sermonette: Church of God Ecumenism

God's Work Changes
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 29-Jan-05; Sermon #703s; 17 minutes

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Last night Beth and I viewed a video called Born to Be Free. And it was produced by an ex-Mormon group. That has dedicated itself to reforming the Church of Latter-day Saints and In order to, let's say, inspire their people and anybody else With helping to reform the Church of the Latter-day Saints, they have come up with a video that highlights the worldwide Church of God and it's changed from, as they say, from cult to Orthodox. Um I'm not saying necessarily that you should see it. You do not have to, it probably make you up, make you mad, make you upset. Uh, it presented Herbert Armstrong as, and these are quotes here, Greg Albrecht was especially the one who, who characterized him like that. Like, like this, he was a false prophet. He was a heretic And at this point Greg Albrecht said, but I too was a heretic at the time, and he was a cult leader. And you and I are no more than poor, duped, ignorant cultists. And we still haven't come out of our A false teaching out of our false beliefs. Now it's not my intention today to rehash all of the controversies of the late 1980s and the early 1990s. That's been done a lot. It's been done too much. Many people are living in the past. It's something that has just been done AD nauseam, and I really mean it. It makes me almost sick to hear about it anymore. We were in the thick of this. I personally was in the thick of it from the very time that Joe Dukot started making changes in early 1987. And even you could say late '86 with some of the small ones that began to happen at that time. And so we went through basically 5 years, a little bit less than 5 years of this. While we were still in the worldwide Church of God between that time and early 1992. Which believe it or not, was 13 years ago, so The beginning of this was 18 years ago roughly. And we've come a long way since then. It's behind us. It's water over the dam. We here in the Church of the great God, primarily, I'd say the the bulk of us have moved on. However, for some, the questions still linger. One question in particular, I think. And that is why are we That is the Church of the great God and its members. Not doing more to unite the greater Church of God. Are we not adding to the confusion and disunity by remaining separate? Should there not be one church? One physical corporate entity is what they mean. One group of people under one leadership. Now today, in the few minutes we have remaining, I want to give you my understanding of why we are not engaging the Church of God or the greater Church of God, uh. In ecumenical talks. Why we are not Intent on joining with other people, other churches. And I think there are good reasons, and every once in a while we need to go over these. Now this video Born to Be Free along with the recent email question has spurred my thoughts on this matter. And to tell you the truth, I really do not think about it very much anymore. So it's actually been a long time since I've thought of these things. But I think it's profitable every once in a while to think these ideas through just to confirm what we understand as well as maybe to toss around a few new ideas. Now among the things we need to keep in mind are a few principles that we can find in the book of Ecclesiastes. So if you would please go back there, we will start in chapter 3. I'm only going to pull a few verses out of chapter 3. And then a couple out of chapter 7, and that will be the extent of things pretty much today. Ecclesiastes 3 verses 14 and 15. Now I want, I want you to catch the principles here. I know Solomon writes that whatever God does, it shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it. That men should fear before him that which has already been and what is to be has already been, and God requires an account of what is past. Now there are a couple of principles here. But The main one is that because we believe God is sovereign, we have to conclude that God scattered the church, and he did it for an important reason, one that is vital to his own purposes. And I should say not just vital for us as individuals but also uh. For The events during the end time. It's not just for us as particular individuals, but it's for the greaterprogress of end time events. There are many purposes why he scattered the church. But it says here if we pull this from Ecclesiastes 3:14, that God's act of scattering the church is forever. Meaning as long as the conditions last, as long as they need to be there, the church will remain scattered. And we can do nothing to change it. We can't add to it. We can't take away from it. He, when he is ready, will bring us back to physical unity again. And for him, that is not really as important as the spiritual unity we already have in Christ. He looks at things far differently than we do. We're united in Him. We do not necessarily have to be united in one corporate body. And The plain fact is that we will have to endure these conditions until he works to change matters. Now Solomon also says here, wow, that scared me. Solomon also says here, That God does these things to produce godly fear in us. That's what it says. It says God does it that man should fear before Him. We're supposed to learn from them and come to right conclusions, and these then affect our actions. They're designed to make us rethink our path. They're designed to make us consider what we are doing and how we are doing it. That is what happens when we truly fear God. We put his priorities first and we submit ourselves to his will, and these things that happen are designed to get us to that point. To make us sit up, think things through again, and follow God, submit to him in the way he's going. And as he says finally here, we should never forget that God is watching and will require an account of our actions. As I've mentioned in those sermons I did a few months ago, we will be judged according to our works. Especially during these times of crisis when the pressure is on, what will we do? If we fear God, we will follow him where he goes. If we do not really fear God, we will go by the wayside. OK, to Ecclesiastes 7. And verse 8 Solomon writes the end of a thing is better than its beginning, and the patient man or