Jesus Christ’s parable of the prodigal son, recorded in Luke 15, is perhaps the most moving parable He uttered.

A man had two sons, and the younger one asked his father for his inheritance. He didn’t like it at home with Dad and all his “tough rules.” I have to get out of here. I can’t stand the authority and the government, he thought. I want to go out and have a good time! He decided to flee to the world. As any parent can imagine, such rejection and abandonment is devastating.

The heartbroken father in this parable represents God the Father. Throughout history, He has had many prodigal sons who have turned away from Him. This parable helps us understand how God feels about such rejection and how He handles such a painful situation.

This father surely tried to persuade his son not to take such a reckless, self-destructive course. Nevertheless, he did not compel him to stay. Everyone must make his own decisions—and everyone must live with the consequences of those decisions.

God the Father yearns for a close relationship with every one of His sons—but He gives us the choice. He offers real, abundant living—a blessed life, filled with purpose, hope and joy. He shows us the way, then encourages us to choose life. “… I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing,” He says, “therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). God gives us free will, and He leaves that choice to us. He is looking for the same voluntary, heartfelt love and devotion that His Son Jesus Christ shows (John 8:29; 14:31). That is what He wants from every son! Sadly, despite what a wonderful Father He is, such love and devotion are extremely rare.

The son in the parable traveled far away and squandered his wealth on riotous living. Soon he was broke, forced to do hard labor just to survive. He was miserable and starving. It was in these wretched conditions that “he came to himself” (Luke 15:17). He finally realized that his life had become a wreck. He saw the terrible mistakes he had made, and he recognized, for the first time, just how good he had had it and that there was nobody like his father.

He determined to turn things around. He said to himself, “I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants” (verses 18-19). This is true of all of us! We are not worthy to be called sons of God!

That trial brought this young man to a sincere repentance. There are times when those who leave God find themselves in trial and trouble. God often uses difficult circumstances to help a son “come to himself” and repent.

If you have found yourself in such a state, the sooner you change course, the better off you will be. As long as you are separated from God’s blessing and protection, your life will only get worse. In fact, Bible prophecy shows that many of God’s sons and daughters are about to be plunged into the Great Tribulation, a time of the worst suffering in human history! Whether or not you believe it, violence is about to overwhelm our cities. Millions of lives will be snuffed out by nuclear weapons—great numbers of people will be taken into concentration camps and death camps! Many prophecies warn of this horror, and it is coming soon.

It is in those woeful conditions that many people will “come to themselves.” They will recognize their rebellion against their loving Father. How tragic that it will take such extreme trial to get through to them! Nevertheless, it will bring them to sincere repentance, like the prodigal son.

The father in this parable clearly loved his son—and, despite the son’s betrayal, never stopped loving him. He mourned his departure and feared he would never see him again. As he walked his land each day, he regularly scanned the horizon, hopeful for any sign of the young man’s return.

Finally, that day came. The father glimpsed the figure of his lost son “a great way off” (verse 20). His heart began beating faster. Suddenly flooded with emotion, he ran to his son! The closer he got, the clearer he could see the young man’s broken, emaciated state—but he was alive! The moment he reached him, the father embraced and kissed his son! He was overwhelmed with joy! The fact that his son had returned indicated his repentant spirit, and the father, filled with compassion, was eager to forgive.

The son said, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son” (verse 21). The father didn’t even answer. He simply told his servants, “Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found” (verses 22-24).

This is a type of God the Father! This father didn’t act like a worldly father and say, Didn’t I tell you that you were wrecking your life? He saw his son returning in repentance, and he ran to him and showered kisses on him! He was so thankful to have him back home with the family! They had a great feast because the father was so happy.

This father responded exactly the way God the Father responds to anyone who leaves His Church and then returns to Him in repentance! Our Father is profoundly moved by a son who repents, who has an attitude of, I’ll be a hired servant—I’ll do anything. I’m just so thankful I can come back to your love and your mercy. I’m so thankful for your kisses and hugs because you are my Father! The Father is waiting with open arms! That is the way He is; that is the depth of His love. He is a Father!

Yes, God is a loving Father! He is not like a father—He is the ultimate Father!

The parable of the prodigal son is the third of three parables recorded in Luke 15. In the first, the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus Christ said, “I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance” (verse 7). When you repent, you really fill God with excitement and joy! You can affect God’s feelings and His happiness simply by repenting when you need to repent! Your Father loves you so much.

The book you are now reading is addressed, in large part, to God’s prodigal sons—of whom there are many in this final era of God’s Church in this age of man, called the Laodicean era in Revelation 3:14-22.

If you have fallen away from God, know that God loves you and has not given up on you! He is longing for the day when you will come to yourself, repent, and make your way back to Him. He is watching the horizon for any sign of your return! Don’t delay. Humble yourself and go to Him so you can be reunited and once again enjoy His blessing and favor.

Christ’s parable continued. The man’s other son became upset at the celebration being held for his once wayward brother. He angrily stayed away from the festivities (Luke 15:25-28). This part of the parable also teaches us about the love of God the Father.

The attentive father noticed and sought his older son out. He perceived there was a problem and “intreated” him. The Greek word parakaleo means to call to one’s side; to speak to in exhortation or comfort; to beg or beseech; to strive to appease by entreaty; to console, encourage and strengthen. This man didn’t demand, “You get in here and welcome your brother!” He said, Son, what’s wrong? I can tell something is bothering you. Let me help you. This is a joyous time, and I want you to be able to share in it. He gave him an opportunity to express his frustration.

The son told his father frankly, “Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf” (verses 29-30). This son didn’t react to repentance the way God does.

How did the father respond? He said, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine” (verse 31). What profound love the father expressed! This son wasn’t being rebellious; he had simply lost some perspective and needed to change his attitude. His father helped him through, comforting and entreating him.

This is God the Father talking: You are ever with me, and all that I have is yours! The Father gives His faithful children everything! Many scriptures show that the inheritance God has reserved for those who remain faithful during this Laodicean era—and those who repent before Christ’s Second Coming—is truly staggering! We will “inherit all things” (Revelation 21:7)—all that the Father has to give! And He keeps us “ever with Him,” in the most intimate relationship, teaching us, comforting and entreating us, helping us overcome and grow.

This book is also for God’s faithful sons. We need to open ourselves up completely to our Father and listen and respond to His guidance and correction.

We all need to study and appreciate and emulate the wonderful qualities of our heavenly Father. God is love (1 John 4:8). He looks for the best in His children. He bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:7). He wants the best for us. He wants to see us prosper and succeed. He wants to give to us; He truly is a generous giver! He wants to be a helper of our joy. God the Father yearns to draw His children into the closest relationship with Him. And He is perfect. He said, If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more do I, in whom there is no evil? (Matthew 7:11). God gave us the most precious thing possible: His own Son to pay for our sins so that when we repent and accept that sacrifice, He can open up His Family to us!

We must all come to think much more like our loving, perfect Father God.

Where we have gone off track, we need to be humble and contrite, repentant and obedient. Where we are selfish and small-minded, we need to grow in compassion and mercy, generosity and love.

It is my sincere prayer that this book helps many lost prodigal sons to be found—and many sons who are spiritually dead to be brought to life again!

We do not grasp God the Father’s love deeply enough!

If we truly saw the passion He has for His Spirit-begotten sons—and for the people in this world—it would drive us to our knees in humble gratitude. It would inspire more love and devotion in us to serve Him.

You see that love in the baptismal covenant.

Baptism is the most important, meaningful ceremony in life. It is a glorious, inspiring covenant between a human being and the Almighty God!

When we are baptized, we receive a whole range of promises and blessings from God. It is difficult to fully comprehend the investment God makes in us at that moment.

God does not take this lightly. From that moment, He is committed to our eternal spiritual success in an intense, personal way!

And He is deeply grieved when one of His begotten children breaks that covenant with Him.

Sanctified by the Father

God the Father is the one who calls us. John 6:44 tells us, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him ….” The Father must draw us to Him before we can truly come to know Him and Jesus Christ.

Do you realize how selective God is in calling someone? How much effort He puts into deciding whom to draw?

The first verse in the epistle of Jude gives us insight into this process. This letter is addressed “to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called.” That word called is better read as invited. This word is quite different from how it is used in Matthew 22:14, where Christ says that “many are called, but few are chosen.” This is God personally inviting someone to be part of His Family. And this verse shows that before God calls an individual, God the Father sanctifies him or her.

The Father is carefully selective, setting that person apart. He then gives Jesus Christ the job of preserving that person. The individual must be protected from the devil and his demons who seek to destroy him.

During that period, God is evaluating to gauge that person’s likelihood of successfully entering His Family. Surely He is watching to see how he or she reacts to His truth, or to His correction, or to a challenge or trial He allows or sends.

Only after that person has passed such scrutiny does God extend that invitation—the greatest invitation God will ever give for all eternity! This undoubtedly means many who are sanctified are not invited.

When you understand just how special and exalted that calling is—and as you recognize the eternal stakes—the fact that the Father is so careful and selective makes perfect sense.

Every person God works with is super special to Him! He knows and loves that individual profoundly.

And when that individual is baptized into His Family, entering a covenant with God, that increases his or her spiritual stature tremendously!

Begotten by the Father

After baptism, a minister of God lays hands on the person and prays over him. With that prayer, the person receives the greatest gift in the universe. God imparts a small portion of His spiritual power, the Holy Spirit.

That is what makes a person a Christian: the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9).

At that moment, the Father begets that person as His own son! That Spirit is like a sperm cell fertilizing an ovum: It is the start of a new spiritual life!

Only the Father begets us—not even Christ does that. How amazing to be begotten by God the Father!

Can you understand how important this is to God? When the Father begets a son, that means everything to Him! That is at the heart of His master plan. That was why He created man! The Father is reproducing Himself in human beings, creating more God beings in His own spiritual character image.

That is why He made the ultimate sacrifice—sending His Son to Earth and allowing Him to die—to offer you the opportunity to be born into His eternal Family!

Zechariah 9:11 mentions “the blood of thy covenant.” The Hebrew shows that this is speaking of a “blood covenant.” Christ, who was God in the flesh, gave His own blood to make this covenant possible! We must see the bloody price that was paid to give us this opportunity and recognize how it shows God’s unparalleled love and devotion. (Read about this in Chapter 7 of my free booklet Zechariah—The Sign of Christ’s Imminent Return.)

There are no accidental sons—like an accidental pregnancy—in God’s Family. God calculates it to the smallest detail!

The Father has yearning love for every individual in whom He has planted His Holy Spirit. We are His Family, and He makes sure we are taken care of if we are loyal to Him. He is not about to let His sons be neglected or mistreated. What love the Father has for us!

God does allow trials in our lives, but even those are blessings: “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him” (James 1:12). The Father wants to give you a crown of life! This is in stark contrast to the fading flower of this life (verses 10-11). If you love Him—which means you love His law and the government that teaches it—then nobody can break God’s promise of eternal God-life to you!

Do you love God like He loves you? Are you proving that love each day? We cannot afford to answer these questions casually.

Our Burial at Baptism

The Apostle Paul knew that we are all sinners (Romans 3:23). He knew there was nothing we could do, by ourselves, to erase that penalty of death. We all need a Savior. By God’s grace, after we repent, He removes the penalty for our sins against God’s law.

Paul was also clear that, after we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, we need to live by God’s law. This too requires a miracle.

After explaining in Romans 5 about grace and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, Paul says, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” (Romans 6:1-2). Is the law done away because of grace? Paul answers with an emphatic no!

He then explains the inspiring symbolism of the baptismal ceremony. We must understand this symbolism to comprehend why we need the Holy Spirit and why Christ must live in us today.

“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?” (verse 3). Paul says we were baptized into the death of Christ. He pointed out in the preceding chapter that we are justified by Christ’s death and saved by His life (Romans 5:9-10).

At baptism, we are fully plunged under water, which is a symbolic burial (e.g. Matthew 3:16; Acts 8:36-38). The old, carnal man dies with Jesus Christ. Paul explains further: “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

Now we begin to see the importance of the Holy Spirit and why it is Christ’s life that saves us! Just as Christ was resurrected, or raised from the dead, we arise from that watery grave and proceed to walk in newness of life by the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

We agree to bury the old self, and when we are baptized, that old self dies. Paul makes this plain: “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection” (verse 5). Baptism symbolizes both a death and a resurrection. At baptism we die as Jesus Christ did, and when we come up out of that watery grave, we live as He does—not by our own power but by the power of God’s Holy Spirit!

Our sins have been forgiven. But does our baptism excuse sin? Does it cover future sins? Paul continues, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (verse 6). Baptism symbolizes a complete break. It is a line between death and life, between sin and righteousness!

To “walk in newness of life” so that we might “not serve sin,” God gives us the gift of His Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands immediately after repentance and baptism. Walking in “newness of life” means we are now living a life led by the Spirit of God (Romans 8:14).

The Holy Spirit by which God begets us as His sons after baptism is the very power by which we begin to overcome sin and actually take on the divine nature of God Himself. It is by that power that the resurrected Jesus Christ lives in us!

Led by the Spirit

Many of you reading this likely made this baptismal covenant because of the teachings of the late Herbert W. Armstrong. Remember what he taught about this.

The down payment of God’s Spirit imparts the mind of God. Mr. Armstrong said in a July 1983 sermon that this means God injects “His life [and] also His mind, also His character, also His attitude of love, of cooperation, of giving, of concern for others just as much as concern for yourself. Selflessness instead of selfishness.”

When we are led by the Holy Spirit, it produces spiritual fruit in our lives that comes straight from God—His love, joy, faith and other qualities (Galatians 5:22-23). That Spirit also gives us spiritual understanding (1 Corinthians 2:9-14). What an unparalleled gift!

1 John 4:2 shows that through the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ “is come in the flesh.” The tense of the Greek verb translated is come means is coming. It could read “is come and continuing to come,” or “is now coming.” Christ Himself is dwelling in us in Spirit! And when Christ is living in us, we have life (1 John 5:12). That is an earthshaking truth.

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). The very mind of God comes through the Spirit. We must let His mind be in us. He will not force it.

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Romans 8:14). What a profound statement! If we are to be born as God’s sons, simply having God’s Spirit is not enough: We must be led by that Spirit!

This is a big reason why there are so few in God’s “little flock” (Luke 12:32), His true Church. God leaves it up to you.

If we do not follow the direction of God’s Spirit, we are quenching the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19)—and we risk losing it!

The Father wants to lead His sons. He wants us to follow Him the way His Son Jesus Christ does. Christ said, “And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29). This is one of my favorite scriptures, if not the favorite. What a beautiful attitude Christ had! No wonder the Father called Jesus “my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”! (Matthew 3:17; 17:5).

If we love our Father, we will use His Spirit to keep His commandments willingly and cheerfully (1 John 5:3). That is how we show Him that we love Him.

If we are led by the indwelling Spirit of God, always striving to please our Father, then He will do everything for us! “And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight” (1 John 3:22). Imagine receiving anything you ask of God! But to obtain that, you must do more than just obey your heavenly Father out of duty. The Apostle John is discussing an attitude of wanting to do anything possible to please your Father! That attitude gets your prayers answered! Of course, you will be asking for the things that please God.

Obviously, God will only give us what is good for us. But this verse shows that we should not put limits on what God could give us—as long as we are obedient and ask Him in a right attitude. That is the formula for success that Christ followed.

Would a father leave a child alone who had such an attitude? No—he would smash a battalion of soldiers to save that son! Take on that attitude, and your heavenly Father will intervene in your life and make splendid things happen for you.

This is the loving family relationship God opens up to us when we enter that baptismal covenant with Him!

Repent and Believe

The Father wants to give these glorious gifts generously, but there are conditions we must first meet.

When the New Testament Church began on Pentecost a.d. 31, the Apostle Peter said, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy [Spirit]” (Acts 2:38). Repentance is prerequisite to being baptized and receiving God’s Spirit. And, it must be noted, continued repentance is key for us to keep God’s Spirit (e.g. Psalm 51, especially verse 11).

Before baptism, God leads us to repent of the way we have been living—a life contrary to His law (Romans 2:4). We repent not only for what we have done but for what we are.

Mr. Armstrong wrote that repentance “is a total change of mind and heart and direction of life. It is a change to a new way of life. It is a turning from the self-centered way of vanity, selfishness, greed, hostility to authority, envy, jealousy and unconcern for the good and welfare of others to the God-centered way of obedience, submission to authority, love toward God more than love of self and of love and concern for other humans equal to self-concern” (Just What Do You Mean … Conversion?).

Many misinterpret repentance to mean sorrow. Repentance actually means change. Merriam-Webster defines repent as “to turn from sin ….” Turning from sin—changing your former way of life—means turning to obeying God’s law.

In addition to repentance, we must “believe”—know and accept that Jesus Christ died for us (e.g. Mark 16:15-16; Acts 8:12, 36-38; 16:30-31). This means He paid the death penalty for our past sins (Romans 6:23). This belief, or faith in Jesus Christ’s shed blood as payment for our sins, is outwardly manifested by baptism.

“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). We must have faith in that blood and the fact that He paid the penalty for “sins that are past” (Romans 3:25).

During the baptismal ceremony, God’s minister will ask the potential member of God’s Family the following question: “Have you repented of your sins and accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?” After the individual says yes, he is baptized.

Wholehearted Commitment

Baptism is only the starting point of a lifetime of conversion, striving to become more and more like God. It is a commitment to obey God and to replace our carnal thoughts, emotions and desires with the very thoughts of God Himself! We must think like God! That is very difficult to accomplish. We must constantly grow in our conversion. And we must endure to the end. That is all part of our baptismal commitment.

Jesus Christ said, “If any man come to me, and hate not [or love less by comparison] his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26-27).

Do you understand the seriousness of the commitment you make when you enter this covenant with God? You promise that whatever burden He gives you, you will bear it and follow God no matter the cost. You must be willing to give up anything for this cause, including the closest members of your own family. You may even have to die for it!

God must know that we will never allow anyone or anything to take priority over Him. “So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple” (verse 33). At baptism we tell God that, if necessary, we will give up anything, do anything and go anywhere to obey Him and keep Him first in our life!

You cannot enter that covenant lightly. Before you are baptized, you must count the cost.

God’s part of the covenant is sure. Ephesians 4:30 says that you are “sealed unto the day of redemption.” At baptism, God “seals” you. He will not withdraw His calling. If you are properly led by the Spirit, you are as good as saved—that is how God views it. God “calleth those things which be not as though they were” (Romans 4:17).

At baptism, we are “sealed with that holy Spirit of promise” (Ephesians 1:13). It is a “promise” because God’s part is sure! However, we can break that seal by our actions. Nothing is guaranteed until we are born sons—not just begotten.

Covenants can be broken by men. But God’s Word cannot be broken. This is the character we must build to become members of God’s Family. We must uphold our part of that baptismal covenant!

Our Father is dedicated to our success. He would not have chosen us if He didn’t believe we could make it. He yearns to consummate this covenant with us—and He can only do that if we faithfully carry out our part of the agreement.

Kings and Priests

Again, Ephesians 1:13 calls what we receive at baptism “that holy Spirit of promise.” It is a promise from God of something even greater.

Verse 14 calls it “the earnest [meaning pledge or down payment] of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.” That small measure of Spirit God implants in us at baptism is a down payment of our future inheritance—God giving us the full measure of His Holy Spirit when we become spirit beings—born sons of God!

God gives His Spirit to His sons to empower us to overcome and grow. But that gift represents even more. Our Father has magnificent plans for His sons! When He makes that covenant with us at baptism, He is committing Himself to placing us into supremely exalted offices in His eternal Kingdom!

1 John 2:20 says, “But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.” The New King James translates unction as “anointing.” Receiving the Holy Spirit means you have an anointing from the Holy One, from God Himself!

In the Old Testament, priests and kings were anointed with oil when God put them into that office (e.g. Exodus 30:30; 1 Samuel 16:13). When you are baptized and receive the Spirit—pictured by that oil in those ordination ceremonies—God anoints you as a king and a priest in embryo!

John says “you have an anointing,” present tense—not “you will receive an anointing.” God sees it as though it is complete.

That is why Revelation 1:6 and 5:10 use the present perfect tense when saying that God “hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father ….” Once we are baptized, we are there and then consecrated into the highest offices in the World Tomorrow! In His mind we are already kings and priests, though we are yet to assume those offices. Following baptism, we are being trained and prepared to rule this world.

What an honor! At baptism we are like spiritual embryos in the womb, just beginning the process of conversion. How awesome and inspiring that, even at that moment, God places us into that royal priestly office! Then He continues to lovingly shape and mold us into king-priests.

God has such a positive, hope-filled approach to His sons. If we remain faithful, our eternal double-crown as king-priests is assured!

This too shows you just how deeply invested God is in every Spirit-begotten saint. Think of the Father’s emotions in individually choosing each one of us as a member of the royal, priestly Family that will rule the world with Him in the soon-coming Kingdom of God. That is a one-in-a-million opportunity that He does not give carelessly.

Jesus Christ told His disciples, “In my Father’s house are many mansions [or offices]: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:2-3). God has many offices to fill in His future temple in Jerusalem, and He is preparing those offices right now for His firstfruits! These same king-priests will later have offices in new Jerusalem! Revelation 3:12 promises that those who remain faithful to the Philadelphia standard will “go no more out” of God’s temple. We will work from the Father’s house forever!

This destiny ought to stir us far more than anything else in our lives! The reward given to these pillar-priests, the highest-level offices in God’s Kingdom, is magnificent beyond words! And it starts with the spiritual anointing we receive at baptism.

If you can believe it, there is an even more awesome, inspiring aspect of the baptismal covenant.

A Marriage Covenant

Few understand this truth, but the Old Covenant was a marriage covenant. The God of the Old Testament was the Being who later became Jesus Christ. (I explain this doctrine in Chapter 1 of my free book The Eternal Has Chosen Jerusalem.) The covenant God made with ancient Israel on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19 and 24 was a marriage agreement. Read Ezekiel 16, which describes God’s marriage to Israel. Verse 8 reads: “… I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest mine.”

Sadly, Israel broke its “wedding vow,” so to speak. As verse 32 says, it became “as a wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband!” In verses 38-39, Israel is compared to “women that break wedlock.” In Jeremiah 3:14, God pleads, “Turn, O backsliding children … for I am married unto you ….” That history shows how human beings can fail God, even when He offers them such a special and glorious opportunity.

Ezekiel 16 does describe the Old Covenant marriage with ancient Israel, but it is mostly a prophecy about a New Covenant marriage with God’s Church today. That is the focus.

In verse 8, the expression “spread my skirt over thee” is a sign of marriage. God says you became mine—you became my wife. When does that happen? On the individual level, it happens the moment we are baptized.

This is perhaps the most electrifying aspect of the baptismal covenant. At baptism, the firstfruits make a marriage covenant to obey God and be born again as Christ’s wife. We say we will marry Christ and meet all the covenant conditions.

Only the firstfruits—those called before Christ returns—are offered that noble reward! This is the most exalted reward ever offered to any human being at any time! It will not be offered to people baptized in the Millennium and beyond.

Verse 9 says, “Then washed I thee with water; yea, I throughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil.” Water and oil are symbols of God’s Holy Spirit, which was never offered as part of the Old Covenant marriage made with ancient Israel. This is describing God’s firstfruits today.

In verse 10, God says, “… I girded thee about with fine linen ….” Exodus 39:27 shows that Aaron and his sons, the highest-ranking priests in the tabernacle, were the ones who wore fine linen. Revelation 19:8 says Christ’s Bride is “arrayed in fine linen,” which represents “the righteousness of saints.” God is clothing His Bride with the fine linen of righteousness.

Even though we are not officially married to Jesus Christ until He returns, God already views the Church today as His wife. Unlike the Old Covenant, we who are under the New Covenant must prove ourselves before the marriage. Nevertheless, Revelation 19:7 says Christ’s “wife hath made herself ready.” The time frame here is during the preparation stage, before our marriage—but it doesn’t use the term bride-to-be or fiancée. Christ sees that fabulous marriage as already being consummated! This lady was His wife while she was getting ready for the marriage. This is what God’s Word says.

To expand His Family, the Father will first give His Son a helpmeet who can assist Him in raising the rest of the Family, those who will be invited during the Millennium and beyond. This invitation is given to only a tiny few—the most selective invitation ever!

This is the best and finest that the Father could ever give us. We must be thankful: We have been invited to be Christ’s only Bride forever! Eternal majesty awaits us! We are the lowly of the world, but we are the elite of God—we will have unequaled stature for all eternity! We are to be married to the Father’s Son forever—no divorce—the most exalted marriage ever!

The more deeply you ponder all these thrilling truths, plainly spelled out in the Bible, the more clearly you see what a spectacular covenant God makes with an individual at baptism!

Think of it! In that moment, He begets you as His own son. He gives you a down payment of His spiritual power, His nature, His mind, His life. He anoints you as a king-priest in embryo. And He draws you into a marriage agreement with His Son Jesus Christ!

God is deeply invested in us! He looks upon us as Christ’s wife, and if we do what He says, that is our destiny. His part of the covenant is absolutely assured, because He is God (e.g. Numbers 23:19; Psalm 119:89-90).

The lesson God is trying to teach us is that a covenant is a promise to keep your word. Our word should never be broken. And if we manifest God’s character, then our word will be fulfilled!

Considering the magnitude of the reward God is offering, isn’t He justified in expecting total, unqualified commitment from us? You would have to say that God is offering us the greatest bargain we could possibly have!

Eternal Life or Eternal Death

God’s part of the covenant is sure—but we must be tested first. In fact, it is very possible for us to fail and never be a part of that wedding!

We must understand that once God gives us His Holy Spirit, then our eternal life is at stake. God holds us to the promise we made to Him. He holds us accountable for what we do with His Spirit and whether we fulfill our calling.

Most people do not realize this, but the Bible clearly shows that this world is not being judged today. God is preparing to offer them salvation after Jesus Christ returns, and His people are going to teach them. That is when all people will be judged.

But God is judging His Spirit-begotten people now! “For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?” (1 Peter 4:17). Once we are baptized, we are under God’s scrutiny in everything we do! Eternal life hangs in the balance. That is why God is so deeply concerned.

“For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy [Spirit], And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame” (Hebrews 6:4-6).

What incomparably majestic spiritual blessings God’s people receive! We have been enlightened. We have tasted of the heavenly gift, and tasted the good Word of God and the powers of the world to come! We have partaken of the very Spirit and power of God! Once you have experienced these things, God holds you accountable.

Isn’t He justified in doing so? You cannot simply walk away from those glorious gifts without terrifying consequences!

Your baptismal covenant is a life-and-death, eternal decision!

God is trying to reproduce Himself in you—and He keeps every word of every promise. That is what He needs from us. How could He give us eternal life if He couldn’t count on us to honor our word?

When you meditate on all that God the Father has invested in this relationship, and all that He has given to each of His sons, and all that He is offering us—surely you can understand why He has such high expectations of His firstfruits! Surely you can understand why He wants to see wholehearted devotion—total commitment—just like a father wants from his own children, or a husband wants from his one and only wife.

And surely you can see why the Father is so emotionally upset when one of His Spirit-begotten sons treats his calling lightly or neglects his relationship with his Father or turns away from Him!

Yet as this book will show you, we live in an age when the great majority of God’s people have done just that.

The Father Cries Out

Revelation 2 and 3 are a prophecy of seven eras of God’s true Church starting from its founding by Jesus Christ in the first century until His Second Coming just ahead of us. We live in the seventh and final era, right before Christ’s return, called the Laodicean era.

Read Jesus Christ’s heartfelt message to His precious people in this era in Revelation 3:14-22. It is a heartbreaking message. This is a time of horrifying spiritual tragedy—when the vast majority of God’s own people, His very Spirit-begotten sons, have become spiritually lukewarm.

