Don't Let Anyone Take Your Crown

[Music] well good afternoon or good morning to all of you very good to have this opportunity to speak with all of you once again uh you know it's been a very interesting year i think all of us would say this most unusual year of our lives at least for the majority of us some of you may have had some other interesting years especially those who are old enough to remember the second world war or other situations you may have found yourself in not everybody has the same experience in life and some of you've had some very traumatic ones for sure this year as we all know has been a very unusual year and it's required flexibility and adjustments for individuals and for the church one adjustment was how that we've conducted our services we didn't know all the details that we know today there's a lot we still don't know about this coronavirus there are contradictions all over the internet and in the news but nevertheless we didn't know exactly what we're facing but it caused us to make decisions that were not easy to make we're not comfortable to make but sometimes decisions had to be made we we recognized that venues were shut down we were shut out of places to meet and the weather is not always conducive to meeting outside every place and so we made decisions about singing about masking about even whether we could meet and that affected the holy days it affected a lot of things that we have done this past year and of course as we saw in the announcements uh mr mcnair pointing out the giving out of the awards that we have the the tokens of our appreciation very small tokens and uh mr greer will be getting one i had the opportunity he's been there 50 years i had the opportunity presenting a couple of those in kansas city where mr uh rand milic is the pastor and he's had 50 years of service as well as mr james wells who is actually our longest serving minister so we have two of our uh whatever we call them 50-year 50. there's got to be a word for that wars or tokens of appreciation right there in kansas city and i had the opportunity of presenting those to them after services uh following thanksgiving there but we have others mr mr richard ames of course had his uh 50th year some years ago and was received a particular gift at that time in revelation the third chapter getting into the subject that i have for you today revelation 3 we we go here quite often it's not an unusual scripture to go to by any means but in revelation 3 it's talking about the philadelphia era of the work there was a literal church there and then there is an era of the church and then there are individuals who can have a philadelphian attitude throughout any of the times or they can have other attitudes but we believe that we are striving to have a philadelphian attitude at the time of the laodicean era and here in verse 11 it says behold i am coming quickly hold fast what you have that no one may take your crown he who overcomes i will make him a pillar in the temple of my god and he shall go out no more and i will write on him the name of my god and the name of the city of my god the new jerusalem which comes down out of heaven from my god and i will write on him my new name and he says he who has ears to hear let him hear what the spirit says to the churches dr douglas winnell gave a sermon a couple weeks back a very fine sermon about pillars in the church he spoke speaks here of making us a pillar and he talked about what it means to be a pillar a very fine sermon that will be sent out to all of you uh be put out there and so i'm going to talk about one of the other metaphors that is used here and that is crowns which may be more than a metaphor maybe a literal one but he's talking about not just the crown but what it symbolizes here so today i'm going to focus on revelation 3 11 hold fast what you have that no one may take your crown and i'll be addressing several questions they're very much on the minds of many of you uh and which have and may still cause some to actually lose their crown uh we have the situation of masks of singing which have become controversial and quarantines and caused some to leave our fellowship here and i'm not saying that because they have done that that they have lost their crown but nevertheless we see from history that when people get disoriented in this way oftentimes they just go out and uh they throw away religion all together or they begin to be a part of a group that gets further and further away from the truth and so yes they could lose their crowns they could lose the fact that they are philadelphians and speaking here of that reward so i'm not trying to make judgments on anyone but i'm just saying that this is something that can happen and we've had people that have certainly had a different approach toward masks singing quarantines and the one that we're facing very quickly vaccines and so i'm going to address these questions in the sermon as well today but revelation 3 11 is a warning and we need to consider the meaning of that warning how can someone lose his crown you know he says hang onto your crown so that no one take it from you so how can we lose that crown this implies an outside force that no one take your crown an outside force that can take it away and so he says hang on to it hold on to it tight and that implies that you are in control of the situation you with the help of god of course but you have some saying as to whether someone is going to take your crown or not otherwise why would he give that warning in that way so someone can take it away but you have control of the situation you with the help of god that you can hang on to your crown so who is it that might take your crown well let's look at a few scriptures let's go back to matthew the 24th chapter matthew 24. very familiar chapter for all of us the olivet prophecy and we're going to read verses 4 and 5 to start out with and jesus answered and said to them take heed that no one deceives you now he was talking to his his servants there he was talking to the apostles and of course he's talking to god's people down through time he said don't let someone deceive you now brethren we have to understand that deception is something that happens to some of god's people some of god's people down through the years have been deceived by false doctrines he says for many will come in my name they will come using his name his authority saying i am the christ and will deceive many so they come in jesus name and they say that jesus is the christ they say the right things in certain ways but in the process they deceive many then down in verse 22 he says and unless those days were shortened no flesh would be saved but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened that's showing to us a time of great trouble that is coming upon this earth the potential annihilation of mankind you know we've gone through really less than a year of lockdown and some of you have been locked down more than others and it's very discouraging the kind of lockdown that some of you have experienced where you're you know controlled as to how long you can spend outside of your home and how many people can go outside your home uh they're they're just some some very oppressive lockdowns now i'm not trying to make judgments on whether they should be or shouldn't be but it is very difficult under those circumstances i know that out in california for example uh it's been a little bit more