Church of God, New World Ministries

What’s It All About?

Former President Roosevelt told the American people, in one of his speeches, that this is not “just another war,” (Speaking of WW II). Something is definitely wrong with the world today. What is it? What’s the real meaning of war?

Former Minister Churchill said before the American congress: “He must indeed be a blind soul who cannot see that some great purpose and design is being worked out here below, for which we have the honor to be the faithful servants.”

When Mr. Churchill said “being worked out here below,” he implied that a Higher Power, Above, is dong the working out.

Just what is that purpose, and design? Is war a part of the great plan of God? The answer is, that God does have a Plan, and war and present world conditions are all a vital part in the working out of that Plan! And so it is vital that we understand it. All these terrific world events of today are prophesied. But why? What is their purpose in working out God’s Plan?

Let us begin at the beginning. On the 6th day of this world’s first week, God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. So God created man in His own image and said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. And God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good” (Gen. 1:26-31).

All was perfection and beauty. A material creation, all made of material substance, but perfect and beautiful none the less.

After completing the material creation in six days, God rested the seventh day of the world’s first week. And it must have been on the very first Sabbath, which Jesus said was made for man (Mark 2:27), and therefore made when man was made, that the Lord appeared unto the man and his wife and preached to them the first sermon – laying before them the spiritual law designed to regulate their relationship with God and with man – the way of right, of peace, happiness, joy, and success – the way to life eternal. Sin is the transgression of the law (I John 3:4), and in that very first sermon the Eternal explained that the wages of sin would be death, but that the gift of God, which the man could freely have if he chose, was eternal life (Gen. 2:16-17; Rom. 6:23).

But Satan appeared and denied God’s love in giving His commandments and induced our first parents to disobey what God had said. He also denied that the wages of sin is death, introducing the doctrine of the immortality of man: “Ye shall not surely die,” he cunningly answered.

Eve was deceived, but Adam broke God’s Commandments deliberately. And when he obeyed Satan instead of god, he broke the first commandment, placing another god before Him. When he permitted such inordinate desire for the forbidden fruit to take root in his mind, he broke the 10th command against coveting. And when he reached forth and actually took what belonged to God and was forbidden to him, he became a thief and broke the 8th commandment. And so “by one man sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 3:12).

And so it is recorded that when Adam sinned, God drove him out from the beautiful Garden of Eden. A curse came upon the earth. “Cursed is the ground. . . .thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee” (Gen. 3:17-18). Then God said, “Lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever; therefore the Lord sent him forth from the garden and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (Gen. 3:22-24).

Adam never received immortal life – and none of his descendants have been born with it. He had sinned and all have sinned – bringing death upon the human race! And so here was man, mortal, doomed and hopeless!

 But God has a plan! “God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

Yet God will give eternal life only to those who are willing to live it in peace, happiness, joy, the way of His commandments! Why did God impose the death penalty for disobedience? Because God is love, and God loved man too much to permit him to live immortally in the misery brought on by sin.

Let us understand it; God’s fundamental law for man was designed to bring man happiness-- to keep him in his right relationship with God and with neighbor. The law is spiritual, (Rom. 7:14), holy, just and good (Rom. 7:12), perfect, (Ps. 19:7), established forever and ever (Ps. 111:7-8). This law is love – to God and neighbor, a bestowal of God’s love upon man. It is the true way of life, the only way to peace, happiness and joy.

 But Adam chose a different way, and all have followed his false way of transgression. Thus unhappiness, poverty, anguish and woe has come to the human race. Sin is man’s enemy. Sin has made humanity miserable, and so God hates sin! For God is love, and God’s hatred for sin merely manifest His love for the sinner! A God of love could not give eternal life to one who chose to live it in the ever increasing misery imposed by transgression of His perfect law!

And so redemption was made necessary only because man was in rebellion against God’s Commandments. The whole object and purpose of His plan is to redeem man from his false way of transgression with its attendant penalty, and, with his own consent, to restore mankind, with eternal life, into the way of His perfect law.

But, oh, how Satan would blind your eyes to the glorious eternal truth, even as he blinded the eyes of Eve! How he would blind you to the love in God’s Commandments!

But now what about the process by which this plan operates? Just what do these prophesied events, now so rapidly occurring, have to do with it?

Before the days of Moses there was no nation known peculiarly as God’s nation upon the earth. There was no Bible! No written revelation from God. God spoke orally with Adam. He communicated with those patriarchs whose hearts were willing. But how many of all earth’s millions from Adam to Moses – the first 2500 years of world history-- do you suppose were even willing to walk God’s way?

Abel knew God’s plan and accepted it (Heb. 11:4). But, so far as is recorded, we read only one other man between Adam and the Flood who was willing to walk with God – Enoch. Men rejected God’s way, flouted His law, went the way of human reason, and gratified the desires of pride and of the flesh. “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thought of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5), - and so, finding only one man in all the earth who would listen and obey, God brought destruction to all living except Noah and his family.

