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The
Purpose of Human Life
Address
by Dr. Herman L. Hoeh
Feast
of Tabernacles, October 4, 1980
“This
afternoon in our near an hour left I would like to discuss an overview after we
have heard the Festival of Tabernacles sermons, an overview of the purpose of
life as taught in the Churches of God.
There are organizations that propose to explain the purpose of life but
none have come to grips with the purpose of life as it was ordained by God, and
our role in it today, which transcends every other issue, for there is no
reason to discuss the smaller things of life if we have not really discovered
the purpose in human life. If we’re
going to understand the purpose in life, that is, why you are here, we have to
focus ultimately on one thing which is fundamental. We sometimes have gotten away from
emphasizing it, and it is the simple word “character.” When all is said and done, the ultimate issue
of what we have achieved in this life will not be measured in money, property,
and inheritance or institutions, but it will be measured in character. Which brings up the question, of course, why
is character this important, that it should be the ultimate way of summarizing
the purpose of human life? We have to go
back, of course, to the beginning to discover that the perfect character is
God’s. Jesus said at the end of his
exposition in the account in Matthew chapter 5, that we should be perfect, as
our Father in Heaven is perfect. We
start out by recognition of something which the human mind cannot fathom--it
may discuss--but we really have to face the fact that we take it on faith, and
faith of course is an aspect of character, and that is the Beings who gave
birth to the universe by a creative series of acts are perfect. God existed before all that in the universe
is. He is also perfect, he is perfect in
character.”
Two
Beginnings Mentioned In Creation
“Now
it would of course have been an unfathomable problem if the Creator, or beings
who had power were not perfect. We have
to face the fundamental evidence of Scripture from beginning to end, and that
is before there was a universe there was a level of being that we define as
God, or the creative level of being, above matter, perfect in mindpower and
character. They set about, according to
1st John 1, in the beginning you have the Word, Logos, verbatim in
Latin, which is the more active sense of the word. Authority is what is conveyed, spoken
authority by the Greek word Logos, or the English word “Word,” and the one whom
we know as God, who became the Father.
Here we have the level of beings that is God, and we discover when we
look in Genesis 1:1 that they created the universe. [Comment:
it also mentions in Genesis 1 that the Spirit of God moved on the
waters, so you have God the Father, the Logos, or Word, and the Spirit of God
mentioned in Genesis 1] As Mr. Armstrong
has pointed up, the beginning referred to in John 1:1 is even preceding the
beginning which is in Genesis 1:1. One
is the beginning of the natural universe, the other is the beginning in which
God already is. You see, in Genesis 1:1
we have a Creator acting in the beginning of matter. In John 1:1 we have the existence of Divinity
or Deity already there if we were to measure in terms of the sense of the word
beginning in time, a series of events to follow. God is already there. We learn elsewhere in Scripture, in
particular Job 38, verses 4 and 7 as well as some other parallels that there
were also spirit beings created as the Sons of God, but not from birth, but
from a creative act. Spirit beings whom
we may call spirits or angels, some of whom have such rank as archangel or a
chief angel, and there are other terms in the Hebrew also used, usually not
translated in English, but just left as the original Hebrew is, a serif and a
cherub, that is, spirits of immense power and rank. We discover then that God thought out and
planned everything that we see. But
before having thought out and planned and then created the universe, he first
created spirit beings not composed of matter, whose function it would be to
carry out his purpose in a material world that we visibly see. So that when God laid the foundations of the
earth, Job 38:4 & 7, we read that the angels were already there and shouted
for joy at what was to be created.
Angels, therefore, were created in the interim between the existence of
God the Father, as we know him as Father today, or as God and the Word, because
he was not the Father until Jesus was born of Mary. He was actually in the level of a non-family
relationship until that particular relationship occurred. This God relationship is a kingdom, and then
in matter we have the kingdoms we think of in terms of animal life, and we think
of in terms of botanical life. These
terms are broadly defining levels of existence.”
The
Creation of Angels, God’s First Creation
“The
reason God created spirits was first to train them, in his presence, at his
throne in heaven, which is not the physical heaven. We cannot see heaven at God’s throne, because
if we did we would not live. God chose
not to enable man to see the throne of God unless he has a special purpose in
mind, which will come to light of course, if you read Revelation, where that
throne does appear on one occasion. And
the family of man is quite frightened at such an experience. But at heaven, at the throne of God where
God’s government is centered, the angels were trained in God’s Truth. God’s Word is Truth. They were trained in his character, that is
to think and act like he does. But they
had to make up their own minds as to whether they would continue to do so,
having had God’s way explained. And up
to that point that God created the physical universe the angels were
obedient. They were perfect in all of
their ways, and we learn of course that they were overjoyed at the time of the
creation of the Earth itself. Having
been trained at the presence of God’s throne, Hillel, the light bringer whom
the Latin translators called Lucifer was given a responsibility away from the
throne of God to carry out God’s government on Earth. This being was one of the three great beings,
two of whom were at the presence of God’s throne.”