difficult new york city is another one then here in charlotte we're pretty well wide open we have to wear masks we've posted social distance which i think for the most part people comply with but nevertheless traffic is going about restaurants are open to one degree or another some of them for indoor dining some of them only outdoor although it will be a little bit hard today and some other times for outdoor dining unless they have heaters out there or take out but nevertheless things are pretty wide open here compared to a lot of places in the world and some they enforce it with guns uh i noticed a picture down in i believe is south africa in some places where they had armed guards to to force these things and some places you cannot cross borders they're just literally shut down so it's been different for people but nevertheless uh it's going to get worse and i hate to say it that way brethren but it is and i think that if we understand the scriptures we all understand that but remember there is a reward we're not going to get out of this alive we might as well get used to that death is coming to all of us unless we live till christ's return and then the body will will die and be transformed instantly but you know most of us may not experience that some of us may experience that time but uh i i certainly don't uh anticipate that i'll be there with when christ returns uh outside of the grave maybe i will maybe i won't but i i reconcile myself with the fact that i could very well die just because of my age and several years have to go by and after a certain age things go wrong they just do mr meredith mentioned that to me that after a certain age get into your 70s that things go wrong and i didn't quite understand at the time but now i understand a bit more that things do go wrong with our bodies and i don't mean something terrible has happened to me or anything like that please don't read into this more than that i'm saying but uh you know a couple years ago i had i don't know a pseudo-pneumonia i don't know what it was but something that i had not experienced in the same way before and we have aches and pains that take place and things do happen to us we don't have a guarantee on eternal life in this physical existence so we have to understand that we are here for something far greater than anything we could have in this physical life god has offered to us eternal life there's a very good commentary out mr carl harm dirks wrote into commentary that just came out this morning on eternal life i would suggest that you go to our website and look up the commentary very interesting commentary as he pointed out if you were offered 10 million dollars if you didn't tell a lie for a year every morning you'd get up and you'd be telling yourself be careful what you say you'd be very very careful because that 10 million dollars is something you can imagine something you can see something that is tangible you know that others have had it you know that it's a possibility if the promise was made to you you would be very very careful but god is offering to you and me eternal life as members of his family to live for all of eternity and you know the one thing that he's looking for as i pointed out to our living education students in a forum that i gave this this last week tuesday if you really boil it down to to everything what god is looking for is can i trust you can i trust you are you going to be reliable can i know that you will be obedient to me throughout all of eternity are you being obedient now are you recognizing how i'm working in this world today and where i'm working and are you being faithful to that or are you doing your own thing you know these are very important concepts i hope that you'll look at that commentary by mr carl harm dirks i hope you'll think about trustworthiness because that is so very important and you can get away with things with human beings but you can't fool god and there has to be consistency of character that is being built within each one of us as he says here in verse 23 then if anyone says do you look here is the christ or there do not believe it for false christs or false messiahs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive if possible even the elect i think the old king james says uh the very elect and some have taken that to mean that well there's the elect and the very elect uh meaning a higher stage of elect i i think the new king james puts it really properly as it should be that even the elect even the elect or the even the very elect that's you and me uh can be deceived uh if possible and it is possible if we allow ourselves to be deceived but we have control over whether somebody's going to take our crown or not as long as we stay close to god and god will be with us and he will be merciful to us but we have to recognize that there's going to be great deception i know there's one person out there who says that uh donald trump is going to still be in the office that uh the bible doesn't say anything about mr biden well you know that person's sticking his neck out i'm sure he's got some scripture that he's talking about there but uh never and i know he does but uh it's it's a it's reading something into scripture that is just simply not there and you know but what what if somehow mr trump is able to pull this out would everybody just run over to that person well you know it says here that they're going to be people that perform signs and wonders and no doubt make predictions that do come to pass of course they fail to realize all the predictions that that individual and other individuals have made that have not come to pass they forget that and they only see the one that might and uh and maybe follow after that he says false christ they're going to show signs and wonders to deceive if possible even the elect you know these are individuals that can take our crown if we allow them notice over in acts of 20th chapter because this talks about individuals that are not necessarily outside of the church of god in some way but this talks about those who are within the church of god that can take away our crown notice beginning in verse 29 for i know this that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock so those are the ones that come in and they seem to be a part of us there for a short time or they influence people they they come in as a prospective member and begin to teach things that are not correct and they take people away but also verse 30 says also from among yourselves men will rise up that's within the church of god will rise up speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves therefore watch he says and remember that for three years i did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears he pleaded with them and there are expressions in paul's epistles where he says you know i plead with you i uh you know the various words like that uh where where he is pleading with the members of those congregations or those areas uh where he was he was crying out to them please listen to me as he said and he is pleading with us through these words here to recognize that he had warned us of these things and when you look down through the history of the church of god i've i've been here if you go back to when i first started attending church that was 1964. that's uh some 56 years and a little over 56 years now and what have we seen well we see this individual or these two or three individuals they go