CHRIST WILL RULE

By Herbert W Armstrong

11 October 1984

(PLAY FROM START)

Well greetings brethren, not only to you here in Pasadena, but to all you brethren who just telephoned in from New Zealand that you’re getting the program from down there. Right now it’s very close to nine o’clock tomorrow morning in New Zealand; and yet it is the same time that it is here, not quite 2 o’clock in the afternoon. But I’m speaking now by satellite to all of our brethren in all feast sites in the United States, in Canada and in England.

It’s a wonderful thing that we can all be together. We can all sing together; sing the same hymns at the same time. Mr. Tkach’s remarked, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could hear what God does when He sees and hears us all together at one and the same time.” And we are at-one-ment with God and with Christ. I think that’s the most wonderful thing.

We’re living in a world that has made tremendous progress. One great example of that progress, (which is awesome) is the very fact that I can sit right here and talk to all of our brethren all over the United States and Canada and Britain and to New Zealand, and if we only had the hookup facilities, I could to the rest of our brethren all over the world.

But at the same time, we’re living in a world of appalling evils, problems, unsolvable problems, troubles that are multiplying even much faster than the progress. Now there is a reason.

foretaste of world peace (PLAY FROM 2:33)

We are here, on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles 1984, to sort of have a foretaste of that time described in your Bible (in Revelation 11 and verse 15) when all the governments, and kingdoms, nations of this world will have become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ. They will no longer be run by the human beings who are under the influence of Satan the Devil.

We’re here to celebrate the time spoken of in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, when the wild animals will be changed, and a young lamb will be playing with lions... or I mean a young child will be out playing with a lion. When even the wild animals will be changed and when we will have world peace.

We’re here to enjoy a foretaste of the time spoken of in the second chapter of Isaiah and about the first nine or ten verses, when the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, and when they’ll beat their plowshares... or rather, their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks (or the implements of war into implements of production). No one will learn war, and there will be no war anymore, but just peace. We’re here to celebrate the time when even the whole world will begin to be made at one with God.

Today, this world is at one with Satan the Devil. Now for six thousand years we have lived... this earth has been populated by a humanity living in what might be called the day of man (or even more properly), the day of Satan. THIS IS NOT GOD’S WORLD! This is SATAN’S world.

We’re here to celebrate the beginning of the time that will be GOD’S world. It’s not God’s world yet. We in God’s Church have been called out of Satan’s world. We are the come out ones, those who have been called to come out and to follow Jesus Christ and to be made now at one with God.

But the world is not at one with God. The world doesn’t want to hear about God. God never enters into the mind or the thoughts or the activities of the people of this world. They’re only concerned with the things of the ways of Satan. And Satan is the author of vanity first of all, which has led to competition and strife and attitudes of jealousy and envy, of hostility, of rebellion, of destruction, of tearing down, never building up, of wanting to get, never to give or to share.

Whereas God’s way is the way of love, L-O-V-E, love. The way of giving, of cooperating, of helping, of sharing, of having a concern for the good and the welfare of others of our own kind (the human kind) of people. But love, first of all, toward God in obedience, in reverence, and in worship and in reliance and dependence on God. God who is love, who is the giver of all good gifts and everything good, and the giver, finally, as we’re going to see in due time, the giver of peace.

true gospel being proclaimed (PLAY FROM 7:41)

But we’ve been living in the day of Satan. We’re looking forward to a time when the whole world will be, (as we who have been called out of the world to become now) at one with God. The time we call the Millennium, a thousand year period. Now when this gospel of the Kingdom of God is proclaimed in all the world for a witness to all nations, and it is now. The Plain Truth is going into every nation on the face of the earth today. In one way or another, we are getting the gospel into every nation on the face of the earth today.

I don’t know of any other church of any kind that is getting its message there, although no other church has the gospel of Jesus Christ. They have a gospel about Jesus, (many of them) but not the gospel of Jesus Christ, because His gospel was the gospel about the Kingdom of God, whereas man’s gospel is merely one about Christ. Christ was the messenger and they only preach a message about the messenger. But they overlook entirely, the message that God sent by Him.

So we’re looking forward to a utopia. Now is utopia an impossible thing? You look up the word utopia in your dictionary. If you never did you might look it up. And you’ll find that the dictionary says that utopia is a fanciful, imaginary, impossible condition of absolute perfection where everybody is peaceful and happy and there are no troubles of any kind. There’s plenty for everybody and everybody has plenty and everybody is happy and contented. And everybody is getting along very happily and peacefully with everybody else.

