Good morning, everyone. I felt like a bobblehead doll this morning--I got in here and a couple of people were already asking me, Am I speaking first, and I’m just nodding my head yes and I didn’t look at the schedule so, for all I know, I was supposed to go second but it’s too late now! And then I could tell I hadn’t gotten enough sleep this morning because we were singing and, out of the corner of my eye, I see Mrs. Coulter standing there and it looked like she was smoking . Well, it turns out, it was the steam from her coffee but, the way she was holding it and the way it was hidden, it looked like smoke from a cigarette. So, we’ll talk afterwards, I guess.

When we read the Bible, we read that there’s coming a time when this world is going to fade away, when this world is going to pass away, when a transition is going to take place. A brand new world is coming--a brand new government and maybe even a brand new world because, when we read about the Day of the Lord and we read about all the terrible things that happen to this earth with the atmosphere being messed up with radiation and smoke and dust and the seas turning to blood and everything else that goes on, maybe there is coming a time when the earth will have to be renewed like it was back in the days of Genesis. But the point is that some time a transition is going to happen--there’s going to come a time when this world is finally going to fade away and finally we’re going to see Christ return and finally our change will come and this new government will take place.

But the question always comes up--when? When are these things going to happen? We look around us today and things seem to be going on and on and on. I mean, how many years has it been since the events in the church break-up--a decade or so--and still things seem to be going on and on.

So we have to wait. I know that this Book assures us that Jesus Christ is going to come again and we believe that. We believe that as the truth. I certainly believe that. I believe that these are the end times--that the church has been given certain understanding to know that these are the end times and so we believe that as well. But, still, things seem to be going on and on. Our kids are growing up, some are starting their own lives. We have people right here that are grandparents for the first time and it’s true that our older generation is starting to die off as well. In the church there are people who have been faithful for years and decades and, finally, they’ve finished their race and time had run out for them.

And yet we still remain. I’m a little bit encouraged in that I started attending in 1978 and there have been some great examples in that there are people who are still attending, that I first met way back in '78, and that’s been very encouraging for me. That, despite the fact that time seems to be going on and on, there are people that have remained faithful and that’s been encouraging. And so we have to continue to wait--there’s no doubt about it.

But still, we wonder when? When are these things going to happen? When is the transition going to come? We look around us and we don’t see the miracles occurring that would tell us for sure the End was about to take place. I mean, if fire had come down from heaven any time recently, we certainly would have heard about it. If there had been sacrifices starting up, over in Jerusalem, we certainly would have heard about that. So, until that happens, until that intervention takes place, it seems like we’re stuck in a waiting mode.

Well, today, I wanted to give two reasons that could help explain why it is that things seem to be going on and on--two reasons. And I hope that by doing that, just by going over these couple of reasons, it will help us to see the need to hang in there and help us to hang in there, while we wait out this time.

Let me just get right into the first reason. One of the things that I’ve noticed in studying this Book is that it’s par for the course for there to be long stretches of time in between those times when God intervenes in this world’s affairs. So you might read about one event that happens, where He intervenes with some miracles and then a very long stretch of time--sometimes a very long stretch of time takes place--and that’s a pattern that we see a lot.

So the point is, right off the bat, if we feel that we are in a long stretch of time now, let’s not get too discouraged because it’s nothing new, in that sense, it’s something that’s happened before. It’s a pattern that God has used in the past. Let’s go over to Genesis chapter one to start off with an example about that. I’m not going to go to a specific verse, but let’s just note that this was a time where great miracles happened--where God, in a sense, intervened in the world’s affairs to get His Plan going.

And that’s something else I’ve noticed that, when these events take place, when these interventions take place, oftentimes it is because God is trying to keep His plan on track--His plan of Salvation or He’s trying to get it going or some such thing like that. So here, in the first couple of chapters, we have God renewing the face of the earth. He is doing this re-creation as we call it. And so the atmosphere is cleaned up, the heavenly bodies are given their assignments of being for time and for the calendar. We have the land being brought up out of the water, plants and animals are created, birds, all the things in the sea, and then, finally, man is created. A man and a woman are created on that sixth day and that becomes the crowning achievement of God’s creation. And they’re given an intelligence that sets them apart and sets them over the animals. But all of this is part of the spectacular series of miracles and events that take place, that God uses to get his plan going for humanity.