Lucifer,
Michael & Gabriel, The Three Archangels
“Having
been placed now over the earth to continue the Government of God over this
earth that the Creator had now brought into being, and to continue to govern it
through whatever forms of life there should be on this earth, we have a most
remarkable series of events. Spirit
beings who had been aware of the goodness of God, who had been aware of the
magnitude of God’s creative powers now were face to face with executing God’s
Will and His Law on a planet all their own.
And if they should prove themselves here, their responsibility would
have been to extend the Government of God over the rest of the universe step by
step. And it didn’t turn out that way,
because the light bringer, the supreme angel or Cherub conceived, listen, he
conceived that God’s way was only one alternative, that there ought to be other
possible alternatives. And over a period
of time ultimately one-third of the angels came to the same conclusion [cf.
Revelation 12:3-4a]. They had heard that
God was good, they had seen that he was good, but they ultimately came to
believe that their ideas might be better, that God couldn’t be that good.”
Lucifer,
Satan Introduces The Way Of Get, Competition
“The
basic philosophy that was introduced by this light-bringer who now was bringing
darkness to the minds of angels, and came to be known as the devil or Satan,
Satan the adversary, and we’ll refer to him as that--he conceived fundamentally
the idea of competition that leads to achievement. This was his reasoning, that instead of
cooperation, instead of the way of give, Love which fulfills the Law of God,
there should be the chance to compete and to get ahead by alternative methods,
so instead of having to tell the Truth, you might get ahead by telling a
lie. And the most remarkable thing we
find is that John, the Apostle of Jesus writes, he tells us in John 8:44
(Jesus is now being quoted, and it’s important that we turn to this particular
verse), I’m reading from the Revised Standard Version, speaking of those Jews
who had followed the way of the devil, Jesus, speaking of the devil said in the
second sentence of verse 44, “he was a murderer from the beginning.” That is, that the spirit of competition as he
conceived of it is manifested in the attitude of hate or murder, and he
ultimately ended up with nothing to do with the Truth. There is no longer, you see, any truth in
him. “When he lies he speaks
according to his own nature, for his is a liar and the father of lies.”
Human
Nature Is A Reflection Of Satan’s Nature
“Angels,
including this being, were ultimately to determine the nature of the spirit composing
them. Now, let us remember that human
beings have a nature. Human nature is
molded by our society, molded by parents, molded by others of our own
generation and our schools, molded by television, and in reality also
significantly molded by ideas that enter into the human mind that the devil
puts there in the form of moods and attitudes without human beings realizing
it. As human nature varies from person
to person, and some human beings are developing natures that even go contrary
to our own society, so spirits ultimately have the responsibility of
determining their own nature, whether the nature of spirits would be in
conformity to the character of God, or in conformity to something in
opposition.”
The
Commandments of God Define the Character of God
“Now
you will note that long before the Ten Commandments were given at Sinai this
being is called a murderer. He was a
murderer from the beginning. These ideas
came to the mind [Satan’s mind] after the spirits were given responsibility to
execute God’s Government over the earth.
He was a liar. One of the Ten
Commandments says you shall not murder.
Another says you shall not bear false witness or lie. So we discover that the commandments
define already, just from the general picture we have here, the character of
God, and the violation of the Commandments define the nature that some of the
angels ultimately introduced into themselves. Spirits were subject to being molded, either
into the character of God or some other direction. And this being conceived of the idea of
competition, that you get ahead this way.
You separate the less able from the more able. And while you are getting ahead, you make
progress if you can lie and deceive somebody into believing something else so
that you can replace him and get ahead of the other person or angel. And so we find that the devil is a deceiver,
he is a liar, he is a murderer. The
Truth doesn’t exist in him. We turn also
to John’s account in a letter he wrote, 1st John chapter 3, verse
8, “He who commits sin,” speaking of men, “is of the devil. Sin is the transgression of the Law, for the
devil has sinned from the beginning.”