“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth” (verses 15-16). Those are harsh words! Christ would only say such a thing to those of us who should know better and who should be honoring our promise to Him.

Is Christ speaking to you?

In verse 17 He describes how these people have become carnal in their thinking, fixing their minds on physical things, becoming worldly and self-satisfied—and have unwittingly become “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” spiritually! What a disaster!

Sadly, this describes nearly all of God’s people in this lukewarm age. Spiritually, this is the greatest crisis on Earth!

Have you neglected God? Have you allowed the disease of spiritual negligence into your life? As we will see in the next chapter, we are all susceptible to deceiving ourselves. We have to listen carefully to Christ and accept whatever correction He gives us.

You can turn back to God—even at the very end of your life—and finish your race strong. Read the rest of the passage, and again you see the depth of God’s love, even when His people go astray! These are the earnest words of our Husband reaching out to His Bride! He isn’t just criticizing and condemning. He is crying out to remind us of our commitment to Him—to show us how to get back on track—to express His devotion to us—and to make beautiful promises to any individual who will hear and heed!

“I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see” (verse 18). God wants us to be spiritually rich! He wants us to be clothed with righteousness, to be getting ready for that spectacular marriage. He wants us to see where we need to repent and change, to open our eyes to the magnitude of our calling. He wants to give us dazzling spiritual vision!

Every one of us must listen to and heed the cry of our Father to His errant sons.

The Father Corrects in Love

“As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent” (Revelation 3:19).

Yes, God rebukes those He loves. Our Father chastens us because He loves us. Even the Great Tribulation—the worst suffering in history that is about to befall the whole world—is loving correction from God. This and other passages make clear that most of God’s people will not be protected during the Tribulation.

But God’s “rebuke” is coming now, before the Tribulation! God loves His people and is pleading for repentance now. Anyone who is zealous and repents today will not need the chastening of the Tribulation—God will protect him from it!

Think deeply on your baptismal covenant. Consider it through God the Father’s eyes. Realize just how important every Spirit-begotten son is to Him, and how determined He is to help every last one of us make it into His Family.

Remember the father in Luke 15, who allowed his son to depart and make some bad choices—but who was always searching the horizon for any sign of his return, eager to welcome him back with feasting and rejoicing!

Promises Fulfilled

Christ’s loving message to the Laodiceans continues: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). He is on the outside, beseeching them to let Him into their lives! They are throwing away the most beautiful relationship a person can ever have!

Christ doesn’t want to see anyone go through the Tribulation. But the Laodiceans must “hear His voice.” He is reaching out to them through His human messenger. What more can Christ do? What can you do if, for example, your older teenager goes astray?

God will never let you get into a spiritually fatal situation as long as you are listening to His Spirit.

“To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne” (verse 21). What an incredible promise!

God makes so many promises to His precious Family.

Our baptismal covenant is a series of promises. God gives us the Holy Spirit of promise, the down payment of a spectacular inheritance. We can be “confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). God finishes what He starts. Even when we fail Him, He does not give up on us. He rebukes and chastens us when we need it—in an intense effort to turn us around. Thank God for that chastening! He has said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5).

God fulfills His promises. The question is, will you?

Each one of us must remember the promise we made to God when we covenanted with Him at baptism. We each must use the Spirit of God to examine ourselves and to see ourselves honestly.

Think deeply on the profound, passionate love of God our Father and Jesus Christ our Husband—and on all they have done to prove that love for you. “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). The more you understand God’s love, the more moved you will be to fulfill your promise to Him—to love Him and serve Him with greater devotion.

If you remain faithful to God and Christ, they are going to consummate that covenant, glorify you, fill you with the Holy Spirit, crown you as a king and priest, and let you share Christ’s throne as His eternal wife!

What spectacular rewards await if we fulfill our baptismal covenant!

After Herbert W. Armstrong died in 1986, the Worldwide Church of God (wcg) quickly began to turn away from the truth God had taught through him.

Revelation 3:9 shows something shocking: Within the Church in the Philadelphia era, under Mr. Armstrong, a “synagogue of Satan” existed. The devil set up his own church right inside God’s Church—while Mr. Armstrong was alive! This satanic plot almost succeeded in the 1970s when Mr. Armstrong was close to death. He recovered and regained control of the Church, but that “synagogue” remained. Then when he died, the Church transitioned into the Laodicean era, and Satan’s “synagogue” took over (verses 14-22).

Realize how Satan can work through people. He even got some top ministers to bring in what the Apostle Peter called “damnable heresies” (2 Peter 2:1). The word damnable is really strong. Thayer’s Lexicon says it means “utter destruction,” or “the destruction which consists in the loss of eternal life”! That is what Satan seeks most of all!

It took Satan about five years to destroy 95 percent of God’s Church. Five years! It is astonishing how successful those satanically inspired men were at destroying God’s Church! How could such a shocking, grotesque thing happen?

Think seriously about that history. It shows you not only how skilled Satan is at deception, but also how susceptible human beings are to being deceived. In fact, without God’s protection, all of us are dangerously vulnerable! God warns us repeatedly about the threat of deception—especially self-deception, under Satan’s influence.

Read again Jesus Christ’s description of the Church of the Laodiceans: “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17). This is the way Christ describes His own Church during this era we now live in! Most of God’s people are convinced of their spiritual richness and self-sufficiency—and are unaware of their actual wretched, impoverished spiritual state!

You have to ask yourself: Have I been deceived? Am I deceiving myself?

Yet Christ has not given up on them. He tells them to “anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see” (verse 18). He wants all of us to rid ourselves of deception, to remove the scales from our eyes and see reality, to see ourselves as we really are.

Christ is standing at their door and knocking, hoping they will answer and let Him in (verse 20). They still have a chance to turn their lives around!

Since Christ is so blunt about His own people deceiving themselves, surely we should examine ourselves deeply for where we are falling into this trap.

Our Deceitful Heart

Think carefully on Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

Most people do not believe what God says here. They think the human heart is basically good. They could not be more wrong!

The truth is, there is nothing more deceitful than the human heart!

That is why people think they are good. We like to think of ourselves as good even when we are doing things we know are wrong! We justify and flatter ourselves; we explain away our sins; we downplay our guilt. Mr. Armstrong often said that the most difficult thing for the natural, vain human mind to do is to confess it is wrong.

This self-sufficient, self-reliant mindset is part of the acquired nature of Satan.

The phrase “desperately wicked” should read “dangerously sick,” “incurably sick” or “sick unto death.” Can you see this in your own heart? We cannot trust our own thinking. That is eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—the tree of death.

Understanding this profound verse is more important than any education in this world.

This verse is describing all human hearts. But God is speaking primarily here to His own people—especially the end-time Laodiceans. So many have followed their incurably sick minds into unparalleled deceit!

The Laodiceans do not believe this verse! If they did, they would not have been deceived so easily. They look to themselves and other men to understand their own minds—not God! Trusting in the human heart destroyed God’s own Church.

Deceitful and sick hearts cannot be trusted. Yet astoundingly, the human heart is the foundation of this world’s education and government. Our educators and leaders believe man is fundamentally good and trustworthy. They trust in evil human reasoning.

Everywhere in this sick world, we see evidence of men trusting in sick human minds. Terrifying problems are mounting all around us—and still men trust in their own minds. It seems nothing can convince them we are off track! Deceitful, desperately wicked human hearts are leading this world to the point where, if Christ didn’t intervene, we would annihilate ourselves! (Matthew 24:21-22).

Humanity’s number one problem today is that people don’t see their own terminal sickness. That is profound self-deceit.

This is what happens when people will not listen to God!

So God is forcing mankind, including His own people, to face the truth. Soon this world will be engulfed in a nuclear holocaust created by sick human minds. Only the worst time of suffering in history will get them to admit the real problem! They will no longer be able to deny the horrific fruits of deceitful human reasoning. Only then can God begin to teach them.

If you really understand the fundamental truth of Jeremiah 17:9, you will cry out to God every day to save you! You will not let a day pass without intensely praying and studying for the help to overcome your fatally sick heart!

Are you praying and studying this intensely each day? Mr. Armstrong recommended at least 30 minutes each of prayer and study every day just to survive spiritually—an hour of each to thrive! That gives you an idea of the intense effort it takes to build and sustain a truly robust relationship with God. If you are not doing that, it is very easy to deceive yourself about how much you love God.

God ends verse 9 with the question, “[W]ho can know it?” Only God knows the human heart. Only God can explain the mind and emotions of man. Our greatest need is to let God reveal our sickness to us and heal it.

Until we learn this lesson, we are living under a curse (verse 5). We will remain deceived as long as we continue to look to men—and that includes trusting in our own reasoning.

“I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings” (verse 10). Look at the terrible, devastating fruits of our ways and our doings! Following our hearts is causing all the world’s problems and leading to nuclear war!

There is no hope in man. There is endless hope in God.

Vanity of Vanities

Human nature is naturally vain. “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2; 12:8). It is easy to have an inflated view of ourselves. We are all prone to self-righteousness, thinking too highly of our works, relying on our own deeds, our own righteousness.

That is a powerful form of self-deceit. “For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself” (Galatians 6:3). Pride, vanity, self-righteousness, overestimating ourselves—all spring from self-deception that we need to examine ourselves for and rid ourselves of.

Such self-deceit and self-righteousness push God right out of the picture. They blind us to God. We can’t even see Him! Our thoughts become focused on self, leaving little room for God. We break the First Commandment by placing self ahead of God! God passionately hates that because He is a jealous God who loves us.

Look at the example of Job. He was quite a righteous man, but when he did good deeds, he would take the credit for himself. He liked to be seen as good by other people (e.g. Job 29:14). His charity was to show what an impressive man he was—instead of what an impressive God we serve! His motive was to exalt himself, not God (Job 32:1-2).

God helped Job overcome this problem by putting him through some excruciating trials. That brought the sin right to the surface: self-justification, self-exaltation, self-righteousness. God then gave Job an awe-inspiring glimpse into His own immense and fearsome power, the vast scale of His creation, His command of the elements, His provision for all creatures, His majesty and rulership (Job 38-41).

Once Job realized his own insignificance next to God’s all-encompassing greatness, he could see God! “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6).

The clearer we see God—in all His power, judgment, love, mercy and excellence—the less impressed with ourselves we will be and the more open we will be to listening to God and accepting His correction.

See Your Sin

Romans 3:23 says that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” The sharper your picture of God in all His glory, the better you will see how far short of the glory of God you fall!

Sin is the transgression of God’s law (1 John 3:4). God’s law is holy, just and good (Romans 7:12). It is “perfect, converting the soul,” more desirable than fine gold, sweeter than honey (Psalm 19:7-10). God gave us His commandments, statutes and judgments to help us see where we are not thinking like Him, where we need to change. “Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward” (verse 11).

Sin is the nature acquired from Satan. It is thinking the way Satan thinks. His attitude of self-love—at its root and core, vanity—transgresses the spirit of God’s law.

Do you really see the sin in your life? “Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults” (verse 12). Yes, because of our deceitful heart, it is very difficult to truly see our sins. In fact, it takes a miracle from God. We need God to show us our errors, and to cleanse us from our hidden faults and those sins we can’t even recognize. God must open our eyes, because “[e]very way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the Lord pondereth the hearts” (Proverbs 21:2).

Naturally we convince ourselves that our faults aren’t that serious. This is pure self-deception. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). There it is again! Don’t fall into the trap of such blindness. God commands us to continually repent in prayer for our sins so He can cleanse us (verse 9).

“Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression” (Psalm 19:13). Yes, when we break God’s law, sin has dominion over us—it rules us! Jesus Christ said, “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (John 8:34). Sin enslaves us in bondage (Romans 6:16; 2 Peter 2:19). Only God can free us from that bondage—and we must draw close to Him to break that yoke (Isaiah 58:6).

God’s law is a “perfect law of liberty” that leads to freedom! (James 1:25). Most religions are in bondage because they reject God’s law and call it freedom! Men routinely think bondage is freedom—intellectually and spiritually.

Just a few years after Mr. Armstrong died, the Worldwide Church of God stopped keeping the Sabbath, which is one of the Ten Commandments. They thought it was freedom to work or play on the Sabbath. In truth they put themselves into bondage to sin and the devil!

Only the truth will set us free (John 8:32). And God’s Word is truth (John 17:17).

One of the easiest ways to deceive ourselves is simply to hear God’s Word and fail to apply it. “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22). Many people believe they are accepting what God tells them simply because they listen and agree. But if you are not acting on it and changing your life, then you are kidding yourself!

Read Ezekiel 33:30-33: There are people who love to hear God’s truth; they admire God’s messenger the way they would a skilled musician. God tells his prophet, “[T]hey hear thy words, but they will not do them … but their heart goeth after their covetousness.” That is dangerous self-deception—and it is prophesied to afflict many people in our day! You can read about this in Chapter 2 of my booklet How to Be an Overcomer, “Are You Deceiving Yourself?”

“If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain” (James 1:26). A lot of religion is worthless because people aren’t controlling their tongues or their lives. They are deceiving their own heart.

What are your thoughts and conversation like on God’s holy Sabbath? Are they focused on God—or on the things of this world? This is a true test of our conversion.

We may fool ourselves for a while, but in the end, the truth will come out. God will judge us according to our works. All pretense and hypocrisy will be exposed. “Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is” (1 Corinthians 3:13). How much better for us to learn now where we are off track than to wait until our sins are revealed by fire—in the Great Tribulation, or worse, the lake of fire!

We must do all we can to avoid the common, deadly sin of self-deception. “Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. … The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. Therefore let no man glory in men. …” (verses 18-21).

How different our human perspective is from God’s! And how crucial it is that we humble ourselves and seek God’s view.

If you have gotten spiritually lazy, if your daily contact with God through prayer and study is skimpy or weak, if you have allowed material interests to crowd God out of your life, look at those problems through the eyes of your heavenly Father! Malachi 1:6-8 will help you do that.

God’s Perspective

In this book, we will spend a lot of time studying chapters 2 through 7 in the prophecy of Jeremiah. These chapters are a crucial message from God to His lukewarm people today. They have a message as bold and direct as anything you will read in the Bible.

This message applies to most of God’s people in this age. If only they would listen and heed! Sadly, most will not. But please consider God’s words honestly and humbly. I urge you to study these chapters with your eyes open to anything God has to say to you. I believe every one of us can take to heart what God is saying here.

Notice first how often in these chapters God confronts self-delusion in His people. He is pointing out the sins of His own begotten children—yet they claim innocence, deny their wickedness, refuse to be ashamed, trust in false assurances, and presume that God’s anger has turned away.

The way God describes His people’s actions in these chapters is truly devastating. Jeremiah 2:33-34, for example, show them going out and looking for spiritual lovers and causing terrible damage. But they are so deluded, they don’t see their sin: “You say, ‘I am innocent; surely his anger has turned from me.’ Behold, I will bring you to judgment for saying, ‘I have not sinned’” (Jeremiah 2:35; Revised Standard Version).

How could God ever direct those who have such a rebellious spirit? In every way possible, they want to govern their own lives and do their own thing.

These chapters in Jeremiah’s prophecy repeatedly expose their hypocrisy and spiritual blindness.

‘I Am Not Polluted’

In Jeremiah 2:21-22, God describes how His people have polluted themselves with sin. But they respond, “I am not polluted, I have not gone after Baalim” (verse 23). God, in answering them, is incredulous: How can you say this, after all you have done? You’re like a restless young camel running here and there, a wild donkey in heat! (verses 23-24). God says His people are delusional, shamelessly denying their idolatry and spiritual adultery.

After Mr. Armstrong died, many of God’s people went back into pagan ways, keeping Christmas, birthdays and other practices rooted in paganism. Or they compromised with those things, reasoning that it was nothing to worry about. Have you done that?

In Jeremiah 3:3 God says, “You refuse to be ashamed,” or “you refuse to blush with shame” (New King James Version). They lack self-awareness of their guilt and feel no remorse (see also Jeremiah 6:15). Verses 4-5 of Jeremiah 3 show that they continue to call God “my father” and presume that His anger is passed even while they carry on in their evil.

In Jeremiah 5:11, God condemns His people for their treachery against Him. How do they respond? Verse 12 says, “They have spoken falsely of the Lord, and have said, ‘He will do nothing; no evil will come upon us, nor shall we see sword or famine’” (rsv).

The Bible has many prophecies about the coming sword and famine and other tragedies. God gives these warnings to help us avoid these nightmares! The world ignores them, despite the fact that prophecy makes up about one third of the Bible. Even a large majority of God’s own people have developed a casual attitude about these prophecies. They deny God’s judgment, or they “put far away the evil day” (Amos 6:3), having no urgency. Or they deceive themselves that if great tribulation does come, they don’t need to worry about facing any consequences themselves. Do you view world events casually—even though Christ commands us to watch and pray always, so we are accounted worthy to escape? (Luke 21:36).

These lukewarm Christians don’t realize it yet, but soon they will see: They are not going to be protected by God—because they denied God’s law and government! Some of them think they will be in the place of safety during the Great Tribulation—but they won’t be!

Many Laodiceans and people in the world are interested in hearing God’s prophecies, but they reject God’s law. What will their knowledge of prophecy mean when they are in the Great Tribulation? If seeing prophecy fulfilled does not cause you to purify your life now, then the prophesied Great Tribulation will force you to become pure—or die in your sin!

In Jeremiah 7:4 and 8, God warns the people against trusting in deceptive words and assuming their religious practices will protect them from judgment.

The theme in all these verses is clear: God is trying to wake His people up from their delusions! They are taking their sins lightly and provoking His judgment. He repeatedly calls on them to recognize their guilt and repent.

How crucial for all of us to humbly ask God to show us where we are deceiving ourselves and to help us see reality!

Whom God Loves He Chastens

In Hebrews 12, the Apostle Paul writes that God is a Father who corrects His children. “And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (verses 5-6).

Correction is a gift from God. If we receive correction, God is preparing us for sonship in His Family! That is a major way God fulfills His part of the covenant He made with us at baptism.

It takes real work to open ourselves up to God’s correction. But we must do so if we are to become part of His eternal Family.

The Father loves His sons deeply. He does correct us—even harshly when we need it—because He loves us. We all have to keep growing to achieve our potential and fulfill our calling. His correction is aimed at helping us see where we are off track and helping us grow in righteousness.

Considering how sinful mankind is, doesn’t it make sense that God would need to correct us at times to prepare us to be born into His Family? We all must receive correction.

“But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons” (verse 8). Are you receiving correction from God? If we are not, we are not even considered His children!

Our greatest curse is when our Father no longer corrects us. Then we are no longer part of His Family! God ceases to be our Father.

Our greatest blessing is receiving correction from our Father! He is doing everything He can to help us make it into His eternal Family. That means He must correct us.

What is your natural response to correction?

Most people immediately get defensive. We begin to justify ourselves. We think the critic doesn’t have the whole story. We reason why what we did was not that bad or was actually right. We defend our actions. We answer back.

The Bible repeatedly warns against that response. Yet it also shows that most of God’s people in this end time have the wrong impression of correction. They reject it or reason around it.

If that describes you, then you are in danger of losing your salvation!

God tells us we need correction and reproof. We must learn to listen and heed. In fact, we should seek and want correction.

God gives us a lot of reproof and correction through His Word. But to benefit from it as God intends, we have to accept it. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

The question is, will you take that personally and put it to use in your life? It is not easy. Very few people are willing.

‘Most of You Don’t Get It’

Herbert W. Armstrong was willing to correct the members of God’s Church when it was necessary. He often thundered strong correction in the Worldwide Church of God, especially during the last few years of his life. This reflected God’s love. It was really God reaching out, reminding us of His love and the covenant He made with us. But most refused the correction.

The last Pentecost Mr. Armstrong kept was on May 26, 1985. In his sermon he spoke on the subject of “Why the Firstfruits?” He said, “Why the Feast of Firstfruits? … I think that most of you don’t understand that at all. … I perceive that even our ministers, when they preach, take it for granted that the whole goal is to get us into the Kingdom of God; and that’s all we are called for now. … I fear that most of you just don’t get it. … I am going to try to make it plain this afternoon, and still I think you won’t get it.”

That was a mournful plea from God’s end-time Elijah! He was teaching us the most inspiring message in the Bible—yet many people didn’t care or they refused to comprehend it.

Dealing with spiritual foolishness has been routine for so many of God’s prophets and apostles through the ages.

Mr. Armstrong said, “Most of you just don’t get it.” Many people thought, and some even said, Oh no, Mr. Armstrong, that can’t be! Surely most of us get it. But the reality was even worse than he thought! Look what happened in God’s Church after he died, only seven months after that warning. Within a short time, most of God’s people turned away from the truth he taught them from their own Bible!

How is it that most of God’s people refused this correction? How did they fail to go to their knees in repentance? Why do so many of those members today, if they attend church at all, lack ministers who preach God’s corrective words?

If you attend church services, does your minister give you this kind of correction directly from God’s Word? Far too many people listen to preachers for their smooth-sounding words. Those preachers are leading people to ruin!

A Broken Spirit

If we have godly wisdom, James 3:17 says we are “easy to be intreated.” Think of King David. He committed adultery, caused a man’s murder, and lied about it! Major sins. Yet when the Prophet Nathan confronted him, what were his first words? “I have sinned against the Lord” (see 2 Samuel 12:7-13). He didn’t fight God. He didn’t have to be physically corrected and “come to himself” only after he became destitute and famished. He heard God’s words, accepted the correction, and repented immediately.

What a beautiful attitude! Nathan responded, “The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die” (verse 13). David still faced hard consequences, but his repentance saved his life.

David gives us the most powerful example of repentance in the Bible. Read Psalm 51, his psalm of repentance. He had “a broken and a contrite heart” (verse 17). We must be teachable and have a broken and contrite spirit for God to be able to lead us and use us. God wants to guide you as His son or daughter, but He cannot do so if you lack a broken spirit. You must allow God to convict you of your sins and teach you. This attitude was fundamental to David’s repentance, and it is a big reason why God considered him “a man after mine own heart” (Acts 13:22).

David committed some terrible sins. That didn’t prevent God from loving him! Because He loved him, God corrected David severely.

Hebrews 4:12 says that “the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” God’s Word reveals our true thoughts and intents. It exposes what is going on in our mind. It helps us face the truth about our own heart and see how we are ruled by human nature. It reveals where we are evil so we can change!

That is uncomfortable—but so necessary and beautiful. It leads to life!

“Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Hebrews 12:11). When we accept correction, it produces wonderful fruit in our lives.

I have been corrected many times in my life. It wasn’t always done exactly right, but I always tried very hard to accept the truth—and sometimes had to pray very hard to do so! Every time I have received correction, even if it wasn’t handled the best, it turned out to be what I needed.

This is an area where we need to go to God and, like David, say, Search me, God. Reveal my secret sins to me. I want to be childlike. We each must pray for God to show us our faults. We must pray for God’s correction (Jeremiah 10:24). We must use God’s Word to pierce us even to the thoughts and intents of our heart. And then we must be doers of what we know to do, lest we deceive ourselves (James 1:22).

If we let a problem fester, eventually it will explode to where everyone will know about it. When the Tribulation comes, all game-playing will be over. The whole world will know who responded to and obeyed God, and who refused to do so.

‘In What Way Have You Loved Me?’

The book of Malachi is directed at God’s end-time Church. God revealed the meaning of this book to start off the Philadelphia Church of God in 1989, exposing what was happening in the Laodicean Church. (Request a free copy of the first book I wrote, Malachi’s Message to God’s Church Today.) Through the Prophet Malachi, God is rebuking His people strongly, pointing out and correcting their sins.

But throughout the book, you see that God’s people will not accept God’s rebuke! They continually answer back, deceptively rationalizing and trying to justify themselves.

It begins in Malachi 1:2: “‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord. ‘Yet you say, “In what way have You loved us?”‘” (nkjv). They don’t see God’s love! He has shown His love and blessed them abundantly in so many ways. Even His rebuke is love! But they disagree.

“I have loved you,” God says—but they respond, How have you loved us? They reject God’s message of love. They want to be left alone. Dad, just leave me alone! a rebellious teenager might say. Dads who don’t love their sons will leave them alone. But if you really love your son, you will not leave him alone.

God says, I have loved you! This is a “saith the Lord.” Do you hear God saying this today? Can you clearly see all the ways God shows His love for you—even in the correction He gives and the trials He allows? When He says, “I have loved you,” our response should be, Oh, Father—thank you! I see how you have loved me beyond anything I could ask for!

What a shameful lack of perspective to say instead, In what way have you loved me? Sadly, that is what many of God’s own sons are doing today!

Talking Back to God

“A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein [or in what way] have we despised thy name? Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? … Ye have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied him? …” (Malachi 1:6-7; 2:17).

It is hard to imagine God’s people talking back to God so brazenly, but this is God’s view!

Realize: Though this appalling attitude is expressed dramatically in these verses, we can be a lot more subtle in how we talk back to God. We communicate the same attitude by just not listening to His correction or by refusing to repent and change.

Do you really want to know what God thinks of you? Do you want His evaluation of your spiritual state? Do you want the truth?

We should always be actively seeking God’s view. Don’t make excuses.

“Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?” (Malachi 3:7).

That is a very merciful and loving promise from God to His rebellious sons: Return to me, and I will return to you! Anyone who has gotten away from obeying God and His commands needs to return to the way they once knew. We should let nothing stand in the way of running back to God! He is pleading for His people to return to Him!

Isn’t it heartbreaking and shameful that people answer back, What do you mean, God? How can I return? I never went away! Yet many people whom our ministers meet display this kind of thinking. They simply cannot see how far they have strayed from their calling!

“Your words have been stout against me, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against thee?” (verse 13). Their words are “stout,” or presumptuous, impudent and defiant. How could anyone be so deceived as to reject His plain rebuke?

This shows you that self-deceit is much easier and much more common than most people realize. We are all prone to it. We all need to examine ourselves for it and be vigilant against it. We all need to ask God to help us overcome it. Accepting correction from God is the only way we stand a chance of avoiding self-deceit.

Accept Correction

Are you willing to be corrected?

“The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise. He that refuseth instruction despiseth his own soul: but he that heareth reproof getteth understanding” (Proverbs 15:31-32; see also Proverbs 13:18; 10:17). Proverbs 12:1 says if we refuse reproof, we are stupid (New International Version).

How can Christ save us if we do not accept His correction? How can you start as a terrible, evil, ugly human being and expect to become a God being, perfect in character, without receiving correction?

We will never qualify to enter God’s eternal Family, let alone be Jesus Christ’s Bride, without correction from our Father!

What happens if God shows us where we are wrong and we don’t accept it? That is a deadly serious problem!

Proverbs 15:10 says, “Correction is grievous unto him that forsaketh the way: and he that hateth reproof shall die.” If you have received the Holy Spirit of God, as we discussed in the last chapter, your eternal life depends on loving and accepting God’s reproof!

“He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy” (Proverbs 29:1). That is referring to eternal death. Nothing is more serious!

Yet so many of God’s people are making this mistake: They are truly off track, rebelling against God, and will not accept His correction.

When the Laodiceans are in the nuclear holocaust, they can no longer play games of self-deceit! God is going to allow the Great Tribulation so as to crush all hope man has in himself and turn him to hope in God.

You need to learn this lesson today—before that calamity.

History shows us that most eras of God’s Church eventually turned away from Him. That is why we must learn from God and His Word. We must measure every doctrine and every word of God. Then we cannot be deceived.

I implore you to study this book along with God’s Word, proving every statement with a searching heart.