This roughly happened, as we know, about six thousand years ago. So that started things off. You can go next to Genesis chapters six, seven and eight, and we come to another event. This is the time when the Flood occurs on the earth, in Noah’s day. And the thing is, according to one timeline, this occurs supposedly around 2329 B.C., or 1655 years after what occurred in Genesis chapters one and two. My point is that God intervenes to get the world going, roughly six thousand years ago. Then 1655 years pass before He intervenes again, in the days of Noah. So there is this pattern where there are long stretches of time in between these times of intervention.

Here, with Noah, God is making a clean sweep of humanity and starting over with eight people. Things had gotten so bad that He, in a sense, passed a death sentence on the world and were it not for Noah finding grace in God’s eye, then the plan for humanity would have ceased. God had to stay true to His Self--imposed rules of justice in dealing with sin and so He imposed a death sentence on the world. But, if He had done that completely and all of humanity had perished, then where would be His plan to reproduce Himself? So, while He was taking care of and cleaning up the sinful world, He also showed mercy and, with the same set of miracles, intervened to save humanity and to save a line so that the rest of us would be here today and that His plan would continue. Again, He intervenes in order to keep His plan going. And so that was the Flood.

Let’s turn over to Genesis chapter 11, and there is a section here I’d like to read, starting in verse one. The lesson of the Flood didn’t last that long on humanity because, again, according to this timeline that I’m using (and this is from Harold Smith’s Exploring the Bible series on Genesis). Based on that, this was roughly about 130 years after the Flood. So, not as long as the first time but still there was a span of time between the Flood and where God intervenes at Babel. There was a group of people led by a rebel, who figured they wouldn’t follow through on God’s instruction. After the Flood, God wanted people to spread out across the earth again. Well, this man in this group says “no thanks, we’re going to stay where we’re at” and they decide that they don’t want to be spread out. So God has to intervene. God intervenes because He has to keep His plan on track in order to get people to spread across the earth, so that certain things could take place down the road in prophecy. But this group didn’t want to listen. Let’s just read the first four verses here:

So they were determined to stay in that place. They figured--the memory of the Flood was still in their minds--that if they baked their bricks hard enough, if they fire-hardened them enough and if they built this tower high enough, then they’d be safe from any floods in the future and they’d be safe from any god who wanted to say otherwise. But, of course, we know the story, God intervenes and He decides otherwise. Verses five through nine:

The key here is in verse six, where it says that the people are one and that they all had one language. God saw that, if things had been left alone, things might have progressed so fast that humanity may have come to the point of destroying itself much sooner than we came to in the last century. I remember that one of our writers wrote something about this and I don’t remember if it was The Plain Truth or the Good News or a reprint, but he was commenting that the key here was that it says that they all had one language. The fact that they had one language, they could communicate much easier, of course, they could talk to one another and so any advances, any ideas that they had, would just build on each other much more quickly.

The writer went on to say that, if you look at our own example in these last several centuries, of how the English language has become the dominant language. It was because of that, that so many of our technological advances were able to come about. It’s because these different people would talk to one another and build on each other’s ideas. So, if God had let this go on in Genesis 11, possibly something like our rapid technological development could have happened here, where humanity would have reached the point of destroying itself much sooner than God’s 6,000-year timeframe had allowed.

If that had happened, you could see how that would have played right into the hands of the devil. Before the Flood, he got everyone going his way so that God had to pass a death sentence on that entire world. It says somewhere [Genesis 6:5] that the imaginations of their heart were only on evil continually--all the day, as it can be translated. We think it’s bad now, can you imagine what that was like, where God had to step in and start over with a few people. But that’s the devil trying to disrupt God’s plan and the same thing was going on here. If he could get humanity to accelerate to the point where they would take themselves out then, in that sense, maybe he thought he would have succeeded in overthrowing God’s plan. Because if he wipes out the human beings, then who was there for God to reproduce Himself through? So, perhaps, that was the devil's thinking.

