Sermonette: God Alone Can See

God's Master Plan
#FT03-13s
Mark Schindler
Given 18-Oct-03; 20 minutes

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Something God alone can see, from before time the Great God and the Word have envisioned this great day. Today represents the combination of a glorious plan that we only see through glass darkly, as the apostle Paul says. But it is a vision that we must firmly grasp, because this day is the pentacle of God’s success for us as a race of men.

His plan and His purpose have been set since before the foundation of the earth, and He clearly sees its end on this great day. This is not the first time that I delivered a message on the Last Great Day. The last time was seven years ago on October 5, 1996. It was in a Catholic church at my father’s funeral. My father died suddenly on October 2^nd, when Nancy, the kids, and I were at the Feast. Suddenly death and resurrection became more of a reality to me than ever before.

All the way home on the plane and through the next two days, Millennium scriptures and scriptures of the Last Day, raced around through my mind. I begged God’s to help me to understand why did this happen, especially why at the Feast days, and what I needed to do about it? The day before the funeral I knew what I had to do. If given the opportunity to eulogize my father at the funeral on the Last Great Day, I would tell the people assembled at the funeral what a fine man my father was, but also about the Family of God and the hope for all mankind revealed to us through the holy days, specifically through the Last Great Day. I told over 400 Catholics, assembled at Catholic mass, that their eternal hope actually is revealed in some ancient abandoned Jewish holy days, kept with the final judgment and reward pictured in a day that was being kept that very same day that we were burying my father, on the Last Great Day.

Before I spoke those words I asked God, that if this was in fact what He had in mind for me to do, He would give me the right words to say. I asked if He would give me His words to speak about His holy days and not my own. Words that would bring comfort, not anger to a group of people not yet called, and trying to deal with something very painful to them, and they did not really understand it.

I do not intend to make you think that on that day I went charging in with great words like the apostle Paul. I merely told them about the ancient Israelite tradition of pouring water at the foot of the altar on the Last Great Day of the Feast and how Christ used that illustration on the very same day (when we were burying my father) to describe Himself as the source of living waters. I told them the day that Christ said those very words, according to John 7, was observed on this very same day we were burying my father, some 1,196 years before.

I told them that all the world would be resurrected on the Last Great Day, to the judgment of the Great God, and that the physical family, like the one that my mother and father had carefully nurtured, would be born, was a type of a family of God that all could be born into at the Last Great Day. The words that I spoke that day were not my own. They brought great peace and comfort to my family and those assembled there that day. They even inspired the priest praying over my father’s grave at the cemetery afterward, to say, “As Larry’s son said, we look forward to seeing Larry again at the resurrection on the Last Great Day.”

I was flabbergasted! There was a Catholic priest repeating a part of the plan he knew nothing about, as they lowered my father’s physical body into the grave, saying, “We will see him again at the Last Great Day.”

As I look back on it, our Great God took that opportunity that day to give a group of people not yet called, but surely with the opportunity of someday being in His Family, a peek into His plan, and just with their hope, really, was all about.

He gave me the opportunity to understand that this is not about me, or about you, or the world, it is about all of mankind together with the Father and the Son as we rejoice at the completion of God’s plan, God’s generous purpose for all of mankind, on this: the Last Great Day.

There was a very interesting sermon given at the Feast of Tabernacles a number years ago that showed this whole Book is a book of history, a real Book of His story. It is not the whole story, but it is the part of the story that God has deemed necessary for us to see at this time. His story, as far as we have been permitted to see it, started in John 1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

It started with a Family of Two, who were creators and created all things. We see the story move to the creation of magnificent beings, the angels, and being described in Ezekiel 28:13 as spectacular. God made him the anointed cherub that sat at His throne. We see God’s story move to Genesis 1 and the beginning of the physical universe which, when it was created, the created angels shouted for joy at its splendor and immense opportunity for creation.

After this, and perhaps after years and millennium and billions of years of the joy of creation, part of the universe went through a devastating time, when iniquity was found in the most magnificent of God’s created beings, and he rebels with one-third of the angels against the Family and destruction enters the creation. We find ourselves back again in Genesis 1-2 again as the recreation takes place. God creates man in His image and His likeness. Before all this even happened, before the foundation of the world. As it says in I Peter 1:20, the only two members of the God Family, that have existed from eternity, make it Their purpose to bring others into the Family who will be firmly committed to the peace, unity, and perfect harmony of the Family without ever having even the slightest opportunity of another Savior. They devise a plan that is full proof that will produce exactly the mind and spirit of a family that can only come from this perfect plan. They devise a plan to involve a process over thousands and thousands of years, a plan that will include much time and patience, joy and sorrow, sickness and health, life and death, kingdoms and countries, sacrifices and rewards, with the ultimate sacrifice by one of Them. And all these things known exactly to Them from the beginning, as it says in Acts 15:18.

All this was done so that one family that walks in perfect unity can be born to create for all eternity. They have a perfect plan, and everything must be put together in exactly the right way, the details of which lead to the big picture of only clear to Them.