Heed God’s warnings. Realize that self-deception is our natural inclination due to our deceitful heart, our pride and our failure to apply God’s truth. Avoid that snare. Ask God to search your heart (Psalm 139:23-24). Accept the loving rebuke and correction of your heavenly Father. Confess your sins honestly. And act on God’s Word.

We must always try to get God’s perspective. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

God’s thoughts are so much higher than ours. But He gives us a great deal of help to rise to His level of thinking so we can better understand Him and reason like Him.

We need to break out of our limited thinking and view our lives and this world through God’s eyes.

This is especially important in this end time, when the world is in the final stages of this age of man and about to destroy itself—and when God’s Church is in the Laodicean era, in a terrible spiritual condition that it cannot even recognize.

The early chapters of the book of Jeremiah can help us understand God’s thinking much more deeply, especially about the spiritual state of the Church today.

Consider the historical context of these chapters. Jeremiah began his prophetic warning message in the 13th year of King Josiah’s reign (Jeremiah 1:2; 25:3), which was around 627 b.c. The messages of Jeremiah 2-6 were during Josiah’s reign (e.g. see Jeremiah 3:6).

Josiah was a righteous king, committed to returning Judah to live according to God’s law. However, God’s warnings and correction through Jeremiah show that not everyone agreed with Josiah’s religious reforms. There were serious problems in the nation God was trying to correct. But there is still hope expressed in these chapters that the nation would respond to God’s warnings and be saved from destruction (see Jeremiah 3:22; 4:4).

Today, we still live in a time of material prosperity, but the curses are intensifying. Most of God’s people have turned away from God, and time is rapidly running out for them to repent and turn back.

Study these chapters of Jeremiah, and you see a heart-wrenching, agonizing plea from God to His own people—those who know Him, or knew Him, but are failing spiritually.

These chapters contain powerful, searing correction for God’s people. God knows this correction can be hard for us to take. So throughout this passage, He also powerfully emphasizes His love for those He is correcting.

To whatever extent we need to be corrected and prodded, anyone who studies these chapters in Jeremiah with spiritual thinking and honest self-examination will be moved emotionally! It should drive us to our knees in repentant prayers!

After Jeremiah 1, God speaks directly to the Laodiceans, giving them a strong warning. Will you consider what God says and take it to heart? Each of us needs to examine ourselves in light of this passage of Jeremiah’s prophecy.

Jeremiah 2 begins, “Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem …” (verses 1-2). Jerusalem here is a prophetic term that includes America and Britain, as well as Judah (the Middle East nation called Israel). But the real focus of this message from God is on spiritual Jerusalem: God’s own people.

Before God gives the warning to His people, He explains a most inspiring truth—a spiritual reality that should move all of us!

Christ Loves His Bride

“… Thus saith the Lord; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown” (Jeremiah 2:2).

“I remember you,” God says! If you were a member of God’s Church, He has had a close relationship with you—and He remembers you! Sadly, many of those He is speaking to have forgotten Him—but He has not forgotten a single member or former member!

In this end time, thousands of God’s people have rejected Him. We can recognize the magnitude of their betrayal only if we see the magnificence of God’s calling.

The Revised Standard Version translates this verse as, “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride ….” The first thing God talks about here is a bride. Wow! This is about family—the very Family of God. Anciently, Israel and Judah were married to God. But that was only a letter-of-the-law type of the Church’s marriage to Jesus Christ in this end time.

This is the most exalted calling God can give a human being! There never has been, and never will be, a nobler office than that of the Bride of Christ!

Note God’s passion and emotion. He remembers how devoted His people were at the beginning of their conversion when they were Philadelphian—before they became Laodicean (Revelation 3:7-20). He remembers their love for Him in the early days of their conversion. He remembers the day you were begotten and all your history with Him.

God remembers “when thou wentest after me.” Do you remember when you were first called? Your joy at discovering God’s truth for the first time? The hours you put into prayer and Bible study? God is joyful when His people go after Him! He wants us to pursue Him like a physical bride should go after her husband-to-be. Christ wants passion in His Bride, like a young physical bride with intense emotions preparing to marry her beloved husband. Christ loves that passion directed toward Himself, like any normal husband does.

What a wonderful beginning to this message from God! These chapters give us profound insight into God’s beautiful thinking.

But that makes them all the more painful to read because of the contrast with the faithlessness and rebellion of the people He is reaching out to! These people have rejected their Husband and rebelled against Him. The betrayal wounds Him personally.

How passionate are you for God? He has given you a lot, especially if you have received the Holy Spirit and are part of that Bride-level calling. Are you really going after God, fervently showing your love as a bride? Are you walking with Him? Are you passionate about what God is passionate about?

Tragically, the vast majority of God’s people are not! This is why Christ is so upset. Most of His Church has turned away. They had a history of going after Him, but they are no longer doing so. And most of them are blind to their own spiritual condition. God really wants to shake His people out of a deadly spiritual lethargy!

Don’t assume you are OK. We all must grow in the ardor described in Jeremiah 2:2. Some of us are letting our love wax cold (Matthew 24:12) and are not reciprocating God’s love!

Set Apart

Here is another beautiful statement: “Israel was [that should read is] holiness unto the Lord, and the firstfruits of his increase: all that devour him shall offend; evil shall come upon them, saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 2:3). God is emphasizing the special position of His firstfruits and assuring them of His protection. They are God’s first harvest—those He calls ahead of the rest of the world to share the throne of David with Jesus Christ Himself for all eternity! These saints will have the honor of helping God instruct the whole world in righteousness and then harvest them—the fall harvest pictured by the Feast of Tabernacles. What a vision!

God says these firstfruit saints are “holiness.” That means they were set apart by God the Father. We cannot come to God unless He does that. Then Christ takes these firstfruits, whom His Father chose for Him, and harvests them to be His Bride!

If you really grasp this vision, it almost makes you faint! We have been set apart in a way that people who lack God’s Holy Spirit cannot understand. They will later, once they repent and are converted.

Christ is calling the firstfruits to be united with Him in marriage as His “help meet” (Genesis 2:18). We have the glorious honor of helping the Father and Christ harvest their children—their Family—and then introduce them to the entire universe. That is when God’s Work really begins!

Think about the last half of Jeremiah 2:3. What is God saying? This shows you how devoted to and fiercely protective He is of those He sets apart in this special category! Meditating on that statement will help you recognize God’s abiding love for His people. When people attack them, God takes that personally. You see this in Genesis 12:3, where He told Abram, “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.”

There are prophecies of how severely God will correct His lukewarm people in this end time. But did you know there are also prophecies of how harshly God will then punish those who punished them? (e.g. Isaiah 10:12-19; Isaiah 13-14; Jeremiah 25:12-14; Jeremiah 50-51). “Evil shall come upon them,” God says! When His people need to be corrected, God watches over that correction very carefully and holds those who give it accountable.

What does it mean to you to have the Almighty God so protective over you—even when you really don’t deserve it? (And none of us does.) It is imperative to stop and think on the profound love God has for His people.

‘What Sin Have You Found in Me?’

Now God begins His correction—and He does so with a heart-wrenching question: “Hear ye the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel: Thus saith the Lord, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?” (Jeremiah 2:4-5). What a disturbing question! What fault did they find in me that they left me? God asks.

Ask yourself: Have you given God any cause to ask such a question of you?

None of us has any excuse to treat God in such a way. Humans sin and make mistakes that might give others cause to turn away from them. God never does! He is the perfect Father! Christ is the perfect Husband!

Yet people have gone far from God and “walked after vanity.” They have become vain—of no spiritual value, worthless to God.

“Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit” (verse 11). Think seriously about that statement: My people, the great God says, have changed their glory for something worthless! These are God’s own people. They had wonderful spiritual glory. Sadly, they now have little glory to speak of, if any. They have embraced vanity. They have put the things of this world above their heavenly Father.

After all that God gave them—including their wonderful calling as Christ’s Bride—they have gone back to the world like a dog returning to its vomit! (2 Peter 2:22).

Fountain of Living Waters

What these people have done deeply hurts God. “For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13).

God is the fountain of living waters! The living water is the Holy Spirit of God, which can be flowing in our lives if we yield ourselves to it. What a spectacular gift from God! Do you have that fountain of spiritual power flowing in your life?

How tragic for anyone to forsake the loving, generous God who gives abundant life! God says not only have many of His people forsaken Him, they have also created their own religious work and their own beggarly doctrines and ideas—“broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

Do you know a spiritual fountain when you see one? This passage speaks of people who can’t discern the difference between God’s “fountain of living waters”—a powerful flow of God’s Spirit—and a broken cistern! That shows profound spiritual blindness.

“Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, when he led thee [past tense] by the way?” (verse 17). God Himself ruled, governed and led His people. Then they rejected God’s government. Many people have a history that condemns what they are doing today. Their history with God is past. Now they are rebelling. God can no longer lead them. This is a catastrophe!

Was there a time when God led your life? Evaluate whether He still is.

There is a faithful remnant Work that God still leads today. Every one of us needs to find that Work!

“And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river?” (verse 18). These people who have access to the living waters of God are drinking instead from the poisoned wells and rivers of this world. Egypt and Assyria are two powers that enslaved the people of God anciently—like this world enslaved us today, until God freed us. Are you seeking worldly entertainments or refreshment? Are you going after the wisdom of this world instead of the living waters of God? The questions of verse 18 are ones we should all ask ourselves regarding the filth and toxic influences of Satan’s world.

This is a prophecy for our time today. Verse 15 speaks of cities becoming “burned without inhabitant.” Only nuclear war can produce such devastation! This passage is clearly for the present day, over which the apocalyptic shadow of nuclear war looms.

Do you have the courage to face this terrifying truth about nuclear war that will strike very soon? People must be warned! Do you “sigh and cry” for the abominations in the land? (Ezekiel 9:4). Do you love people enough to warn of the nuclear holocaust about to shock this world?

A Noble Vine

Jeremiah 2:21 contains yet another majestically inspiring statement from God regarding His elect people, whom He personally called and chose out of this world: “Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed ….” God’s people are a noble vine, planted by God Himself! How precious! Only God the Father begets His sons (John 6:44; James 1:17-18). Not even Jesus Christ does that. What a noble vine!

The firstfruits are the most noble vine God will ever plant throughout eternity! There is only one group of firstfruits. Once Christ returns, that invitation will never be offered again.

This truth should be real to you—and more real all the time. This is the most critical moment for the firstfruits in the history of the universe! We must not let this opportunity slip away.

God then asks this heartbreaking question: “[H]ow then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?” (Jeremiah 2:21). What a tragic failure! God’s noble vine turned into a degenerate plant, a strange vine. That is God’s view!

Do you remember your spiritual beginning—the time God planted you—a “wholly right seed”? You have a glorious history. How does that history compare with the present?

If you remember a time when you were once right with God and when fountains of living waters flowed in your life, and you recognize that those times have ended, there is good news. You can get back to God. But you must do it His way.

“Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me, says the Lord God” (verse 22; rsv). God says you cannot wash yourself of these sins, no matter how hard you try. Only God can cleanse you. Yet for Him to do that, you must submit and allow Him to rule you.

These people say they are not polluted or Satan-inspired (verse 23). They disagree with God! They talk back to Him. God demands, “[S]ee thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done ….” They need to face what they have done! They must understand the towering sin they have committed.

Again you see God’s emotion and ache as He describes His people turning away from Him—their living Father who loves them—to false gods: “Saying to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ And to a stone, ‘You gave birth to me.’ For they have turned their back to Me, and not their face. …” (verse 27; nkjv). What spiritual madness! It is painful to even imagine people committing such an outrageous offense against their heavenly Father! But just as it did with our ancient forefathers, it has happened in our day—both in the physical nations of Israel and in spiritual Israel during this final era of God’s Church, on a shocking scale!

The nations of Israel and the lukewarm saints will see how helpless their false gods are when the devastating nuclear holocaust is upon them (verse 28). But God desperately wants them to repent before then. He says they have as many false gods as they have cities! They will call on those gods to save them, but only the true God can actually save.

Are you sure you are worshiping and trusting in the true God? How much do you really trust God to save you? Can you trust God to heal you? (Physical healing is a type of spiritual salvation.) We must be trusting God in our daily lives to build a saving faith. Sadly, far too many of God’s people today lack such trust in Him.

A Bride’s Attire

In Jeremiah 2:32, God makes clear what He thinks of a church that once trusted Him but has turned to its own way: “Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number.”

The bride’s attire is her righteousness (Revelation 19:8). Can a bride really forget that? Would any bride come to her marriage naked? Spiritually, that is what the Laodiceans are doing to God! The picture in Jeremiah 2:32 illustrates just how absurd what God’s own people are doing really is.

Jesus Christ is going to rule His wife. Is that negative? To become Christ’s Bride is the most awesome opportunity offered to any human being for all eternity! Yet this bride has “forgotten” her Husband! God will never give such an indescribable, glorious reward to anyone who is rebellious against Him.

Physical marriage is a type of that glorious marriage to Christ. What a difference it makes in a marriage when a husband and wife fully understand that their union is a God-plane relationship!

The world does not understand this. Most women today rebel against the husband being the leader in marriage. Sadly, even most of God’s own people have lost this spectacular vision of godly submission. The Laodicean bride refuses to let her Husband be the Head. She doesn’t want to be His helpmeet.

When physical marriages fall apart, the cause is often rebellion against government. Many wcg ministers allowed their wives to rule them—and that is what they tried to do spiritually with Christ! But He will not allow it!

“How well you direct your course to seek lovers! So that even to wicked women you have taught your ways” (verse 33; rsv). Another devastating condemnation: Christ’s Laodicean bride has become expert at finding “love” anywhere but with God! He says that even prostitutes could learn a thing or two from them!

This is tough correction to take. The easiest thing to do is to brush it off: That couldn’t apply to me! Yet God speaks in such dramatic terms to try to wake us up to a deadly situation.

Think deeply on what God has given us. He has invited us into His Family, even at the cost of the life of His Son. The Word, who existed from eternity, risked eternal death—the God Family put everything on the line to make your calling possible, and they were happy to do so. No wonder God responds with deep emotion when those He loves so much casually set this aside!

‘Return Again to Me’

In Jeremiah 3, God continues speaking about His wife. Again this shows how deeply emotional He is about this relationship.

“They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 3:1). This applies to the nations of Israel in a general way, but only God’s Church is Christ’s wife in this end time. These people have greatly polluted themselves, yet still God pleads with them to return to Him!

Can we even begin to comprehend God’s unending love and mercy? Are we truly thankful for the forgiveness He offers when we simply turn to Him in repentance?

In verse 2, God makes a grotesque comparison: He says His people are spiritually like an animal in heat! He then says, “[T]hou hadst a whore’s forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed” (verse 3). This is why we cannot get together with Laodicean splinter groups. These people are shamefully committing adultery, they have betrayed their Husband, Jesus Christ—and they show no shame about it!

Verse 3 begins, “Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain ….” Showers and rain are types of God’s Holy Spirit. God has withheld His Spirit from these rebellious people. The power of the Holy Spirit is no longer with them. They do not receive God’s revelation anymore. They are in grave danger of losing their eternal lives!

Considering what an unparalleled honor God is offering them—to be part of the very Bride of Jesus Christ—isn’t God justified in this punishment? Christ’s wife will be judged far more severely than anyone else because of the knowledge and the opportunity she has. How could He do otherwise?

God fervently wants to give them spiritual “showers” and the “latter rain,” but their attitude has made that impossible.

Do you realize that your attitude determines the flow of God’s Holy Spirit in your life? When we become hard, the flow of that Spirit stops! That is a dangerous condition to be in once we have received that spiritual begettal.

Think on this aching question: “Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?” (verse 4). They have turned from God the Father, their Guide in former days, and forgotten their history with Him! How could the Father not be hurt?

In verse 6, God calls these people “backsliding Israel”—people of spiritual Israel, the Church, who knew God and then began to backslide.

“And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not …” (verse 7). Even after all the sin they have committed, God cries out for them to return. Verse 12: “Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord, and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger for ever.”

This has been God’s consistent message to His Laodicean people since this Church era began—using the Philadelphia Church of God: Turn back to me! God pleads with them to acknowledge their sin (verse 13). Sadly, very few have humbly heeded that admonition.

Verses 20-22 have the same message: God’s people are treating Him “as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband.” They “have forgotten the Lord their God.” Yet still God pleads: “Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings.” Now is the time to return!

Birthing Her First Child

Jeremiah 4:31 has another reference to God’s firstfruits. This analogy also shows how precious we are to our Father: “For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers.”

Zion in the Old Testament represents God’s Church. This woman is God’s own Church—but here it is His lukewarm, rebellious Church. They are portrayed as a woman giving birth to a child. This is a painful firstfruits’ birth—the birth of the saints who are called before Christ returns. The firstfruits’ birth is likened to the birth of a woman’s first child. The spiritual firstfruits are born first into God’s Kingdom.

Isn’t a firstborn child cherished by his parents? God certainly feels that way toward His firstfruit saints.

But the reality, and the picture in this prophecy, is that the firstborn is generally the most difficult to deliver. That is definitely true spiritually! The process of bringing us to the birth is far tougher and more painful than it will be for the children born into God’s Family later.

This is especially true of the Laodiceans! These people will be sent into German concentration camps because of their evil. The Laodiceans cry out, “Woe is me now!” They do not think they deserve anywhere close to that level of punishment. But they rejected the most precious calling ever offered to man! However, God will do anything to wake them up and win them back. God wants you in His Family and would rather send you to die in the Tribulation, and save your eternal life, than lose you forever. You will read more about that later in this book. They have to die to prove their faith in God. Appallingly, half of them will lose their eternal lives because they refuse to repent!

The Tribulation is likened to birth pangs. And the birth it pictures is far greater than anything physical! Their salvation is at stake. That is not true of the nations of Israel, since God has not yet called them. But God’s Church has been called. His people are being judged now (1 Peter 4:17). And He must punish them this way to save 50 percent of them (Matthew 25:1-10). The other 50 percent will die the second death and be lost forever! (Revelation 20:14). What a painful birth. But God never gives up. Only men do.

Despite that pain, in the end this is good news. Zion is giving birth! Though labor pains are terrible, it certainly is worth the pain if you see the eternal majesty in God’s Kingdom. God’s repentant Laodiceans are to be born into God’s Family—eternal glory! That is the greatest news we could hear!

Turning your life around now may seem hard, even impossible. But it is infinitely easier to repent now instead of in the Tribulation. And with God, all things are possible.

‘Shall I Pardon You?’

God is abundant in mercy and eager to pardon. In Jeremiah 5:1, He told Jeremiah to search throughout the streets of Jerusalem; if he could find even one man executing right judgment and seeking the truth, God would spare the city!

You can be sure that God never punishes without cause. The magnitude of the correction described in these chapters in Jeremiah and other prophecies shows just how deep is the sin within God’s Laodicean Church and in the nations of Israel; both have a history with God. Remember, Israel is the only nation on Earth that has ever been married to God! The people of Israel failed God anciently; their modern descendants are shamefully ignorant of their history and are still rebelling today.

“And though they say, The Lord liveth; surely they swear falsely” (verse 2). These people talk about God and religion, but it is devoid of substance. You see a lot of this kind of religion in the world today. Jesus Christ asked, “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46). Talk about God is worthless if you do not obey Him! Sadly, this type of religion is also common in the Laodicean churches.

Jeremiah 5:3 shows that God is cursing these people in an effort to turn them around, “but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return.” “Refused to return” shows this is primarily talking about His Spirit-begotten sons who left Him. Only they can truly return to Him.

Verse 5 reads, “‘I will go to the great, and will speak to them; for they know the way of the Lord, the law of their God.’ But they all alike had broken the yoke, they had burst the bonds” (rsv). This is talking about “the great,” or the leading ministers of God’s Laodicean Church. They have known “the way of the Lord” even better than the lay members, so God will hold them more accountable! But they decided they would no longer submit to God’s government. They would not allow Him to bridle them. This is the greatest sin of all!

To be bridled and led by God is the only way we can avoid these catastrophic curses! Do you want to go your own way? Do you want to live according to the ways of ignorant, foolish, proud, presumptuous men? That always leads to disaster!

The Anchor Bible explains their rebellion this way: “The people are like oxen who have escaped their master’s yoke—and his protection”! The Laodiceans who fail to repent before the Great Tribulation are going to be ripped in pieces (verse 6). Without God, any one of us is as helpless before Satan as a small deer before a hungry, roaring lion! Even now, spiritually, God’s Church is being “torn in pieces” by Satan and his demons. And if members don’t change course, they also will be “torn in pieces” physically! Revelation 12:12 warns that it will happen soon! This is a stinging warning to the Laodiceans. Do they comprehend that their physical and eternal lives are at stake?

“How shall I pardon thee for this? thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery …” (Jeremiah 5:7). This is talking spiritually—about God’s own Family. The word children should read sons. God is re-creating Himself in man. What a goal! Even God can’t achieve anything more magnificent. He took such care of them—He “fed them to the full” with the truth He gave them through Herbert W. Armstrong. Never has God’s Church been so richly fed spiritually!

But how did they respond? In the most shameful way imaginable: They forsook the true, all-powerful, living God and turned to “them that are no gods.” And they “committed adultery” spiritually! Christ’s own wife turns to Satan’s ways and self-reliance rather than submitting to God!

This passage has Father and sons as well as Husband and wife. God is a Family! The Laodiceans have lost the God Family vision. What a shameful loss!

Again, please try to see this from God’s perspective. “Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?” (verse 9). Isn’t God right to be indignant? How could He not send punishment?

Even so, in verse 10 He tells those who will inflict this punishment to “make not a full end.” As in Jeremiah 4:27, it would be even worse if not for God’s mercy. It grieves Him to see people suffer. But He will do whatever it takes to try to turn them around so He can spare their eternal lives!

‘What Will You Do in the End?’

Jeremiah 5:26-28 describe more sins of the Laodiceans, particularly the ministry. They are dishonest. They deceitfully and treacherously set snares and traps for people. Some ministers have drawn followers to themselves by telling lies. They are selfish and greedy; they don’t stand up for the fatherless and needy. “Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?” (verse 29).

“An astonishing and horrible thing Has been committed in the land: The prophets prophesy falsely, And the priests rule by their own power; And My people love to have it so. But what will you do in the end?” (verses 30-31; nkjv). Leading Laodicean ministers prophesy and teach falsely; lower-ranking ministers follow along. They establish their own government, not God’s rule. And sadly, the people “love to have it so.” Instead of standing up and refusing to follow such evil in the ministry, the people go right along because they don’t love God and His government!

Can you recognize what a colossal disaster this prophecy describes? And it has come to pass among God’s people in our day exactly as God said it would!

God has a piercing question for all these people: “What will you do in the end?” What will they do when the nations collapse? God’s prophecies will come to pass—and the lies of these ministers will be exposed. Reality will replace deceit and delusion. When the Great Tribulation comes, these people will have no protection from God! That is the nightmare they are about to face!

God is reaching out to His lukewarm sons! He aches with longing for them and grieves at what they are doing. He wants so much to reach them and turn them around so they can enter His eternal Family.

Examine yourself! How much worldly Protestantism has rubbed off on you? How many of these Laodicean tendencies have you picked up? This message from God should remind every one of us that we need to be continually looking to God to show us our sins and working to repent, improve and grow! Especially when God is so bold and direct in passages like this, speaking to His own people, we do not want to assume we are free of these sins!

If any Laodicean who has any spiritual thinking left at all would sit down and study these chapters in Jeremiah and honestly examine himself, I think he would be unable to control his emotions!

Repentance

There is great suffering ahead for so many of God’s people. Thankfully, that suffering will lead some back to God in repentance.

“A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the Lord their God. Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. …” (Jeremiah 3:21-22). What a promise from our loving, merciful God!

At that point, verses 22-25 give us the encouraging words of those who repent: “… Behold, we come to thee; for thou art the Lord our God. Truly the hills are a delusion, the orgies on the mountains. Truly in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel. But from our youth the shameful thing has devoured all for which our fathers labored, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us; for we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day; and we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God” (rsv).

How God longs to hear those words! And He would respond with overwhelming mercy to anyone who sincerely confesses his sin to God and repents this way!

Are you fulfilling the purpose for which God called you?

Much of God’s anger at His people today comes because they have stopped fulfilling the purpose of their calling. In fact, most have entirely forgotten that purpose!

The purpose of our calling is not simply to receive salvation. God calls a select group of people out of this world out of season today because He has a job—a responsibility—for them to do. We are called to do a work. As Herbert W. Armstrong often said, we are not called for our own salvation—we are called to serve the world!

This is such an important truth! And the history of God’s Church shows that it is very easy to lose sight of. We naturally become focused on ourselves, our own desires and ambitions, our own issues and problems. But God is teaching us a way of outgoing love and concern, a way of selfless sacrifice.

The most powerful means God gives us of combating our selfishness and learning that way of love is by doing His Work.

Mr. Armstrong emphasized this powerfully and repeatedly. In a February 21, 1974, member letter, he wrote: “… God has set before us His way of preparing us—by growing in spiritual character, in grace and the knowledge of Christ, ready for our part in the Kingdom, reigning under Christ! And that way is our part in fulfilling the special end-time Work of Matthew 24:14 …!” This is the way we grow and prepare for God’s Kingdom: by doing our part to support God’s Work!

“[T]his great Work of God is the way God has set before us for each to grow and develop spiritually,” Mr. Armstrong continued in that letter. “God’s way—that of His law—is the way of giving, not getting. Those who try to simply get their salvation are in danger of losing it!

“God’s Work is a work of giving—giving the gospel of the Kingdom of God. In 40 years I have observed that only those whose hearts are in this great Work are themselves growing spiritually.”

That was penetrating insight from God’s end-time Elijah!

The tendency to lose this vision has repeatedly plagued God’s people in the New Testament Church. It is at the heart of why the great majority of God’s people have failed in this Laodicean era!

Daniel 8:10-12 is a prophecy of the spiritual destruction within God’s Church wreaked by a demon army. There were men at the top of God’s Church who were actually helping Satan and his demons destroy God’s Work! That is a terrible sin—and the people allowed it to happen! In fact, the members caused it to happen—“by reason of transgression.”

The priority in Daniel 8 is “the daily,” meaning the Work. When Satan destroyed that, he knew everything was destroyed. (Learn more in my free booklet Daniel—Unsealed at Last!)

The devil’s greatest passion is to destroy God’s Work. Christ’s greatest passion is to complete God’s Work.

The Work identifies God’s Church (Revelation 3:7-8). If members don’t do the Work, they will die as a Church. If the Work dies, the Church dies! Doing God’s Work is what keeps true Christians alive! You, individually, must put your heart into the Work, or you will die spiritually!

We must sacrifice for God’s Work the way Christ did (e.g. John 4:34). Even from His youth, Christ was doing His Father’s business (Luke 2:49). Are you about your Father’s business?

The Laodiceans allowed the truth of God to be cast down to the ground—they did not love the truth (Daniel 8:12; 2 Thessalonians 2:10). They did not have their heart in God’s Work; it wasn’t their top priority. But it must be ours—because it is our Father’s top priority!

When we refuse to do our Father’s business, we spurn our spiritual sonship! That is sin of the greatest magnitude!

A Coming Catastrophe

The world needs a warning message from God’s Work more urgently than ever.

Getting this warning message out is of paramount importance in the book of Jeremiah. The book opens with God giving a commission to His prophet—and a commandment to warn.

In verse 13 of the first chapter, Jeremiah receives a vision from God of “a seething pot; and the face thereof is toward the north.” God explains what this signifies: “Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land” (verse 14).

This is a terrifying prophetic image of the final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire, a fearsome German-led European war machine! This is explained in detail in many other prophecies, and we will discuss it later in this book. Here God warns that this power will enter the gates of Jerusalem, a type of prophetic Israel, and the cities of Judah (verse 15). It is going to wreak unparalleled destruction on our nations and on the entire Earth.