Just like in the Flood, I don’t think the devil counted on God having mercy and having grace. I think that those are concepts that are foreign to the devil. I think, obviously, the devil is underestimating what God can do and what He will do and that He will intervene to keep His plan on track. And that’s what happens here, because God stepped in, then humanity was scattered, we did spread across the earth and things went on and we didn’t come to the point of possibly destroying ourselves until this last century. So, the plan of God stayed intact.

That’s another example and the point is, again, 130 years--a stretch of time--took place before God intervened in world affairs. Let’s go on. We’re not going to go over every example, but I think there’s enough examples even in Genesis that we can get the idea. From Genesis chapter 12 through chapter 50, God begins working with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, and this is a stretch of about 290 years. Now, in this time, God shows up a lot more often (if you read this book) and a lot more interventions take place while He’s working with this family line in which He’s going to build a nation. But, even here, it’s a case where years and even decades go by in between these times where God shows up and works with this family line.

Some of the things that take place during this time is that Abram is called and then promises are re-affirmed to him, after he and Lot separate. God makes a covenant with Abram and He gives him the promise of a son. Of course, their names are changed, at some point, to Abraham and Sarah, and God is involved with all that. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the rescue of lot, Sarah conceiving and bearing Isaac in her old age, Abraham being willing to sacrifice his only son. Then we’ve got Jacob’s dreams and the promises given to him. He wrestles with God; his name is changed to Israel. And Joseph, all of his dreams and his being sold into slavery and then his rise to power in Egypt--all these things God was involved with, trying to preserve a nation--trying to raise up a nation. And part of it was to fulfill prophecy, because the prophecy was that the nation would be brought out of Egypt. Well, in order to be brought out of Egypt, they had to go down into Egypt first of all and God had arranged all that.

So, there was this series of events where God was stepping in, over this 290 years and, again, these things just don’t happen all at once, these things took place over that three centuries--one here, one there, a few years in between, decades in between. Again, this pattern of being in a waiting mode, in between the times where God intervenes, that is something that He’s used a lot.

Things go on, Joseph dies, and then the nation stays in slavery for another century and a half, or so. Moses comes up, God intervenes there to make sure that Moses survives babyhood and that he gets into Pharaoh’s house. Then another 80 years go by before the spectacular intervention where God brings down Egypt and the Exodus takes place. So more years go by and things go on from there. The nation is set up. Eventually, the kingdom is formed and God is involved with that. Every once in a while, God steps in to make sure that the nation survives and that the borders are enlarged and that the Philistines are thrown off. The kingdom splits apart and then there are kings of Israel and kings of Judah. But, again, God does just enough--He steps in, as necessary, from time to time, to make sure that the nation survives, that the religion survives so that a nation, a people and His religion would be around so that the later steps in His plan can be fulfilled. So we have the miracles of Elijah and Elisha. We have God backing up King Hezekiah and King Josiah in their day, when they were trying to revive the true religion for the nation. Oftentimes many years pass by in between those situations.

Let’s jump ahead to the New Testament. If you would, please turn to John chapter 20, verses 30-31. At some point the Old Testament closes out and that’s with the time of, I believe, Nehemiah, with the building of the walls of Jerusalem. But even after that, God is still intervening so that the nation survives and Queen Esther intervenes with the King of Persia so that the Jews survived when they were threatened. Cyrus is raised up so that the Jews can return back to Jerusalem and start building the Temple. The decree of Artaxerxes, which is the time when the 69--weeks prophecy started. The Jews overthrow Antiochus and that’s when Chanukah was established. God is involved with all these things but, the point is, those things happened with long stretches of time in between. Jesus Christ is born--that’s a story in itself--His ministry and all the events, all the miracles that take place as God was backing up His Son, in the flesh. God in the flesh was doing miracles, in part to show that this is what would happen when His Kingdom comes back to the earth: it’s going to be a time of restoration and healing.