In other words, the time of perfection. Well what’s wrong with that? Why shouldn’t there be a utopia? Why don’t we have a utopia? I’ll tell you why. It’s because of the way people live. It’s all a matter of the way of life. We talk a lot about lifestyles these days. Humans have adopted Satan’s lifestyle, in one of its many many different varieties. And there are many varieties of it.

But it’s all based on vanity, on self-centeredness, on wanting to get instead of give, wanting to take instead of share. One of hate instead of love. Antagonism instead of cooperation. Always trying to get the best of someone else, or trying to get something without effort or without producing, and take what someone else produced away from them.

god's great purpose (PLAY FROM 11:32)

This world has been going on now for about six thousand years in that manner. Now what’s it ALL about when you get back to the beginning; what’s it ALL about? In the first place, it all has to do with one central thing. And that is the purpose of the Eternal Creator God. God has a great purpose.

You know, it was during World War II, (and I’ve said this hundreds of times I suppose now) Winston Churchill, one of the greatest statesmen of all time, and especially in our lifetime, and I think there is not one of that caliber living today. He was speaking before the United States congress assembled and he said, “There is a purpose being worked out here below”.

I don’t think Mr. Churchill understood what that purpose was, but somehow he seemed to know there is a purpose being worked out. And indeed there is. What is that purpose and who is working it out? When he said “worked out here below”, he naturally meant by God above working it out. Everything revolves around that GREAT purpose; that’s the overall purpose and everything that is going on or ever has gone on. It’s only a part or a portion of the development toward that purpose.

Now let’s start with God Himself. I don’t know how to explain anything except to go back to the beginning. I’ve said so often; you look at this world and try to understand it. And you don’t. You know why? It’s like going into a movie when it’s almost over and you don’t understand it. You don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know why the things you see being said and done are being done, or what led up to it, because you didn’t see what went before. You didn’t see what led up to it. Then you would’ve understood.

We’ve come into this world when it’s almost over. It’s near its six thousand years. And God has, in His purpose, allotted seven thousand years to complete His purpose. The first six thousand years have been allotted to Satan the Devil. Now how did he get into this? Well we need to go back to the beginning to understand even that. So I usually cover the trunk of the tree with its roots, and I leave the branches and the twigs to our other ministers. They bring you the details.

But God has a great purpose. Now in the first place, today I say we’ve been for six thousand in the day of Satan the Devil. And he has so blinded the world that they have no idea about God, and most of the people in the world are simply not conscious of God. They just don’t think about it. He doesn’t enter into their thoughts or their daily activities, or their minds. And they don’t want Him to enter in.

You begin to talk about God and they’re uncomfortable, they want to change the subject or run away real quick. They’re nervous, they don’t want to talk about God. Actually, they are afraid of God. It’s not that they think God is a monster going to harm them or hurt them. It’s rather the other way, they think God is so good that they might find out how bad they really are, and they don’t want to know. And so they run away and they are afraid of God. I’ve said many times there is no religion on earth that knows who or what God is. Except God’s own church.

who is god? (PLAY FROM 16:24)

You read in the very beginning of the Bible “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) but Moses wrote that in the Hebrew language. And in the Hebrew language, he didn’t use the word God. The word for God in Hebrew was Elohim, and Elohim is a uni…is a plural word. Not uni but plural word. It means more than one and it should be Gods (with an “s” on the end of it) in the English language, because God later said “Let us make man in our image” not ‘let me.’ There was more than one person there.

Now who was that…who and what then is God and of what is He composed and what is He like? You find that described in the New Testament in the first chapter of John the first five verses, where it says:

John 1:1 In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

Now, it's the same as in Genesis "In the beginning", but instead of saying God created the heavens and the earth, it says; "was the word and the word was with God and the word was God" ...and:

John 1:3 All things were made by him...

And there He is the Creator. It just goes into a little more detail. Now who and what is this Word? Is that talking about a being, a personage? In verse 14 I believe it is;

John 1:14 The word was made flesh and dwelt among us... [and became Jesus Christ]

So the Word was a great personage that became Jesus Christ - is the personage before He became Christ. Now we read of Him in Hebrews that He was like God,

Hebrews 7:3 Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life...

He will always exist. He always did. There never was a time when He began, He always has been. Don’t try to figure that out in your mind you just can’t. I can’t either.