Now we learn in John’s own letter here a little earlier, ‘that
whoever disobeys the commandments and still says I know Him is a liar and the
Truth is not in him.’ The devil
may claim to know God--he’s been in God’s presence--but he didn’t believe God
was that good, he didn’t really therefore know God for what he is, even though
he could have, and in faith should have continued to believe that God is good
as God told him he is, before the earth was created.”
What
Sin Is, The Bible Definition
“He
who says I know him but disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is
not in him.”
This is a description of the devil.
The devil really doesn’t believe that God is that good. He lies about God. He has lied to himself. In disobeying the commandments he has become
a liar, and we know that he was a liar and a murderer from the beginning. This is all called sin. “Sin is the transgression of the law.” (1st
John 3:4) same book. Everyone who
commits sin is guilty of lawlessness.
Sin is lawlessness. King James
Version says “Sin is the transgression of the law.” Now here we are dealing with the nature--Satan
speaks of his own nature, said John in the RSV translation--a very good
translation of that verse, John 8:44.
Here we discover that the commandments therefore reflect the nature of
God, the violation of the commandments [reflect] the nature of the devil, and
the issue is not only a matter of government, broadly speaking over the
universe, it is also individually a matter of character. And we must not forget that, because each one
of us is also going to be found responsible.”
“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father
ye will do. He was a murderer from the
beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his
own: for he is a liar, and the father of
it.” (John 8:44, Jesus speaking) Here
we discover the picture that angels in administering the Government of God
conceived if they followed the reasoning of the devil, that there were other
alternative ways. Or, as one might word
it, when they heard what God revealed to them could be their destiny, some of
them conceived that they were taking God’s way for granted, that they had never
seen an alternative, and why should not they conceive of an even more effective
alternative? Sin, in a sense, is trying
to find an alternative to God’s character.
It rises first from disrespect for the Government of God, denial of
God’s goodness, and a decision that implies that the natural mind, whether the
natural mind of angels or the natural mind of men, is capable of devising alternatives
to the governments of the universe equal to or superior to anything God has
thought out. In so doing, one violates
the very first commandment, that you shall not have any god before Yahweh, who
is the Ever-Living God. Yahweh is a
Hebrew word which means the Ever-Living or the Eternal One, translated LORD
usually, in most English renderings.”
Satan’s
Lawless State Of Mind, His Nature, Becomes Permanently & Internally Set As
His Nature--He & His Demons Cannot Change
“That
anyone who conceives of an alternative as better puts himself in the position
where he is now serving himself as God instead of the Creator. There came a time, having gone this wrong way
for a great period of time not defined in Scripture, that a final action took
place in which the angels and Hillel, now become Satan, abandoned the estate
that they had been given. Jude, which
follows John (James, Peter, John, Jude), Jude tells us that the angels which
kept not their first estate were punished, having at a moment in time conceived
of the idea that if they could delude God into thinking they had other ideas in
mind, that suddenly they could swarm to Heaven itself and displace God from his
throne, and would be able therefore to re-define the way the universe should be
run, to determine the results of how spirits should live.”
Early
War In Heaven
“In
this ascent, assault, and war on Heaven there was an immediate reaction--Jesus
said that in the battle he beheld Satan fall from heaven as lightning, and he
was booted back (cf. Luke 10:18), or whatever other means we might like to use
to define it, to earth, and fell with such speed it was comparable to the
movement of lightning, the speed of light in the heavens. And he was cast back to earth, and the angels
that followed him. It was at this point
we pick up the story of Genesis, as you know.
[So Dr. Hoeh is surmising that this took place some time during or just
after the creation of lifeforms on earth, perhaps up to the bio-engineering of
homo sapiens, or even as early as the Cambrian Period.] The issue now is “what God proposes to do
with human beings.” This has been
defined, of course, in much more extensive form in sermons and in Mr.
Armstrong’s book “The Incredible Human Potential” which is also now
available as you probably know, in Dutch, French and German. A great change that takes place, where the
focus is no longer on what the angels shall do, but on whether or not human
beings could qualify to execute God’s Government on the earth.”
Mankind
Through Adam Was Given The Chance To Live God’s Way And To Rule Earth
“The
angels had followed Satan [Revelation 12 says one-third of them did], having
abandoned their estate, could now be replaced, and the account is given in
Genesis 1, the rest of chapter 1, beside verse 1 and 2, and then in chapter 2
and in chapter 3. There is the story--you
have heard it repeated on a number of occasions. Could man follow God in such a way that human
beings would continue to execute the Government of God, that is to keep the
Commandments, to do what God says is right, to come to have that kind of
confidence in him, that by doing only that which is right, no other alternative
makes sense, that it makes sense to tell the truth, it makes sense to love your
neighbour as yourself. It does not make
sense to lie or to steal or to hate, that you see the benefits of living God’s
way so much that you wouldn’t either do or plan or anticipate an alternative.”