off and do their own thing back in 1974 there were a group of uh i forget uh several dozen ministers and about 3 000 people on the east coast here when the church was far bigger but about 3 000 people that left over certain things and where where have they gone what have they done when you look on where they are they basically yes they're out there they have little followings here and there but they were scattered and they were divided and that's been the history of the church and those of us who have been around recognize that these things happen and that's why we don't get overly upset over these things or lose a lot of sleep because we recognize the apostle paul had that problem back then he said it would happen even if you go back to moses he said that he knew after his departure that israel would go astray and so we see these things happening over and over and over again now when these individuals who are drawing away followings after themselves here in acts 20 that he describes did they suddenly say that we don't have to keep the sabbath or the holy days well some may we've had that happen but we've also had people who just divide the flock and go off and and really don't do anything they don't do the work as as mr desimone was talking about here the importance of doing the work and boldness to do the work and encouraging us to pray about that and i certainly would put my my stamp and amen to what he was saying there to pray for god to give us not not just good health but but boldness to do the work of god and uh to help us in that way to you know all of our ministers especially uh as he pointed out the evangelist but but also all of our ministers to have that boldness to do the work of god and you know we have many ministers that are you know very bold in that and want to do the work and we're very thankful for that but they didn't all just say the sabbath and the holy days are done away with but they just scatter and they damage the work of god by taking people away and diminishing our ability to do the work and yet they may still be sabbath keepers they may still keep the holy days but they have divided the flock and that's a problem and that's not something that god looks too lightly upon who is it that might take your crown well as we see here false messiahs and then we have savage wolves and even so those who come from within but it doesn't have to be a religious leader of any kind to take your crown the bible counsels us to choose our associates very carefully to choose our associates carefully our close friends our associates notice over in psalm 1 the very first psalm and i believe i gave a sermon on this i don't always remember the the names of them titles of them but nevertheless if you look through our sermons you can find these things there and the first psalm we have in the first verse it's it's interesting you can take this apart in a very interesting way says blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly nor stands on the path of sinners nor sits in the seat of the scornful now there's a lot to that verse a lot more than that we realize we just kind of read over that and say well blessed is the man who's not a sinner but notice there's a progression he says blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly he doesn't walk along with the person who's ungodly that's not his close companion nor stands in the path of sinners so you walk and then you stand in the path you stand with them as it were nor sits in the seat of the scornful it's a progression of walking standing getting more interested and then sitting and becoming a part of the scornful a part of the cynical ones that are out there you know and it speaks of scornful scorn is a noun it means open contempt or disdain open contempt or disdain as a verb means reject in a contemptuous way you reject something or someone in a contemptuous way but what does contempt mean what does contempt mean well it's the feeling that a person or a thing is worthless or beneath consideration in other words your feeling toward the individual is so so negative that you write that person off and is this not the attitude that we see in our divided world we have come to the place brethren where we not only disagree with someone but if we disagree with that individual we put him in the category of not being worth listening to not being worthwhile we are so divided that we've put people either in favorable or unfavorable category internet facebook these types of things you you can defriend somebody because they said something that offended you now i'm not saying that we shouldn't sometimes defriend somebody because we simply don't want to listen anymore when someone is for example criticizing the church and everything well we we should put them out we we shouldn't invite them into our house as it says there and and one of john's uh later epistles it's the second or third epistle i forget which was but someone comes to you without this doctrine don't invite them into your house there is that point but there are so many other issues in this life where we just write people off we don't want to listen to them we don't want to hear them because they're either a good person or a bad person either a conservative or a liberal as an example and if they're liberal then there's nothing they can say that could possibly be right and if they're a conservative there's nothing that they could say that wouldn't be that that would not be right or vice versa it goes both ways and we need to understand that satan is trying to divide us he is dividing this world terribly so you know there are certain people that we do need to avoid however not because of the fact that they might have some different way of looking at something but uh we're talking about certain attitudes and approaches for example in proverbs 29 the 29th proverb the chapter of proverbs proverbs 29 and verse 22 it says here an angry man stirs up strife and a furious man abounds in transgression mr michael hay coop up in canada has a program i don't think it's out yet uh could be but anyway he talks about the news media i think that's still to come out and and he points out that the the media thrive on anger uh they they want you angry because you they know because they know you will come back and and they they feed on anger and they they stir people up the the liberal side of things if you listen to msnbc as the worst here in the united states and i'm sure that's there's these places in different parts of the world but there there is nothing that that mr trump has ever done that would be positive and if you listen to in to uh fox news it's pretty much the opposite although there is a little bit of criticism from time time but basically uh it's all mr trump is is right that that's here in the united states and i know you have your political uh situations where you are and it may be as bad or maybe a little bit better but that's what we face here in the united states and it it is either this or that it's either good or bad but depending on which side that you're on and he says here you know an angry man stirs up strife and that's what we're seeing in our world today we see people who are angry who are bitter who stir up strife who stir up uh protest in some case and protest maybe in our world we understand it not that we should be involved in it but then you get people who infiltrate it and they have this angry attitude and they turn it not into a