God wants the world to know about this! He recorded many prophecies about it so we could be forewarned. He gave this vision to Jeremiah so it could be proclaimed. And—this is very important—this is an end-time prophecy—it is for our day! Whether or not you believe it, this deadly machine is rising today! This pot is boiling and is about to break forth!

God sends His modern-day apostle onto the scene with Jeremiah’s message to ensure people receive this warning! That man is backed by a group of supporters to carry out this crucial Work of God.

Billions of people’s lives are about to be shattered and destroyed. God’s Work is trying to prevent that—and to spare as many as will listen. How well we back it will radically affect their lives!

God tells us in 2 Peter 3:12 that God’s people can be “hasting unto the coming of the day of God.” That means that if we are intensely urgent, we can finish God’s Work in less time! Look at the suffering in the world around us—the wars, the sickness, the despair. We can help humanity by ushering in Christ’s return as soon as possible!

Most people are not responding to this Work today, but once this phase of God’s Work is over, the pot will boil over and the greatest time of suffering ever will begin. Faced with irrefutable evidence of mankind’s failure, multitudes will “come to themselves” and repent. How many? God doesn’t tell us. Revelation 7:9 prophesies of this group: It says “no man could number” it—in part because that number depends on us! The more effective we are today in carrying out God’s Work and spreading His truth, the more people will repent in the Tribulation. (Read my May-June 2019 Trumpet article “Learn the Lesson of the ‘Great Multitude.’”)

How much is that worth? Once someone repents, he will be protected from that horrific suffering. He will receive a living hope and get to know his Creator. Your support for God’s Work could save a father from losing a son, or a wife from losing her husband. Your support could help people begin the priceless process of being born into God’s Family!

But the tragic reality is, most of God’s people have turned away from doing this Work! God wants them to have enough love to warn the world about the Great Tribulation. The Laodiceans’ failure to warn the world is costing human lives, and God holds them accountable (Ezekiel 33). No wonder God tells them in Malachi 3:9 that they have robbed the whole world (as it reads in the original Hebrew). By failing to do God’s Work, they have committed a monstrous crime. Because of that grievous sin, those people are going to become victims of the very power they should be warning about!

Jeremiah 1:16 reads, “And I will utter my judgments against them touching all their wickedness, who have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods, and worshipped the works of their own hands.” These people have forsaken God. That must refer to God’s people, His own Church.

The very people who should be warning the world about this coming Tribulation need themselves to be warned: They are about to be caught in the middle of this nightmare!

Notice three sins highlighted in Jeremiah 1:16: In addition to forsaking God, these people have turned to false gods, and they have worshiped their own works and creations.

The people of God should be passionately obeying God and supporting His Work! But many of them are instead worshiping the trivial work of their own hands! They are self-absorbed and small-minded. What vanity!

‘Go and Cry’

In Jeremiah 1:17-18, God speaks directly to His prophet: “Thou therefore gird up thy loins, and arise, and speak unto them all that I command thee … against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests thereof, and against the people of the land.” This is an intense confrontation God is thrusting him into. Doing God’s Work is never easy. That is another reason why so many people rebel against it. We must love God more than our own comfort and even our lives.

However, God promises to deliver His prophet to enable him to do the job. “… I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee” (verse 19). God has a faithful Work today that is supporting His end-time prophet. We can claim this promise of protection from God!

Jeremiah 2 begins to get into the message God wants His prophet to deliver. God tells him, “Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem …” (verse 2). God instructs His prophet to “Go and cry” this message “in [their] ears.” There is a commission here to God’s faithful people to deliver this message. This is an important theme we must remember throughout these chapters.

There are two groups here. One is supporting the publication of this warning—the other is receiving it. Which group are you in?

Again, the great majority of God’s people in this Church era are not fulfilling their responsibility to do God’s Work. They are failing to warn Israel and the world, and they fail to explain about the beautiful world to come. That is a tragic reality of our day.

In these chapters in Jeremiah, and in many other places in Scripture, you see God correcting those of His people who are failing to do His Work—and commanding those who are doing His Work exactly what He expects from them.

Every one of us has a grave responsibility to find God’s Work and give it our 100 percent, wholehearted support!

America Ignorant

How desperately the world needs this warning! They have no idea they are about to be attacked and conquered.

The rest of Jeremiah’s vision here spells out the details of how this attack will come.

“And when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold, though thou rentest thy face with painting, in vain shalt thou make thyself fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will seek thy life” (Jeremiah 4:30). Remember, the book of Jeremiah was written specifically for this end time (Jeremiah 30:1-9). In this revealing verse, God is addressing Israel (Jeremiah 4:1)—primarily America and Britain today.

Who are our “lovers” today? We must know, because these lovers will seek our life to destroy us! If we have even an ounce of godly fear, verse 30 should strike terror in our hearts!

Other prophecies show which nation God will use to punish modern-day Israel. In Isaiah 10:5-7, God calls the Assyrians “the rod of mine anger,” the weapon He will use to punish a “hypocritical nation,” Israel. Remember, the book of Isaiah was also written precisely for the end time (Isaiah 30:8). Who are the modern-day Assyrians? We have proved for years that Assyria is Germany.

You cannot understand such end-time prophecies if you don’t know the identity of Israel and Assyria today. The fact that God’s Church reveals these keys to prophecy is one indication of where God is working—because these prophecies must be proclaimed now, before all this comes to pass!

Germany is God’s instrument to awaken the nations of Israel and God’s Church. Other prophecies show that Germany will lead a fearsome European empire. We see this building today in Europe!

Yet astoundingly, shamefully, the nations of Israel have chosen Germany as their “lover“! And Germany will betray us, as it has often done in the past. It will “seek your life.” It will destroy the great nations of Israel unless we repent!

God is contemptuous of this relationship! Anciently He chose Israel to lead the world in His way of life. They were not God’s “favorite people”; God is no respecter of persons (Romans 2:11). They were chosen to do a job—the most important job on Earth.

Anciently, the Israelites failed. Today that failure is far worse. Israel has not only scorned God, we have also taken the great wealth and birthright blessings He gave us and used them to teach the world rebellion against God!

Israel was chosen to be God’s wife and to trust Him—not other nations! You can almost feel God’s vehement emotion in Jeremiah 4:30—the same feeling a loving husband has when his beautiful wife commits adultery, but a million times worse!

Blow the Trumpet

God wants a trumpet blast—a loud, dramatic, arresting warning—coming out of His Church! In Old Testament Israel, the blowing of the trumpet often signaled war. The trumpet blast sounds the alarm of war, invasion and captivity! It should cause people to tremble.

“O ye children of Benjamin, gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and set up a sign of fire in Bethhaccerem: for evil appeareth out of the north, and great destruction. I have likened the daughter of Zion to a comely and delicate woman” (Jeremiah 6:1-2). Jerusalem is a type of all Israel—including Britain and America. The trumpet of warning is to be blown in Tekoa, a town in Israel just outside Jerusalem. Bethhaccerem is a high place in the Tekoa area.

God wants us warning all the nations of Israel in a time of great urgency. Israel and many of God’s own people are asleep! We must do all we can to blow the trumpet and warn people of what is coming very soon on Israel.

What is the warning about? “Great destruction” in this end time coming from the north. This refers to the “king of the north,” mentioned in Daniel 11:40-41, Jeremiah 1:15 and many other prophecies, causing great tribulation—the worst suffering ever on Earth! (Daniel 12:1; Matthew 24:21-22). The “sign of fire” symbolizes nuclear destruction. This enemy is about to come, unless we repent!

“Misery and desolation comes on you!” this passage warns. “They pitch their tents around you! … They proclaim war against her, they mount and go up to the forts! … They rise up by night and destroy her palaces!” (Jeremiah 6:3-5; Ferrar Fenton).

In verse 6, it is God Himself directing this besiegement. Why? “As a fountain wells up with water, So she wells up with her wickedness. Violence and plundering are heard in her. Before Me continually are grief and wounds” (verse 7; nkjv). Their sins are overwhelming—a never-ending stream!

“Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from thee; lest I make thee desolate, a land not inhabited” (verse 8). If we do not heed God’s message, He departs from us. That is the worst possible news! Then the land of Israel becomes desolate—“a land not inhabited.” This means nuclear annihilation. After the attack, the remainder of our people will be removed from their own land as slaves.

God is correcting the nations of Israel for their sins. If they do not heed, they are heading toward captivity and death. That makes this message crucial for their survival! They must know why God is sending this correction.

No Shame

The trumpet-blowing work isn’t just warning about impending armies. “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins” (Isaiah 58:1).

God is sending Germany “against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath” (Isaiah 10:6). God is full of wrath against the modern-day Israelites because of their flagrant hypocrisy. They think of themselves as godly and righteous—while they lead the world into the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah! Never has the world seen such gross, inexplicable immorality as in the nations of Israel—the very people who were chosen to lead the world to God! We act righteous—instead of being righteous. Unless we repent, God will tread us down like the mire of the streets!

“Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush …” (Jeremiah 6:15). Morally and spiritually, the modern nations of Israel are steeped in sexual sin. They have glutted themselves on perversion, pornography and filth, and they are unashamed. In fact, America broadcasts and spreads that trash around the world far more than any other nation! We promote same-sex “marriage” and transgenderism and push other nations to embrace these perversions. You cannot make these people blush!

Many people think God is happy with our nations today. Even God’s faithful people, who can clearly see that this world is evil, sometimes lack the intensity of feeling that God has. We need to wake up and recognize what He thinks of our sins! He chose us to lead the world in keeping His Word and law. Instead we lead the world in rejecting God’s Word and breaking His law!

Strong marriages and families are the foundational strength of any nation. Drugs and pornography shatter the family and destroy our nations’ godly values. Our people are on the brink of sudden destruction.

Consider God’s view of our society expressed in Jeremiah 7. The Valley of Hinnom is infamous as the biblical location of child sacrifice. Jeremiah recorded that the Jews “built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart” (verse 31). God strongly condemns this horrific practice.

God said modern Israel is as bad as pagans ripping out their own children’s hearts and offering them on an idolatrous altar! We think of ourselves as civilized and sophisticated. But look at the reality, and you see God’s view: Our nations are guilty of monstrous child sacrifice!

America aborts roughly 1 million babies every year! That is an average of nearly 1 baby every 30 seconds. Ancient Israel never came close to murder on that scale!

Our children face a society saturated with perverse sex. Most of them will encounter pornography before they enter their teenage years. When we give them no moral instruction, no uplifting vision, we sacrifice them to sexual lust and fornication. We give them unlimited, unfiltered access to the Internet, where they can stumble upon some of the worst perversion mankind has ever created! We also sacrifice our children to demoniacal music and drugs. In the nations of Israel, this happens before our youth are taught to use their minds!

We teach that homosexual relationships and same-sex “marriage” are normal. Hundreds of American teens mutilate and castrate themselves in the name of “woke” ideology. God calls this an abomination! (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13). He is passionate about protecting families and children, and He is deeply angered by influences that undermine and degrade them. Marriage and family are tremendous gifts from God that illuminate His inspiring master plan for human beings! The homosexual and transgender movements are an all-out attack on the gospel of the Kingdom of God! That is why we must not be indifferent about this important subject. We must come to see God’s view.

In the world today, God’s perspective is ignored, even ridiculed. The contempt that people have for truth, goodness, morality, biblical values and revelation—even history, human experience, tradition and simple facts—is shocking and shameful!

The result is an entire generation of sick young people. In America, over 40 percent of Gen Z have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. In a 2023 survey, 40 percent of U.S. high schoolers said they were persistently sad or hopeless. A quarter of America’s teenage girls have a suicide plan. Around the same number have deliberately cut or harmed themselves!

Do you see why God has to urgently and forcefully intervene? Do you see why a trumpet message must go out?

Yet who is sending out this warning? In many cases, the churches of this world celebrate this destructive perversion!

Right after condemning the activities that occurred anciently in the Valley of Hinnom, Jeremiah wrote, “Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter: for they shall bury in Tophet, till there be no place” (Jeremiah 7:32). The last prophetic clause in this verse has been fulfilled. Today, the sides of the valley are dotted with graves. But this is only a small foretaste of the global upheaval and suffering that lie just ahead, in this time just before Jesus Christ returns.

Blood on Your Hands

“Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken,” God says in Jeremiah 6:17. When God sets a watchman over us to blow the trumpet of warning, we had better heed! You are reading a watchman’s message right now! Today the Philadelphia Church of God warns God’s own Laodicean Church, the nations of Israel and the world. That is our work. But our people said, “We will not hearken.” This is why, if we do not repent, God will punish us as no other nation has been punished.

What happens to those God has called to support His watchman Work if they do not warn?

Ezekiel describes a watchman warning going out to Israel. “When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand” (Ezekiel 33:8).

If the people God called out of this world and gave this vision to do not proclaim His message to the world, they will lose their own blood. On top of that, they will be guilty of the blood of those they should have warned!

Stop and think about that! Did God call you to support His warning message? Are you supporting that message? If not, God holds you responsible for the blood of all those people! God will judge His people for that failure—and “[I]t is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:30-31).

God is merciful. Even those Laodiceans who enter the Tribulation because of their failure to warn will have the opportunity to repent. But they must get back to this warning message! They will have to warn their captors about the destruction coming to them (Psalm 137:3; Ezekiel 12:15-16).

If you have been called today and you want to be in God’s Family, there is no escaping your obligation to support this warning Work. It is far, far easier to publicize this warning message today than it will be in the Tribulation!

Will Anyone Else Warn?

Some Laodiceans still claim to be doing God’s Work. In reality, they are doing their own work. Even Revelation 3:15 confirms that.

God doesn’t have five or six different works. He has one work that anybody can find if they know the true God!

Where is the one Church that God governs? Where is the one and only Work God is doing?

Other churches claim to be publishing a warning message, but are they really?

I know of three other groups that emerged from the Worldwide Church of God that produce regular magazines. Looking over their issues of the past year as I was finishing this book, it is clear that none of them have much interest in a warning message.

One group has written nothing in their magazines about these prophecies in at least 12 months. There is no mention of Germany’s identity as Assyria. The closest they come is an article on a speech by the Danish prime minister saying Europe has five years to rearm. But it contains no Bible verses, no prophecy, no warning!

Another group mentions Germany’s biblical identity almost in passing among a list of things to watch.

The third group is even worse. They tell their readers that Assyria “may prophetically represent the end-time northern power in Europe”—but they are not sure.

The same issue declares “for the present, U.S. power in the world remains at the forefront by far, with other nations and international power blocs, including the European Union, significantly behind.

“That lets us know that, though there are warning signs, the end is not yet. … [I]t looks like things will continue with the United States on top for a while.”

The same magazine issue contains an article on the Great Tribulation and the return of Christ: “With the vast power of the United States on the world scene today relative to other nations, this calamity seems yet a ways off,” it says. Meanwhile, for Europe, “It seems that it will take some time to swing back to a church-state partnership.” Yet another article states, “[I]t appears that U.S. dominance on the world stage will yet continue a good while longer.”

That is not warning the world—it is putting people to sleep!

Over the same time frame, we have featured two cover articles in the Philadelphia Trumpet warning about the imminent threat from Germany, along with many feature articles. My son brings up this threat many times a week on his news program, the Trumpet Daily. Even the Atlantic published an article, “The New German War Machine,” which was stronger than anything produced by these Laodicean groups!

Members of these groups routinely tell our ministers that they like the prophetic message coming from the pcg. Yet they are not in the pcg, and they are not supporting this Work. Why? They see the need for such a message, and they see that their organization is not sending one out—but they don’t see that need urgently enough! If they did, they would support this message!

The Laodiceans will be plunged into the Tribulation because they are not doing God’s Work. Few sins are more serious than God’s own Church failing to do His Work. The Laodiceans will be penalized by having to give their lives in the Great Tribulation.

‘One of a City’

God tells the Laodiceans, “Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I am married unto you …” (Jeremiah 3:14). He has not forgotten. Jeremiah is addressing Christ’s “backsliding” wife, the Church. The only Israel God is married to today is spiritual Israel, the Church (see Revelation 19:7). This relationship is extremely important to Him!

Jeremiah 3:14 continues, “and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion,” speaking of God’s Church.

This verse beautifully describes how the Philadelphia Church of God has been built: God has taken “one of a city, and two of a family.” This is how God is accomplishing His end-time Work.

This Church has members in this situation all over the world, including many cities with only one person. That is a tough challenge. But we must be strong enough to do whatever we can to help God’s Work even if we are alone—only one in a city! If God calls one person from a city, He knows that individual can stand alone. And in a family where He calls two, that can be an even bigger challenge because it can cause a family split.

Can you walk alone—with God? Each person must walk by his faith, then build more faith. How precious to God is a man of faith—a person who can follow God while his whole city is rebelling! These saints can stand alone as they serve God. They are God’s most noble end-time warriors.

You may be “one person from a city,” but know that God is behind you and you are going to have an impact in God’s Work! When God calls you, He will give you power—real power!—and a certain authority to rule yourself and to help His Work.

We need every member. Every member must realize God has called you to contribute to the Work and to give and serve wherever you can! Maybe it is just by your intense prayers and fasting for this Work. Whatever your contribution, you can be a precious member with all the power of God backing you.

This is the ultimate test for Christ’s end-time wife: Will she follow her Husband when most of God’s Church is rebelling? She must respond to Christ and warn the Laodiceans for her Husband. This is a small remnant, God’s voice crying out in a wilderness of religious confusion. It is a “little flock”—a fraction of the size it would be if not for the betrayal and spiritual failure of most of God’s people! This greatest of all tragedies reveals how difficult it is to do God’s Work.

Can you face the trials and difficulties of doing Christ’s Work and know that your Husband will protect you? Remember, the reward for doing so is glorious beyond words! God is now preparing His Bride to rule over and unite the nations of Israel. Then Israel will be used to lead the world—“all the nations”—to God (verse 17). After that, David’s throne will rule over the whole universe (Isaiah 9:6-7).

Christ’s Bride will be king-priests in His world headquarters! (Revelation 3:12; 5:10). She is to share David’s throne with Him. “One of a city, and two of a family” is leading to this magnificent future! Now is the time to prepare.

God is calling you and me to do great things. Let Him lead you wherever you need to go!

‘I Will Give You Pastors’

Amid all the failure in His Church during this age, look at this encouraging promise from God: “And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding” (Jeremiah 3:15).

The great majority of God’s people have fallen away. But for those who accept God’s correction and respond to Him, He promises to take care of them! There will be a Work. There will be faithful ministers to pastor and feed them!

This prophecy is being fulfilled right now in the Philadelphia Church of God. This little remnant has godly pastors who supply the knowledge and understanding of God. Thank God for His faithful ministers!

In the middle of this extremely corrective passage, verses 16-18 give a beautiful millennial scenario. At that time, the physical ark of the covenant that represented God’s presence in Israel anciently will be forgotten, because Jesus Christ will be here, in glory, ruling from Jerusalem!

“At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart” (verse 17). Think of the context! This vision is achingly poignant, as a contrast with the condemnation of the faithlessness of God’s people today. God pauses from His correction and thinks longingly on this utopian vision. “I thought how I would set you among my sons, and give you a pleasant land, a heritage most beauteous of all nations. And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me” (verse 19; rsv). Again—this passage reveals so much about God and His emotions toward His Family!

Sadly, Jeremiah’s prophecy abruptly returns to the bitter reality of what most of His people have actually done to Him: “Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the Lord” (verse 20).

Again you see two groups God is addressing here: One He is directing to do His Work, the other He is correcting for failing to do His Work. God’s love for both groups is evident throughout—though He is also deeply disappointed in and angered by the second group.

God holds you, individually, responsible for the message you back, or fail to back. Each one of us needs to examine ourselves to make sure we are throwing our passionate support behind God’s Work. Are you supporting a warning message? Your physical life—and your eternal life—depends on the answer!

We must find and back the right work. God’s people are divided into many different groups. Jeremiah tells us why: It is because too many are not asking the right question.

Consider this statement from God’s indictment against His lukewarm people in the early chapters of Jeremiah: “Neither said they, Where is the Lord that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt?” (Jeremiah 2:6).

This is the vital question: Where is God? If He has a Work, how do we find it?

God brings His people out of spiritual Egypt, a type of this world. It takes God’s great power to free us from Satan’s bondage and lead us in His ways. Has God done that for you? If so, think of all the spectacular miracles God had to perform to draw you out of the world! Do you remember those miracles? Spend some real time, even on your knees, thinking about what your life would be like if God had not called you—if you were still captive to your own sins and to this evil, Satan-deceived world.

God condemns those of His people who have forgotten this history. He says they should be asking, Where is the Eternal who freed us from this world? Where is God? This is the top priority: We must know where God is! What is a saint or a church that doesn’t know the answer to that question?

The living God led us out of this sin-soaked world. He also led us “through the wilderness” of many trials. God did that for His Church. Now, shamefully, most of those who were in that Church don’t know where this omnipotent, all-powerful God is, and they are not even seeking Him! Many want to be part of a church—but they are not even trying to find out where God is.

Verse 8 shows that the ministers are not asking, “Where is the Lord?” That is a major failure we have seen during this Laodicean era. The ministers should be leading the people to God—but they don’t even know where He is, and they aren’t even asking the question!

“Where is God?” This is the only question that will lead us to God! He is on this Earth in spirit, leading a group of His people who are faithful to Him—and you can prove that! We must be able to discern where God is, the God whose countenance shines like the sun in its full strength! (Revelation 1:16).

The Old Paths

Jeremiah gives us a powerful key for finding God: Think back and recall your history with Him.

“Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein” (Jeremiah 6:16).

Remember how God called you out of this world. What books did you read? What work did He use? What man did He use? Get grounded in that history with God, recall your previous relationship with God, and it will point you to where He is working today.

God’s Laodicean Church and the nations of Israel were shown the “old paths” but refused to walk in them. God’s Church had God’s truth revealed to them in this end time by Herbert W. Armstrong. But most of them have rebelled and forsaken that truth—the old paths—not holding to the traditions or teachings they received (2 Thessalonians 2:15).

This formula would help our nations as well. The nations of Israel—mainly America, the British peoples and the Jewish nation—have a history with God. No other nation has ever been called by God to set a righteous example for the world. No other nation was ever given such a commission! But Israel has rejected those old paths. We now lead the world in drug usage, crime, pornography and every other pathology.

You could even say that in the United States, the “old paths” includes the Constitution. If people would return to what the nation’s forefathers said, they would be in far better shape compared to what they are doing and saying today!

Looking to Men

There are several different Laodicean groups in this end time. They all had God’s truth and became lukewarm. They erroneously assume God is leading all of them and that they will all be united in a place of safety. That is simply not biblical. God wants us to be perfectly united even today (e.g. 1 Corinthians 1:10; John 17:11). Matthew 24:40-41 show that only one group will be taken to a place of safety.

Many people today bounce from one Laodicean group to another without a second thought. They often say, “Let’s all get together.” But that is not the right goal. The question uppermost on their minds should be, “Where is God?” We must get together with God. There is no glory in congregating with others if God is not among us! (1 John 1:3). That is what Aaron and the Israelites did when Moses climbed Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. They ended up worshiping the golden calf (Exodus 32). They got together—but God wasn’t with them, and He was deeply angered by their “worship”!

“Where is God?” This one big question, if honestly answered, will always keep us anchored in the truth. Answer this question correctly and there should never be a serious problem answering other questions.

If we are going to build for God, we must start on this foundation: “Where is God?”

“How lightly you gad about, changing your way! …” (Jeremiah 2:36; rsv). The Laodiceans are double-minded and erratic, jumping from one idea to another, trying this and that, instead of holding fast that which is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). They have access to the almighty, unchanging God! Yet they look to and trust in pitiful, unstable men, including themselves.

How about you? Does your life lack the stability and strength that comes from truly building your life on the Rock? (e.g. Psalm 18:2; Matthew 7:24-27). Do you drift, wander or roam spiritually?

Jeremiah 2:36 concludes, “You shall be put to shame by Egypt as you were put to shame by Assyria” (rsv). Anciently, the kingdom of Judah tried to court Assyria; King Ahaz even hired Assyria to fight for them (2 Kings 16:7-9). That was delusional! The Assyrians ended up conquering their cities (2 Kings 18:13). To protect themselves from the Babylonians, the Jews tried to ally themselves with Egypt—the same nation God had freed their fathers from! God warned that this alliance would result in the Chaldeans burning Jerusalem with fire and that He would deliver the Egyptians to the Chaldeans (Jeremiah 37:5-10; 46:25-26).

In our day, God’s lukewarm people are making the same mistake spiritually, and the same fate awaits them! God warns that they are headed for a terrifying captivity, and says, “[T]he Lord has rejected those in whom you trust, and you will not prosper by them” (Jeremiah 2:37; rsv). This is what happens when people trust in politicians—or doctors, or their bank accounts, or anyone or anything else more than God!

Why trust weak, fallible men? We must trust God! That is how to have real stability and blessings in our lives.

After Herbert W. Armstrong died, it was a confusing time for all of us. In their confusion, many people looked to men for solutions. They followed their local minister into a splinter group; they looked to an evangelist they thought was a good speaker; they picked the largest wcg offshoot, or the one most of their friends or family attended. That is, essentially, looking to Egypt and to Assyria. Only one thing matters: Where is God?

Prayerfully ask yourself, Why am I attending with this group? Is it so you don’t rock the boat with your immediate family? Is it because you like the minister? Is it because they have a congregation near you? There is only one acceptable reason to be with any church: because God is there!

Shamefully, we are all prone to look to men and to material solutions instead of to the loving, Almighty God. Scrutinize your heart for areas where you are failing to trust God completely. Look for any substitute, any counterfeit, and eliminate it! Strive with all your being to put your full trust in the one and only true God!

Love God’s Government

Do you really want God to govern your life? This is a crucial question each of us must think deeply about.

God has called His people out of this world today to prepare us to rule in the World Tomorrow. We qualify for rulership by learning to be ruled by God now.

How much do you love God’s government? God governs His people directly through the Holy Spirit, and we need to be led by that Spirit, responsive to God’s guidance (Romans 8:14). God also leads His people through the government structure He has put within His Church (e.g. 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; Ephesians 4:4-16; Hebrews 13:17).

Some people don’t like any form of government; they can’t get along in any church. But if we love God, we ought to profoundly love His government.

Jesus Christ wanted His Father to rule Him completely. He was perfectly obedient. He declared the Father (John 1:18). He continually pointed His disciples to His Father. “My Father is greater than I,” He said (John 14:28). He was deeply submitted to His Father. “… I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do,” He said (verse 31). “I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. … I do always those things that please him“ (John 6:38; 8:29). He did everything He could, and still does, to be like His Father (e.g. John 5:19).

That is a wonderful example to follow. God wants you to be such a “beloved son,” in whom He can be so well pleased (Matthew 3:17; 17:5). You have a Father, and He wants you to understand that and become more and more like Him.

Here is a statement from Christ I have always marveled at: “Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?” (John 14:9).

Jesus Christ was so righteous that He said, If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. What a statement! Oh, if we could all say, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father”! Christ loves His Father more than you and I can even imagine. He said, I act just like Him. I do everything just like my Father. If He were down here on Earth, He would do what I’m doing exactly the same way. How astounding!

Jesus Christ wants to develop within each of us the very same love that He has for His Father. Then, when we go out into the universe and people ask, “What are you doing?”, we can say, “What you see done here is exactly what the Father would do.” This is the beautiful love of God, and He wants it to fill our lives!

King David developed that love. “I delight to do thy will, O my God,” he wrote, “yea, thy law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8). He pleaded for God to actively direct and govern his life: “Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God … lead me into the land of uprightness. … Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 143:10; 139:23-24). David wanted God to examine and govern his deepest thoughts and motives! This made him a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22).