Satan
Deceives Mankind Under Adam To Abandon God’s Way & Follow His Way
“In
this cased it did not work out that way.
God who foresees everything, put Adam, the first human being [I would
say the first homo-sapien that God actually created in the Garden of Eden, not
the homo-sapiens bio-engineered by fallen angels in the final biosphere after
the end of the Cretaceous period] to the test.
And of course the one whom we know as the devil, or that serpent,
Lucifer who had become Satan, or an adversary, deceived the woman into thinking
that there were other ways of acquiring all the things that God knew, instead
of finding those things from God’s mouth, his way, to pursue it some other
way. There was a tree that was symbolic
of the devil’s way. God said that tree
he reserves for himself. He did not
allow the human family to eat of the fruit of that tree in the Garden in which
they then dwelt.”
Lucifer,
Now Satan, Rules An Invisible World Government Over Mankind
“The
devil put it into the mind of Eve that she could take of it anyway. That in fact is what God had said he would
reveal to her, because God reveals Truth and he reveals its opposite so you can
know, the Bible contains the full story, that we should learn the difference
between Truth and error by doing what is right, not to be doing the alternative
to the commandments, which is sin. The
devil conceived of the idea that if the first human beings could be led to
create their own ideas, to put themselves up as God, where they relied on
themselves instead of God’s Word, why then of course he would not be
replaced. And he and the angels would
get back the rule, in part, of the estate which they abandoned. And that is in fact what happened so that
today men do not believe there is a world government. In fact there has been for nearly 6,000 years
a world government continuing on earth, but not visible to man, composed of
spirits who had rebelled against the law of God. This government has influenced the human
family ever since the events in the Garden of Eden. The human family went its own direction, God
cut the family of man, of Adam, off from him.
On occasion he chose to reveal himself to individuals, but otherwise
God’s Plan called for the world to continue doing what Adam and Eve decided
that they would do, to invent alternative explanations of God’s Way,
alternatives to God’s goodness, where human beings would define evil as good
and good as evil, and light as dark, and darkness as light. That is, since God defines what is light,
human beings took upon themselves the idea of calling the opposites by these
words. And so societies were born,
nations developed, and we will not address the question for the moment of the
Flood or any of the other events, but merely say that for more than 2,000 years
of human experience human beings have simply gone their own way, God revealing
himself on occasion just to singular individuals, Abel, Enoch and Noah, and it
was not till we come to a man named Abram, who lived in Mesopotamia, that God
chose to reveal himself to a man from whom he would raise up a nation among all
the nations of the world. This man Abram
was tested, we know him also as Abraham after he proved himself. Having proved himself, we discover the
uniqueness of what God expected of Abraham, in contrast to the way everybody
else had been living, in contrast to the way he had been living.”
God
Is About To Start A Special Nation Through Abraham
“If
you will note carefully what it says--“Abraham was 99 years old,” the
translation says, “when the LORD
appeared to him and said I am God Almighty!”
This is the One appearing to him who we know as Jesus the Christ [cf.
John 8:58]. The Father had not appeared,
the one we know as the Father, had not appeared. It was the one who became Jesus who talked to
the patriarchs, and came in the flesh and talked to his generation. He said, “Walk before me and be perfect,” and
the King James is more effective here, “perfect” because that reflects the
ultimate word that [we] know in English, to define the character of God. Here the first duty of Abraham is to walk
before God, to walk with him in his presence, and to do so that he should be
called perfect. To be perfect is to be
like God is. Adam could have been, he
simply followed his wife, though he knew better, and she was deceived. The human family has been allowed to write
its own record, its own ideas, to have its own religions, its own political
structures, just as the angels thought they could invent (the third that
rebelled) alternatives. God has allowed
the human family to remain in spiritual darkness, has not dealt with the
family, but chose rather up to this point to deal with certain individuals, and
now he asks one man in particular to be perfect. Jesus asked the disciples to be perfect--this
has to do with character. We learn of
course of the nature, as how Abraham is to be seen (unintelligible) affection
of character, when we read the LORD’s,
or Yahweh’s statement to Isaac, that Isaac was to conduct himself in the same
way that Abraham did, and Abraham kept God’s commandments, his statutes, his
Laws. God revealed the way that we
should go to Abraham. We are not told
those laws, however, till later. But he
did reveal them to Abraham, and that defines the character of God, defines what
it means to be perfect.”
