sermonette: News of the Work

Annual Report and Perspective
David C. Grabbe
Given 15-Oct-03; Sermon #FT03-08s; 16 minutes

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Good morning everyone. When I spoke to you last year at the feast, I gave you an overview of the internet projects of the Church of the Great God and explained some of the plans that we have for the future. Well, a year has passed, and here I am again to report on the way things have happened during the past year. A number of our plans were realized and a number of things happened that nobody quite expected, which in my mind just goes to show who is in charge of things and who is not. If you recall, much of what I spoke about last year had to do with the Bible tools website. That website was officially launched in December of last year, and I'm sure by now most of you have had a chance to see it. It was released with 8 Bible versions, 6 commentaries, 2 Bible dictionaries, the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 2 topical studies, and the treasury of Scripture knowledge. In the eyes of the search engine, if you want to put it that way, all of these resources add up to approximately 3 million pages. And to this point, the major search engines have only found approximately 3% of those pages. Now, in addition to what is already on Bible Tool's website, we still have an additional 5 commentaries, 2 lexicons, 3 dictionaries, 2 concordances, and a dozen historical reference works such as the works of Josephus. All of these are in electronic format that can be added to the website as God wills and as time allows. One of the long term ideas, long term ideas presented to you last year was a church commentary which would consist of material already produced by the Church of the great God. Well, the forerunner commentary was started shortly after the Bible tool's website was released, and we've already had someone write in and ask if you could purchase it in a bookstore. The forerunner commentary now contains over 3100 entries. It consists of material collected from 4 booklets, 38 transcripts, and 397 forerunner articles in Bible studies. And this represents approximately 1/4 of the resources that the Church of the Great God has produced in the last 12 years. In addition to providing a commentary on various scriptures, the same material has also been organized into a topical commentary. In this way, a person looking for information on the 7th Day Sabbath, for example, can see all of the forerunner commentary entries that relate to the Sabbath, along with the verses to which each commentary entry refers. The forerunner of topical commentary currently has over 1500 subjects contained within it, which is somewhere between the number of topics contained in Nave's topical Bible and Tory's topical textbook, and it continues to grow. As most of you are aware, I'm Pentecost of this year, we started another daily email newsletter. The Borean daily verse and comment is drawn from a flex number of entries in the forerunner of commentary that are particularly effective in explaining a verse or a series of verses. The original intent was to provide the church with these daily nuggets of wisdom and to continually reiterate the core principles of the gospel. But this is where something unexpected happens. The intended audience was the church, the remnants. But the brilliance seems to have escape the bounds and is now proving to be a rapidly growing means of preaching to the world. One month after pet costs, there are 488 subscribers to the Berean. Within two months there are over 1000 subscribers, and today, brethren, the Berean newsletter is going out to over 2000 subscribers on a daily basis. And incidentally we reached this mark on the opening night of the feast just a few days ago. This is without any external advertising campaign. This has come about simply by people finding the website and signing up over the past few months. The Bible Tools website website has far more activity on it than all of our other 3 websites combined. Last month on Bible Tools, there were over 1 million page requests. I'll let that sink in for just a minute. This works out to an average of approximately 1 page request every other second. Also last month on Bible tools, we had an average of over 2000 individual visitors each day, and on some days there were there were as many as 3000 visitors. What is especially interesting about this is that the vast majority, probably 95% or more of these visitors are not coming to the website from the daily newsletter. And what this means is that we are not only reaching 2000 subscribers, we are also reaching thousands of others who are finding the website through through various means. And as I emphasized last year, we still have no idea where this is headed or where it's going to end up, but in the meantime, these numbers to me are staggering. As I said, Bible tools is where most of the activity is right now, but I do not want to give you the impression that the other websites have fallen off. In the last year, the average number of visitors on both the Sabbath.org website and on CGG.org has literally doubled. And the number of visitors on the World Watch daily website has tripled in the last year, and we currently have over 1000 subscribers to the World Watch daily newsletter. As you can see, all of the websites have demonstrated very dramatic growth in the past year. This year witnessed another milestone. Between October 20th of the year 2000 and August 29th of 2003, Dr. David Moss has written 1,0024 abstracts or summaries for the audio files audio files on CGD.org. This number represents all of the sermons, sermonettes, and Bible studies that have been digit digitally recorded since the church's inception, as well as 216 World Tomorrow programs given by Herbert W. Armstrong. And incidentally, Dr. Moss is also the one assigning the related topics of study that you can see at the bottom of the Berean newsletter, and we are very appreciative of the countless hours that you have poured into these endeavors. In August of this year, we received permission from the Lachman Foundation to make use of the Amplified Bible on the Bible tool's website. The amplified Bible is considered by many to be the most literal translation of the Bible because of the synonyms and alternate phrases that are contained within a given passage, and it is usually easier to read than a King James English. The Lachman Foundation holds the copyright to this Bible, but they gave us permission to use it, provided that we use the correct copyright information. I believe we can see God's intervention in this, in this door being opened because the Lachman Foundation is quite strict in the rules for its usage. The Lachman Foundation is very closely associated with Gospelcom.net. For those of you who aren't familiar with it this website is responsible for one of the largest mainstream Christian websites on the internet, such as Biblegateway.com and CrossSearch.com. Considering that Bible tools is in the same marketplace as Bible Gateway and could be seen by some as a competitor, I believe we were granted favor in the eyes of the Lochman Foundation by God to be able to use the amplified Bible on our website. Before I move on to the next section, I'd like to briefly thank everyone who has been involved to any degree in these various projects over the years. This truly has been a work of synergy and of cooperation, and the list of names would take a page by itself. But thank you to all of the transcribers, both Dutch, French, and English. The artists, the proofreaders, the book typists, our editor, the visionaries, the audio experts, the technical gurus, the contributing forerunner writers, the speakers, those praying for this work, and anyone else that has contributed in some way, large or small, over the years. Given the little old ladies and others who write in and tell us what is broken, their service is appreciated tremendously. Now up to this point I've been describing the news of the work from a corporate perspective, but in the time that remains, I'm going to change direction slightly and pose a question. What news of the work of God is there in your life? To begin to explore this question, please turn with me to John 6. John 6 starting in verse 28. Then they said unto him, What shall we do? Do we might work the works of God. Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God that you believe on Him who He has sent. Psalm 7412 also says that the God, the King of old, is working salvation in the midst of the earth. This in the sovereign's own words, is the work of God. Our salvation and development are the work of God. It is by grace through faith that it is through belief in the one that God has sent. So to rephrase the question, how much belief is evidenced by your own life? This morning I've given you numbers and statistics about the corporate work, the secondary work, and they are impressive numbers to be sure. But it is paradoxical that the true success of the work cannot be measured in human terms. One cannot convert his level of faith to a number and chart it on the graph. Only God can track our belief either at any given point in time or for the entirety of our lives, and because of this, it is impossible for us to really know how effective this small work is. Neither more website visitors nor more newsletter subscribers are guarantees that faith is being increased, or that an individual's belief is being bolstered. It should be evident to all that websites cannot. Websites email newsletters, magazines, or even radio and television broadcasts cannot by themselves generate the faith that is necessary for salvation. These things cannot build the character of God within us. Our salvation is by grace through faith, and both of these gifts are from God. Also, Paul tells us faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, but simply hearing the word of God does not automatically infuse within us faith to salvation, and simply reading an email newsletter cannot create character. As John showed in his last sermon, the real problems of this present evil age cannot be solved by technology. To those that God calls, He is willing to give every good gift, and certainly faith is very near the top of that list. He supplies both the grace and the faith that are needed for our salvation. He has given us the gospel message about His kingdom, but the principal point is what we do with them. We are judged by what we do with what we have been given, and those that God has called have been given a great deal indeed. Our faith, our belief is going to be manifested in the way that we live our lives and conduct ourselves and our relationships. For example, when we truly believe God and when we believe in the one whom He sent, we will be poor in spirit because we will clearly recognize our spiritual spiritual poverty in relation to God. When we believe, we will mourn with godly sorrow at the state of our incurable heart. We will be meek in our interactions with others. Because we will recognize that we are all finished before God and all deserve death. We hunger and thirst for the righteousness of the one. In whom we believe and recognize our own righteousness as filthy rags. When we truly believe in a merciful mediator, we will likewise be merciful to others and extend to them the same kindness that has been extended to us. When we believe in the holy one of Israel, our heart will be pure because the focus of all of our thoughts and intentions will be on the things that are true, that are noble, that are just, pure, lovely, and virtuous. When we truly believe in Christ with His living faith, we will be peacemakers, not by techniques of mediation or dialogue, but by our core character and attitude. And finally, when we believe in the one whom the world crucified, we will likewise be persecuted because our life and works will resemble the objects of our belief, and the world will, will reject us just as it rejected him. Galatians chapter 3 shows that the gift of the Holy Spirit is also dependent upon our faith, upon our belief. We turn to the book of Galatians. Galatians 3 starting in verse 2. This only would I learn of you. Received you the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain, if it yet be in vain? He therefore that ministers to you the Spirit and works miracles among you, does he it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith, even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. These verses show that it is faith. It is true belief in God that is the means by which we receive the Holy Spirit. In Acts 5:32 adds that obedience to God's law is one of the requirements. So we have two more indicators of faith and belief in our lives obedience to God, which then serves as a foundation for the Holy Spirit to produce fruit. And the result of the Holy Spirit being active in a person's life, of course, will be love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control. A person whose life is dominated by God and is led by His spirit is going to be exhibiting these things in addition to obeying God's law, and it is a person's faith that under good undergirds makes all of these things possible. That person will not be merely obeying, but obeying and imitating Jesus Christ. Such a person will be exhibiting these characteristics because he is a begotten son of God, and in being a Son of God, he will be exhibiting the traits of his father. These are the indicators of faith and belief, and these are the things by which we as individuals can evaluate, at least to some degree, the work of God in our own lives. All these things have been presented here like a snapshot in time, but the reality is that this is all part of a process. We are part of God's ongoing workmanship. The fruit of the spirit is called a fruit because it takes time to develop. It is not produced overnight. In the same way, the attributes given in the beatitudes are ones that are developed over time and over years of submission to God. But in the final analysis, what it comes down to is what we do with what we have been given. It comes down to the choices we make based on the understanding that we have been blessed with. We know that God gives the grace and the faith necessary for salvation and thus accomplishes the overwhelming majority of the work. But what we do with these gifts is in our own hands. And so looking at the complexities of this process, we can see that a corporate work is a secondary work. It is a means to an end, and that end is salvation and sanctification. That salvation is now for us individually and later for the rest of the world, as this feast of Tabernacles represents. But the corporate work is not the end in itself. The websites, the forerunner magazine, the sermon tapes, and the email newsletters are the most cost effective way for the Church of the God, Church of the great God to preach the gospel to the church and to the world, and they are the doors that have been opened to us. But the true effectiveness is going to be determined by God and to a much lesser extent by the individual. In his book entitled Of God and Man. I believe Aden Poser captured the essence of what our focus should be with regard to the work of God, and I'll conclude with this. Aden Tozer said, the popular notion that the first obligation of the church is to spread the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth is false. Her first obligation is to be spiritually worthy to spread it.