This desire for God’s rule is repeatedly expressed by the Prophet Jeremiah in Psalm 119: “Make me to go in the path of thy commandments …. Incline my heart unto thy testimonies …. Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me in thy way” (verses 35-37). Make me do right—turn my heart—direct my eyes to where they should be! Jeremiah truly wanted God to rule him—even the inclinations of his heart! He wanted to subject his will completely to God!

“[L]et me not wander …” (verse 10). “Make me to understand …” (verse 27). “Order my steps in thy word …” (verse 133). Jeremiah didn’t just ask God, “Guide my life,” but, Direct my every step! If God doesn’t order our steps, then we wander off our own way. Either God rules our life—or sin does! (Romans 6:16).

Compare your own attitude to that of these very righteous men. This childlike submission is exactly what God needs in all of us! This is what is going to make His Family live in beautiful harmony for all eternity!

The better you see that, the better you can recognize why God is deeply upset with the great majority of His people during this Laodicean era.

Government Problem

The early chapters of Jeremiah reinforce a warning to the Laodiceans that is conveyed in several Bible passages: They refuse to let God rule them.

Jeremiah 2:24 says that, spiritually, God’s people are behaving like a wild ass in heat! That is deeply corrective! It means they have rejected God’s bridle—His government.

Look at what has happened to God’s people. Many have wandered from church to church. They leave one because it splits; another, because they disagree with a policy or doctrine. They are wandering around like a wild ass, going wherever they please.

How can God spiritually harness and direct anyone who is in such a state? We should be the opposite: precisely following God in every possible way. These people have broken the yoke and roam without purpose. God is giving them a vivid picture of how far they have departed from Him. They must understand their spiritual state and change. God must punish them until they repent. There is no other way into His Kingdom.

In verse 25, God pleads, “Withhold thy foot from being unshod, and thy throat from thirst ….” He is warning that their attitude will take them into the horrors of captivity, traveling barefoot and denied water to quench their thirst. But instead of heeding, they talk back, answering: “It is hopeless, for I have loved strangers, and after them I will go” (rsv). What bitter stubbornness! What rebellion and delusion!

I have actually heard some people who have deserted God essentially say these words—as if it is impossible to repent! Woe to anyone who talks back to God when He is trying to turn us around. Are we so steeped in sin that we don’t want to leave it?

‘We Are Lords’

“O generation, see ye [or heed] the word of the Lord. Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? wherefore say my people, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee?” (Jeremiah 2:31). God is pleading for people to heed His Word! As in verse 5, He is asking, What wrong have I done to you? “Have I been a wilderness to Israel [like a land without food], A land of thick and deep darkness [like a path without light]?” the Amplified Bible reads. Obviously He has not! Why, then, are you treating me this way? He asks.

God is speaking to people whom He once ruled—but who now say spiritually, “We are lords.” They are not babes and humble people—they see themselves as “lords,” refusing to come to God. They will not heed God’s Word; they want to rule themselves! Jeremiah 10:23 says that man cannot rule himself!

Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon says the Hebrew word translated “We are lords” is “specially used of beasts which have broken the yoke and wander freely” or “a people, who, having as it were, broken God’s yoke, go on unbridled” (emphasis mine throughout). Once broken loose, they “will come no more” to God. The Amplified Bible renders the last part of this verse, “Why do My people say, ‘We [have broken loose and we] are free to roam [at will]; We will no longer come to You’?”

That is the foundational problem with this world—people are ungovernable! Tragically, so many of God’s own people have the same headstrong attitude. They have rejected God’s government and will not heed God. They are unbridled!

God’s faithful people must be bridled and readily corrected by God. Christ Himself pleads with us to voluntarily take on His yoke that we might find rest (Matthew 11:28-30).

“We are lords” describes the arrogance of so many of God’s people today. They don’t look for the Church God has established; they make the choice themselves based on their own preferences. Thousands have stopped attending any church. They don’t see the need for what they call a “human” government. They are their own minister—saying, in effect, “We are lords.”

So many have moved away from what God plainly reveals in the Bible and showed to Mr. Armstrong about how God leads and organizes His Church!

Is God’s Church Divided?

One common idea today is that many of the dozens of different groups the wcg splintered into after Mr. Armstrong died are doing God’s Work in different ways. They think God’s Church is divided into branches, with different organizations, different leaders, even different doctrines. We’re all God’s Church, they reason. We’ll all be together in the place of safety.

That is delusional human reasoning—not Bible truth! Please read Chapter 6 of Mystery of the Ages, “Mystery of the Church,” and be reminded of the sound Bible-based teaching God gave us through Mr. Armstrong.

The Apostle Paul wrote, “Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10). Do the scattered Church of God groups even come close to fitting that description?

The Church is the Body of Christ. He is its living Head, and He actively leads it! He commanded that His people be unified in spirit—spiritually one even as He and God the Father are one! (John 17:21). Christ is not working through hundreds of different presidents, boards, ministries and voters to do His Work. All those differences, disagreements and divisions are a product of sin!

God used Peter to establish His Church (Matthew 16:18), and He has used a human leader ever since. To have a Work, we must have leadership. Through God’s government, we are united. We would have chaos and confusion if we lacked His leadership. God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33). But the reality is, Satan is always attacking God’s government. He seeks to disrupt God’s Work, discourage God’s people, and attack those whom God is calling. So it is crucial we be deeply grounded in God’s government and that we show our love toward God by loving His government.

God nurtures His Spirit-begotten people, preparing them for birth into His Family, through His one government (Ephesians 4:11-13), teaching pure, true doctrine (see verses 3-6). Christ still leads and feeds His Church! Your responsibility—and your only hope—is to find Him!

The Loner Christian

Remember the purpose for which God is calling people today, and it becomes clear that He is not working with various groups of called-out ones or with individuals spread throughout the world in no real contact with each other.

Again, why are we called? As Mr. Armstrong explained in Mystery of the Ages, we are called to fulfill a two-part commission: to “go ye into all the world” with the message of God’s coming Kingdom, as well as a warning about the coming Great Tribulation; and to “feed my sheep,” or care for those God calls into the Church and nurture them as they back that first commission.

What kind of work does a loose network of loner Christians accomplish for God? If you have “dropped out of organized religion,” please ask yourself: What have I really done to reach this world? As we saw in Chapter 4, you are not called simply to get knowledge or salvation. You are called for a great purpose in service to this world! If you are not doing that, it is not too late to change.

The loner Christian is not only failing to support that commission to the world, he is also not preparing to rule with Jesus Christ! Remember what Mr. Armstrong wrote in Mystery of the Ages: “The person who says, ‘I will get my salvation alone, outside of the Church’ is totally deceived. This is not the time when salvation is opened to those in Satan’s world. Those called now, I repeat emphatically, are not called just for salvation. They are called for a special training provided only in God’s Church.

“Those in Satan’s world cannot train themselves outside of the Church for the special calling of being rulers and teachers in God’s Kingdom when Satan is removed and the world has become God’s world.

“The Church is organized on God’s pattern of mutual teamwork and cooperation to function perfectly together. They shall become the God Family as it shall exist at the time of Christ’s Second Coming. Remember God IS that divine Family!”

Mr. Armstrong used the analogy of a football player who wanted to train alone instead of with the team and still expected to play in the games. No coach would ever permit that, and neither will God bring someone into His Family at the resurrection who wasn’t part of His Church during this spiritual “training season.”

In John 15:5, Jesus Christ said about His followers, “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” Mr. Armstrong explained, “Those not joined with others of the branches, all joined to the main vine, were no part of the Church, and God the Father will cast them away as dead branches. The life (spirit life impregnated now) is received along with all other ‘branches’ from the main vine—Christ, the Head of the Church!”

Remember, Jeremiah described God’s people as a “noble vine.” Yet many are now a “strange vine”—they are no longer part of God’s organization!

Present Truth

How do we find God’s one true Church? One way, as Jeremiah instructs us, is to recall how God brought us out of Egypt and then search for the Church continuing that Work. Another important clue is that God continues to give new truth to His Church.

Where is the God of revelation? The Apostle Peter wrote, “Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth” (2 Peter 1:12). We must remember past truth “and be established in the present truth.” We must regularly review foundational truths, like those God restored to His Church through Mr. Armstrong, to make sure we don’t let them slip. But we must also be established in present truth.

God is always revealing “present truth” based on what He has already revealed in the past. That means there is always a powerful Work if His people are submissive. God provides an “open door” (Revelation 3:7-8) through which we can deliver His revealed truth.

Anytime God reveals new truth, He does so through His government (Amos 3:7; Ephesians 3:5). Then He uses the same government to proclaim that truth. To be established in the present truth, we must have government.

God calls into His Church people who are adept researchers, who prove His truth from the Bible. That is a good, healthy trait; God commands that (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Some people, however, have gotten carried away with endless research and are relying on their own reasoning and interpretation instead of recognizing how God uses His government to teach us (e.g. Romans 10:14). Satan has wedged his way in and drawn them away from God.

So in 2 Peter 1:12 God says, First let’s make sure we have the right foundation. Always remember the truths you have already been taught. That gets you grounded. You have solid direction as you study present truth. Through His government, God appoints a leader to stir us up and help keep us “in remembrance of these things” (verses 13-15).

We must do things according to God’s direction through His government. Don’t be a religious hobbyist who hops from one point to another to another and never really digs in and gets established in what God has given, past and present truth.

“Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy [Spirit]” (verses 20-21). We cannot privately interpret Scripture; only God can reveal its meaning. He revealed His truth to one man, Mr. Armstrong, and He is using one human leader in the Laodicean era.

God has always used human leaders. He has always had a government that He moves and stirs with His Spirit. He uses a loyal following to back and support that leader in establishing present truth.

Lying Words

Jeremiah 7 also points to the need to back and support God’s one true Work.

Verses 1-2 begin, “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all ye of Judah, that enter in at these gates to worship the Lord.” Again we see two groups: 1) God’s prophet and those who support him; and 2) God’s people who need this correction.

“Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place” (verse 3). God is trying to get these people to see how to dwell with Him! He wants to be with His children—if only they would heed this warning and amend their ways. God expands this wonderful promise in verses 5-7: He says if you thoroughly amend your ways, execute justice, care for the needy and avoid idolatry, “Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever”! How loving and merciful is God!

“Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these” (verse 4). The Jews felt very secure because they had God’s temple. It was a false security. We saw the same mistake in the wcg after Mr. Armstrong died. The members felt that as long as they stayed in the Church, they were safe spiritually—even after Satan took over that organization!

If God’s people are going astray, then it is a sin to stay with them. To say otherwise is “lying words”!

Instead of focusing on “God’s Church,” or “the temple,” we should be asking the question in Jeremiah 2:6 and 8: Where is God? We must know the answer!

“Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not; And come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations?” (Jeremiah 7:8-10). Again, this refers to God’s Spirit-begotten people, who alone can “commit adultery” spiritually. Many think they can get away with terrible sins while maintaining a relationship with God.

God is truly giving them a harsh, corrective evaluation. But as always, it is because He loves them and is trying to save them!

“Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the Lord” (verse 11). Those in God’s Church know that Mr. Armstrong called Ambassador Auditorium “God’s house.” God dwelled there in spirit! Those who took over after he died ridiculed that idea, then sold the auditorium for far less than it was worth just to be rid of it. They made off with a whole lot of money! Robbers and thieves! God abhors what they did!

Remember Shiloh

“But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel” (Jeremiah 7:12). God’s people today need to know the significance of Shiloh. Its history is recorded in the portion of the Bible called the “former prophets,” which means it is prophecy for today.

After Joshua led the Israelites into the Promised Land, Shiloh was established as Israel’s first capital where the tabernacle was set up (Joshua 18:1). God set His own name there—but it didn’t stay there! In the 20th century, He established the Worldwide Church of God, and He was with them for over half a century—but then the people turned away.

Later, the Prophet Samuel grew up in Shiloh. At that time, the priesthood was plagued by the corruption of Eli and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas. The Israelites took the ark of the covenant into battle because they believed that with the ark in the battlefield, God would give them victory. They had the ark and the tabernacle—but they didn’t have God! The ark was only a symbol of God’s presence, but they had been sinning greatly, so God was not with them.

What happened? Read the history in 1 Samuel 4: In the battle with the Philistines, Israel was defeated, the ark was captured, and Shiloh was destroyed. It still lay in ruins when Jeremiah wrote his prophecy nearly 4½ centuries later.

Psalm 78:59-64 show that God, in His anger at Israel’s sins, “forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men”! He simply left! He is perfect in righteousness, and these people were turning away from Him; He didn’t want to be in the presence of that sin!

What a stark warning. Jeremiah was saying, when God departed from Shiloh because of the people’s evil, what good did the ark do them—even though it represented God’s presence? What good is a temple if God doesn’t dwell in it? What value is God’s Church in this end time if God isn’t there?

Having God’s name is not enough. God must be there too! And if God’s people turn away from Him, He will also turn away from them. If God punished physical Israel, what will He do to spiritual Israel, His Church, today? Even if you have the “house of God,” it can fall into the hands of a traitor, as happened after Mr. Armstrong died.

Departing From God’s Glory

Phinehas’s wife was close to giving birth. When she heard that her husband and father-in-law had been killed and the ark was captured by the Philistines, she went into labor. It was so difficult that she died during the birth, but her son was delivered (1 Samuel 4:19-20).

Before dying, however, “she named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel: because the ark of God was taken …” (verse 21). Ichabod means “departing from the glory of God.” Israel had lost a considerable number of soldiers. All his life, Ichabod would be a memorial to this ignominious event and the dangerous direction Israel had taken!

This woman uttered a remarkable prophecy. Shiloh had an illustrious history under Joshua, but it came to represent corruption and shame. This woman recognized what had happened, and she pinpointed the problem: God had departed!

Ichabod is our greatest warning today. God’s own people lost the glory of God! This has happened to God’s people in this Laodicean era.

We have such glory in God’s Church! This is real—you can’t even come close to describing it, it’s so wonderful! We must hold on to that glory and never depart from it!

Shiloh Is Coming

After its destruction, Shiloh became a warning. Again, Jeremiah 7:12 says, “But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I caused my name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel” (American Standard Version). Jeremiah was delivering a prophecy for Jerusalem just before its fall—and a prophecy for us today.

Shiloh is also mentioned in the prophecy of Genesis 49 (which verse 1 shows is for the end time, or “the last days”). Verse 10 says, “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come ….” This refers to Jesus Christ’s return—but why call the Messiah “Shiloh”? That is peculiar.

By using that name, it seems God puts the Laodiceans’ problem there right alongside the Second Coming of Christ! They had the opportunity to introduce Christ to the world, yet you could say they have marred that spectacular event! But anyone reading this still has a chance to help proclaim Christ’s coming to the world.

Genesis 49:10 is packed with meaning. As I explain in my book The New Throne of David, it describes the uniting of David’s throne with God’s law in this end time. God has given His end-time Church a throne and a king. This points to the future of God’s people as kings and priests of God (e.g. Revelation 1:6; 5:10). It all points directly to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. And in this verse, God connects it all to the great Shiloh.

By using the name Shiloh, God is expressing His disappointment in the Laodiceans. They can talk about God all they want, but they are into the vanity of vanities! They will suffer as no people have ever suffered, and half of them are throwing away their eternal lives!

“And now, since you have committed all these sins—it is [God] who speaks—and have refused to listen when I spoke so urgently, so persistently, or to answer when I called you, I will treat this Temple that bears my name, and in which you put your trust, and the place I have given to you and your ancestors, just as I treated Shiloh. I will drive you out of my sight, as I drove all your kinsmen, the entire race of Ephraim” (Jeremiah 7:13-15; The Jerusalem Bible). God warns that He is going to do to spiritual and physical Israel exactly what He did to Shiloh! He is trying to give us hope and help us avoid a nuclear catastrophe! It is coming, and God wants to save us from it!

You can see how important it is that you find the one Work God is leading and support that with all your effort. You cannot afford to make assumptions about such an urgent, life-and-death matter!

Repent and Get to Work

The correction continues in Jeremiah 4—but note how earnest and hopeful God is that they will accept it and turn back to Him: “‘If you will return, O Israel,’ says the Lord, ‘Return to Me; And if you will put away your abominations out of My sight, Then you shall not be moved. And you shall swear, “The Lord lives,” In truth, in judgment, and in righteousness; The nations shall bless themselves in Him, And in Him they shall glory’” (Jeremiah 4:1-2; nkjv). Put away your abominations, and you will have a glorious future! These are wonderful promises! If God’s people will return to Him, He will bless them and even bless others through them!

“For thus saith the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings” (verses 3-4). God warns Judah and the other nations of Israel. (Jerusalem is a type of all Israel.) But it too is a message for the unfaithful people of spiritual Israel. Heeding the warning can save people from God’s fiery wrath! Physical circumcision is a type of spiritual conversion. God explicitly commands, not physical circumcision, but circumcision of the heart (see Romans 2:29).

“Declare ye in Judah, and publish in Jerusalem; and say, Blow ye the trumpet in the land: cry, gather together, and say, Assemble yourselves, and let us go into the defenced cities” (Jeremiah 4:5). When someone repents, this is what God wants that individual to direct his energies toward: the Work!

God commands His people to declare and publish His warning message! He calls us to do a specific work. We must help God’s Work get this message to the world. Declare it—publish it! We must do this Work urgently. We must blow the trumpet because nuclear war is coming on the nations of Israel unless they repent!

Even in the Laodicean era, God has given us the means to accomplish this Work. Times are growing more urgent. We have a lot of work to do and a short window in which to do it. This Work needs more helpers in this crucial time. God prophesies that we will reach 10,000 saints (the correct translation of Deuteronomy 33:2 and Jude 14).

This is why we blow the trumpet. God has established this trumpet-blowing Work. He wants you to be part of it! God has called you to contribute to His Work, to give and serve wherever you can.

“I have set thee for a tower and a fortress among my people, that thou mayest know and try their way” (Jeremiah 6:27). God is still talking about Zion, His Church. He says, “I have set thee for a tower and a fortress” among Israel. God did this. God has called us to be a tower so we can get an elevated view of all that is happening in the world and warn Israel about His prophecies.

We are a fortress among people in this world. God gives us His truth and His Work to do, and He protects us; we can face any challenge or difficulty if we stay with God in that fortress. But we must obey Him. If we obey God, we have nothing to fear.

But if we fail to obey God, then we are entering into a time when fear will be, by far, the most dominant theme of our lives!

God has promised to protect us individually or nationally if we repent. Everyone should stop his own work now and join God’s Work. May the great God help you to heed this urgent and terrifying message!

Many of us can rightly consider Herbert W. Armstrong a spiritual “father,” the same way the Apostle Paul was to many in the first century (1 Corinthians 4:15). He helped me to relate personally to God the Father.

My own father did not know how to be a good father because no one had taught him how; his father didn’t know how. So he did many things wrong. This is true, to one degree or another, for many of you in your own family background. To turn a family around, someone in the family needs to break the cycle and learn how to do it right.

My dad was an alcoholic and, at times, pretty violent. When I was growing up, he gave me some severe discipline. He didn’t whip me a lot, but when he did, he really cracked down, usually with a good-size switch.

I needed some of that correction, but many of my needs went unfulfilled. I certainly learned to submit to government, but there were many things I wasn’t taught that I should have been. Frankly, I grew to have a certain amount of bitterness toward my father. That made it difficult for me to relate to God.

When the time came, I was happy to move out on my own. I wanted to live the “exciting life” everyone in the world was living. Yet it wasn’t that way at all. Soon I felt life was hopeless and empty. I even started wondering whether there was a God. The more I tried to prove it, the more I thought God did not exist. This discouraged me even more.

My mother had been called into God’s truth in 1957, and from that time she tried endlessly to convert me. I rebelled against that and persecuted her for it. Whenever Herbert W. Armstrong came on the radio, she turned up the volume so I could hear him, and that upset me. I was antagonistic against him and his message—that is, until my life had become so miserable and hopeless that I was desperate enough to do anything to change it, even if it meant looking into “Mom’s religion.”

Protected by God

About the time I was being called, one stormy night my dad was out back, knocking to get into the house, but no one heard him because it was raining and thundering. Finally I heard him and went to open the door. He was standing there, drenched, drunk and in a rage because we hadn’t let him in quicker.

He stormed into the house and into the back bedroom. When he came back out, he had a handgun, and he was coming after me. I recognized what he intended to do and tried to grab the gun. But before I could reach it, he put it against my head, and I heard the gun click.

I took the gun from him. It turned out that, though the chamber had been empty when he fired at me, the next chamber did have a bullet in it. My dad had literally tried to kill me.

I am convinced God miraculously saved my life. He had plans for me, and that is one of a few instances I can think of where He protected me.

Humanly, I would rather not mention that incident, but it might help you to know what God brought me through.

Sometimes we hold back from really giving ourselves to God because we have a bad background or certain problems in our past. We just can’t quite get over it and put it behind us. We may think, If I hadn’t had this or that happen to me, maybe I could make it.

We must not limit God. He has reasons for calling whom He calls, and He can work miracles in our lives beyond what we can imagine. Often, He has ways of using the tragedies in our past to His ultimate advantage.

I will be honest: The way my dad abused his authority made it a struggle in some ways for me to get my mind straight about authority in the Church. Having seen authority abused, I learned to hate that about as much as anything. It has also helped me learn to exercise authority in a godly way.

Did you know that most of the people God has called into His Church have had problems, some of them extremely serious? Some of what many of us have gone through in our childhood was so horrible we don’t want to talk about it! 1 Corinthians 1:26-29 describe us as the despised and lowly of the world.

We have all come out of a world that can leave us deeply scarred. But we can’t sit around and mope about that. If you have come out of a situation like I did, or worse, what can you do?

Thankfully, my own children didn’t have to deal with those problems. They certainly have a flawed father, but things got better all the time—as they do in God’s Church. Because of God, we can stop that madness in our families! You and I have that opportunity. What a priceless blessing! We must take advantage of it.

Called Into God’s Church

In early 1961, I was 25 years old and living in St. Louis, Missouri, when God called me into His Church. At that time, I was a spiritual mess—one big towering failure. My life was so off course, I’m sure I would not have survived to age 40. I really needed someone to give me direction.

God had brought me to the point of desperation. I knew I needed help, and I was thankful there was a God who would reach out to me. When He called me, I took advantage of His help.

There is only one way we can learn how to make life work, and that is to have our heavenly Father show us!

For example, a few years later when I got married and had a child on the way, I knew nothing about how to rear children; my parents had not set an example I could follow. Mom was too easy; Dad was too hard and taught me little. Where would I learn how to train my children? That is something we must learn from God!

So I began to study God’s Word and the child-rearing book published by the Worldwide Church of God. I studied and studied. I wanted to give my children the opportunity to make successes of themselves! I wanted to give them the direction they needed, the way God was giving it to me.

Right at the heart of Mr. Armstrong’s teaching was his instruction about the God-plane institution of family. He taught us how to build beautiful marriages and how to rear happy children. We educated our children with Youth Educational Services lessons; we provided our teens rich experiences through the Youth Opportunities United program—with its sporting events, talent contests and summer camps.

Anyone who applied God’s family education personally experienced the blessings that result!

A Father Figure

Once I was in God’s Church, I came to think of Herbert W. Armstrong as a father. My own father was lacking, but I saw that Mr. Armstrong was very stable. Following him helped me stabilize my life and become a stronger man.

I proved that Mr. Armstrong was God’s man. He led the Church powerfully, keeping the truth alive. He gave me what it took to make my life meaningful and happy. He taught me how to love God; I had never experienced anything like that before.

It is a very biblical perspective to view Mr. Armstrong as a father. The Apostle Paul had a fatherly perspective toward God’s people. He considered men like Timothy, Titus and Onesimus as sons (1 Timothy 1:2; Titus 1:4; Philemon 10). He called the members in Galatia “[m]y little children” (Galatians 4:19). He exhorted and comforted God’s people “as a father doth his children, That ye would walk worthy of God …” (1 Thessalonians 2:11-12). To the people of Corinth he wrote, “I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you” (1 Corinthians 4:14).

Paul considered his followers to be his spiritual sons. Why? “For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel” (verse 15). Paul was their spiritual father because they came to God through him. He called himself their spiritual father.

Mr. Armstrong said the same to all those who came to God, either directly or indirectly, through him.

This is different from giving someone the title “father.” Jesus Christ instructs us not to use that as a religious title (Matthew 23:9). In God’s Church we do not call our ministers “father” as is done in the Catholic Church. We did not address Mr. Armstrong that way, Paul did not use that title, and members of the Philadelphia Church of God do not address me or any minister that way. But that did not stop Paul or Mr. Armstrong from describing themselves as fathers to the Church members.

Paul and Mr. Armstrong were rare. We “have not many fathers.” This “father” label is a very exalted calling from God! That is because it points us to God the Father.

The End-time Elijah

Here is a clear, direct prophecy from God, which was fulfilled by Herbert W. Armstrong: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Malachi 4:5). Mr. Armstrong came in the spirit and power of Elijah the prophet. It is clear from this prophecy that this role would be fulfilled in the end time. The “great and dreadful day of the Lord” hasn’t happened yet, but it is about to!

Mr. Armstrong recognized toward the end of his ministry that he fulfilled this prophecy. He said so on several occasions and wrote about it in his final book, Mystery of the Ages. Yet within three years of his death, his successor, Joseph Tkach, said, “It is not appropriate … to assign various scriptures to Mr. Armstrong or me personally as though our leadership were specifically prophesied in the Bible. Besides being erroneous and spiritually presumptuous, this kind of thinking only serves to falsely brand God’s Church as a cultish sect that worships its human leaders” (Worldwide News, Jan. 9, 1989).

Mr. Tkach gave no scriptures to support his assertion, which was a massive change in the Church’s teaching. When Christ’s disciples asked Him about Malachi’s prophecy, He didn’t tell them not to assign names to it. In fact, He told them that prophecy had already been fulfilled, in type, by a specific man—John the Baptist (Matthew 17:10-13).

Of course, that fulfillment wasn’t “before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord”—there would be an end-time Elijah. And Christ also said that in this end time, Elijah would “restore all things” (verse 11). If you really know your Bible, you will notice when a man is restoring all things! That is what Mr. Armstrong did for God’s Church, restoring all the foundational doctrines of truth that had been lost. If God hadn’t sent him, we would know nothing about the true gospel of Christ, the purpose of God, the government of God, the nature of God. We wouldn’t know God’s master plan and how it is pictured by the annual holy days. We wouldn’t have the key that unlocks biblical prophecy, which is one third of your Bible! Mr. Armstrong restored all these truths and many more. No one else has even come close to fulfilling this role. God worked through one man to restore these truths—not a committee of scholars. That is undeniable. (Request our free booklet A Pivotal Sign of the End Time to learn all about this prophecy.)

God always builds His Work around a man. If you don’t accept this profound concept, then you must reject the end-time Elijah and what Christ said about him. God’s whole end-time Work revolves around him! The Bible makes that clear. He was the physical leader directing the Church under Christ. The whole Church got behind him to do God’s Work.

The Laodicean groups do not believe Mr. Armstrong fulfilled this fundamental prophetic role! Some of their members may believe it, but their leaders are wishy-washy about it at best. That condemns their religion!

Because we understand Mr. Armstrong fulfilled this pivotal prophesied role, we published Mystery of the Ages and several other important works he wrote. Those books were inspired by God, and He wants them offered and distributed freely to this world! The wcg sued us to try to keep Mr. Armstrong’s books out of print. We battled them in court for six years before they finally offered to sell us the copyrights. The Laodicean groups did nothing to help us. Many Laodiceans hoped we would fail! If they valued the truth restored by God’s end-time Elijah, they would have supported our effort to keep it alive—but they did not! That loudly testifies of their disrespect, or even contempt, for God’s Elijah.