Four
Centuries Later, Abraham’s Descendants Become A Nation Under God’s Rule--Given
God’s Laws & Truth
“We
move down four centuries in time. We
come now to the events when Abraham’s descendants were in Egypt. There God chooses the descendants, leads them
out of Egypt by Moses and miracles at the Red Sea, brings them to the foot of a
mountain in the Sinai Peninsula [now it’s been proven this mountain is in Saudi
Arabia], proposes to them a covenant, a relationship that would be based on the
following premise: That as mortal human
beings, as we all are, they could be if they wished (it was voluntary) a particular
nation that God would choose. And he
would provide them a land in which to live, he would protect them from their
enemies, and he would constitute them not only as a nation, in a masculine
sense, where we tend to think of nations in a masculine sense, they should also
be a church, that is the recipients of the religious truth that no other nation
was in possession of. They could be a
nation in this world, they were not promised eternal life, they were promised a
good life, to enjoy their years on earth in the land that was ultimately to
flow with milk and honey. So marvelous
were the flowers and the pastures that the bees would simply produce more than
enough good things to eat, and the cattle, the goats and the sheep more than
enough good things to drink. And the
children of Israel accepted the proposal, and they agreed in principle. So God then defines for everybody to hear
what he had been in detail already expounding to Moses, and atop Sinai, as the
children of Israel were assembled on the opposite slopes to the east…”
The
Ten Commandments Given To God’s Nation
“…But
God revealed ten commandments, the broad, basic perspective of God’s
character. It covers a relationship to
God himself on the one hand, and to our neighbour on the other. It involves those simple things that we ought
to know of when we have a commitment to husband and wife, that we don’t involve
ourselves in adultery, that we don’t have the spirit of murder, the spirit of
theft, or lying, we don’t covet what is not ours. And with respect to God, we recognize that he
determines right and wrong, [that] we have no other god before us. He is the one who defines the way we should
go. Nor do we make any likeness of God
or of anything else that we may conceive of.
There are two commandments here.
Now I know that there are those who have assumed these were the same,
but the second commandment involves the question of making something that
symbolizes God. God is a spirit and does
not ask, in fact expressly forbids, that we make any replica of himself [to bow
down and worship it]. Further, we do not
abuse or misuse or take his name in vain, and fourth that we conduct ourselves
in such a manner that we hallow any time he has hallowed. And God of course gave the Sabbath Day not at
Sinai, he gave it to Adam and Eve at the end of the week of re-creation, when
he rested and beheld what he had done, and asked man to rest on that day to
consider, to contemplate, to study what God has done. And those who do not observe this day are
made up of those who simply do not know either what God has done or what he is
doing. That’s why the world has the
doctrine of evolution, which presupposes a creation without a Creator. And last in my thought, but by no means least
(and I’m picking it up from different points of view, not in the order in which
they’re given) he addresses who become adults, that we should honour our father
and our mother, that is, to pay respect to those to whom we owe our existence. This is a very important thing, and sometimes
young people fail to realize that if there had been no father and mother there
would be no children. As our children
have said on more than one occasion, it was nice to be wanted. Today we often abort in the world, just the
opposite of what God intended. In any
case, God is revealing now to a nation which is also a church the broad
outlines of his commandments--these define God’s character. We may not have seen it this way, but they
define essentially how God lives, how he thinks, and how we should think. He also asked them a little later to build,
since they were a physical nation, a temporary dwelling for him, and he asked
the family of Aaron to serve him in that temporary dwelling. That was the Tabernacle which later became a
structure called the Temple, and the people who served him, the family of
Aaron, were called priests, and they had people to assist them, the rest of the
family of Levi, because Aaron was of the family of Levi, but all those who
didn’t descend from Aaron served the priests who did descend from Aaron. And many other laws were given (we won’t go
into detail) but I want you to note that God defined human conduct as it should
be in the Ten Commandments and many of the other laws given. He also gave the physical nation the
opportunity to recognize that God was in their presence, in their midst in the
temporary dwelling called the Tabernacle, and they could come to him in
physical service, and they could offer from time to time animal sacrifices
which, involving the shedding of blood, would look forward to someone who would
shed his blood to pay the penalty for their sins. Now it is significant that in that church to
whom God had revealed his Truth as he revealed it to no other people, to no
Indians in the New World, to no people in Europe or Africa, to no other people
in Asia, and most certainly not to the Aborigines of Australia, but to those
people in the southwest of Asia, in the [area of Saudi Arabia at Mount Sinai],
he revealed to them the body of truth that defines properly what human