So many of these things in Christ's life took place, in part, to picture that time in the future that the plan of God was going to bring about. And then here in John 20:30--31, what I get out of this is just a real good summary of Jesus’ ministry. He just had a short three and a half years, but in these couple of verses John (to me) sums up a lot of what that ministry was about, where he says:

And so, part of the reason that these miracles occurred, that these interventions appeared in Christ’s day, was so that people would believe, so that people would understand that God was behind what otherwise looked like a normal human being. It was a way to back up the One who was fulfilling a major step in God’s plan as the Passover sacrifice. And let’s just turn over one page, to the end of the book, John 21:25, where he also says this about Christ’s ministry:

And it just seems like a real good way for him to end an account about the Messiah who, again, fulfilled a major step in God’s plan of salvation. It’s almost as if John was just thinking out loud when he wrote this, but then God recorded it anyway.

Then, of course, right on the heels of this, we have all the acts of the Apostles and all the works that they do and how God backed them up with miracles and signs and wonders, as they went about establishing churches and shepherding God’s sheep. He backs them up with miracles and signs, in part, to show where it was that God was working.

So that brings us to that point in time. Here we are, some 1900 years later and still things are going on and on and on. They have for almost 2000 years now and still they’re going on in our day. To some that has been discouraging, in that they see things just going on and yet no return of Christ, no sign that the end time events are actually happening right now, which would mean that the countdown has resumed again. It can be discouraging, it can be one of the tactics of the devil where he tries to wear us out by discouraging us. I think someone here mentioned that one of the tactics of the devil is to wear out the saints and I think he based that on a passage in Daniel [7:25].

But, try and view this from a larger view in that the time that we’re in now--this waiting time--is just another cycle of a stretch of years between a time in the past when God intervened and a time in the future that we believe, surely, is coming. He’s promised that it’s coming. And so, maybe, just looking at it from that point of view, can help us get through whatever stretch of time that we are in today, so that, instead of looking at this as a time that’s never going to end, we can look at it as a time that will have an end. We know that because this pattern is nothing new--this is something that God has used in the past--this pattern of stretches of time in between those times when He intervenes in the world. So, let’s try and think about it in that way.

And then I was thinking that if that’s not helpful enough then, maybe, we might want to consider this: it’s true that when God was dealing with the world, there were oftentimes very long stretches of time--decades, centuries or even millennia--between those times when He intervened with the world. So, we have the re-creation and then 1655 years later we have the Flood. Then 130 years later, we have the Tower of Babel and then another 750 years we have God stepping in and dealing with Egypt and the Exodus. Another 780 years after that, we have Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection. So, those are long stretches of time and then here we are, after Christ, one thousand, nine hundred and some odd years since Christ and still counting. We’re waiting for the next set of interventions in the world--long stretches there.

But, then, if you go back and read through Genesis 12 through 50, you kind of see a different timeline, where God is starting to work with the Patriarchs and the nation and the people that would form a nation, the timeline gets compressed--now He’s working in a period of about 300 years, much shorter than 1655, much shorter than 1970 years and then, in that 300 years, He’s showing up and intervening much more often. So, on the world scale, it’s a very large time-scale; but working with the people starting his nation, a smaller time frame. And so, maybe, if the pattern holds, on an individual basis, it’s an even smaller time frame. I mean, how often does He intervene for us in our personal lives, in our daily lives? So, despite what’s going on with the world and how many years it is that He’s waiting to intervene there, maybe for us, it’s on a different time scale. And maybe we can take heart from that.

There is some verse where it talks about how the eyes of the LORD are running to and fro throughout the earth, looking for people whose hearts are loyal toward God [2 Chronicles 16:9]. And He does that, why? Because it says that He wants to show Himself strong on their behalf. So, perhaps, for us, on an individual basis, it’s a different matter, for us it’s a different time scale depending on how loyal we are to the calling that we have. So, even though things are going on and on in the world around us, consider and take some hope in that, in that, for us, on a personal level, God may be dealing with us in an entirely different manner. Let’s go on--I think that’s enough on this first reason why things go on and on.