Nevertheless, something had to always exist and it took intelligence to produce the unintelligent things we find in the universe. Now it says that He lived and God lived and the Word lived. Well the next thing is, then how did they live? They lived happily, they lived at peace, they loved one another. Two can’t walk together except they be agreed and they agreed.

When the Word, the Logos (as it is in the Greek language) became Jesus Christ, when He was about thirty years of age and was baptized, God said from heaven “you are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” (Matt. 3:17) He loved the Son. And the Son loved God who then became His Father after He was born of the virgin Mary. And He obeyed His Father.

only one in charge (PLAY FROM 20:24)

Now He was the Word; He spoke and one of the Psalms says “He spake and it was done.” (Psalm 33:9) And the power that did it was the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit that proceeded forth from God and also from the Word. But Jesus said, when He was human on the earth, that He never spoke anything except what His Father told Him to speak.

Now two cannot walk together except they be agreed but at the same time two cannot walk together except one is the boss.

Every young married couple going to the altar in a wedding ought to remember that. One is going to be the boss. So there are so many young brides today that say now, in advance…they say that they won’t go to the altar if there’s any promise to obey. “I’m not going to promise to obey. Our marriage is going to be fifty-fifty.” And I just simply say, “Oh yeah? Fifty-fifty?”

You know that reminds me of a Judge back in Gladewater (which we used to call it Gladewater, now we call it Big Sandy) over there in Texas. And this Judge said that he settled that question on his wedding day.

He said, “I laid down the law to my wife. I let her know without any equivocation who was going to be the boss in our family. And I told her I would be the boss, and make no mistake about that. I would allow her to, well, make any decisions in some minor, little minor problems that might come along, but I reserve the voice in deciding all major problems. I wanted her to understand that I am the boss.”

“Well” he said, “now that worked out very well all these years since we were married. No major problems have ever arisen.” (audience laughter) So you can guess who the boss was.

Well in this case God was the boss, and Jesus said He was. There’s no question about it. You can’t have any society. You can’t have any organization. Unless one is the boss. There has to be leadership. But God lived. The Word lived. And they got along, and they lived the way of cooperation, and one was the boss. And there was love between them, and there was harmony, and there was peace.

Now the next thing is, what did they do? If they lived, they had to be doing something. What was their occupation? Well, they were creators. They created, and in Ephesians 3 and verse 9 you read that God was the creator. He was the boss, and He created all things BY Jesus Christ.

Now Christ did whatever His Father told Him. He only spoke what His Father told Him to, so God told Him what to do. He spoke, and one of the Psalms says “It was done.” The Spirit of God leaped out and did it. So it all originated with God the Father and there was total cooperation, and a perfect creation came about.

angels created first (PLAY FROM 24:52)

Now the first thing that they created was angels. What is God and of what is God composed? Let’s see, it’s in John 4:24 I think. "God is a spirit", He is composed of spirit. What is man? Man is flesh, made from the dust of the ground. That’s quite different. But you see back in Genesis, it was Elohim, (more than one person) said:

Genesis 1:26 ...Let us make man in our image after our likeness. [But,]

Genesis 2:7 The Eternal God [and the Eternal is the one who became Christ] formed man of the dust of the ground...just out of matter, and what was made out of matter became a living soul.

So the soul came out of matter, and the soul is not spirit. But God did put a spirit in man to give him a mind. So you read in Job that “there is a spirit in man.” (Job 32:8).You read in the second chapter of I Corinthians that no man could even have the knowledge that a human can have; a knowledge that horses, cows, elephants can’t have. No animal can have human knowledge, and a man could not have that kind of knowledge except by the spirit of man (the human spirit) that is in him.

Now, I find in the Bible, that there are different degrees (or levels) of spirit. Highest of all is the Spirit of God who has the power of creation, the power of thinking and planning and designing. Then bringing into existence out of non-existence; and forming and shaping. He designed an oak leaf and caused an oak tree to always bear oak leaves. He designed the human brain and the human body. Far more marvelous than anything any human can design or produce.

And God was Creator and God was composed of spirit. Now the first thing that God created then was angels. We find that angels were in existence before matter, because you find in the 38th of Job that when the earth was created (and the heavens were created at the same time according to both the 1st and the 2nd chapter of Genesis) that the angels were already in existence. And they were shouting for joy and singing for gladness, because the earth originally was made as a habitat for the angels.

Now we find there are three archangels or cherubs and they are the highest level of angels. Angels were created on three levels. First were ordinary angels. They do not have wings. A little higher, also composed of spirit, also immortal, (not made of matter but made of spirit) are seraphs. They do have wings.