protest but into a riot and they destroy and oftentimes they don't even know why they're angry somebody else has stirred them up to anger or to just having fun in some cases i i think sometimes they don't even know what the cause is you read there at ephesus uh or was it philippi uh where you know the greater part knew not y4 they had come together they got stirred up by demetrius and silversmiths and so forth they stirred them all up and uh you know for a couple hours they were yelling you know great is dying of the ephesians and they didn't even understand what they'd come together for and i think so often people get caught up in these protests and they don't even know what they're there for and they have different causes they they all bring out as soon as there's a protest as soon as there's a riot then you've got all the different causes represented there as they're each trying to promote their view now we need to understand what is happening in our world we need to understand how it affects us our world has become so polarized and this is one reason that we as the people of god have become polarized in a number of areas we've become very very polarized and that's not really good when we start despising someone who disagrees with us on something the expression your truth is not my truth brethren has some truth to it now don't misunderstand me there's truth and there's error but from our world view where you are listening only over here or being fed only by this and another person is being fed by something else he sees truth here this person sees truth over here and so your truth may not be my truth has some truth to it now this is why we have to get back to a proper foundation of real truth because it is either true or an error i'm just speaking of in people's minds they have different truths in john 17 verse 17 it says your word is truth jesus said that your word is truth that was in the prayer that he was giving there on the night in which he was betrayed just before he was betrayed he was praying the real lord's prayer as we sometimes say he says your word is truth that means this this book this is what truth is in psalm 119 verse 160 it says the entirety of your word is truth that's psalm 116 119 verse 160 and the 33rd psalm and verse 4 psalm 33 verse 4 the word of the lord is right this is what's right this is what we need to live by now let's get down to um so some some really more very specific things here but first of all let's understand the prince of the power of the air and what he's doing to you and what he's doing to me and i think that if we don't realize that he's affecting us then we're not going to be able to fight against him you have to know what he's trying to do if you're going to fight against him if you're going to you know go to the right source in ephesians 2 let's just look at that we're very familiar with it ephesians 2 and verse 1. we quote this so often but i think it's so important to understand it because it is talking about the world in which we live the world in which we swim you might say he's talking about our co-workers our neighbors it's talking about television it's talking about the internet it's talking about social media it's talking about the music that we listen to the movies the the television that we see he's talking about even the news which has become so polarized he says verse 1 of ephesians 2 you he made alive who were dead and trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world now we once walked according to the courseless world but brethren i'm here to say that too many of us are still walking according to the course of this world yes we've been baptized yes we've accepted jesus christ our personal savior yes we may pray every day we may study the bible every day but then we get out our smartphones or our computers or turn on the television and we get caught up in the course of this world according to the prince of the power of the air the spirit who now works and the sons of disobedience he's working at our neighbors he's working all over the place and if we allow him to work through us but the only way we can stop that is first of all if we're willing to admit that there's a problem here and too often we we're baptized we we go along we pay our ties we do all the things we're supposed to do in that way and we don't realize the influences that are all around us do you think that lot wasn't influenced by the society in which he lived he's called righteous lot but when you look at the story of lot's life you realize that he was influenced heavily by the world in which he lived when the angels came there and they wanted to know the men the angels the ones who'd come there to rescue him he offered his daughters and you know that that's hard to understand how someone would do that he got drunk a couple occasions and you know was moab and adam ammon i believe was were the end results of of his uh a couple times getting drunk right after this was after he was spared now this is not a an advertisement for us to say that well we can do all these things i think god requires a little bit more of us today because we have a lot more understanding in certain ways but nevertheless we have to realize he was influenced by it remember lot's wife she couldn't turn her back on the world in which she came out of she had children they were left behind probably grandchildren a nice home nicely decorated and everything and she had a very difficult time turning her back on all of that and escaping to a different world that god had called her to a different world a world away from sodom and all the things that were going on there you know the course of this world in revelation 18 and verse 4 revelation 18 and verse 4. it says here i heard another voice from heaven saying come out of her my people lest you share inner sins unless you receive of her plagues come out of this whole babylonian system not only the religious system that is going to be there at the end but this whole system of babylon of division of of sin of of everything that we see about us he says come out of her my people lest you you know fall prey to the plagues that that uh babylon is going to go through and second corinthians the 10th chapter 2 corinthians 10 and verse 3. this is something that we it seems like we used to use a scripture more often quote it and i think i use it recently but it seems like we've it's one of those scriptures that we we kind of take for granted we don't go to all the time and of course in in some ways this is a little bit taken out of context because paul is defending himself and he's saying the weapons of our warfare he's talking about himself he's talking about those with him but there's a principle here he says verse 3 for though we walk in the flesh we do not war according the flesh for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal or physical but mighty in god for pulling down strongholds you know we have arguments over whether to carry or not and we say carry we're talking about guns and there are people have very strong feelings on both sides of these things but he says the weapons of our warfare are not physical but mighty and god for pulling down strongholds he says casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of god bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of christ bring every thought every thought that we have into obedience into captivity to the obedience of christ now how much are