You must prove this foundational doctrine. Once you do, it provides a solid foundation for many aspects of biblical understanding and right living, according to every word of God.

Do you view Mr. Armstrong the way God does?

Turn Your Heart

Here is how God describes Mr. Armstrong’s work: “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse” (Malachi 4:6). The subject is family love—turning the hearts of fathers to children and children to fathers. That is not just about physical family, but about God’s Family.

Mr. Armstrong turned my heart to God the Father! He fulfilled this prophecy in my personal life! He did that for many tens of thousands of people who became members in the Worldwide Church of God. And he also worked very hard to build physical families, especially within the Church but even with people in the world. What a marvelous Work God did through this man!

God the Father has turned His heart toward us—we need to turn our hearts toward Him and love Him. Once people have learned to love their heavenly Father, they will then learn to love their children, their family and everyone else. That will revolutionize our lives, turn everything around, and change the whole world!

If there is one word that describes where the Laodiceans have gone wrong and where the remnant of Philadelphians has not, I believe it is the understanding of the word father.

Note the warning at the end of this passage: There are people who turned away from what Mr. Armstrong taught and accomplished—and they are about to receive the ultimate curse and lose their eternal lives! To avoid that curse, we must turn our hearts to God and love His government as Mr. Armstrong did and as he taught others to do.

The Schools of Elijah

The life of the original Prophet Elijah has many parallels with the end-time Elijah. Elijah raised up three colleges, probably located in Gilgal, Bethel and Jericho (e.g. 2 Kings 2:1-5; see also 2 Kings 4:38). Mr. Armstrong also raised up three colleges. Gilgal was in Ephraim. Mr. Armstrong also had a college in Ephraim, modern-day Britain.

Why did God establish these colleges? We can know the answer because we know why Mr. Armstrong established Ambassador College: Without it, the Work simply couldn’t grow. The Work kept falling apart as fast as he could build it because he didn’t have the ministerial and administrative help to keep people’s minds on what God was doing. After he started the colleges, he had trained help, and the Work began to grow at a phenomenal pace!

Elijah was educating students to teach the whole world. That is what this Elijah work is all about: preparing teachers to teach and to lead all humanity! Through the college, God was able to deeply educate people in His vision! That is His goal. People don’t naturally have godly vision, but once He can educate them and point them in the right direction, they can do a great Work for God! That is also why we have established Herbert W. Armstrong College at the Philadelphia Church of God headquarters campus in Edmond, Oklahoma.

The students of Elijah’s schools were called “the sons of the prophets” (1 Kings 20:35; 2 Kings 2:3; etc.). They looked to Elijah as a father. He taught them all about God’s Family.

An inspiring proof of that fact comes at the moment Elijah’s authority is transferred to Elisha, his successor.

Elijah was about to be taken away by God. Apparently, he was visiting his three colleges to say goodbye. He loved those young men, and they were extremely emotional about his departure. He told Elisha to remain behind in Gilgal while he traveled to Bethel, but Elisha said, “As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee” (verse 2). Elijah, as he went from college to college, kept offering Elisha the chance to stay behind. But Elisha would not leave Elijah’s side. He was deeply loyal to his teacher!

Elisha had learned something most of God’s people still have not learned today, and that is never to leave Elijah! Even after his death, do not leave the spirit of Elijah or what he taught. If it is God’s Elijah work, we must cling to it!

‘My Father, My Father’

At last God took Elijah in an impressive display! “[T]here appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven” (2 Kings 2:11).

Here was Elisha’s emotional response: “And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. …” (verse 12). Elijah was not his biological father, but his spiritual father, through whom he had received the truth of God, just as Mr. Armstrong was our father in this end time.

I believe God has separated the Philadelphians from the Laodiceans mainly over this issue. All the Laodiceans have rejected the father office, which means they have rejected God’s family government. This is the foremost reason they are Laodicean.

The members of the pcg look to Mr. Armstrong as “my father, my father.” Of course, he was not infallible; this is simply acknowledging him as the man who gave us the truth of God. If we are going to make it, our attitude toward Mr. Armstrong’s teachings must be like Elisha’s reverence for Elijah’s work.

Elisha saw that Elijah’s office was the only office that could lead Israel forward! It was Israel’s only hope—then and now! He saw that, ultimately, all Israel would be governed by the teachings of Elijah. Calling out “My father, my father” revealed his deep understanding and beautiful attitude. God loved his attitude so much that He used Elisha to continue His Work after Elijah. That is why Elisha was chosen for the job, I believe. As Elijah was about to be taken away, Elisha didn’t think, I’m glad I’m finally getting that job! He wasn’t like a vulture waiting for Elijah to die. Elisha said, My father, my father! He loved Elijah.

The original Elijah and the end-time Elijah held extremely important “father” offices for God. The pcg, like Elisha, recognizes that fact. This is the foundational issue that sets the pcg apart from the Laodicean groups. That is why we fought in court for Mystery of the Ages and nobody else did. Only the pcg today owns the copyright and prints and freely distributes that important book.

This is such a vital principle to understand. If you follow Elisha’s example in this respect, God will make you a king with a headquarters position forever!

Why? Because this foundational truth points us to God the Father.

Jesus Christ said, “[M]y Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). He repeatedly made such statements to establish the Father-Son family relationship. God is trying to get us to capture, or recapture, this God Family vision. We can rule in the God Family only after we prove to God that we will be ruled—that we are in total subjection to God our Father.

The lukewarm Laodiceans show by the way they treat Mr. Armstrong’s writings that they are not honoring God the Father! If you don’t understand the role Mr. Armstrong filled, you don’t understand God the Father!

This is a beautiful family vision that a person with a carnal attitude cannot grasp because God cannot reveal it to him.

God wants you to honor Him. Mr. Armstrong established Ambassador College to teach the young people that. If all those students had clung to this truth, we would have many thousands of people in the Church today doing a spectacular work! We ought to have many more people helping to deliver God’s message, because it is the only hope in the world today. Imagine the impact on the world we could have with more people!

This family understanding will keep us spiritually grounded forever! Then God knows we shall always remain loyal to the Father and Son and anyone else they place over us. We must become locked into God’s family government and accept the Family rule forever!

The God of Elijah

After Elijah was taken away, Elisha learned an important lesson. “He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back, and stood by the bank of Jordan; And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is the Lord God of Elijah? and when he also had smitten the waters, they parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over” (2 Kings 2:13-14).

If you study this account in the original Hebrew, you will see that the first time Elisha came up to the Jordan, he smote the water but didn’t speak—and nothing happened. Then he asked the important question, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” and smote the water, and the river opened up and he walked across!

Do you want to know how to do the Work of God today? How to have doors open for you—even part rivers, if necessary? Here is the formula. Elisha knew where the God of Elijah was, and he was following his spiritual father. So God parted the waters of the river for him, just as He did for Elijah.

Where is the God of Elijah today? Where is the great Almighty God who did that powerful Work?

Can you answer that question? Far too many of God’s people aren’t even asking it! Most of them are not even interested in where He is! If they wanted to know, they would submit to God’s government and end up in God’s true Church.

After Mr. Armstrong’s death, many Church members failed to look to the God behind the man. They didn’t ask where that God of miracles was—as if He had died along with Mr. Armstrong!

God did not die! Yet none of the scattered churches of God have that kind of power. They don’t receive and proclaim God’s revelation. They have rejected God’s government. And their works are devoid of the kind of miracles and wonders that were almost routine when the Work was led by Mr. Armstrong.

We must find and remain with the God of Elijah!

When the waters of the Jordan parted for Elisha, everyone knew where the God of Elijah was. “And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha. And they came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him” (verse 15). These young students were deeply submissive to God’s government. It’s sad that so few of Mr. Armstrong’s “students” have this attitude.

Where is the God of Elijah today, who did such a powerful Work through His end-time messenger? You can answer that question with another question: Where are the people who honor God as a Father today, and at the same time, honor Mr. Armstrong as a spiritual father?

Honor the Father

The book of Malachi is directed at the Laodiceans. The first criticism in that book is about God not being honored as a Father. This has far deeper meaning than we sometimes realize. I believe it is at the root of all the Laodiceans’ problems.

Malachi’s prophecy begins, “The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob” (Malachi 1:1-2).

God brings up Jacob and Esau for good reason: These two brothers were estranged, alienated from one another. There is family division in God’s Church today. What is the cause? Here God tells us why.

“A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? …” (verse 6).

What a penetrating question! Where is my honor? This is profoundly important to God. Astonishingly, some Laodiceans no longer believe that God is a Father.

The Laodiceans stopped honoring God the Father, the Head of the Family! It’s impossible to survive if we do that. They rejected their spiritual Father. They also rejected Mr. Armstrong. But it wasn’t really Mr. Armstrong they rejected—it was our spiritual Father, God the Father!

To maintain a right spiritual perspective, you must honor the Father! If you fail to do so, you are rejecting the Family and the Family government.

Even in a physical family, if it is to be strong and produce good fruits such as children with character, the father must be honored. If he is not, the family begins to break down.

God is a Father—and He must be honored.

The Fear of God

In Malachi 1:6, God corrects the Laodiceans for their lack of godly fear: “[I]f I be a master, where is my fear?”

Contrast this with Mr. Armstrong’s example, also highlighted in Malachi. There God refers to him as “Levi,” who was the father of the physical Levites, who ministered in the tabernacle and the temple (e.g. Deuteronomy 21:5). God uses that prophetic name to show that Mr. Armstrong was the spiritual father of God’s ministry in this end time.

God tells the Laodicean ministry, “And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, saith the Lord of hosts” (Malachi 2:4). God made a covenant with this man. He then commends him: “My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name. The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity” (verses 5-6). What a commendation! Mr. Armstrong turned many people away from lawless living, like he did me! My life is a personal testimony of his fulfilling this prophecy. Many among the Philadelphian remnant would say the same.

Notice what this says about Mr. Armstrong’s character: His fear of God is mentioned three times in verse 5 alone. Mr. Armstrong had a living fear of breaking God’s law and going against His government. That is why he did such a great work. He was a remarkable example of that fear—and a model of obedience to God! No one can honestly deny the fruits.

Do you fear God? Is that reflected in your daily life? If you are a Christian, following Jesus Christ, you must fear God. This is a deep, respectful awe that leads to right living. God commands it (Deuteronomy 10:12, 20; see also Deuteronomy 6:2, 13; 13:4; Ecclesiastes 12:13). Fearing God is “the beginning of wisdom” and “the beginning of knowledge” (Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 9:10; 1:7). Jesus Himself echoed this principle (Matthew 10:28; Luke 12:5). Throughout the New Testament, the fear of God is tied to holiness, obedience, worship, humility and motivation to avoid sin (e.g. 2 Corinthians 7:1; Ephesians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:17; Revelation 14:7).

God cannot rule anyone who doesn’t fear Him. We must properly fear Him and fear breaking His law. That produces obedience from the heart! Our level of understanding will depend on how much we fear God and humble ourselves before Him like a little child. Then He can reveal His truth to us. Those who do this, God rewards mightily!

We all need to learn to fear God as Mr. Armstrong did. Study that man’s life. We will happily send you a free copy of his autobiography, which is filled with examples of how that fear motivated his righteous life. This is one of the books we won the copyright for.

God also confronts His people’s lack of fear in Jeremiah 2-7. “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts” (Jeremiah 2:19). Is He talking about you? So many of God’s people had that fear—but now they have “forsaken the Lord.”

“‘Do you not fear Me?’ says the Lord. ‘Will you not tremble at My presence, Who have placed the sand as the bound of the sea, By a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass beyond it? …’” (Jeremiah 5:22; nkjv). God is an all-powerful God to be feared! Do you fear to disobey Him and rouse His anger? Most of God’s people in this era do not! “But this people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart; they are revolted and gone. Neither say they in their heart, Let us now fear the Lord our God …” (verses 23-24). That fear needs to be in our heart.

Notice how verse 24 describes God: “… that giveth rain, both the former [revelation given to Herbert W. Armstrong] and the latter [revelation given during this final Church era], in his season: he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest.” The biblical truths and doctrines Mr. Armstrong taught truly were spiritually refreshing rain—but we have to realize that the Source of that was not a man but God Himself! That is also true of the revelation we have received during this Laodicean era. What a precious gift we ought to cherish!

Appointed weeks refers to the Feast of Pentecost. That holy day pictures Christ marrying us! Christ’s wife must properly fear her Husband and submit to His lead. This fear is a great treasure. If this marriage were real to God’s people, they surely wouldn’t rebel against such an unparalleled honor.

“Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you” (verse 25). How tragic! God yearns to give His people so many good things— wonderful, inspiring blessings—but He cannot do so because of their sin and rebellion! Are you denying God the opportunity to give you “good things”?

Remember that question from God: “If I be a master, where is my fear?” Do you fear when your marriage might be failing? Do you fear when your children are not doing what they should? Do you fear whether you are lukewarm toward God’s Work? Do you fear whether you are doing your part in this Work? Do you fear division in the Church? Do you fear competing with God’s government? Can you get on your knees and say, God, I know that there are some areas where I hate your government, and I don’t want to change my marriage, or I don’t want to work with my children the way I should. God, please help me to fear you the way Mr. Armstrong did!

The time will come when every knee will bow to Christ (Philippians 2:10). God is giving you, as you read this message, the opportunity to become one of the first to bow to Christ the King—before the rest of humanity does. Those who refuse His rule will lose their lives.

Remember the Father’s Name

Further on, Malachi describes the faithful Philadelphians: “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name” (Malachi 3:16). Whose name? This is talking about God the Father. These saints have proper fear of God, and they remember God the Father’s name.

Look how the Father blesses these people: “And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him” (verse 17). The word jewels is not a good translation to describe God’s faithful saints. The Hebrew word means a special treasure. It describes what God prizes.

We are far more than jewels to God. We are sons! You know that a pile of jewels is nothing compared to your own son or daughter. Your own child truly is a special treasure!

Even the Soncino commentary says these people are not like the other people in the book of Malachi; these are a faithful minority. Indeed they are. They are extremely special sons to God.

God spares from the Great Tribulation His own sons who serve Him. That is how He feels about His obedient sons. He expects honor. And when you honor your Father, He will spare you like any father would his son. That is the love of a father. We ought to thank God for that daily! That keeps these saints loyal: They know their Father, and they know they are sons, and they thank God for that continually! Oh, Father, I am your son! You look after me and protect me and provide all that I need! What a blessing to be your son! What have I ever done to be such a special treasure to you?

God’s people enjoy a special relationship with God today—and we are called to help all humanity enter that special relationship! In Jeremiah 3:18, God says He will reunite the divided kingdom of Israel: “In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers.” That is inspiring—but it is only the start! God is then going to unite the whole world! He will graft all the Gentiles into the Family.

We are going to help God bring all people under one Head. How is that possible? The only way we will ever unite this world is to unite them under one leader—God the Father. Then they too will become His special treasure!

‘A Glorious Throne’

Isaiah 22 has an end-time prophecy about a father and son: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah” (verse 20). Two clay seal impressions, or bullae, with the names Eliakim and Hilkiah were excavated in Israel proving their familial relationship. We displayed these artifacts in Armstrong Auditorium as part of our “Kingdom of David and Solomon Discovered” exhibit. I believe God was behind that. These two bullae don’t mean much to the world, but they mean a great deal to us: They point to the end-time Hilkiah and Eliakim, who are types of Herbert W. Armstrong and me, respectively. God actually calls Eliakim “the son of” Hilkiah! How inspiring!

God gives Eliakim a responsibility in this end time: a government to administer (verse 21). This was stripped from an evil leader in God’s Church, Shebna (verses 15-19).

Verse 21 states: “… and he [Eliakim] shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah.” This man is a “father” to the inhabitants of spiritual Jerusalem—the people in God’s Church. These supporters and members all share the goal to do everything possible to have unity and harmony in this government.

Eliakim is a type of my office. God has given me His government. We have government in this Church, with a focus on the Father. The Father is trying to help us see what it takes to get away from Shebna and his false teachings. Eliakim is a spiritual father; he is the son of Hilkiah, who preceded him in that office. In spiritual Jerusalem, God says, this leader is not a tyrant but a father. This type of leadership does not force itself; it simply leads as God directs. God says that Eliakim is also a father to Judah. This is a family government, a family Work. God really emphasizes that here.

This “father” can’t do all the Work by himself; he needs a lot of support. All of us are doing the Work, and there is only one way to do it. Mr. Armstrong made that clear. God the Father is the Head, and He is the ultimate authority. We are on Earth to be His sons and daughters—His Family. Government is everything.

We have not many fathers in the Church. God emphasizes these two leaders, Hilkiah and Eliakim, as fathers.

Regarding Eliakim, God says, “And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open” (verse 22). This is about the house of David—descendants of King David himself! God has opened many powerful doors for His Work, enabling us to proclaim His truth around the world.

“And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house” (verse 23). How will Eliakim be for a “glorious throne”? What “glorious throne” could this be? This is David’s throne—a glorious throne! It is a prophecy about David’s throne being here in this Church. I explain this important prophecy in detail in my book The New Throne of David (please request a free copy). That book shows how this throne started with a new “stone of destiny”—Mr. Armstrong’s prayer rock. This revelation builds on the revelation in The United States and Britain in Prophecy and explains how that throne will be turned over to Jesus Christ!

Mr. Armstrong was the end-time Elijah, and we carry on the Elijah work. We must keep in mind the focus here on “father.” Eliakim is the son of Hilkiah. Mr. Armstrong is in the picture the whole time. He prepared the way for us to have a new stone and a new throne.

You see him also in the next verse: “And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house”—that harkens back to Hilkiah—“the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons” (verse 24).

All unrepentant Laodiceans are going into the Tribulation, and only 50 percent will come out of it—in a resurrection—after dying in the Tribulation! The “offspring” are those who repent and are reconciled to God. The “issue” are the 50 percent who lose their eternal lives. The Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary says “issue” refers to “vile things … worthless shoots, excrement.” God says they are like worthless excrement! (Please read Chapter 6 of Isaiah’s End-Time Vision to learn more.) Those who reject God are like spiritual dung! God will have nothing to do with them.

What caused the Laodiceans to degenerate to this horrible state? They lost the vision of the Family of God.

This is a big issue to God! He is the Father! This is His Family! God loves His Family; He gave His only begotten Son to be savagely beaten and then crucified to pay for our sins. What a tremendous sacrifice! That is how much the Father loves His Family! He called those people into the Church and chose them. He is very mournful over their rebellion.

We must emphasize the Father in the family government. You need to be absolutely clear on and excited about this most foundational truth. God is telling us, If you can get the focus right and can learn to follow me, your Father, I truly am going to let you share the very throne of Christ and rule this world with Him!

A Work of Miracles

When Herbert W. Armstrong led the Worldwide Church of God, it was a work of miracles. Over his 55 years in Jesus Christ’s ministry, the Work blossomed. It started with nothing and grew into a huge, Spirit-led Work that spread God’s beautiful truth across the world.

Mr. Armstrong oversaw a work that was based on the principle of give—which is an expression of God’s love. By the end of his life, the Church was giving 8 million free copies of the Plain Truth newsmagazine each month, a greater circulation than Time and Newsweek combined at that time. We gave 6 million copies of The United States and Britain in Prophecy, not to mention countless other magazines, newspapers, books, booklets, tracts and articles—all without cost. We made the World Tomorrow broadcast freely available on over 400 television stations.

At that time, the Work received an annual income of about $200 million. God put our tithes and offerings to magnificent use, and we were happy to be part of such a noble cause.

The Ambassador International Cultural Foundation, which Mr. Armstrong founded in 1975, sponsored humanitarian projects including archaeological digs, schools and anthropological excursions. Its activities stretched from Bombay to Brussels, the Philippines to the Netherlands, Tokyo to Cairo. We hosted projects in Jerusalem, Jordan, London, Nepal and Okinawa. Why? Because Mr. Armstrong was commissioned to preach the gospel “for a witness unto all nations” (Matthew 24:14).

Using the international contacts Mr. Armstrong established through the cultural foundation, God opened doors for him to meet hundreds of high-ranking officials around the world. Mr. Armstrong was invited to speak publicly on many occasions, and he took those opportunities to preach the gospel—to tell people about God’s master plan and about their incredible human potential. These events opened the way for personal appearance campaigns, where he spoke to many thousands of leading people in various countries.

At the wcg’s headquarters in Pasadena, California, we hosted the concert series, staged in Ambassador Auditorium, which attracted world-class performing artists and brought a standard of excellence to the community. Physically, it was the crowning achievement of a Work that over decades had built great resources to draw on for the betterment of mankind.

Under Mr. Armstrong, the Worldwide Church of God practiced the way of give—of godly character, generosity, cultural enrichment, true education, of beautifying the environment and caring for fellow man. Mr. Armstrong never deviated from his God-given commission, and the Work flourished! His work acknowledged God’s desire to have all men saved and brought to the knowledge of His truth (1 Timothy 2:3-6). It was an inspiring display of God’s love for all mankind.

When Mr. Armstrong died, he was highly praised by leaders and prominent individuals from around the world. Even unconverted people could clearly see the towering legacy of love and generosity he left behind, and they were deeply impressed by it. Certainly we in the Church all recognized on a much deeper level what he had achieved.

What truly distinguished Mr. Armstrong’s accomplishments was that they were all built on the foundation of God’s truth. God flooded Mr. Armstrong with biblical understanding, restoring all true foundational doctrines to His Church through that man. We learned and lived by the wonderful truths of God, and our lives were richer as a result.

Did Mr. Armstrong do all that? Certainly he worked hard to implement God’s law and government and to walk by faith. But was the Work so powerful and effective simply because of Mr. Armstrong’s intellect or advertising expertise? Did Mr. Armstrong swing open all those mighty doors?

No—the great God did that!

As Zechariah 4:6 says, and as Mr. Armstrong often noted, that Work was done “[n]ot by [human] might, nor by [human] power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” It doesn’t take great spiritual discernment to recognize that God was behind that Work—God was blessing that Work—God was empowering and multiplying that Work—as Mr. Armstrong submitted to Him. No man could have ever built such a marvelous and wondrous work in this satanic world. It was built and sustained by the miracles of the living God!

Critics

Since Mr. Armstrong died, I have heard a lot of people criticize him in unfair, even scandalous ways! I know those criticisms are rank slander! There simply is no truth to most of the accusations against him. Mr. Armstrong made mistakes, and he publicly acknowledged many of them. But God could never have accomplished what He did through that man for over 50 years unless he was righteous and intensely committed to serving God! He changed my life in many wonderful ways. To this day I am deeply grateful for him, and I look forward to seeing him again in God’s Kingdom very soon!

The Laodiceans don’t want God’s government. They don’t want “the evils of one-man rule,” as they have publicly stated. Those words are from the mind of the devil! They never discuss the blessings of one-man rule when that man follows God. Was the era of Herbert Armstrong evil? I know that Mr. Armstrong’s rule was wonderful. It almost drove me crazy after he died, when we no longer had that wonderful gift. Is one-man rule bad? I have to say my experience with one-man rule was splendid! I exalt the office, not the man. But Mr. Armstrong was a wonderful blessing all my adult life. I know. I experienced it. I don’t care what any carnal-minded rebel says.

Naturally, the Church wasn’t perfect; there were problems. Some members and even ministers did not implement God’s loving family government the right way. But the problem went well beyond simple neglect. As mentioned earlier in this book, Revelation 3:9 tells us that “the synagogue of Satan” was actually at work within the Church of the Philadelphia era—even while Mr. Armstrong was alive!

The Bible is filled with prophecies that show that God knew this crisis would happen—and actually allowed it in order to test our loyalty to Him. The Bible also shows that He is going to bring every abuse to judgment. God will not be mocked! I strongly encourage you to request a free copy of Malachi’s Message for a thorough scriptural study of God’s perspective on what happened to the wcg.

Many of God’s people have turned away from God altogether—because of the mistakes and sins of men. They are missing the big picture.

Do the sins of men change the truth of God?

Mr. Armstrong died 40 years ago. But did the Almighty God who empowered his work die?

Is God too weak to do the same marvelous Work today—simply because a man has been taken from the scene? Absolutely not.

The Work of the PCG

The Philadelphia Church of God has far fewer members and supporters than the wcg had at its height. But I challenge you to examine the miraculous Work God is doing with these few!

The pcg started out in December 1989 with $80 and 12 people. Since that small beginning, God has given us a wonderful group of faithful, loyal supporters all over the world. He has opened doors for us to produce television programs, daily podcasts and radio programs for mass audiences. The Key of David is broadcast on television stations worldwide. God has given us the means to freely distribute hundreds of booklets, magazines and Bible correspondence course lessons to millions of people. The Philadelphia Trumpet magazine and its website, theTrumpet.com, carry on the work of the Plain Truth. We publish Royal Vision, a Christian-living magazine; Let the Stones Speak, an Israel-focused archaeology magazine; True Education, which is directed toward our youth; and a 36-lesson Bible correspondence course in which over 100,000 students around the world have enrolled. The pcg has revived personal appearance campaigns, hosting campaigns in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

God has given us four regional offices around the world located in Canada, the UK, the Philippines and Australia. The Church headquarters is situated on a beautifully landscaped 170-acre property, which includes an administrative office building and a mail processing center as big as a football field, which houses our literature inventory, call center and a television studio. We have several buildings and dorms for a small college and a K-12 academy, and students who give us invaluable help in doing God’s Work. Since 2001, our Herbert W. Armstrong College has graduated hundreds of students, over 80 of whom are employed full-time or part-time in the Work. We have full-time ministers all over the world.

The focal point of our campus is a house for God—Armstrong Auditorium, a performing arts venue of the highest quality, with crystal-trimmed chandeliers, crystal candelabra, Spanish marble, Azerbaijani onyx and world-class acoustics. Through the Armstrong International Cultural Foundation, the pcg sponsors culturally enriching experiences, such as fine art performances and humanitarian projects abroad. The foundation sponsors archaeological excavations in Jerusalem. We have exhibited some of the most biblically important artifacts ever found, hosting three exhibits in our auditorium, most recently the “Kingdom of David and Solomon Discovered,” in which we showcased the priceless Tel Dan Stele, which proves the dynasty of King David.

All this has been paid for without soliciting donations. We started with $80 and faith in God. Because we have trusted in God, He has provided astonishing means to serve Him and His Work!

And—most importantly—for holding fast all the foundational truths we received through Mr. Armstrong, God has given us an abundance of truth over and above even that. God has continued to bless us, as He did Mr. Armstrong, with new revelation. The living God did not stop speaking to His people after Mr. Armstrong died. He has continued to give us “present truth” that builds on the foundation of the truth He restored through Mr. Armstrong. The pcg produces over 100 books and booklets, the large majority of which contain new revelation from the great God.

That is the single greatest proof that the God who inspired Mr. Armstrong is behind our work.

We hope you can clearly identify the same miracles and blessings that built Mr. Armstrong’s work. Most of all, we hope and pray that you can recognize the Work of the great God of Elijah!

Accounts of the Holocaust of World War ii are truly horrifying. It is difficult to even conceive of human beings abusing fellow human beings so barbarically and treating human life so cheaply. Nevertheless, it happened. We need to think about that, because many prophecies tell us that far worse conditions will prevail in the time just ahead.

Jeremiah’s prophecy begins with a vision of a modern-day European war machine conquering and terrorizing the people of physical and spiritual Israel (Jeremiah 1:13-16). In a way, this serves as a backdrop to the entire book of Jeremiah. This vision haunted God’s prophet.