Then above them, highest of all, next to God, were cherubs (or super archangels), and they have wings. And there are three of them mentioned in the Bible and a third of them had followed one, Lucifer.

Lucifer was one. He was on the very throne of God, and there was a government there. The government was based on a way of living; a way of life which is love, cooperation, perfect harmony and agreement, and being at one with God, at-one-ment with God. And one of those archangels (Lucifer) had been on the throne of God. And he was experienced in the government of God. Now all government is based on a law. How would you define law? I had to speak before the law school of the University of Southern California, one of the most famous law schools in the United States. I mentioned then that law is merely the rules of human conduct, or the conduct one or more persons in contact with other person or persons. And I also mentioned that men can’t seem to understand what is the right way of conduct, and even our Supreme Court judges can’t understand the difference between right and wrong. They just don’t know.

One of the big arguments right now is abortion; is it right or wrong. And only God can tell you that. So I think the next program that I put on the air will be answer to that question.

When does human life start? Is it at birth or is it before birth? Is an abortion the taking of human life, is it murder or isn’t it? I’m not going to give any opinion. I’m just going to tell them what God says. I’m going to tell them what Jesus Christ would say if He were here. What He does say because the Bible is His word in writing. So He says that, that’s what He says.

Now any government is founded on a law, a basic law and law is merely the rules of human conduct. And God’s way of human conduct is love.

physical universe created (PLAY FROM 32:13)

Now the next thing that God created was the physical universe. As I say in Job 38 you read of God creating the earth. And in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are statements that show in both places the whole universe was created at the same general time as the earth. It says in the same day, but it doesn’t mean 24 hour day, the same general time.

And so the angels were created before the physical universe. When God created the physical universe and created the earth, He put a third of the angels on the earth and He put this Lucifer over them. Now there are two other archangels, each one over a third of the other angels I presume. One of course, was Michael and the other was Gabriel. Those are the three archangels.

But God set a throne of government on the earth that His government, based on the law of love; of love toward God first of all and then love toward your fellow creatures, in this case, it’d be toward other angels. And Lucifer was set on a throne to administer that government. And he still is on that throne to this day.

Now when he was set on that throne nobody knows, it was prior to the creation of the first human. And I don’t know whether it was two or three years before or whether it was millions of years, because angels are immortal and they have been living forever, (not forever) they’ve been living a long, long time. They’re immortal.

This Lucifer, when he got on the throne of his own, he became jealous. Beauty went to his head. Now you find about him in the 14th chapter of Isaiah and the 28th chapter of Ezekiel. He was so beautiful that he allowed vanity to seize him and it went to his head. And he then became jealous of God. God ruled the whole universe but he could only rule this one little planet earth.

So he organized his angels into an army and said “let’s go up and pull a coup. Let’s invade God’s heaven and knock God off the throne. I want to take over. I'm going to take God’s place. I’ll be God.” But he got knocked back down to earth. And so he was no longer the super archangel, he became Satan the Devil and his angels who went with him became demons. Now after that had happened, God next decided that He, in His great purpose being worked out here below, would reproduce Himself. He could create no higher being than the cherubs. Here was a cherub who had gone the wrong way and sinned and lacked the character of God.

man created (PLAY FROM 36:26)

So He said, only God can be assured of always going the right way and never will go the wrong way. So He would reproduce Himself; and He would reproduce Himself out of humans made out of the dust of the ground.

Genesis 1:26 God said let us [that was God the Father said to the Word “Let us”] make man in our image after our likeness...

Then the Word obeyed,

Genesis 2:7 [and he] ...formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life...

Now he didn’t have immortality, angels did. But man had a mind and he had a human spirit. A human spirit was on a lower level than angel spirit; the lowest level of any spirit, but it was still spirit, it was human spirit. And the human spirit with the human brain (and incidentally, a human brain is no better than a cow’s brain or a horse’s brain or an elephant’s brain or any animal brain).

But the human spirit with that brain empowers it with the power of intellect; the power to acquire and comprehend knowledge; the power to reason, and the power to have wisdom and judgment, to make decisions, to put facts together in a reasoning process and come to conclusions, even to invent and to do many things that the human mind can do. And so the human brain empowered with the human spirit becomes a mind. Animals don’t have minds, they merely have brains.

But God offered the man life. He put him in the Garden of Eden and there were two symbolic trees, one was the tree of life and if the man would take that tree of life, he would then be made at one with God. And it meant that God, when God’s Spirit would enter into him and combine with his spirit.