we monitoring how we think how we react to things in this world are we monitoring our thoughts are we considering them or are we just allowing ourselves to go along with them and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled and again the context of that is really he's talking about those who were you know fighting or criticizing against them he's saying our our weapons are not physical but they're they're spiritual weapons but this applies to us as well that our weapons should not be physical but we should be able to pull down strongholds and cast down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of god we need to realize how satan is influencing not only the world but you and me he's using the media television internet platforms he's using celebrities he's using music and politics and far more to influence us i just saw a note that came from mr peter nathan uh this last week updating us on his trip in africa there and he's talking about the youth camp down in south africa and just has a paragraph this is in the bulletin for those of you over in the uk but he said quote one point for parents social media is a curse for the youth of our age i think that's that's pretty pretty stern isn't it but i would agree with him 100 percent it is a curse for the youth of our age and there's so much evidence out there i'm reading a book right now about irreversible about how the internet social media is affecting teenage girls to where they were they were girls all along and all sudden they get to be about 13 14 15 maybe even a little bit older and suddenly they think they need to be a boy and this is so different from the historical norm where it was mostly boys wanting to be girls and start very early in life but these are what they they recognize is that social media and all these influencers out there where you have young people at a very vulnerable age where being fitting in and being a part of things is so important and their their self-image and everything and you've got these influencers out there that are trying to take advantage of them and say this is the solution and what's interesting in the book it brings out that the most of the parents at least so far and about page 50 have been very uh open-minded about the lgbt movement and and this sort of thing but what they're seeing is their their daughters not getting happier with their decisions but becoming more and more uh depressed as they go into this direction the people trying to lead them and and it's kind of like mass hysteria and not mass but it it's they find these pockets within high schools of of six or seven or eight all of a sudden and they're all friends and it's like anorexia that uh you know influences others but it's it's amazing what is happening out there we need to understand that there are terrible things happening to our young people they are lonely they're actually dating less but it's all online and that does not satisfy the the the face-to-face in-person uh interaction that we need to have with one another but he says here as one presenter at the living youth program in belgium in 2018 stated quote facebook is not your friend end of quote mr peter nathan says such programs are really the enemy of today's youth and parents need to be alert to the time they're offspring spend on social media and i've heard some authorities say that no child under the age of 14 should be given us a cell phone or a smartphone or have access to it and some of the executives of silicon valley do not allow their kids to have these things and that they send them to schools where there is no electronic uh you know type of device and they they give them you know the traditional things because they know what this is doing to people and in some cases they'd like to turn around but it's not just the young we hear government leaders constantly bashed in the media made fun of ridiculed and called names and guess what folks we get caught up in it don't we sometimes we get caught up in it is this god's way because you see this is where real truth is it's not over here or over here but it's right here in the word of god let's notice over in acts the 23rd chapter acts 23 this is where paul was hauled before the sanhedrin i believe it was the council and at that time in verse 2 it says the high priest ananias commanded those who stood by to strike him on the mouth notice verse 3 then paul said to him god will strike you you whitewashed wall for you set to judge me according to law and do you command me to struck contrary to the law now he was right he understood what the law was and he understood that this command was not according to the law but he called him a white wash washed what sepulcher whitewashed wall verse 4 and those who stood by said do you revile god's high priest and paul said i did not know brethren that he was the high priest for it is written you shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people. he quoted from the old testament so the question is are we so caught up in the politics of our age that we throw out disparaging comments about other individuals i don't mean that we we disagree with their policies or whatever but to where we we are name-calling and uh you know just just the type of thing well i'll leave it up to you to figure that out but do we disparage our leaders or do we follow the word of god because this has an effect on us if we god knew that if we disparaged our physical leaders we would also disparage our spiritual leaders and there is an attitude and an approach that happens here and i'm not trying to defend our leaders i think that our leaders are making some terrible terrible decisions and i think that there are many who are hypocrites and that's you know christ called them hypocrites i think that's something we can say but we don't have to um there's some there's a there's a line that we should not cross through politics and the media satan is threatening people's crowns over such simple things as masking singing vaccinations quarantine all kinds of things he's manipulating our world so let's talk about where we are in the living church of god we recognize that controversial decisions need to be made and we have appealed to deuteronomy the 17th chapter i'm not going to turn there for sake of time but deuteronomy 17 verses 8 through 13. you can look that up and it tells us how controversial controversial decisions need to be made and for the most part you read that to people and they they just skip over and they go to what they want to because they don't want to answer what is stated there also acts the 15th chapter the controversy over circumcision which was a huge controversy back then god shows us how we are to settle uh controversial issues he makes it very clear there so let's look at our our history just briefly we've had to make decisions this year we canceled the ministerial conference at the last minute and there were some who perhaps thought that well that's not the right thing to do we've already got it planned and it was at the last minute you might say some already were on the way but it's a good thing we did cancel it because we had people coming in from all over the world and getting back home was not always easy things were happening so quickly in the month of march there early march our minister there or our leader the one that we're using over there in uh thailand happened to be here in charlotte for the conference his wife for a particular