I do not need to explain the rest of the story to you. You know where it started, in the Garden of Eden with the Two Trees. Before mankind could even be introduced to God the Father, the first man, Adam, failed, and was ejected from Eden before he could take from the Tree of Life. Thousands of years go by, and man continues to fall into seemingly the same calamitous situation, over and over again, just in different forms.

All the time God slowly works His plan through Abel, Noah, and the father of the faithful, Abraham, through Sarah and Isaac, Jacob through Joseph, and Moses and millions of Israelites who died in the wilderness as a witness for us.

I Corinthians 10:1-11 Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. [They did not have God’s Holy Spirit, and they went after these things. We do and are told not to.] And do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell; nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents; nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the age have come.

All these things happened to them as an example for us. God slowly moving His plan to the purpose He intends, goes to great lengths using people, time, nations to make His point, and the whole time there are a few who He lets in on a need-to-know basis. Do you see that Israelite family slagging through the wilderness, trying to understand what is going on, a father, mother, children, trudging through a wilderness, making decisions, based only on carnal knowledge, based only on a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Hot and cold, invigorated, tired, frustrated, happy, heartbroken, confused, and rebellious? God saw them and they all had their opportunity to be in His Family someday, but first He used them to put His plan forward.

He is not a heartless bully but a loving Father, who sees far beyond what we see, and what will make sure the bond that will be established in billions of His Family members for eternity.

We have seen a common thread through these sermons and sermonettes during these days of the Feast of Tabernacles. We have been shown in no uncertain terms that there are two ways of life to go into. The one is the easy way, the world’s Babylonian system of things that will carry you away. As Mr. Armstrong used to call it, it is the way of get, a way of competition, and war. It is Satan’s way of competing for the very throne of God. It is a way that God has allowed over a thousands of years for a purpose and not by chance.

As we were told, the night is far spent and there are some right now who have been given the opportunity to have the light of God’s truth in their lives. We are those few. We have the responsibility now to walk in the light, to come out of Babylon and to think as God thinks, to have the outgoing concern for each other and for God’s plan. It is the hallmark of the family. We are to be laying the foundations for the World Tomorrow, as Richard said on the first day. God is a generous God and so must we be, and think like He thinks.

Everything about His character is outgoing sacrifice for others. It is our responsibility to look at the big picture, like God does, and to think and act as God does.

Why are we here? We have been told why we are here, to come out of Babylon, to be zealous to follow the light of God’s truth and to be ready to do whatever He wants us to do, to be of service and sacrifice for all of mankind who will come after us into the Family of God.

Philippians 2:1-8 Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

Brethren, do you grasp the significance of these verses? The One who created all things and had all the glory of the Family name, did not think that was the pinnacle of success. He saw success only in investing everything He had into the rest of the Family. This is the ultimate refusal of the way of get, by giving everything He had to ensuring the billions that will come up in the Family of God.

I remember years ago in Worldwide, there so many who were so concerned as to whether we are going to the Place of Safety or not. It became their goal. They missed the point, maybe we all missed the point. We can do the same thing now. We can become so wrapped up in the process that we forget what it is really all about. We are a holy generation, a royal priesthood, a called-out people, as it says in I Peter 2:5, and we will, God willing, complete the course and rule with Christ in the Millennium. But that is not what it is all about. That is part of the story, but there is the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey says.

Part of many pieces along the way, it is not about going to the Place of Safety, or not, or ruling with Christ, our own personal salvation, or for that matter, even the individual sacrifice of Christ, as we just read. Those are vital important pieces of the story that only the Father and Son can see clearly now. The ultimate end of the story, as God sees it, is a Family composed of billions of creators who will have hearts that beat as one, an outgoing concern for each other, and in creating in perfect harmony.

The choir sang a song yesterday, it was the song of the father and prodigal son, the song that the Father will sing as all His Family is born in that day. Today brethren, is not about us. This is our Father’s story, coming to the conclusion He saw from the beginning. Today is about the plan of the Great God coming to completion.

Mr. Armstrong wrote in Mystery of the Ages,

See now how Christ has already been crowned with glory and honor. He is already in possession, He has already inherited. The living Christ already sustains the entire universe by His limitless Divine power”. Mr. Armstrong continues, “For the creation waits for the eager aligning for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation, all suns, planets, stars, moons, was subjected to futility. Not of its own will, but by the will of Him who subjected it in hope. Because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage of decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.” Mr. Armstrong ends Mystery of the Ages, by writing, “Finally even God the Father will come to this earth. His throne over the whole universe will be established on this earth.

Notice, after speaking of the various resurrections, it is recorded:

I Corinthians 15:24 Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts down all rule and all authority and power.

Revelation 21:3 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself shall be with them and be their God.

Revelation 22:3 And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him.

Mr. Armstrong finishes up on the very last page of the book, “Finally the at-one-ment shall be completed. Both God the Father and the Son Jesus Christ in us and we united with Them as the one great supreme God Family.”

How wonderful, beyond ability of words to express is the glory of God, and His wonderful purpose actually now in progress. Praise, honor, and glory be to God and Jesus Christ forever and ever!

With God’s great master plan of 7,000 years finally completed, the mystery of the ages finally revealed, and with the re-creating of the vast universe and eternity lying ahead, we come finally to the beginning.

MS/cdm/drm