Now man was at first made alone and incomplete. God had not completed the creation at first, he was only a single male human being. And God wanted him to reproduce and replenish the earth. The poor man couldn’t do it. So God performed an operation, put him to sleep, used a, perhaps it was a miraculous anesthesia (but was an anesthesia), took out one of his ribs and made a woman out of it. And so he added a woman, (a female human) to the male and the two became one. But one what? One family! They became one family just as God and the Word are one God Family. Now they became one human family.

Already you begin to see a type toward God. Now God offered them eternal life. If they would take of the tree of life, then the Spirit of God would enter into them and would impregnate them with immortal life. They would have then been begotten with eternal life and in due time they would be born as very God, as Jesus Himself was later after four thousand years.

satan's deception (PLAY FROM 40:51)

But in the meantime, Satan came along and he deceived Eve. And Eve took of the forbidden fruit. That was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and God forbade them to take that; to take to themselves the knowledge of good and evil.

Now notice, they were made with a human spirit and it had the power to know, up to a certain level, (the level of the human spirit) they could know good as well as evil. They couldn’t know good though, on the grand scale that God’s mind can, because they had a lower grade of spirit.

Any good that they could do was of a self-centered nature. I’ve said many times that one of the highest attributes of good that is possible for a human is mother love. The way a mother loves her child, but that is, in itself, innately selfish. The child came from that mother; it’s hers, she loves it. She doesn’t love other children like that one. All the difference in the world.

Whereas God doesn’t have favorites, God is just love. Period. God loves sinners as well as the righteous. He loves sinners so much He gave His only begotten Son to die for them that they could be reconciled back to him again. That’s a different kind of love altogether. It’s on a higher, more grand scale.

So what did God do? He closed off the tree of life so that no man could get to it, and put super archangels guarding it with flaming swords, lest anyone should go in and take it and eat and take it live forever.

So this world was founded. Satan had virtually kidnapped Adam and Eve and they went the way of Satan. Satan didn’t say “Worship me”, he said “do your own thing.” He said “choose your good and evil for yourself, your own way, do your own thing.” And so they did. But they could not choose a higher good because it wasn’t within their power. They only had a human spirit. It wasn’t on that higher level of the Spirit of God.

And so the world that followed had both good and evil. But there was Satan who had kidnapped them and kidnapped their whole family. At that time, the foundation of the world, God made certain decrees. He decreed as you read in the 13th chapter of Revelation and verse 8 that the one who was the Logos (or the Word) would become flesh and dwell among us; would live a perfect human life but would pay the death penalty in man’s stead, because the penalty for that sin was death. So now it was already decreed that man’s sin could be paid for, and man could have his penalty removed.

The next thing God decreed was that as in Adam all were going to die, so in Christ the same all would be made alive by a resurrection. You read of that in I Corinthians 15 beginning with verse 22. And then along with that, in Hebrews 9:27, you will read that it was appointed then at the very foundation of the world for men “once to die” because of sin. They are all the offspring of Adam and Eve, and they had sinned. Adam had sinned, and all have sinned since and Adam. They all die in Adam. But after they die, there would be a judgment. They would be resurrected in Christ. Christ would come and pay the penalty of sin. They would be resurrected, and then it would be possible after all, for them to be saved.

god's purpose revealed in the holy days (PLAY FROM 46:08)

In other words, God had a purpose He was working out here below and when Satan induced Adam and Eve to go the wrong way, he did not defeat God’s purpose. GOD’S PURPOSE SHALL STAND! No one can defeat God’s purpose. And so God arranged that even though man should die, through Christ they would all be made alive. Then would come a judgment. But the judgment was not on the children of Adam and Eve.

Now, it’s just a case of when we’re to be saved. Those that God calls are those that were predestinated to come. We have a different battle than those who come later. We have to fight Satan. We have to fight this world. We have to overcome Satan. We have to overcome the world and we have to even overcome our own selves.

Now everybody is going to be called. But only those in God’s Church are called now. Others will be called later, it’s just a case of when you are called. We’re called now, not to get salvation. We’re called now to learn and to come to be filled with the Spirit of God and to learn of God in order to be teachers and to bring others, when their time comes, into salvation and into the Kingdom of God and to bring into a condition where they too, will finally be at one with God.