medical reasons was back in the united kingdom and as a result they were separated for seven months eight months whatever it was he was able to get back to thailand but she couldn't get home to thailand because she's blocked off there were good reasons for canceling it and god allowed us to cancel it at late time when we wouldn't be hurt financially which we could have been if we'd done it earlier but god worked that out we've had other decisions that had to be made and they were made very late there we made the decision to change how we were going to keep passover the knight to be much observed not the symbols but rather because we didn't know exactly what was happening at that time we didn't know how dangerous the the contagion was except that we knew that there was a huge problem with it so we said okay let's keep it locally in our own homes which many people do around this world year after year the night to be much observed and so forth we we changed the way that we kept sabbath services that we were doing it online and those were decisions that somewhat were made for us because the venues wouldn't allow it or the governments would not allow us meeting together but if the governments don't then the venues are not going to go against those in most cases because they could be shut down entirely so we had to make decisions and some of those decisions may have been a little overreaction to something or there may have been a perfect decision when it came to the feast of tabernacles we said let's go local and small and as it turned out that was a right decision i think that most of us look back on and see that it was right decision we shut down transferring overseas which frankly if people had their tickets and everything they wouldn't have been able to go to some places that one popular place was ireland but that was shut down from outsiders so there were a lot of things that we had to do but we were using the principle of being prudent proverbs 22 verse 3. and you know prudence means acting with or showing care and thought for the future looking ahead and showing some care and thought for it we have study papers on masks and singing you can go to the lcg.org website and we have some study papers on these subjects that you can look up now one of the things we decided was that at least for a time we would not be singing because of the the uh you know reports that that is much more transferable in terms of the virus after some time we've been able to look at what we're doing i know that here in charlotte we have very good social distancing as we did at most of the fee sites i think all the fee sites certainly in the united states where we had people separated by at least six feet sometimes ten feet or more and when we're wearing masks we we've looked around we said you know there's a greater chance of the spread of this in fellowshipping before and after because we're wearing masks but we're having to speak louder especially if there's a full auditorium and we are much closer because we want to hear we haven't found that there's been a a massive spread of the virus from our services you know there were a few people that got sick at the feast but we think that they probably didn't get it in services but probably got it at restaurants or other activities where people were meeting over meals and different things like that we don't know for sure in every case we know in some cases but you know there were just a relatively small number of people we've been meeting for months now and we don't see the spread of it from services as best we can tell and so we're going to make a modification and that modification is that we'll have two songs at the beginning one at the end just we're doing right now uh we'll you know modify that later keep modif we keep monitoring the situation but to say that we cannot sing at a moderate level while we're wearing a mask we just don't think is is reasonable at this point and so we're saying that if the government or venue uh restrictions uh allow it and we're proper masking and when i say proper masking not fake masking because some people have masks that really you know they're lacy and different things where you might as well not wear them and many people wear beneath their nose and you know that's not really doing the job it's not to protect you as protect others but uh you know where proper masking and proper distancing and there's ventilation that can be maintained we're no longer going to restrict singing as at an appropriate level i say at an appropriate level we don't have to be shouting but we can sing and sing melodiously along just as some have been uh humming we're going to allow that and uh if you're not sure whether your location allows it then you know check into that but our last song today will allow for people to to sing and i think that's going to be very encouraging because many of you have had the same thoughts that we've had here at headquarters so look we're fellowshipping we're talking loud and that can't be any worse than singing at a moderate level with a mask on the biggest problem has been with choirs where there's been no social distancing and no masking and you know loud voices and and that's where that's where the biggest problem has been not only in the actual performance but in the in the practices that they have so if if we have somebody especially vulnerable and you don't feel comfortable then you know make decisions accordingly what about vaccinations that's the biggest controversy coming up right now our next controversy and it could cause some people to decide well i'm so i don't like their stand on it so i'm going to go elsewhere well i i'd say don't let someone take your crown because that may be where you end up if you're not careful uh some people don't want to hold some this is a statement of mine some people don't want to be told what to do until they want to be told what to do you know some people don't want anybody telling them but then you get into a question like this and they want the church to make a definitive statement on it and i'll add and they're unforgiving in either instance people are unforgiving in either instance right now we have many concerns about vaccines so let me answer a few questions question number one quote i've heard that vaccines are made from aborted babies or unclean animals is that true well the answer to that is yes and no some vaccines are made uh and i say made they're in the process of making them involved aborted fetuses uh really going back to the 1960s and so it's not that there's going to be an aborted fetus put in you but there's there's a process and i i don't understand all i'm not going to try to explain it you can do your own research on it but is abortion involved with some vaccines and the answer is yes the pfizer and moderna vaccines that have just come out the answer is no some vaccines have used unclean animals but again are they injecting the unclean animal or is that the medium through which they they replicate the virus and harvest the virus and then it goes from you know from one to the next to the next but so there's it's pretty far apart from that but you know some people would say well we shouldn't do that and i'm not saying we should uh have a vaccine from you know a monkey or chimpanzee or something i think there's some dangers in that but nevertheless you know the same time people will take a transfusion which comes from an unclean source i