character should be like. And he also
told them that they were not now being offered eternal life, that is God was
not coming to dwell in them, but only among them. And so they had a physical priesthood which
[had] sacrifices from year to year to remind them of their sins, to look
forward to an event yet to come, which was the ultimate fulfillment of
Passover, and there was a temporary building showing that God did not
permanently plan to be apart from the children of Israel in a building, but
would ultimately be in them. This nation
was given God’s government, but they got away from time to time and then
returned back to that government, that’s the story of the Judges. We’ll in fact look over the whole of what we
call the Old Testament period to summarize it in such as way as this: that the nation that God called and the
church that he formed [within that nation] to be a recipient of the truth,
divided in an act of rebellion following the death of Solomon, and only the
house of Judah (but not the ten tribes living further north) retained the
Bible, and among the Jews we today look for that revelation of God that we now
call the Old Testament. That’s not the
way it was called. Jesus called it the
Law and the Prophets and the Writings, or the Holy Scriptures. They were the recipients of this revelation
and have preserved it for us. This was
the church that God used, to whom at a time in the days of Herod the king Jesus
came, Jesus who was the Word before the Yahweh of the Old Testament, was born
from Mary, by the Spirit of God overshadowing her and she conceived, and the Being
that was born from her who we know as Jesus was the One who pre-existed as the
Creator of the universe, who executed the will of God [the Father]. And so now his Father we call God the Father
and Jesus we call his Son. This person
was born of the house of Judah, not of the house of Levi associated with Judah
as a nation. Jesus was not a priest
among men--he was not a descendant of Aaron.
He was in fact reared in the synagogue which represents the public
buildings of God’s own church. He came
to define the character of God, he came as a Rabbi, and I think few of us
really realize that when Jesus was on earth he was not addressed as Priest, he
was not addressed as Father, he was addressed as Rabbi. That was his role. He sacrificed himself and offered himself to
pay for human sin, he entered into the role of Priest at a level unlike Aaron.”
Jesus’
Teachings Expand The Law of God: Matthew
5:17-48
“But
we won’t cover that for the moment.
We’ll go back to Jesus’ teachings.
While on earth in his ministry, the best summary I will find in Matthew
chapter 5. Jesus again stated the basic
premise of God’s character. He expounds
them and we call this the New Testament.
The difference between the Old Testament and the New is very
simple. Most people have conceived of
the idea that everything was wrong with the Old and had to be corrected for the
New so that today we have substituted one thing for another. This is not the case at all. Jesus said,
‘The Law as I revealed it on Sinai stands as it is, you read it as it is. I have not come to change a single letter or
a single bit of wording of the Law. I
however ask you that when you look at the Law, you don’t look at it as the
nation of Israel did at Sinai, but you look at it as I intended it to be
understood by people who have the Spirit of God, not by people who don’t. That is, I’m going to come and by my Spirit dwell
in you or beget you so we may be called the begotten sons of God and we may be
born into his family. And if we have the
Spirit of God in us, then [when] we read the commandment which says “You shall
not kill,” we also perceive it says we shouldn’t even hate.’ There are people who hate, but they think
they have kept the Law because they didn’t kill the one who they hated. Jesus says that everyone who is even angry
with his brother without cause is ultimately liable to the Judgment. He asks us to examine the commandments, not
be changing them, but by understanding them better than the physical nation
Israel at Sinai ever could. So we not
only learn not to kill one another, we learn in what Jesus said, that we don’t
even share animosity as people often do, or grudges. We learn all the way through here not only
not to commit adultery, but not even to lust or covet someone else. So Jesus went through all of the laws briefly
and he named 6 basic areas and then he comes to the 7th and in the
end as the 7th one he merely summarizes it and says in simple terms,
“Be you therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Having defined human character for what
it should be, Jesus died. He became a
priest after the order of Melchizedek, who is described in the Book of
Genesis. That means that Christ, unlike
Aaron and Aaron’s descendants, offered himself up once to pay the penalty of
sins for all. The family of Aaron had to
offer sacrifices every day and every year, and it was repeated year by
year. Paul said in Hebrews that if those
sacrifices could have actually forgiven people according to the conscience, why
they wouldn’t have had to repeat them again, but they were only animals--goats
and sheep and cattle and doves and pigeons, there were even sparrows--they were
just reminders that blood was shed. But there was a man who was falsely
accused, and Pilate turned him over to be executed even though he knew he was
without guilt, and Jesus offered himself once for all. And having done so and given his life, he was
buried and rose again after three days and three nights, ascended to Heaven and
was accepted of the Father in Heaven, as the offering of the Wave Sheaf
described in Leviticus 23 was also offered.