One would think those eight survivors and their dependents should have learned their lesson. But as soon as men began once more to multiply upon the earth we find them at the tower of Babel! And not another righteous man appears in the record until we come to Abraham.

And “because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws” (Gen. 26:5), God made an unconditional covenant with him, selecting Abraham to be the father of a nation to be God’s peculiar nation on earth.

Men had now multiplied into nations, all walking their own ways, building civilizations according to the thoughts of their hearts, contrary to the fundamental principles of God’s law.

God’s ways must be vindicated! Man’s way must stand condemned, and in the light of human experience under every conceivable trial and test! So God now purposed to build a nation giving that nation every material help and advantage.

From Abraham sprang the 12 tribes of Israel. In 430 years they multiplied into millions (Ex. 12:37). And Moses was prepared in a very special way to lead this people out of Egypt, and on to the Promised Land we now call Palestine.

At Mount Sinai God made Israel a proposition. If they would obey His voice, and keep His commandments (Ex. 19:5-6), that is, build a civilization based on the principles of God’s spiritual law, on the principles of love to God and love to neighbor, then God agreed to give them prosperity and power to dominate the world – “above all nations” (Ex. 19:5). And of course the people glibly promised.

After 400 long years of Egyptian servitude under taskmasters, without written Scriptures, without opportunity for worship or religious assembly or instruction, Israel – as well as Gentiles-- had forgotten God’s law. And so at Mt. Sinai God appeared before the entire vast congregation of Israel, and with His own voice, delivered directly to all the people (not by Moses) the Ten Points of His eternal spiritual law. Then God wrote these basic words with His own finger on enduring tables of stone (Ex. 20. Deut. 5:1-22).

Afterward God gave Israel other laws – civil, statues and judgments for the governing of the nation and a ceremonial or ritualistic law known as the Law of Moses.

Now consider – here was a nation – God’s nation started out by God to build a civilization on His fundamental eternal law of love.

If this nation would continue to build a civilization upon the unselfish principles of love, if they would walk in God’s way and keep His commandments they had the promise of untold wealth and dominance over the nations of the earth (Lev. 26:1-13).

But if Israel refused, rejected God’s right ways, reverted to Gentile ways of human reason, God promised them a seven times punishment (Lev. 26:14-18, 21, 24, 28). This we now understand – involved a duration of 2520 long years! – 2520 years of national punishment, dominated by Gentiles!

God’s plan was to give a specially-generated, spiritual-chosen, sanctified, and instructed race every possible material advantage to build a perfect civilization.

     God’s purpose was to demonstrate through human experience that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,”- and that with every material advantage still man’s heart will turn from God and to his own selfish devices! And God has demonstrated, too, that the ways will fail, and that they cannot produce happiness or anything permanently worthwhile.

    For a while, the nation of Israel remained faithful to God’s principles, and so long as they did, the nation prospered and grew, they conquered in battles – they increased in wealth and in numbers and power.

But soon they wanted a man for their king, like the Gentile nations around them (I Sam. 8:4-9). Gradually Israel drifted more and more into the man-devised ways of the Gentiles, political, socially, economically and religiously. So God, true to His promise, drove them into national slavery and punishment. First the House of Israel – the Ten Tribes were carried to Assyria about 721B.C. After their captivity, Judah sinned worse even than Israel, and so the Jews were taken captive to Babylon, 604-585 B.C.

    The complete dominance over the nations of the earth God had promised for obedience never was achieved. At this juncture God turned the reins of world dominance over to a succession of Gentiles nations, starting with Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.  God revealed, through Daniel, that starting with him (Nebuchadnezzar) four successive great Gentile kingdoms were to dominate the world during the time of Israel’s punishment (Daniel chapter 2).

And so the “times of the Gentiles” have run through their 2520 years – and the prophesied four kingdoms ruled as God had said. Babylon was succeeded by the Persian Empire, which in turn was conquered by Alexander the Great and followed by the four divisions of his kingdom, and these eventually were swallowed up by the Roman Empire. Out of Rome, since her fall in 476 A.D., has arisen 10 successive smaller kingdoms or government, continuing the Roman system to this day.

Israel had refused to follow through on God’s principles of life, and so, to demonstrate for all-time, by the actual results of human experience over 2520 long years, that Gentile ways are wrong – that Gentile civilizations cannot bring happiness, prosperity, or lasting peace God gave these Gentile kingdoms an unmolested free hand to dominate the earth – to stand or fall on their own merit!

Now where are we, today, in this unfolding of God’s plan? The 2520 years of Gentile rule are nearly finished. The Gentiles have had their chance.

Gentile civilizations have been established, based on principles exactly contrary to God’s law. Instead of the generous principle of give, of love to God and love to neighbor, the world is engulfed in a civilization based on get! A man’s success is gauged, not on how well he can serve, or how much he can contribute to humanity, but on how much he can get. Men have learned to love money, and the love of money is the root of all evil. The accumulation of money often at the cost of his neighbors’ welfare has become the standard by which a man’s success is gauged.