A second reason that I wanted to get to that may help explain why God seems to let things go on and on is found in 2 Peter 3:8--9. This is probably a very familiar verse. Here he tells us that things are allowed to go on and on in order to give us time to turn our lives around. And he tells us that and he wants us to know that, so that we don’t fall into the trap of becoming scoffers and mockers, something that he talks about before this. In fact, lets start up there, chapter three and verse one, where he talks about, you know, how people in our day and age would become mockers--well, actually, in his day and age. He says,

So he tells us right out that there will be scoffers and that there’d be mockers--people making fun of this teaching, that Jesus Christ is going to return and we have that now in all aspects of our society, including the religious side with the Jesus Seminar group. There are other people that are out in the world who look back--they see things going on for two thousand years since Christ; they see that He promised His return and two thousand years later, He’s not here! They start mocking, they starting making fun of this belief. I guess, on one level, they have an excuse, in that they’re not given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom, they’re not given to understand this plan of God that we are privileged to understand. The fact is that six thousand years has to take place and so they don’t have a concept of that, they just see time going by for nineteen and a half centuries and they say, “Well, obviously, it’s a myth. You guys are wasting your time; you’re just counting on a Savior, because you can’t act and think for yourselves.” People say stuff like that.

So you have to be grounded--you have to be convinced in your own mind to counteract that. You have to be convinced in your mind that what Jesus Christ promised us is true and that He has the power to bring it about and He will bring it about. But us, if we start falling into this trap of mocking, what’s our excuse? There was a time when it was thought that something might happen in 1972 and it didn’t. In 1979, I remember when the receivership took place and people thought maybe things would wrap up then and it didn’t. 1986, Herbert Armstrong dies and things go on. There were things that happened in the world after that, with the Berlin Wall and the Gulf War; December of ’94 Herbert Armstrong’s successors threw out the Sabbath and then, that next year, there was this mass exodus from our parent church and things went on. Things still went on.

So, what’s our excuse, I mean, if we see things going on from the 70s and the 80s, are we going to start mocking because maybe God had a different perspective on things? Because maybe God saw we needed some time to clean some things up? Again, you know, people "out there", they may have an excuse in not understanding some of the things we have the privilege to know. But I think part of the problem was that we had our own expectations of how things would turn out and God had other plans.

Then Peter reminds us of a couple of things here in verses five through seven. Because after he talks about how these people spout off, he says this:

And so, there’s a couple of ways that this section can be viewed. One way is that Peter is saying that there have been times in the past where things seem to go on and on, but they were ended by a sudden change or by a sudden catastrophe. At one time, the earth was in the water and then, in reference to Genesis 1, it was out of the water--God changed things. God made a change, God made things happen. Another time, the kosmos or the order of things was going on and on and on and it was out of the water and then, the next thing we knew, it was in the water--it was in the Flood. So God intervened and made some changes. And he’s saying, just like He can do that in the past, there is a time coming where it is going to be a sudden change in the future. So, maybe that’s one way to look at this.

Another way is that he’s referring to God’s word or His promises to do something. It can be taken that Peter is saying, “Well His promises can be trusted because they’re certain and the reason is because He’s fulfilled His word in the past.” Again, in the past, He said certain things would happen and they did and he gives some examples here. And likewise, He says that things are going to happen in the future; one is that Jesus Christ is going to return, that there’ll be a time of judgment associated with that time of return and that word is just as good as what He fulfilled in the past. So, maybe that’s what Peter is getting at here. He’s backed up His word before, and He can do it again in the future. And then let’s get at what I wanted to get to; verses eight and nine. Here he gives this reason where he says,

And it seems hard to believe but one reason things go on and on, is that God is giving us time to change our lives and, to me, this verse nine makes the most sense to be applied to the time that we’re in now, in the years right before Jesus Christ’s return. It doesn’t seem to make any sense that it would apply for the entire two thousand years that the world has been waiting for Christ to return. Where he says that, with the Lord a day is a thousand years, that helps explain why there are long stretches of time in between those times when He intervenes. But, when it comes to the fact that God may be holding things up, waiting on certain people to repent, it makes more sense to me that that would apply to the time we’re in now, because it’s only in these last few years that He could move forward or back the time of intervention, based on a certain people coming to repentance. I don’t know if I’m saying that right but, to me, it just makes more sense that this really applies to us in this time, rather than to the past two thousand years. God did not hold up Jesus Christ’s return this past two thousand years because not enough people had repented--it was set that, even when Peter wrote this, another two millennia were going to have to pass because the six thousand years would have to be fulfilled and I guess that’s what I’m trying to get at--that this repentance refers to our time.