God the Father inspired him to warn repeatedly about this coming carnage. It is a drumbeat of doom that should shake every one of us out of spiritual complacency and stupor!

Our Father is giving us these warnings in earnest hope of saving every person possible from having to experience that suffering. But the reality is, most people are too stubborn to heed God’s warnings. It will take more than words to turn them back to God. That is why God will allow this evil “[o]ut of the north [to] break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land” (verse 14). It is through the suffering inflicted by this war-making power that many people will finally come to acknowledge their rebellion and sin. They will be humbled and turn to the Father in repentance.

If that is what it takes, that is what God will do. But anyone who turns to God now can avoid that calamity!

‘My Bowels!’

Please focus on these sobering statements from God. They show how angry He is about the rebellion of His people.

“Set up the standard toward Zion: retire, stay not: for I will bring evil from the north, and a great destruction” (Jeremiah 4:6). This is God speaking! He will bring this evil and this great destruction. Cities are about to be “laid waste, without an inhabitant” (verse 7). That is only possible through nuclear warfare!

Once these bombs start dropping, you won’t be able to run. You won’t be able to save yourself, your family, your neighbor or anyone else. The time to act is now.

“For this gird you with sackcloth, lament and howl: for the fierce anger of the Lord is not turned back from us” (verse 8). God wants repentance. Only the deepest repentance will protect you from God’s anger!

“O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?” (verse 14). God’s own people have gotten their minds on vain things instead of proclaiming this thunderous warning. They are more concerned for their personal comfort than for the suffering this world is about to experience. They indulge in the sins of this world as if time will go on and on.

When Jeremiah saw what would happen, he was deeply troubled: “My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war” (verse 19). What is coming upon Israel was acutely painful to Jeremiah! It is especially painful to think of the lukewarm saints of God’s true Church today being enslaved, abused and killed unless they wake up! Jeremiah deeply understood this, and it made him sick.

The Revised Standard Version reads, “My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the walls of my heart! My heart is beating wildly; I cannot keep silent; for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Disaster follows hard on disaster, the whole land is laid waste. … How long must I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet?” (verses 19-21). The Moffatt says, “Oh, my heart, my heart writhes. Oh, how it throbs! My soul is moaning. I cannot hold my peace! And I hear the blare of trumpets and the battle cry. Crash upon crash!—the whole country is down, … How long must I see war signals and hear trumpet blasts?”

Today, we know something of what Jeremiah saw. The horrors he witnessed in vision are, in small part, history for us.

Nuclear Devastation

We have seen what nuclear devastation looks like. Atomic weapons were dropped on Japan at the end of World War ii—man’s only use of such weapons in war, so far. John Hersey traveled there to report on the aftermath, and described what he saw just days after the attack in his book Hiroshima:

“Wounded people supported maimed people; disfigured families leaned together. Many people were vomiting. … In a city of 245,000, nearly 100,000 people had been killed or doomed at one blow; 100,000 more were hurt. At least 10,000 of the wounded made their way to the best hospital in town, which was altogether unequal to such a trampling, since it had only 600 beds, and they had all been occupied. The people in the suffocating crowd inside the hospital wept and cried, for Dr. Sasaki to hear, ‘Sensei! Doctor!’ and the less seriously wounded came and pulled at his sleeve and begged him to come to the aid of the worse wounded. Tugged here and there in his stockinged feet, bewildered by the numbers, staggered by so much raw flesh, Dr. Sasaki lost all sense of profession and stopped working as a skillful surgeon and a sympathetic man; he became an automaton, mechanically wiping, daubing, winding, wiping, daubing, winding.”

Hersey recounted a Methodist pastor’s description of the moment the bomb struck: “A tremendous flash of light cut across the sky. Mr. [Kiyoshi] Tanimoto has a distinct recollection that it traveled from east to west, from the city toward the hills. It seemed a sheet of sun … Mr. Tanimoto took four or five steps and threw himself between two big rocks in the garden. … As his face was against the stone, he did not see what happened. He felt a sudden pressure, and then splinters and pieces of board and fragments of tile fell on him. He heard no roar. (Almost no one in Hiroshima recalls hearing any noise of the bomb. …) … Under what seemed to be a local dust cloud, the day grew darker and darker.”

Tanimoto was 2 miles from the center of the blast. His wife and child were much closer to the blast center, and he went to find them: “He met hundreds and hundreds who were fleeing, and every one of them seemed to be hurt in some way. The eyebrows of some were burned off, and skin hung from their faces and hands. Others, because of pain, held their arms up as if carrying something in both hands. Some were vomiting as they walked. Many were naked or in shreds of clothing. On some undressed bodies, the burns had made patterns—of undershirt straps and suspenders and, on the skin of some women (since white repelled the heat from the bomb and dark clothes absorbed it and conducted it to the skin), the shapes of flowers they had had on their kimonos. Many, although injured themselves, supported relatives who were worse off. Almost all had their heads bowed, looked straight ahead, were silent, and showed no expression whatever.”

Tanimoto’s wife and child survived. A great many did not. His neighbor lost her baby daughter in the attack. “She kept the small corpse in her arms for four days, even though it began smelling bad on the second day. Once, Mr. Tanimoto sat with her for a while, and she told him that the bomb had buried her under their house with the baby strapped to her back, and that when she had dug herself free, she had discovered that the baby was choking, its mouth full of dirt. With her little finger, she had carefully cleaned out the infant’s mouth, and for a time the child had breathed normally and seemed all right; then suddenly it had died.”

That is just one tragic story. There were hundreds of thousands like it. Soon there will be millions!

Many were left unimaginably disfigured. “Mr. Tanimoto found about 20 men and women on the sandspit. He drove the boat onto the bank and urged them to get aboard. They did not move, and he realized that they were too weak to lift themselves. He reached down and took a woman by the hands, but her skin slipped off in huge, glove-like pieces. He was so sickened by this that he had to sit down for a moment.”

All this came from what by today’s standards is just a small nuclear blast. The devastation coming on America’s cities will be far, far worse! No wonder Jeremiah cried, “My bowels, my bowels!”

This gives you a sense of how powerful and vivid must be the message proclaimed by God’s Church! Our monthly magazine is called the Trumpet because we are commissioned by God to deliver Jeremiah’s warning today! Jeremiah put everything he had into this prophetic work. God wants us to do the same today. The trumpet must sound because destruction upon destruction is coming!

The crises looming over our world are profoundly dark. Do you think men know how to solve them? They know nothing—and they ought to recognize that! The terrifying consequences are staring them in their face!

I have really studied these words of Jeremiah, and while I didn’t have quite the reaction he did, it did make me sick to my stomach. If you truly see what is about to happen, it ought to do the same to you. You would think some would try to save their lives, even if in a selfish way!

In Jeremiah 4:22, God tells why this terrifying punishment must come: “For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish [stupid] children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.” What condemnation! It is the people’s own foolishness and stupidity causing them to turn from God and ignore His counsel. God wants us to be “wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil” (Romans 16:19). These people are the opposite!

Where is this rebellion leading? Jeremiah shows us.

‘Without Form, and Void’

We saw in Jeremiah 4:7 a horrifying vision of nuclear destruction that will leave entire cities uninhabited. Verse 23 paints a picture of the whole Earth in devastation: “I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.”

Without form and void are the same words in Genesis 1:2; the Hebrew is tohu and bohu. What caused God’s creation to be in such a state? Lucifer’s rebellion! Herbert W. Armstrong explained how God created Earth and the universe in a perfect state (Genesis 1:1), but the picture in verse 2 was the aftermath of Satan and his angels turning from God and waging war against Him that wrought cataclysm! This prophecy in Jeremiah says that such a condition is coming again!

This is what Satan’s way produces! It is the opposite of God’s way, and its fruits are also the opposite. God’s government and law produce happiness, unity, peace, order and beauty. Satan’s government and way of life produce tohu and bohu—every time! Our world today teems with the evidence, and it will get many times worse before it is all over.

God will allow Earth to descend into tohu and bohu once more so we can deeply understand how flawed our ways are. He is trying to teach mankind to voluntarily submit to Him!

This will be the result of hundreds of Hiroshimas all over the planet! That is what is coming!

It is sad to see carnal men reject God’s rule. It is incomparably worse to see Spirit-begotten people do so! You would think that when people are given God’s Holy Spirit, that attitude would change. However, many of God’s own people from the beginning of history have rejected God’s authority. And in this final era of God’s Church, the great majority of God’s people also reject His government. They too are destined to produce tohu and bohu—waste and destruction—in their own lives and within the Church!

This is the strongest warning about how difficult it is for the human heart to accept God’s rule. And how devastating are the results of rejecting it!

“I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled” (Jeremiah 4:24-25). This holocaust is so bad that all the birds flee from the major cities! Use your imagination and you can see Israel’s future—and your own, if you fail to repent!

“I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by [before] his fierce anger” (verse 26). Hardheaded human beings have given God no choice but to allow this total ruin. He takes no pleasure in it. And as bad as conditions will get, they would be far worse if God did not intervene to prevent it! “For thus hath the Lord said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end” (verse 27). That shows both man’s inconceivable hardness and God’s tremendous mercy.

Jesus Christ prophesied the same in Matthew 24:21-22: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” Thankfully, God will step in before mankind extinguishes all life on the planet!

But again, He is giving these warnings to help us avoid this calamity. He doesn’t want anyone to have to experience such horrors. Will you listen and heed before the nightmare begins?

“For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black: because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it” (Jeremiah 4:28). Can we even conceive of how dangerous it is to have God turn against us like this?

“The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks: every city shall be forsaken, and not a man dwell therein” (verse 29). Imagine it: every city forsaken—completely emptied of people, not one man left! This is talking about all major cities leveled in nuclear devastation. Can you and I ignore this mind-staggering prophecy?

This is a warning Mr. Armstrong proclaimed to the world. This is what the Laodiceans ought to be teaching the world! Instead, they are trying to silence the people who are doing that work today! God will not take that sin lightly. Their only hope is this message! I don’t want to see little children or anyone else in a nuclear holocaust! I pray to God that if there is any way to avoid it, they will avoid it! Who in his right mind could ever want to see something like that happen?

Look what God puts the Laodiceans through just to get half of them into His Kingdom! He is going to try and test us—even put us through a nuclear Great Tribulation. But if we remain faithful to Him, we are never outside His protection.

‘He Will Do Nothing’

Very few people take God’s warnings seriously. They don’t believe punishment is coming. “They have spoken falsely of the Lord, and have said, ‘He will do nothing; no evil will come upon us, nor shall we see sword or famine. The prophets will become wind; the word is not in them. Thus shall it be done to them!’” (Jeremiah 5:12-13; rsv).

Sadly this applies to too many of God’s people. They are asleep. They “put far away the evil day” (Amos 6:3). They may still believe tribulation is coming in the future—but not in their lifetime.

God tells His prophet in Jeremiah 5:14 that His word will be like fire in the prophet’s mouth and will devour these people. If only people would respond to words! Their false ideas would wither before God’s truth. It would burn them spiritually for a time—but spare them from burning in a lake of fire!

In the coming Tribulation, God is going to “bring a nation upon you from far … it is a mighty nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not …” (verse 15). This is referring to the ancient, famous warring nation called Germany today. It has risen again to become Europe’s most powerful nation, and it is asserting that power even now. Soon it will be powerful enough to alter world history! This German-led war machine will inflict mind-splitting suffering (verse 17). It is the rod of God’s anger (Isaiah 10:5), the means by which He will correct a rebellious, sin-filled modern-day Israel. But again God says, “But even in those days … I will not totally destroy you” (Jeremiah 5:18; Amplified Bible).

Despite God giving these detailed warnings, when all this comes to pass these people will be shocked: “And it will be when you say, ‘Why does the Lord our God do all these things to us?’ then you shall answer them, ‘Just as you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve aliens in a land that is not yours’” (verse 19; nkjv). Isn’t this just of God? Haven’t these people asked for this punishment?

The terrifying penalties of ignoring this warning extend beyond just ourselves. Note the warning in Hosea 4:6: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.” If we reject God’s knowledge, God rejects us! Of those who have forgotten God’s law, He says He will forget their children!

How are your children? How are their lives? Are they happy? Are their marriages working out? Already, many Laodiceans see their children suffering from all the sins and burdens in the world. That is only a foretaste. Hosea’s prophecy shows that your rebellion could mean that your children are also dragged into the horror of nuclear tribulation.

No Peace

In Jeremiah 6:11-12, God promises to “stretch out my hand upon the inhabitants of the land” with terrible fury. He then explains why all this punishment is justified: “For from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely” (verse 13).

What happens when prophets and priests deal falsely? So often they put people at ease and tell them what they want to hear instead of correcting them for their sins and warning them! Does that describe your minister? Does it describe your attitude? We see it everywhere in the Laodicean churches (e.g. Isaiah 30:10). These verses tell us what God thinks of their weak messages.

The same tendency afflicts the nations of Israel. “They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). False prophets talk of “peace, peace.” Our nations seek peace in the Middle East and in their own cities—but there is no peace! Nor is there peace in our nations’ deeply troubled families.

A true prophet of God warns of impending war! There will never be peace until people listen to God and obey His law!

God tells us to beware when we hear claims of peace! Endless talk of peace is a sure sign of imminent war—war unparalleled in history! Isaiah 33:7 foretells of a time when “the ambassadors of peace shall weep bitterly.”

Don’t be lulled to sleep by talk of peace in the world. It may look peaceful—but believe your Bible: The time of unimaginable suffering is nearly here!

A Cruel Nation

“Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it” (Jeremiah 6:19). This message is for the whole world! Mr. Armstrong preached the true gospel around the world as a witness (Matthew 24:14). He taught God’s Word and law. After that message was stopped by His own people, we began to “prophesy again” (Revelation 10:11).

The world has refused to accept God’s law—and the Church that Mr. Armstrong founded, along with most of the groups that broke off from it, have done the same!

Many people still act very religious—but it is not a lawful religion (Jeremiah 6:20). The religions in Israel have done away with God’s law, or Ten Commandments. Many religious scholars reason around God’s law and fantasize that they are right. They also reject the government of God that teaches that law. God cuts through the scholarly nonsense and calls these scholars rebels.

Again in verses 22-26 God warns of the threat coming “from the north country,” a “great nation” that is cruel and merciless, a fearsome military “set in array as men for war against thee, O daughter of Zion.” God raises them up to punish spiritual and physical Israel for their evil. Who could this be? It is the same nation that started World Wars i and ii and demonstrated the greatest cruelty history has seen!

During the Dark Ages, God’s people were “never far from threat of persecution and martyrdom,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in Mystery of the Ages. These true Christians had to stand their ground all the way to death! But they accepted death rather than renounce the truth.

The Holy Roman Empire has killed true Christians for centuries! Another martyrdom is coming. Satan is compared in the Bible to a vicious dragon. Under his inspiration, the Holy Roman Empire will become drunk on the blood of God’s saints! (Revelation 17:6). The devil is a bloodthirsty monster that seeks the destruction of God’s people. He delights in causing people, even children, to be ripped apart! The more blood he sheds, the deeper he descends into madness! This will happen in the Great Tribulation on an unimaginable scale.

“We have heard the fame thereof: our hands wax feeble: anguish hath taken hold of us, and pain, as of a woman in travail” (Jeremiah 6:24). This nation is infamous for its cruelty. Remember the concentration camps—or more accurately, extermination camps! God says we had better get ready because they are coming again. That horrific history is about to repeat itself! Those who glut themselves on sin and lawlessness will be the beast power’s victims!

And this time, God’s own Laodicean Church, sinning Zion, will be right in the midst of it. At that time, the hands of God’s people will wax feeble. Why? Because they have heard these prophecies more than anyone else on Earth! No wonder they will agonize like a woman in childbirth!

Revelation 13:7 warns that in the final resurrection of that beast power, all God’s lukewarm people in His own Church—those who knew the truth of these prophecies—will be killed by this monster—every single one of them! People who are worshiping the dragon will kill God’s people, thinking they are serving Christ.

If you are not right with God and don’t wake up, you will experience the nuclear bombs and will see people waste away before your eyes. You will be held in those camps!

Will you be ready to stand up for your faith when faced with brutal death? If our faith is not rock solid today, it will have to be tested in the flames of nuclear holocaust! We need to be ready to die for God’s truth.

‘Obey My Voice’

One reason many people feel safe is that they trust in their religion. They believe they are good people. They go to church and believe Jesus Christ died for their sins. Many even believe America is righteous. Surely nothing so calamitous could hit them?

Ancient Judah was also very religious before it went into captivity. But God was deeply angered by its religion. He sees the people in “the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem” making offerings to idols, “that they may provoke me to anger” (Jeremiah 7:17-18). “Is it I whom they provoke? declares the Lord. Is it not themselves, to their own shame?” (verse 19; English Standard Version).

“Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched” (verse 20). We would be foolish to ignore these warnings!

God’s people fall into the same trap. They believe they are holding fast to true religion, as it was revealed to Herbert W. Armstrong—when, in reality, they are very far from God.

Verse 21 describes the Laodiceans’ ritualistic religion, piously offering their sacrifices while committing terrible sins. God says, That’s not what I want from you! “… Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you” (verse 23). That is what God expects of us: We are His people only if we obey Him!

A lot of religion today falls into this trap. 2 Corinthians 11:14-15 say that Satan comes as an “angel of light,” and that he has ministers who appear as “ministers of righteousness.” It is far easier to be deceived than most people realize! God wants to alert us to this trap and to turn us to Him “that it may be well unto you”! (Jeremiah 7:23). He wants to bless and prosper us—yet He will do so only if we obey Him!

Sadly, most of God’s own people simply will not listen. “But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward” (verse 24). What an unparalleled tragedy! What about you?

God always sends His people warnings (verse 25). He does not correct hastily or arbitrarily. But if people refuse to listen, if they will not receive correction, then punishment is assured (verses 26-28). We must listen and be corrected by God! If we fail, we receive God’s wrath—in this generation! (verse 29).

A Horrific Prophecy

“And the carcasses of this people shall be food for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth; and none shall frighten them away” (Jeremiah 7:33; Webster Bible). Can you imagine such a nightmare—corpses lying around to be food for birds? The animals are not frightened away because there are no living human beings around!

God takes no pleasure in this terrible suffering. In Ezekiel 33, a parallel prophecy, God says, “… I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (verse 11). You can be protected from the horror: God will protect any person who turns to Him.

The prophecy in Ezekiel 33 is directed at the nations of Israel (mainly America and Britain), but the parallel account in Jeremiah 7 and 8 shows that these events will also afflict Judah (prophetically, the modern Jewish state) and Jerusalem.

Jeremiah 7:34 says, “Then will I cause to cease from the cities of Judah, and from the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride; for the land shall be desolate.”

The voice of happiness will disappear. We need to understand this verse spiritually. The voice of the Bridegroom—Christ—and the voice of the Bride—Christ’s wife, the very elect—will disappear. That means God’s message will stop, except for the two witnesses in the Great Tribulation (Revelation 11:3). There will be “a famine in the land … of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11).

To get an idea of the satanic brutality that will be so common, read the prophecy in Jeremiah 8:1: “At that time, saith the Lord, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves.”

What a scene! This is about the tombs—referred to in many verses as “the sepulchres of the kings”—in which several of Judah’s righteous kings and prophets were buried. Jeremiah prophesied that during the future time of suffering, those tombs will be raided, and those bones of the kings will be brought to the surface and publicly destroyed.

These tombs have not yet been discovered. (Some claim that they have, but their findings are inconsistent with where the Bible locates these “sepulchres of David.”) Verse 2 describes the bones in these tombs being spread before the sun and moon, left out in the open like dung. This did not happen when King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army destroyed Jerusalem in 586 b.c. Biblical passages show that the bones of Judah’s kings remained in their tombs during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, more than a century after the Babylonian destruction (Nehemiah 3:16). Acts 2:29 shows that the tombs of the kings remained undisturbed in the first century. This prophecy in Jeremiah 8 is yet to be fulfilled.

When the tombs of the kings are discovered, they must be treated with tremendous respect. But Jeremiah says these bones will be exhumed and then publicly desecrated—an act of towering contempt and hatred. Who does this, and why? Other prophecies show that this terrible act will be committed by the same power wreaking terrible destruction in the rest of the world: the modern resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire.

This empire wants to eradicate anything that reminds people of the true God. They will kill God’s true saints, force the conversion of other Christian sects, attempt to exterminate Jewish life, even destroy the archaeological evidence of Israel’s history. They want to wipe out the name of Israel (Psalm 83).

This will be Satan’s worst wrath, and unless you take warning now, many of you reading this will be caught in it!

The prophecy in Daniel 11:40-45 describes this time. Here the Holy Roman Empire is called “the king of the north.” After it destroys “the king of the south,” this European power “shall enter also into the beauteous land” (jps Tanakh). The “palace” of the strongman over this empire will be set up in “the beauteous holy mountain”—Jerusalem.

This too is a prophecy of the “seething pot from the north”—modern-day Europe. It will “destroy wonderfully” anything considered sacred to the people of God (Daniel 8:24; see also Isaiah 10:5-6; Hosea 5).

The Bible describes multiple signs of Christ’s return. The discovery of the tombs of the kings will be one of those signs; the desecration of their bones will be yet another. God wants you to recognize just how close that earthshaking event is. The purpose of all these signs is to get you focused on Christ’s return and to inspire you to make the necessary changes in your life so you need not personally experience this horrific event!

God warns us: These final days before Jesus Christ’s return are spiritually perilous times. Read again Christ’s message to “the church of the Laodiceans” in Revelation 3:14-22. This is the era we live in. In this passage, Christ describes people who are spiritually lukewarm, wretched, miserable, poor, blind, naked, both in God’s Church and in this world.

But you do not have to fall victim to those problems. Even amid so much spiritual failure, you can spiritually thrive!

I speak from experience. For decades now, God has given this small remnant Work, and me personally, extraordinary blessings. He has answered prayers, worked miracles, opened doors, created opportunities—time after time after time.

There is a reason. I want to share with you some of the most important practical and personal lessons I have learned from doing this Work of God during this spiritually lukewarm age. I know absolutely that anyone who follows this example will experience many of the same blessings!

Beware the Adversary

When Herbert W. Armstrong died in 1986, the Laodicean era began. The “synagogue of Satan” that existed within the true Church quickly showed itself (Revelation 3:9).

It was shocking how quickly the leaders in Pasadena, California, abandoned the truth and drove that church into the ground! Joe Tkach Jr. said Mystery of the Ages was “riddled with error”—but in fact, it was critical to the Work! One evangelist called it essential to God’s Work; shortly after, his boss said it was “riddled with error,” and that man said, “Yes, sir!” We must have more spiritual depth and courage than that!

There were about 120,000 people in the Church at the time. When the leaders began casting truth to the ground, shockingly, most of the ministers and members went along with it! Some were excited about the doctrinal changes. Many were not—yet they acquiesced. They didn’t want to rock the boat. They lacked the courage to speak up. They expected someone else to set things right, and they ended up compromising. They were simply too passive about holding fast to the truth.

I was deeply disturbed by what I witnessed. I turned to the Bible to understand why this was happening. God began to show me that such spiritual timidity and compromise are common throughout human history! I expounded on this in my book Malachi’s Message; I encourage you to read it.

On December 7, 1989, in an office at the Church’s headquarters in Pasadena, the wcg leaders fired my assistant and me for holding fast to the truths Mr. Armstrong taught. They thought they knew better than him. They disparaged his teachings and said he was a terrible leader. They planned to take the organization God had built through him in a new direction. This was a spiritual catastrophe!

The Laodicean apostasy should put us all on notice: Satan is far stronger than you think! He stalks about like a roaring lion, “seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). He had planted men who were deeply under his influence at the very top of God’s one true Church! He devastated God’s Work and deceived most of God’s people, throwing their eternal lives into doubt!

Satan has deceived the whole world! (Revelation 12:9). How powerful he and his demons are—how subtle, how skilled, how effective, how persuasive, how pernicious, how evil!

This is one of the most important lessons we must learn if we are to thrive in the Laodicean era. We must not be ignorant of Satan’s devices (2 Corinthians 2:11). He will use every weapon he can to sabotage us. He is always pressuring us to compromise, even in the smallest amount. The Laodicean disaster shows we must never compromise with God’s truth and God’s law—not one millimeter—or Satan will begin to manipulate and deceive us! Do not underestimate him, or you will become another of his many victims!

In this Laodicean era, not only have the great majority of God’s people fallen away, but we often lose people from the pcg. I expect it will be this way to the very end. As Daniel 11:35 prophesies, even “some of them of understanding shall fall.”

Making it into the Family of God is not easy. This is an elite calling: marriage to Jesus Christ, the King of kings forever! Eternal rulership in the Family of God! God will not give this reward to anyone without first proving and testing him.

Trust Not in Men

This history also exposes a flaw in our human nature that we all must battle. It teaches one of the most fundamental truths of the Bible, yet one that very few people learn.

The Laodicean rebellion shows that most of God’s people were following Mr. Armstrong—or some other man, or their own reasoning—not Jesus Christ!

Jeremiah 17:5 has this sage advice from God Himself: “Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.”

The failure in God’s Church in this era shows the disaster that occurs when you trust human beings. God wants us to learn to trust only Him!

It is also important to realize that God does work through men. He always works through one man, as He did the Prophet Jeremiah, to lead His people. God plainly says we are cursed if we follow a man. We are also cursed if we fail to follow the man God is working through.

Satan has deceived the whole world—and he has accomplished that through men. On the other hand, God has done great works throughout the ages, and He has achieved them through men. Satan deceives us through men. God leads us through men. We must learn to distinguish between the two—or we will be deceived!

Most people rebel against God because they trust a man—yet they refuse to trust God and follow His man, the leader He has appointed. We must learn this gigantic lesson or be cursed.

We need God’s help through the man He has chosen. The Ethiopian needed the help of God’s man (Acts 8:27, 30-31).

Many scriptures tell us how important the ministry is in governing the members of the Church. The ministers are gifts from Christ to His people to help perfect them (Ephesians 4:11-12). God wants us to “esteem them very highly in love” (1 Thessalonians 5:12-13). But if those men go astray, we must not follow them—or we will be following them into the lake of fire! We must follow God—and follow the men He has appointed as they are led by God.

“Remember those who rule over you [the ministry], who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct” (Hebrews 13:7; nkjv). God uses a man to lead His Church, and He gives His men the rule over His people. But He tells us to follow their faith, not their carnal ideas! God expects us to submit to His human government in faith. But we still cling to Christ—not men. God doesn’t want us to follow human government. If the leaders are not walking by faith, then do not follow them. We are only deceived when we follow government that is not walking by faith. You will never be deceived if you follow the leader as he follows Christ!

“Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you” (verse 17). God’s faithful ministers are watching out for your eternal life. God wants you to have a good working relationship with them—a joyful relationship, not grievous. That does require that you obey and submit to them as they submit to Christ. That doesn’t mean the minister will always do everything correctly. But God must have government in His Church.

So should we follow a man? Yes and no. Never follow a man God is not leading. Always follow the man God is leading. Following God’s man is actually following God. How well you do that will determine your physical and spiritual future. It is the most important choice you will make in your life!

Let No Man Take Your Crown

The danger in trusting men is abundantly clear in this era of God’s Church. Since Mr. Armstrong died, many church groups have splintered off from the wcg, and they all claim to follow God. But you must prove whether they are or not! You must try the spirits and follow a man only if he follows Christ (1 John 4:1; 1 Corinthians 11:1). That means you must know Christ! Men can be spectacularly wrong. If they are not following God, they will go off track and lead those who follow them to destruction!

Examine your own life for areas where you are following men, even yourself. This mistake is dangerously easy to make.

