily make as its first action a political religious persecution.

   I would just warn you that the key lies in our doing the work that we are given to do and bearing witness. And when that job is done, then the curtain will be drawn.

   So this morning we have taken an interesting look at what lies behind prophecy in the world of spirit, the nature of prophecy far different from merely a guessing in advance or a forcing in advance of all world events, but a general reflection of human beings going the way of the devil, with the thread running through what God allows the devil to do, with a few prophecies focusing in on Christ's role in the kingdom of God, but the plan of God not being clear until we look at the holy days, which parallel the harvest season of the northern hemisphere.

   And it should tell us what our role is, where we are in the plan of God, where the world is in the sequence of prophecy. And on each of the succeeding days, and of course this afternoon with Mr. Armstrong, we will be hearing how this story will be worked out till ultimately the whole world will be saved from sin. And the human family will be made immortal. And those who will play no role will have their memory perish. And we will be forever in the kingdom of God in a world of peace with access to a universe to be recreated. Not the physical world that we can measure today on our instruments, but a world made new.

   "Behold," said Isaiah, "I make all things new." That is Revelation. Isaiah said there will be a new heaven and a new earth. The angels will not be completing what they were originally given to do. They will be those who are obedient, our fellow servants, so to speak, serving us as we serve God as His children in a new heavens and a new earth, such that human beings with all the instruments of science have never been able to measure. It has not yet entered into the heart and mind of man the nature of the world that is to be. Nor have we comprehended the nature of spirit that we are to be. We can describe it with words. We have never felt it or touched it. This is quite a world that God opens up, that this Feast of Tabernacles, for us to comprehend.