And so you might wonder, well, what type of repentance is he talking about? Well, on one level, it may be He’s waiting for certain ones to still come out of the teachings that our parent church had gone back to a few years ago. Kathy and I went to Jekyll Island, Georgia, last year for the Festival and we met a couple that, only the previous spring, had come out of the other church--the church that had gone back to mainstream christianity. Here we are so many years after they had given up so many major doctrines and it is only now that certain people are coming out. So, maybe, God is letting things go on for that type of repentance. And that type of repentance takes times. To me, it’s like an alcoholic. An alcoholic, when he has to give up alcohol, it takes time for him to dry out; it takes time to get away from his dependence on alcohol. And, maybe, that’s the same thing here, when we come out of a mixture of religious teachings like we did. It takes time to dry out from that spiritual drunkenness and so, maybe, God is allowing time for that.

But then, you look at others that have already gone through that and have been out of that for a few years, what kind of repentance might He be waiting on for us in that category? We can look into this Book and there are just many, many examples that we can look at that point out our personal faults that we still have today. Maybe God is waiting on that type of repentance from us. But, the point is, Peter says that there are situations (and I believe that this is one) where God puts things off waiting on his people to repent. And, hopefully, we’re not so blind that, when we look into this Book, we don’t see those things in ourselves and that we can take action to make those changes.

I’d like to wrap things up by just turning over to one more verse and that’s all the way back to Exodus chapter 17:7. Let’s go back there please. This happened to Israel a few weeks after the Exodus, when they’re on their way to Mt. Sinai and they were going through part of the desert. Interestingly enough, if this event that we’re about to read, were happening today, it would happen about this same time of the year--maybe a couple weeks later. So, I don’t know if that’s what drew me to this. No, actually, it’s the last verse that drew me to this example. Anyway, Israel is starving for water; they’re going dry and they’re crying out to Moses again and they’re blaming Moses for things. So let’s just read the entire account; go back to verse one, where it says that:

And that’s what I wanted to get at. They lost sight of the promises of God. They lost belief and faith and confidence that God could provide for them, just like He brought them out of Egypt--they lost sight of that. And when they lost sight of that, they began questioning God by saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?” So, here we are in our desert wandering, so to speak. We’ve left Egypt so, in a sense, there’s no turning back for us. We’re in our desert wanderings but we haven’t reached our Sinai yet, either. Like these people, they were on their journeys and here we’re on our journeys and things are going on and on, are we going to lose confidence and hope in His promises, just like these people did? Are we going to start questioning God’s ability to come through by saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”, because we see things going on and on, when it comes to Him intervening in the world? Well, let’s hope not.

That’s what I wanted to bring today--just those two reasons about why it is that things seem to be going on and on. Again, this Book, time after time gives us this pattern that God intervenes and then sometimes long stretches of time go by before He intervenes again, especially with the world. So, if we see ourselves in this time of waiting, it’s nothing new. We can take some hope in that, just like before, this stretch of waiting is going to end. That pattern is there as well: things don’t go on forever. Peter gives us another reason in why things may be going on and on and that God is wanting us to change our lives. God is wanting us to repent and to continue to walk with Him.

So, let’s hang in there. Things may seem to be going on but, if we take this larger view, we can get through this stretch that we have to wait through as well.

The last thing is that it’s true that the promise to the firstfruits that there is great reward in the future, but we have a responsibility now. One of our responsibilities is to stay faithful to the calling that we’ve been given. Staying faithful means getting through these stretches until God decides it’s time to intervene. So, let’s do that and be there when that happens.