mean if you take blood from me i'm an unclean animal i'm not just an animal human and put it in you there's a danger there isn't isn't there i know at least one person that died as a result of that because they weren't properly screening and you know hepatitis and destroying a person's liver and thousands of people have died that way but at the same time there are situations where if you don't have uh you know a transfusion you die anyway so people you know they make decisions based on the lesser of two evils in some cases uh there are people walking around probably a few in the church with pig valves heart valves because pigs are very similar to us genetically and and uh genetically and and sometimes in behavior but anyway um there's um uh you know that's a decision that people make it's a decision that people make do we condemn them for it i hope we don't i hope that if you think you know what you'll do that if you ever have to face that you follow through whatever that decision is so the the vaccines some are made with animal tissue of one sort or another whether it's human or uh some other animal some are not my understanding from everything i've read is the pfizer modern vaccines or not question number two is it a sin to be vaccinated is it a sin to be vaccinated well you know essentially our stand on this whole subject has not changed our stand is is the same as it's been for a long long time in the church of god here's a letter that we answer when people write in and ask about it says dear friend thank you for your question regarding vaccinations or immunization this subject has been a concern of many however neither the bible nor the living church of god teaches that immunization is a sin now i suppose there might be some who disagree with that and you're welcome to your own personal opinion as long as you keep it to yourselves but that's been the stance of the church for decades in fact the church as a spiritual body neither approves nor disapproves any of the many medical procedures extent today now that sentence by the way we probably will change and i'll tell you why we may change it because when we say uh disapproves any of the medical procedures extent today now they consider uh changing one's gender or sex as a medical procedure or abortion as a medical procedure and we certainly do not support those types of medical procedures we're talking about sickness a real legitimate sickness of some sort we don't tell people that they can't take insulin or they they have to take insulin we don't tell them whether to have chemotherapy if they have cancer which by the way that is devastating to the physical body much more so than than normally a vaccination would be i say normally because sometimes vaccinations have caused some very bad reactions i understand that i understand it very well my wife does working with severely handicapped children where one child after being vaccinated was you know severely handicapped but those are generally the the exceptions and again people have to make decisions based on uh you know various criteria uh risk and benefit but essentially the church of the spiritual body neither approves nor disapproves of the many medical procedures that our extent today i'd like to read here a little bit from an article in what is called the ambassador college portfolio this is the the newspaper at ambassador college this is the student newspaper this one is from october the second 1984. and the title is quarantine ends after three weeks ambassadors quarantine for red measles ended for 70 students wednesday september 26 after a three-week bout that seemed more like three years to some i've got a copy of it here you can see this this is 1984. mr armstrong was not only alive but he was in pasadena at the time his picture is right underneath the article and the picture has to do with the faculty reception for the incoming students and this is september and august or early september would have been the faculty reception it's it's unlikely that he was not aware of what was going on here as it turned out only five students contracted the measles but efforts to keep the problem spreading had close to 70 students in quarantine at one time or another faced with the problem of being quarantined on campus beyond this year's feast of tabernacles and missing weeks of classes almost all the students who are not already immune to the disease opted for inoculation which was administered wednesday september 26th so that's the end of the three weeks so the quarantine began at the beginning of the first week of september by officials from the pasadena health department about 15 students remain in quarantine some number some of them declining the inoculation due to the potential for allergic reactions to the vaccine now there are certain things that we could learn from this particular passage one is here is a a judgment that was made by the church when mr armstrong had been putting the church back on the track on a number of issues certainly uh the systematic theology project was was uh he rejected that which which had to do with uh with health and different things but here was a decision a judgment that was made that the students could be vaccinated right there on ambassador college campus so they go to the feast and so they would not miss more classes there at ambassador college so here are some observations we can make from it this was an example of vaccination on the ambassador college campus after 1979 when mr armstrong began putting things back on track second observation only five students came down with measles but 70 were quarantined this was precautionary isolation without symptoms see some people say we should only quarantine people if they have symptoms but here's an example of a judgment that was made at ambassador college the headquarters of the the worldwide church of god at the time while mr armstrong was there and the decision was made to quarantine people not with symptoms but without symptoms but they knew they had been exposed to it and the potential was there to spread it to others that counters the argument of dissenters that the only approach is to quarantine when symptoms are present thirdly quarantine was imposed by the college first before the government stepped in and this counters one more narrative that unless the government forces that these things like quarantined symptomless people we should resist and the fourth takeaway is that some students chose to remain quarantined of 15 students there over vaccinations so there was free choice it was a decision that people had to make and the ones who chose not to be vaccinated weren't kicked out of ambassador college those who were who chose vaccination they weren't kicked out it was a personal choice a medical decision that they had to make for themselves we need to understand that there are some difficult questions that people will come up with will there be a lock down where you have to be vaccinated people worried about that i think what we're going to see is that there may not be a government mandate but there will be mandates by schools by employers and whether you can go on an airplane whether you can go into a restaurant these are things that we will likely face and there are decisions that you have to make change job take your kids out of school go to a different school be vaccinated whatever it might be but i think we need to understand that the government in some cases if you