the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Now there are a lot of things I could have pulled out of here, but I just want to make us understand this when God is the prime mover of events. I mean, men do things and hopefully the end of things will be better than the beginning. But when God moves events, they are always better at the end than at the beginning, because he's bringing them about. Things may look pretty bleak and disastrous when events are moving to produce scattering and destruction, but when God destroys, he uses it to produce in time constructive change. So that something better comes out the other end. You might want to think of the sausage maker. What happens? Meat goes in and it gets ground up, but when it comes out the other end, it's a sausage and it's used for. Food, at least some people consider it food. And that's what happens. God puts us through the sausage grinder in order to perfect us and bring us to a finished product in the end. That's kind of a weird illustration, but it's kind of What happens? Think of it this way. When God sent the flood, perhaps the flood was the most disastrous, destructive event in all human history to this point. But when it was over, earth was renewed, and the decline of mankind slowed appreciably. And then he was able to work with mankind, raise up Abraham, raise up Israel, work with them, and eventually come to the point where the church was going to be founded. And his purpose moved on. We could also look at it in this way. When God destroyed Judah in the 6th century BC, it created conditions that provided the setting for the coming of Jesus Christ a few 100 years later. When God scattered the first century church, it says this right in the Book of Acts that it actually helped spread the gospel further around the world because the people got scattered. From Jerusalem, so they went to Samaria, and they went to other places nearby, and the gospel was preached to new groups of people. And something equally good will come out of the breakup of the worldwide Church of God, and I expect that it will be a refined, dedicated, and holy bride of Christ. So it's a good thing. Eventually The end of a thing is better than the beginning. So once again, Solomon says, be patient. Don't be proud and think that all things have just all gone to pieces and you're going to go off and do your own thing, he says, be patient. You'll end up better than the person who does the proud that works. OK, verse 13 and 14 for a final principle. He says consider the work of God. For who can make straight what he has made crooked? In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider. Surely God has appointed the one as well as the other so that man can find nothing that will happen after him. Notice that the subject is the work of God in particular. And God Himself is the one who makes crooked. He's not the one straightening things out. He's the one that's bending things to odd shapes. Now this should tell us something about our God. He's not against stirring things up or tearing things down or lighting a few fires or sending a few disasters. He says he creates these things. Where is that in Isaiah, I believe that he creates disaster. Solomon says that our attempt to straighten them. are absolutely futile. This is God working. We have absolutely no strength or authority to correct God or anything that he does. We simply have to deal with what he does. Make the most of it and get in conformity with what he's doing. If he makes something crooked, well, we better take the crooked. Because we can't make it straight. As Charles Whittaker put it in an early forerunner article, we have to zig when God zigs, not zag. Zagging is not what God does. He zigs. And so when he zigs, we zig. Again, Solomon says we have to consider, we have to think it through, especially when things are not going the way we think they should. God has appointed these things, he says. Do we want to find ourselves working against God? Not in the least. And then he says cynically that we cannot know what will happen in the future. However, You have to think that Solomon was thinking in terms of carnal man. If we are in unity with thought, If we have the mind of Christ, We can be prepared to move in any direction. That God Himself goes. We can anticipate We can at least be humble to see where he's working and go in that direction. It's a matter of understanding that God is not confined to doing things one way. We see that many times in his word, it's time and time again, his work changed with every person that he worked with. With Noah, he built an ark, but with Moses, he brought a nation out of out of captivity. But with Elijah, he showed who was God. But with David, he founded a dynasty. With the other Uh, prophets, he did this and that. With the apostles, he did something different. And with each apostle, he did something different. They went to different places. They did things a little differently. So we shouldn't be surprised that God does things differently than the way Herbert Armstrong did them. Because he worked with Herbert Armstrong in a certain way, and he's going to work with us in a different way. But that does not mean the truth changes. We have to be somewhat flexible. With being while being at the same time doctrinaire in matters of teaching and practice. The way we work is different from what we believe and what we practice. And sometimes Most of the time, the work that we do will be different than the works that have been done before because we are different people and God works with our strengths and our weaknesses. Let's conclude in Luke 21. Luke 21 verses 16 through 19. This is Luke's version of the sermon of the Olit prophecy. Excuse me. He writes, You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends, and they will send some of you to your death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But not a hair of your head shall be lost. In your patience possess your souls. I just wanted to wanted to bring this out. The time. Ahead As things get worse in this world are going to be far worse than what we've gone through in the scattering of the church. He says that some will even die. So we need to heed this advice that he gives us in verse 19. Be patient Endure Keep on doing what is right and good. And we will be saved. Things will get better. The church will be reunited. But in God's own time.