The Gentile nations have sought national wealth and growth, not by producing it out of the ground, but by conquest and armed aggression, taking it away from smaller and weaker nations. The desire to gain for self is the inspiring motive that arouses ambition, stimulates incentive to succeed. Competition has become the life of trade. And in our religious teaching, we have become saturated with Satan’s delusion that God’s law is contrary to us, something harsh, and to be avoided! Thus Satan hides God’s love.

This Gentile civilization has stretched its ugly tentacles into the religious, as well as every other phase of human life. And so today “the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication” (Rev. 17:12). All nations, including America “have drunk” of this false and paganized teaching (Rev. 18:3), until today we are in Babylon!

    Where are we today? What has the 2520 years of Gentile civilization produced? Look about you over the world! Everywhere poverty, suffering, anguish and woe! Everywhere restless, discontent, unhappiness, strife! Look at modern industrial and economic progress! Strife, strikes, labor wars, trouble everywhere.

And so, we behold vast, wholesale world-wide destruction of cities and property, of human lives and human institutions. Millions have been slaughtered on the battlefields of war, human blood runs like rivers. Famine and starvation follow in the wake of war, and pestilence and disease follow on the heels of famine. Whole nations are being reduced to slavery amid starvation, disease and fear!

This is the crowning achievement of 2520 years of Gentile civilization – of life in all its political, economic, social and religious phases built contrary to God’s spiritual law. And still the paganized modern preachers assure us THE LAW” is done away. And that’s what Satan has been assuring the world, ever since he deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden.

So God is about to force men to see and acknowledge the result of human folly. Now God is using mankind to plead in a language he will understand. But they will not listen to the preaching of the very few who have courage to preach and to write the truth.

God is now about to punish! The Day of the Lord is at hand! And as a destruction shall it come from the Almighty! For 2520 years God gave the Gentiles every chance and opportunity to demonstrate the results of their way – without supernatural interference from Him. But soon God is about to interfere. He is about to send destruction. He is about to visit this world with plagues-- terrible, swift, and decisive!

Those who refuse to turn to God, and acknowledge the truth about His Commandments and His ways, coming to Him by Jesus Christ, will soon cry out for the rocks to fall on them and hide them from God’s face! Soon men will be gnawing their tongues for pain, literally scorched with great heat (Rev. 16:9-10); they shall desire to die, but shall not be able (Rev. 9:6). Just as any right-minded, loving father finally will resort to physical punishment when a child defiantly refuses to respond to gentle treatment, so now God is about to punish the world for its evils (Zeph. 1:14-17); Isa. 13:6, 11).

 Between now and the end of these plagues, every phase of modern civilization will completely crash. All will end in utter ruin! The present civilization is doomed, government, industry, society, religion, as now organized is doomed! God is about to force men to see, and to acknowledge, the cruel lesson of human experience.

Then at Armageddon – at the time of the seven last plagues, the same Jesus Christ who once trod this earth and was seen taken up into heaven, shall so come in like manner as they saw Him go into heaven! He left us the blessed assurance – “If I go, I will come again” – and He is soon coming! He is our only hope!

He has gone to a far country – heaven – to get Himself a Kingdom, and to return (Luke 19:11-16). And when He returns He will establish His Kingdom – a government, which shall rule the world! His Kingdom shall shatter to pieces all the forms and systems of government now bringing such misery and unhappiness to the people (Dan. 2:35, 44).

Christ then will set up a new type of civilization upon this earth – God’s type of civilization with government, business, society, religion all based upon the principles of God’s spiritual law, the Ten Commandments and the law shall go forth from Zion (Micah 4:2).

The world, then at last, will be governed by a Theocracy, receiving its just laws from God. Christ will rule sternly, yet justly, righteously (Isa. 11:4-5). Then the mortal humans of this earth will be forced to live under a civilization of God’s building, based on the eternal spiritual principles of love to God, and love to neighbor!  And this government will be administered to mortals by those immortals who endure to the end this time!

If you can see it, the whole object and purpose of this present age is to fit Spirit-filled and Spirit-led Christians through trial and test, through development of Christian character according to the principles of God’s law for a position as king or priest in the Kingdom (Rev. 5:10; 20:4, 6).

Today we are so bound up into a Gentile civilization, steeped in the false religious teachings that emanated from paganized Rome – from Babylon! It is difficult, indeed, for many to realize they have been deceived, misled, and have grown up as a part of this false system. But all who oppose God’s law, the Ten Commandments are most certainly in Babylon, and it is upon them that the wrath of God’s plagues will soon fall. And so, we plead, do not be offended or get angry at us – we are just trying to warn you of what is coming to this earth. Do not hate us but heed the warning and come out of Babylon!

If you would like to learn more about God’s Plan for mankind, enroll in our series “God’s Master Plan of Salvation.”

 
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