disagree with them can take children out of the home and there there are going to be decisions people have to make it may not be comfortable decisions we may not want to make those decisions but in some cases if they threaten to take your children out of your home they're going to take them out and then they will vaccinate them and then you'll have to get them back which can be take time or you can go along with a vaccination that's a decision you're going to have to make i'm not going to make it for you the church is not going to make it for you those are personal decisions that's been our our stance on this uh you know for for decades in the church of god these are personal decisions we we don't disfellowship people haven't disfellowshipped people as far as i know as long as i've been in the ministry for decisions that they make when it comes to medical things i think there was a time early on when it was certainly frowned upon by by the church in some respects but we we allowed people to make those decisions again there are other decisions people make blood transfusions chemotherapy epipens for allergic reactions anesthesia for operations pain relievers and then they're all the natural therapies that are not always so natural there's a passage scripture i won't take time to turn to it for time but in second samuel 24 verses 12 to 14 david had sinned by numbering the people and he was it was not just uh taking a census there's nothing wrong with the census for the right reasons but he was trying to look at his army and see there were issues there that putting his faith in his armies and so forth and god gave him three choices and you can read those three choices and there wasn't a good one there three choices three evils you might say but god said he could do this this or this and finally david said well i'd rather put my hands or put my the decision in god's hands than putting our lives in the hands of our enemies and and uh others and so he chose what really was the lesser of three evils and i say evils that's uh maybe not the right word here because there are choices that god gave him sometimes we have to make decisions where neither one of them is what we really would like to do i often use the expression you know some people ask us questions and it's kind of like shall i shoot my grandmother the morning or the afternoon well neither is right neither is good and sometimes we are faced with those things in this life aren't we we need to see the big picture and let me just uh i've got more that i wanted to give here but let me just refer to titus as a last final scripture here titus the first chapter and and i bring this out here because i i realize that no matter what decision we make no matter how we work word something there will be those who will try to find something wrong about it we are sincerely as a church trying to make decisions based on the best knowledge that we have based on the scriptures that we have and so like that sentence i brought out there where you know we support medical procedures now we have to say something so that it's word in such a way that we don't support abortion we don't support assisted dying we don't you know suicide we don't support transgender operations and that sort of thing or or drug therapy for that we have to change that because we we want to cover ourselves because there's somebody that's always looking for something say gotcha and here in titus the first chapter in verse 10 says for there are many insubordinate both idol talkers and deceivers especially those of the circumcision he's telling titus whose mouths must be stopped who subvert whole households teaching things which they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain i'm going to skip down here to verse 15 and 16 where he says to the pure all things are pure but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure but even their mind and conscience are defiled they profess to know god but in works they deny him being abominable disobedient and disqualified for every good work in other words if if we have the right frame of mind and we read something we understand what the church is saying we don't look at a scripture where we say we support medical procedures you know of all sorts and say ah they're supporting abortion because we know the church doesn't support abortion or assisted suicide or transgender operations or drugs we understand that to appear all things are pure but to someone who is looking for a way to criticize the church they'll find it you know sometimes we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to word a sentence and we go back and forth for for sometimes hours just trying to find a way to word it so that it is it is uh bulletproof you might say and i finally have come to the conclusion that yes we want to be careful how we word things but we don't have to spend forever because no matter how we word it no matter how we state it somebody is going to find fault with it and you know if if they're not pure in heart and mind if they don't have the right attitude of looking for the positive if they're looking for something negative they'll find it no matter how we word it and so brethren we have to make decisions and and one decision that we we've made here is that our our stance on vaccines the same that they've always been just because we're in a pandemic doesn't change our stance on it it's still a pers personal decision that you have to make what we are going to say is that don't get on facebook and fight and argue over it and throw stones and put something in the category well they're not converted because they don't believe the way that i do i did see a thread that went on facebook here recently coming out of texas and i i have to say i was pleased to see that here was a a genuine conversation between members for the most part i guess with looking at facts and going back and forth but it was not it was not with with anger and resentment and hatred it was it was just discussion in the right way that's not the way it always is on these social media platforms but the fact is that god tells us that we have to answer to him and why should we judge another man's servant they're not my servants they're not your servants they're god's servants and so why can't we just accept the fact that people see things different for for a variety of reasons and if this person chooses to be vaccinated this person chooses not to be vaccinated why can't we love each other and why cannot we accept each other is this is a servant of god this is a servant of god and i may not agree with the decision that person's made for myself but that person is making a decision based on facts that apply to him and uh that the same facts may not apply to me some people may have uh maybe greater faith and maybe greater understanding of of what we're dealing with but brethren let's recognize that satan is trying to divide us he will try to take your crown and he's not there to replace that crown on somebody else he's there to displace that crown forever and he's going to use human beings and he's going to use all the tools at his disposal to take your crown brethren we have a wonderful and a great work to do and we have to get on with that work that god has given us to do but let's not let satan come along and use other individuals and other means to take our crown [Music] you

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Published: Fri May 28 2021