God gives His Church a great warning in this end time: Let “no man take thy crown” (Revelation 3:11). God prophesies in Matthew 25 that 50 percent of the Laodiceans will let a man take their eternal crown! And the other 50 percent almost let a man take their crown. God spews all of them out of His mouth into the Great Tribulation (Revelation 3:16, 19).

This same fundamental lesson is also being written on a grand scale in this world. Jeremiah 17:5 explains why our world faces so many mountainous disasters: People are trusting not in God but in man. That man may be a leader, or it may even be their own Satan-influenced human nature; most people trust themselves and follow their own mind.

When we look at the crises besieging our world today, we ought to see plainly that they are much bigger than any man can solve! “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish” (Psalm 146:3-4).

Consider what has happened in recent years to America: We have seen supposed “experts” make catastrophic decisions that have wrecked our families, our schools, our institutions, our economy, our national standing in the world. God is allowing these disasters to teach us just how astoundingly wrong human beings can be. Do you recognize that? Most people do not! In spite of those failures, people keep trusting in flawed, pathetic men! Even those who have lost trust in politicians or institutions are instead trusting themselves, leaning to their own understanding. That leads to curses just the same!

For 6,000 years, man has failed to learn that we are cursed if we follow a man. Unless repented of, this terrible mistake leads to eternal death!

God is going to let mankind reach the point where people will know there is no hope in man and will be willing to heed God’s Word, the Bible. The experiment of human government will prove a grandiose failure, and people will begin to recognize that they truly need God’s help.

What a world it will be when human arrogance has been leveled, people will become humble and childlike, and they will be ready to be taught by God!

Sadly, to reach that stage, mankind must experience destruction just short of destroying all life on this planet!

To avoid those curses and to thrive in the Laodicean era, this is a lesson you must learn deeply.

Trust in God

To be blessed, here is what you must do: “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit” (Jeremiah 17:7-8). Trust in God! Those who do are like a well-watered tree with deep, strong roots that can survive drought and still bear fruit.

Is your life like this beautiful, fruit-producing tree? Are you always producing fruit in a world afflicted with spiritual drought?

I challenge you to learn this towering lesson now, before the “heat” of global tribulation comes. Events are rapidly approaching that conflagration. You need God’s direction, His correction and His protection. God will protect you and cause your life to blossom and bear bountiful fruit if you learn to trust Him.

When I was fired from the wcg in 1989 for holding fast God’s truth, I had nothing. Suddenly I was a fired minister with no congregation, no salary or anything else—except the Bible truths that I believed with all my being.

But I knew that if I trusted God and clung to the truth, everything would work out. And it always has! I’m telling you, God has blessed me, and blessed this Church, beyond words to describe. I have had to trust God continuously, looking to Him for direction, discernment, faith, courage and protection even in the face of obstacles and attacks. He has never failed to provide!

There have been times when God revealed His will, gave me direction, gave revelation about a prophecy—and I walked forward in faith. But then circumstances seemed to go in exactly the opposite direction from what may have been expected. That happened when we printed Mystery of the Ages, and we suddenly found ourselves mired in an expensive lawsuit. It happened when we lost our case at the Ninth Circuit and were then rejected by the Supreme Court. It happened when Joe Biden was inaugurated president after I had said Donald Trump would win a second term. Just as so many of God’s people have had to do for millenniums, we had to hold fast our faith and simply know that God would not fail to do what He had promised! He had not led us into those circumstances only to abandon us when they appeared to turn against us. But He was testing our faith. And when we passed the test, He gave us spectacular victories.

The same can be true in your life! There are times when circumstances look dark and you are tempted to give up spiritually. Trust God! Trust that if you are doing your part and obeying Him, then you can walk by faith and He will supply everything you need!

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones” (Proverbs 3:5-8).

God will teach you, guide you, direct your paths—He will reveal which is the way of life and which is the way of death—if you receive His Word, acknowledge Him in all your ways, obey Him, and trust Him.

Fear God, Not Men

Proverbs 29:25 reads, “The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.” Trust God, and you will never fear man.

Fearing pitiful human beings is a terrible trap! But the Laodicean era shows how easy it is to fall into. By the thousands, God’s people showed themselves more fearful of what other people thought than what God thought—more afraid of offending men than offending God!

How far would the falling away within God’s Church have progressed if ministers and members had stood up for God? Many of them disagreed with what was going on but did nothing! That is inexcusable!

The only way to thrive in this Laodicean era, and at any other time, is to obey God whatever the cost. As the apostles said when their lives were threatened, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Will you stand up for God? Will you risk losing things precious to you—a job, a family member, status, comfort—for the truth? Or will you allow yourself to be bullied and intimidated into compromising?

Some people have convinced themselves they are right with God—while they ignore or defy God’s government. They get into some personal study and come to believe they know more than God’s end-time Elijah or God’s ministry—but they are deluding themselves. They are trusting their own judgment, “going about to establish their own righteousness, [and] have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:3).

The Church’s transformation into Laodicea showed shameful fear and cowardice among the people of God. If you didn’t experience that history personally, you can still recognize how common this weakness in man is. Just look at what has been happening in America and other Israelite nations in recent years, and you see similar cowardice. It is a strong pull in our human nature. It led millions of people to comply with and support insane policies and practices they did not agree with—excessive and oppressive restrictions during the covid-19; censoring people for pointing out election irregularities and crimes; pushing transgenderism to the point of taking children away from parents or firing people for using “incorrect” pronouns; and many other terrible, oppressive injustices. People who knew that these things were wrong were cowed into submission.

Satan is a bully and a terrorist! He uses fear and intimidation to force people to do his will. He has been cast down to Earth and is in a mad rage as his time comes to an end (Revelation 12:9, 12).

To thrive in the Laodicean era, we cannot succumb to the spirit of fear. “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). If we are thinking like God, we are not fearful, but bold and filled with faith!

As I wrote in Malachi’s Message at the start of the pcg: “In the Laodicean churches, spiritual courage may be the greatest need. Without it, the other virtues are of little value! God’s people can’t cower in fear and still grow in God’s love. God says ‘the righteous are bold as a lion’ (Proverbs 28:1).” That spirit has guided this Church from the beginning—and it is the spirit every one of us must live by, especially during this Laodicean era!

The Laodiceans allowed fear to stop them from boldly proclaiming God’s message to the world. It is in our human nature to want to avoid the difficult job of prophesying for God. That is why they succumbed to the spirit of “prophesy not” (Amos 2:12; 7:13). Ministers feared being fired, losing their income and being unable to support their family if they took a stand for God. They feared rocking the boat or disagreeing with family members. They feared conflict with their wives over issues like makeup and other changes. So they went along.

That is what happens when you fear men instead of fearing God. As I write in Malachi’s Message, “Paul said, ‘[W]oe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!’ (1 Corinthians 9:16). He feared the ‘lion’ [God]! If we don’t preach the truth that God reveals, we show a dangerous lack of godly fear—fearing men rather than God. prophets speak out when they are told to ‘prophesy not’!”

Do you have the spiritual courage to stand up for God? To take a stand within your family against a spouse, or a parent, or a child who is compromising with God’s law? Are you eager to represent God in a world that is hostile to Him? Will you support God’s Work even when the world turns against it?

Amos 7 prophesies of a confrontation where “the land is not able to bear all his words,” the words of God’s prophet (verse 10). Jesus Christ repeatedly warned that His people would face persecution (e.g. Matthew 5:10-12; 10:16-39; 24:9-13; John 15:18-21; 16:1-4). God’s people must be spiritually tough enough to withstand those attacks. The apostles showed this toughness—and they were martyred for preaching God’s truth! They did not back down from doing their job!Neither should we.

If we fear God, we will not fear men. The fear of God gives us the spiritual courage we need, because God supplies that courage! That empowers you to thrive even in a spiritually lukewarm and compromised era.

‘Foolishness’ to This World

Living God’s way has always created friction in this Satan-inspired world. That is why God tells us, “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4). We must be willing to go against the flow of this world—whether it be keeping the seventh-day Sabbath, or avoiding pagan holidays, or refusing to lie for an employer, or having to turn down an opportunity that God opposes, or resisting any number of temptations that worldly people commonly indulge in. Such is the way of a true Christian! The things of God are foolishness to this world (1 Corinthians 2:14).

One of the most difficult of God’s doctrines for people to accept is God’s command that we cut off contact with those who have turned away from Him. The pcg obeys this plain biblical command. This has brought untold criticism and persecution on the pcg and on God’s people—perhaps more than any other single doctrine.

This is an important doctrine to understand and to see from God’s perspective. I will go into a bit of detail on this, because it perfectly illustrates how God enables you to thrive spiritually even when everyone around you is going astray.

God commands that we turn our back on someone who turns away from Him. “Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us” (2 Thessalonians 3:6). God the Father has a plan, and He has a Family, and sometimes He has to disfellowship people. That will never change until Jesus Christ returns. Even then, there will be some problems in the Millennium with human beings, but at that time Satan will have been put away (Revelation 20:1-3).

Paul did not say, I wish you would do this. He said, We command you to do this; this must be done to save the Church! I’m telling you, if people are walking disorderly, quit walking with them, or else! That is love. It is the only way to save the Family. How many families have to die before we will learn this lesson?

So many times when people break this command, I have heard them say, “I just wanted to love him; I just wanted to be there and see if I could help.” God says stay away from such an individual! He is talking about a brother, a family member. It is natural to want to protect your physical family. God wants it to become natural to protect your spiritual family.

Remember your baptismal covenant! As we saw in Chapter 1, at baptism you promised God that you would be willing to give up anything for Him—even the closest members of your own family! (Luke 14:26-27). That is no small commitment—and many, many people in God’s Church have been put to the test on this very point. Far too many have failed that test.

God commands this repeatedly in His Word. He could not be more clear. “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Romans 16:17). “But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat” (1 Corinthians 5:11). These are direct scriptural commands. Yet the great majority of God’s people ignore them—and condemn the pcg for obeying them!

Will you obey God? He tells you what He expects, then He lets you make the choice—in this and in every other doctrine. He wants to know what choice you will make. He is not making little automatons. He wants people to make decisions. If they lack the character to make good decisions, they are going to get in trouble.

Cutting off contact with someone seems harsh and unloving. And someone could do that with wrong motives.

But even God the Father turned His back on His own beloved Son! When Jesus Christ became sin at the crucifixion (2 Corinthians 5:21), the Father turned away from Him. It caused Jesus to cry out in agony, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

Turning your back on a family member is hard! Do you think doing that to Jesus Christ wasn’t excruciating for God the Father? He never stopped loving His Son, His eternal companion. But He cannot abide sin!

Keep the Temple Holy

This instruction from the God of love continues: “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds” (2 John 10-11).

“If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself” (1 Timothy 6:3-5).

“A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject; Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself” (Titus 3:10-11).

Why does God say this repeatedly? Why is He so strong about this? Because He knows “the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). He knows Satan is “more subtil than any beast of the field” (Genesis 3:1). He knows how susceptible we are to the devil’s broadcasts and how easy it is, especially when it involves people we love, to rely on our own reasoning.

The pcg has lost a lot of members over the years. People leave for various reasons—but an unwillingness to obey this command to cut off contact with apostates has probably caused more people to fall away than any other single reason.

Many people in this Laodicean era are simply too casual about listening to and obeying God’s commands!

God the Father pleads with us through these inspired passages as the Apostle Paul did in 1 Corinthians 4:14: “I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you.”

In commanding disfellowshipment, God is trying with all His being to protect His children from the wiles of the devil. Look at what happens when we ignore this command! Satan has destroyed so many. I have seen it! I have lost many people whom I love! And despite living in an age of such widespread spiritual devastation, so many people still foolishly believe they are stronger than Satan. They are not!

When a Church member is struggling spiritually, God’s ministry works very hard to help them. We will spend hours and hours with someone who is in trouble, as long as they are willing. We do not want to suspend anyone or put anyone out of the Church. But in the end, in many cases, we must!

When God disfellowships someone, it is an act of love. Love does not mean tolerating sin. We don’t tolerate sin because we love—we get sin out because we love, and we keep that atmosphere of love in God’s Church.

Paul strongly corrected the congregation in Corinth for accepting a shameful sin in one of their members. “And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you. … In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ … deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Corinthians 5:2-5). Put that man out immediately, Paul commanded—with all the authority of Christ!

Study that passage. It shows the grief that failing to disfellowship brings into the Church of God!

In the 1970s, ministers would allow people who had serious problems, who should have been disfellowshiped, to continue attending services. Many congregations were divided, the people were confused, and it was a huge mess. Mr. Armstrong had to close Ambassador College for a time because Satan had destroyed it.

Satan is always trying to infiltrate God’s Family. He is always working to undermine and erode God’s standard. We must fight with all our being to resist and prevent that. If we do not, the devil will take over—just as he did in the Worldwide Church of God! Look at the devastation! In terms of numbers, that was the worst spiritual disaster in the history of God’s Church!

The Church is “the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). It is the temple of God (Ephesians 2:19-22). It is holy, and we must fight fiercely to keep it holy!

Listen to the Father’s heartfelt plea in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” What a clear command—and what a marvelous promise from our Father!

When Jesus Christ saw a presence in God’s temple that did not belong there, what did He do? He kicked them out! “And he went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought; Saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves” (Luke 19:45-46).

The religious leaders of His day wanted to kill Him for what He did (verse 47). People can criticize the pcg for our zeal to keep God’s temple pure, but they cannot honestly say this doctrine comes from anywhere but straight out of the inspired Word of God!

What Is the Love of God?

We want to have mercy; God has abundant mercy. But we must understand that disfellowshiping is an act of love. It shows love toward God by obeying Him. It shows love toward God’s people by saving the Church from destruction. And it even shows love toward the one disfellowshiped, because that is the only way he is ever going to repent.

When someone is put out of God’s Church, he is in a spiritually precarious position. He is more vulnerable to Satan’s attack. Again, as 1 Corinthians 5:5 says, disfellowshipment is meant “[t]o deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh ….” However, it is done in the hope “that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”

The suspended or disfellowshiped member has a choice. If he accepts the correction, then God can save that person! God has done so with many, many prodigal sons! These are people whom He was able to “snatch out of the fire” of the Tribulation or eternal death in the lake of fire! (Jude 23; rsv).

The man whom Paul disfellowshiped in 1 Corinthians 5 was saved. He responded favorably to the correction, repented and returned to the Church. Paul admonished the other members to forgive him, accept him and comfort him (2 Corinthians 2:6-8). I have personally seen many cases like this.

Nothing makes God the Father rejoice more! (Luke 15:7). For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found! (verse 32).

“And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed” (2 Thessalonians 3:14). Church members have a part to play in making such a person ashamed. That is your responsibility. If you don’t do your part, then he will think his sin is acceptable. But it is not! His eternal life is at stake! It is easy for us to forget that. Each of us has a responsibility to make that person ashamed. God’s people are all kings and priests in embryo—and kings and priests make definite decisions. If they act like kings and priests today, then they are going to stand up and rule for God in the Kingdom! We must prepare for that responsibility.

What is God’s love? 1 John 5:3 states that love and law-keeping are the same. Love is law-keeping, and God’s law is love. The Laodiceans talk about love—but they ignore God’s law! We must have deeds. The law is love. God is love, and the law is an expression of His love. Yet so many people talk about love, love, love even as they are breaking God’s law.

God tells us to measure and to put those who do not meet God’s standard in the outer court (Revelation 11:1-2). God cast all the Laodiceans out of His inner court. They are no longer in the temple where God is. Physically, He says they will be “trodden underfoot”!

Some people who leave God’s Church or are put out become bitter. They attack me and the pcg, publicly speaking or writing terrible accusations—bits of truth put in the worst possible light, tiny parts of a much bigger story that condemns them, or rank lies. These people have aligned themselves with the father of lies, “the accuser of our brethren … which accused them before our God day and night” (John 8:44; Revelation 12:10).

I pray for those people! I hope and pray that as they experience the curses of being separated from their Father, as they find themselves out in the field feeding swine, spiritually starving, and considering filling their bellies with husks, they will come to themselves—and that they will say, “I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants” (Luke 15:18-19). They only need to return to their Father to receive again the abundance He wants so much to lavish on them!

But bitterness is like an extremely addictive drug! It is humanly impossible to overcome. Sadly, over the years, I have not seen many of those people repent and return to God. People can make themselves an enemy of God (Micah 2:8). People who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit commit the unpardonable sin (Matthew 12:31; Hebrews 10:26-27).

These are the realities of living in the Laodicean era. We truly are in a ferocious spiritual war, and there are always casualties in war.

Again, this doctrine is a perfect example of how important it is that we obey God exactly—even when it is very difficult to do so. Following the orders of our Commander in Chief is not the easiest thing to do emotionally, but it is the way to be protected, and it is the path to spiritual victory!

God Has Raised the Ruins

We live in a spiritually destitute Church era plagued by complacency, self-deception and misery, an era for which Christ has scorching correction (Revelation 3:14-22). Yet within these hostile conditions, the loving and merciful God has preserved and blessed a small group of faithful people. His message to us, even in this era, remains the same as the one delivered to the Philadelphians in verses 7-13: “[B]ehold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.”

Yes, we have a little strength. But because we have not denied His authority, look at the doors God has opened for us! What blessings He has given us! What vitality, energy and life He has infused this body of believers with as we strive to finish His Work! He truly has enabled us to thrive in this Laodicean era!

When I think of all that God has built and accomplished with this little remnant Work since it began shortly after Mr. Armstrong died, I am deeply moved.

God has been guiding and prospering us every step of the way, and we have strived very hard to walk through every door He has opened. We began by working out of our homes. Then we bought a little office condominium to hold a handful of employees. We expanded to a second unit, then a third and fourth. Then God gave us our headquarters property and led us to start a college. He inspired us to print Mystery of the Ages and other books by Herbert W. Armstrong, then He guided us through six years of litigation over the right to publish and distribute those books and gave us a stunning victory. All so we can give that wonderful truth of God freely!

Step by step God has helped us raise the ruins of the Work He built through Herbert W. Armstrong: the relationship with Dr. Eilat Mazar and the Jerusalem work in 2006; starting Imperial Academy in 2008; inaugurating the spectacular Armstrong Auditorium in 2010; raising up a college in England on a grand estate, Edstone, in 2014, as Mr. Armstrong had done at Bricket Wood in 1960; founding the Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology in Jerusalem in 2022.

From the beginning, God has directed me to study into specific prophecies in the Bible and given me understanding to share. “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). He exposed the evil in His lukewarm Church. He directed me to understand prophecies about the Middle East and Iran, about Europe and Germany, about the pope, Vladimir Putin and China. He gave me prophetic insight into Satan’s attack on America carried out through Barack Obama, and He revealed Donald Trump’s role in setting some of that right and giving the nation time to repent—while also revealing that he won’t fix all the problems. Time and again what God has directed me to speak about has proved prescient and has come to pass! That is not the work of a man! Only the Almighty God can do that!

This is not boasting but is meant to demonstrate that, in this Work, we walk by faith.

All of this was built on faith. Not just my faith, but the faith of our people who believe in this Work and believe God, believe His Word, rely on that Word, and cherish His promises.

That is how this Work was built. In over 60 years in this Work, I have been put to the test hundreds and thousands of times; I know that God will fulfill every single promise and never fail—not one time! If God has promised it in His Word, and if we trust Him, He will fulfill it. He cannot lie! It is impossible for God to lie! (Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18). He is the Creator of the universe—He has all power and can easily fulfill any promise He makes. We must merely trust Him and have faith.

God’s Work has always been a work of faith in the face of odds. It requires spiritual courage, which is the highest level of faith. And we need ample faith and courage if we are to thrive in these final days of man’s rule on Earth.

World Tomorrow Vision

Mr. Armstrong built a work that radiated vision. It was, as he said, the World Tomorrow in embryo! Ambassador College won several awards as the most beautiful college campus in America. When Franz Josef Strauss, the strongman of Germany, visited the campus, he said, “When you see Ambassador College, you see what you can do for this world.” Mr. Armstrong supported fine culture, the best of the human spirit, in a way that reflected the positive, joy-filled way of life that God is about to establish all over the world!

God has blessed us and empowered us to resurrect that same culture and spirit, even in this Laodicean era. We don’t have the same resources Mr. Armstrong did and are limited in some ways. But in other ways, I believe God has actually enabled us to surpass what Mr. Armstrong did, despite us working with a much smaller group of people. That is largely because of the time we are living in, preparing for Christ’s return—and because of the dedication and loyalty of God’s faithful remnant!

We have staged several original musicals and oratorios based on well-known stories in the Bible: telling the dramatic stories of Abraham, of Ruth, of King David, of Isaiah and Hezekiah, of Jeremiah, of the Apostle Paul; proclaiming the messages in the biblical books of Lamentations and the Song of Songs. This is special, extraordinary evidence of God’s living presence within His people. We have recorded several albums of original songs of praise to our great God. (You can access these at pcg.church under the Resources tab.)

We have produced two phenomenal Irish dance productions—Celtic Throne and Celtic Throne II: Psalter of Ireland—that follow the journeys of David’s throne, which Mr. Armstrong explained in The United States and Britain in Prophecy. For several years now, the Celtic Throne dance troupe has performed in some of the finest theaters in America, Israel and Britain, receiving enthusiastic ovations from audiences everywhere for their world-class performances. This is a powerful and moving testament to the uplifting godly culture that will abound in the World Tomorrow—and it is alive and well in God’s Church!

The archaeological work we support in Jerusalem has produced astonishing results, with finds far more significant than any found during Mr. Armstrong’s time. The messages proclaimed by these artifacts that we have helped to unearth—about David and Solomon, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Hezekiah and others—are profoundly relevant to this dying world! We have received truly uncommon favor within the archaeological world and within the Jewish state of Israel to be able to be a part of biblical archaeology. The mighty doors God has opened for this little work in Jerusalem are astounding!

It is extremely moving to see the loyalty and dedication of God’s faithful people in supporting God’s end-time Work. To see our Church members drive three hours each way to attend Church services, or rent a hotel room for a night so they can also attend a Spokesman Club meeting the next morning. To see them spend all day at a fundraiser so the congregation can donate an extra $1,500 to the Church. To see them travel four or five hours to volunteer at a Personal Appearance Campaign. To give generous holy day offerings year after year, even in tough economic times.

I am moved to see members looking out for each other, tending to each other when they are sick or in trial. I am moved to see teenagers travel to headquarters from all over the world to attend summer camp in Oklahoma—to spend three weeks learning about God and sweating on the sports fields and enjoying one another’s company. I love seeing their smiling faces and hearing their cheers and laughter. I am moved by the devotion of our ministers and full-time staff, doing all they can to serve God’s Family and carry out our God-given commission at the highest level possible with His help. I am moved to receive letters and cards and calls of thanks from television viewers and magazine subscribers telling us we are changing their lives.

I am deeply moved by so many aspects of the Work the Father and Jesus Christ have been doing through this faithful remnant—and, again, during one of the most spiritually destitute times in history!

“Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you” (Habakkuk 1:5). God raised up a new Work through people of faith!

This Work proves that you can, indeed, thrive spiritually in a lukewarm age! Even in a very dark time, you can live a life radiating the light of God!

Much of the correction described in this book comes straight out of the prophecy of Jeremiah. But Jeremiah’s message is not negative. It is a spectacular, hope-filled vision.

Much of that hope is bound up in Jeremiah’s hometown, Anathoth. This was a city of Levites. It should have housed Jeremiah’s greatest supporters. Instead, the priests of Anathoth were some of his bitterest enemies. Some even tried to murder him! (Jeremiah 11:21).

Today, the priests God planted and raised up have become very hostile against God’s very elect! At one time they delivered the very prophecy of God—now they are working to destroy that message and the messenger! They were fighting for God—now they are fighting against God. God promises to punish them (verses 22-23). No remnant will be left. The ministers who plot against Jeremiah’s message today will probably be a part of the 50 percent of the Laodiceans who die forever! (Matthew 25:1-10).

Yet God also made clear this was not the end of the story for Anathoth.

While Jerusalem was under siege and Jeremiah was shut up in prison, God told him to invest in some real estate in Anathoth. He said that Jeremiah’s uncle would soon offer to sell a field in his hometown. Jeremiah could preserve the family inheritance by buying the field. God had him do so.

Jerusalem and Anathoth were to be destroyed, and the Jews killed or carried into slavery. What difference would owning land and preserving an inheritance mean at such a time?

Jeremiah prayed, “See how the siege ramps have been built against the city walls! Through war, famine, and disease, the city will be handed over to the Babylonians, who will conquer it. Everything has happened just as you said. And yet, O Sovereign Lord, you have told me to buy the field—paying good money for it before these witnesses—even though the city will soon be handed over to the Babylonians” (Jeremiah 32:24-25; New Living Translation).

Why did God tell Jeremiah to buy that field? The purchase signaled that His Work would continue. He assured Jeremiah: “I will certainly bring my people back again from all the countries where I will scatter them in my fury. I will bring them back to this very city and let them live in peace and safety. … Yes, fields will once again be bought and sold—deeds signed and sealed and witnessed—in the land of Benjamin and here in Jerusalem, in the towns of Judah and in the hill country, in the foothills of Judah and in the Negev, too. …” (verses 37, 44; nlt).

With the world falling apart around Jeremiah, God had him take practical steps to build the new nation of Israel that was to come.

Some of the Philadelphia Church of God’s building projects may seem unusual, especially given the urgent message in this book. We have spent millions of dollars building a beautiful headquarters campus, including a majestic auditorium, even as America is on the brink of nuclear destruction.

We tend to see only the problems on this Earth and not God’s overall plan. We must foresee the imminent collapse of Israel—but like God and Jeremiah, we must also see the wonderful World Tomorrow that follows. Then Christ will be ruling the world from David’s throne.

Christ’s future rule on this Earth ought to be as real as a piece of real estate!

We should be willing to invest our time, money and energy in God’s glorious Work today. This Work will usher in the World Tomorrow. Doing God’s Work is an investment in that incredible future!

In a way, our headquarters property and all our properties around the world point back to Anathoth—and forward to God’s coming Kingdom.

God’s Work does not stop during the Tribulation. It doesn’t even stop at Christ’s return. It flows on through and beyond it! God is having us build for that new world right now.

This is a major theme of the book of Jeremiah. Jerusalem fell. Judah went into captivity. The king’s eyes were plucked out and his sons were killed. But it was not the end for Judah, Jerusalem or the royal line. God’s Work continued.

God enabled a large group of Jews to return from 70 years of captivity. He empowered them to rebuild Jerusalem. And He had Jeremiah move the throne of David to the British Isles.

Christ will set up a glorious new world when He returns. That world is already here, in embryo, in His Church.

God is actively building the World Tomorrow right now in the Philadelphia Church of God. We are actively preparing Jerusalem to be God’s headquarters, clearing the dust and rubble from the very location where God will reestablish the throne of David. The World Tomorrow will flow right out of this Church! It is the same Work of God, the same government of God, the same Family of God!

You can be a part of it. You can help build something truly important and lasting.

Through Jeremiah, God delivered tough correction for Jerusalem, Judah and God’s priests. But this prophecy brims with hope. It shows that all that correction serves a purpose too wonderful to fully describe!

After Jerusalem fell, God’s Work continued. After Herbert W. Armstrong died, God’s Work continues. After Britain and America fall, that Work will go on.

Those who refuse to be corrected will die forever. There will be no more pain or suffering (Revelation 21:4), but the most tragic part is that they will miss out on all the joy and excitement of being part of God’s eternal Work! You don’t want to miss out on that even for a moment!

You can have that same joy and excitement right now. You can be a part of the Work that is about to flow out into the universe. God has called you to the greatest adventure in the history of man!

Will you answer that call