That’s another story you should all know from the Festival of Pentecost
period, the Father accepted him as the perfect sacrifice. He has no need ever again of sacrificing
himself, either on the cross or in symbolic form on any altar.
The
Resurrected Jesus Created His Church
Having
offered himself once for all, he now sits at the right hand of God the Father,
and he now has raised up his Church, first by converting a significant number
among the Jews, to which he then added Greeks, and as we turn we note in the
Book of Romans chapter 10 and especially verse 13, that whereas the children of
Israel were meant to be God’s nation, they disobeyed and like branches of an
olive tree that didn’t bear proper fruit were broken off. Into which tree Gentiles, like branches, may
be grafted in so that the nation of Israel that God will use in the World
Tomorrow to govern the world over human beings, will be composed of all those
to whom the Spirit of God has been given.
They include men such as Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, and Joseph, Judges and kings [the righteous ones] and Prophets. They also include many Jews who were
converted in the Apostle’s day, and Greeks [see https://unityinchrist.com/history2/earlychurch1.htm],
and as time went on some people who were converted when the Church migrated out
of the Byzantine realm into Armenia, later moved from Armenia to the Balkans
and into the Alpine regions of Europe, where God raised up Peter de Waldo. And then the message was brought and people
were added to the church in England following the introduction of the Truth of
God there in the period of the 12th century by Walter Lollard. The message was brought to the United States
in the 1660s to the then Colony of Rhode Island and God’s people were added to
the Church as they migrated through West Virginia, through the Midwest to
Oregon, where this work developed when God called Mr. Armstrong in the 1920s,
and this work is the result of the efforts that God has used him to do. It is made up of people through all these 19
centuries [see https://unityinchrist.com/history/revivals.htm]. God’s Church is, as the centuries in the days
of ancient Israel, when a few were given God’s Spirit, made up of those who are
seeking to fulfill the purpose of life.
By repenting, which is the opposite of what the devil did, instead of
inventing alternative ways, we repent of alternative ways. The world invents, we are asked to
repent. That means we are now willing to
go according to the Law of God, we’re willing to do what the commandments
actually said [say]. All during this
time when God’s Church was small and persecuted there were great religions
around the world, and even those which came to be known as Christian, so that
the civilization of this world in the west is Christian, as some portions of
the world have civilizations called Islam, or called Buddhism, or now
atheism. All of these are different ways
men have gone. They labeled it after
men, some even named it after the name of Christ. They have been part and parcel to the wars in
the Middle Ages. Nations thought to be
Christian go to war. That’s the story of
course in our lifetime of the First World War and the Second World War. There was Christian United States and
Christian England. We had two world wars
of all these people who not only did not keep the commandment which says you
shall not kill, but inculcated the idea of hating your enemy. That’s the way the world’s view is. The Church is not made up of all those who
may be called Christian in the world, but the few who have been willing to
repent of doing their own thing, of turning around and going according to the
Law of God, which defines the character of God.
After which they may, if they’re baptized in water, receive the Holy
Spirit. That baptism is a burial in
water that symbolizes they want to bury their past, to come up with new
life. In this case with the addition of
the Spirit of God that makes man immortal ultimately, because man was born
mortal, there is no immortal soul in man.
Man is a soul, and the soul that sins, it shall die. What man needs, unlike angels who were made
[of] spirit, man needs the addition in this case of God’s Spirit, which imparts
a bit of his character little by little, and also the beginning of potential
eternal life.
Our
Future As Immortal Sons & Daughters Of God In The Soon-Coming Kingdom of
God
“And
so we read in 2nd Peter 1:4 that we have become, if we’re converted
and have received the Spirit of God, a part of the Divine nature which enables
us ultimately to inherit the Kingdom of God, to be like God is, to have his
character, and with Jesus Christ to share with him first the rule of the world
for a thousand years, then the rule of the world after that for two Jubilees or
two fifty-year periods, or 100 years, when we will deal with all human beings
who have lived and died in ignorance [giving all of them an opportunity for
salvation and eternal life]. And [during
that 100 year span of time] the whole world will rethink its life, comparing
6,000 years of man’s ways to 1,000 years of God’s. [Why, as Dr. Heoh I’m sure would agree, that
the accurate teaching of world history will be so very important during the
period of the 2nd resurrection.]