So now, God has given His Church; and ancient Israel was the church in the wilderness, but they were really the congregation or church of Israel. We are the Church of God. In other words, they were the flesh-born children of Jacob, his name was changed to Israel. We are the spirit-born, the spirit-begotten children of God. So we are called by our Father’s name. They were called Israel. That was their national name. We are called Church of God and we go by our Father’s name - God. Oh, brethren, do we realize these wonderful truths? Do we realize it?

Now God has given us these annual Holy days. First it began the spiritual phase of God’s program, began with Christ and His sacrifice, and the Passover pictured that. The seven days of Unleavened Bread picture coming out of sin. That’s the next step. The Day of Pentecost, coming in the summer pictures the coming of the Holy Spirit. Also was the time of the coming of the Law at Mount Sinai. That comes in the summer, usually in the month of June, I guess always.{1}

Then we come to the Feast of Trumpets. That was the second coming of Christ. That is the time when Christ will come and take over the reign and the rule of ALL NATIONS.

we must qualify (PLAY FROM 50:14)

Now when He comes, we’re going to reign and rule with Him. He says, for example, in Revelation the 2nd chapter; well, it’s in verse... in chapter 2 verses 26 and 27, and chapter 3 verse 21, we will sit with Him on His throne. We will be given power over the nations and rule them with a rod of iron. We’re called now to qualify to do that. That’s the only reason we’re called, not to just get salvation. Those of you who think you’re called just to get salvation are going to find you won’t get it.

You’re like the one who received one of the ten talents when Christ, in the parable {2}, gave one talent to each of his ten servants. The one who took it and gained ten with it and did something, qualified for what he would do in the Kingdom. He’s going to reign over ten cities in the Kingdom. He qualified for what he can do in the Kingdom of God. The one who gained five talents, only did half as well, he will be given only half as big a job in the Kingdom, which means half as big an honor really.

But the one who just tried to get saved and that’s all, and he tried to keep what he had and didn’t add anything to it, had it taken away from him. He didn’t get into the Kingdom at all. And that’s what going happen to any of you people who think your just getting into the Kingdom and you’re just going to get saved. If you don’t realize you have to grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ as well as His grace. If you don’t realize you have to overcome. If you don’t realize you have to endure to the end. If you don’t realize you have to qualify; we’re rewarded according to our works, not saved according to our works. But we’re not being called just to be saved.

Salvation itself is a free gift of God, but we’re called for something more than that now. We’re called for a great job and we must qualify. What have you qualified for that you... now how much have you grown since this time last year? Ask yourself that. Many of you are going to have to say “well I guess I haven’t grown. I guess I haven’t learned any more than I knew then. I guess my character is not any better than it was then. I sometimes think that a lot of Protestantism has rubbed off on some of us, and they think it’s just a matter of getting saved. Brethren, it’s far, far more than that.

Now then, if we qualify, then when Christ comes, we’re going to sit with Him on His throne. We’re going to be given power over the nations. We’ll be kings and priests and we shall reign on the earth; that’s Revelation 5 verse 10. And then will come that thousand year period that I mentioned at the beginning. Now after that Satan will be loosed. Satan will be put away. The Day of Atonement, which we had just ten days ago, pictures Satan being put clear away. Christ will come and rule. When He does, Satan won’t be on the throne any longer, he’ll be removed. We will be ruling with Christ. Have you been qualifying? Have you been gaining ground?

Brethren, I don’t say you have to reach absolute perfection. I don’t think any of us is going to do that. But we have to have gained ground. We have to have made progress. We have to have been overcoming. We have to have been growing in grace and knowledge. Do you study your Bibles enough? Do you pray enough? Otherwise brethren, some of you are not going to make it into God’s Kingdom. We talk about making it into God’s Kingdom, let’s quit talking that way. Let’s talk about qualifying to be a king or a priest.

Following then, of course, will come that thousand years. And after that will come the time of the Great White Throne Judgment. Those who have lived before, judgment was not on them. They will be resurrected. As they have died in Adam, they will be resurrected in Christ.

And it will be the final judgment, and of course that is a subject for the Last Great Day of the Feast. Then we will show the final culmination of this marvelous great purpose of God. It’s a marvelous thing and God’s purpose as I said, does stand. As I’ve said before, I’ve looked into the book, which is God’s book. I’ve looked over into the end to see how it comes out, and we win! And we will win. Brethren, keep studying your Bible. Keep praying. Keep qualifying and never fail.

{1} Editorial note: Pentecost, on occasion, also comes in May.

{2} Editorial note: Mr. Armstrong was referring to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30.