And then we come to the end when this Kingdom of this earth is to be
delivered up to God and the Father and he will reign over all. And it is at this point that we look upon
eternity when the human experience is through, when angels who rebelled are
judged, and when those who obeyed are our servants. And there will be a change in the earth,
which will be burned up and the heavens will be transformed also, and we look
forward to a new heaven and a new earth wherein is no sin, wherein the
Government of God will be executed everywhere, and the universe will be placed
under our feet. “That is,” as Paul said
in Hebrews, “not everything now has been subjected to man.” But there is coming a time when the Church,
collectively in all the human family that has been repentant, converted and
ultimately born again [as spirit beings, like Jesus is now, cf. 1st
John 3:1-2], functioning as the wife of Christ who is the husband, just as
ancient Israel should have been the wife, and Yahweh the husband, that when we
are all born into the Kingdom of God we will have all things placed under our
feet. But that would not be possible to
extend the Government of God throughout all the imaginable universe then not
composed of matter as we know it but transformed, if in the first place the
character of God had not been formed in us, because God will not share the
universe with anyone who he cannot rule, and he will not share it with any who
are unwilling voluntarily to take upon themselves the responsibility of
exercising choice and self-control. We
are not automatons--we’re here to choose, and we must choose the character of
God. And when that has been chosen and
carried out through life, and when we stumble and fall we ask for forgiveness
which can be given us, then we shall be qualified for various responsibilities
in the Kingdom of God. The free gift of
the Holy Spirit means that we can be born into the Kingdom of God. That is a free gift. You don’t qualify for eternal life. Christ did that for us. Having then made the Spirit of God available,
we’re asked to qualify for responsibility in that Kingdom, and there is a big
difference.”
Footnote
Here
then, as most of you will be leaving, and for those who will be coming back to
Pasadena, is a brief summary from a little different perspective, not so
closely attached to the Feast of Tabernacles, but another perspective looking
at the purpose of life from the point of view of the importance of human
character, that it must ultimately be replaced by God’s character in us through
the Holy Spirit. After studying through
these addresses I concluded that what is going on in this earth is far more
stupendous than anything I had before envisioned. The Work of Jesus Christ spans the billions
of years during which the Creation has been changed and altered many times [after
life was initially created on earth, it having been altered by bio-engineering
of lifeforms from the individual cell to what we have today on earth] in order
to test angels and prove them thoroughly, after first having taught them at
God’s throne. In a sense the experience
of mankind these last 6,000 years serves not only to demonstrate to mankind the
futility of his way, but also to demonstrate the utter bankruptcy of the
angels’ ways and ideas, not only to man but to the angels [that didn’t
rebel]. One day all of mankind will come
to know intimately the nature of angels as well as humans, when they are called
upon to judge them. The angels are
learning just as well as man in this 6,000 years, and they will learn the final
lesson of how God was right all along--his way will bring real positive results
and solid achievement in the universe, and Satan’s way will be proved utterly
default. We can see stated in Scripture
how this is:
1st
Peter 1:12, “But unto us did they minister the things, which are now reported
unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Spirit
sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.”
1st
Corinthians 4:9, “For we are made a spectacle unto the world, and the angels,
and to men.”
Ephesians
3:9, “And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from
the beginning of the world hath been hid in God who created all things by Jesus
Christ: to the intent that now unto the
principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the
manifest wisdom of God.”
So
we see the angels are yet being taught and trained through the things that we
are learning, right now, today. In
Habakkuk 1:5 and Acts 13:41 we see that God declares he is working a work we
would not believe, though a man told us.
How can we know here on earth as mere humans what the whole tremendous
picture is of what is really going on in heaven and here on earth?...” [since
Mr. Armstrong is deceased, the last paragraph is no longer applicable, so I
deleted it from the text. I have
inserted paragraph titles into this transcript of Dr. Hoeh’s sermon to help denote
changes of subject matter for ease of understanding. Everything within quotation marks is the
direct transcript, minus grammatical insertion of words in brackets [ ] and a
few grammatical corrections made to the text in order to make the text read
more smoothly and understandably. pfb]
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