Aaron Dean Remembers Herbert W. Armstrong

Aaron Dean, aide to Herbert Armstrong
and Joseph Tkach Sr., speaks

By Aaron Dean

[When this was written years ago, the following information was current]
Mr. Dean, assistant professor of business administration at Ambassador University, worked closely with Herbert W. Armstrong from 1974 to 1986, first as a steward then as aide, flying with the late pastor general on the private jet owned by the Worldwide Church of God, accompanying him on many trips to visit officials of various nations.

Mr. Dean also worked with Mr. Armstrong's successor, Joseph Tkach Sr., from Mr. Armstrong's death, in January 1986 until late 1986. This article is a lightly edited and condensed version of a sermon Mr. Dean delivered to the Big Sandy congregation of the United Church of God July 20.

Mr. Dean lives with his wife and two children in Gladewater, Texas.

I have a long history in the Big Sandy area with the Church of God in that I was one of the few privileged people to go through 12 years of Imperial Schools with somewhat different feelings from it than some other people who went through Imperial Schools for a few years.

I enjoyed my stay there. I started Imperial Schools in Big Sandy, Texas, because my father, my real father, had died when I was about 3 1/2 in a construction accident, and Mr. [Dean] Blackwell did the funeral and told my mom that, because she was a widow with children, she should move to Big Sandy.

But I didn't stay in Big Sandy. In 1960 we moved to Pasadena, and I finished Imperial Schools in Pasadena.

I came back to Big Sandy in 1970 for [Ambassador] college and stayed here long enough to get called in a few times by Mr. [Les] McCullough [the on-site administrator at AC] and others.

Then I graduated from the Pasadena campus, and I was supposed to go out as a trainee in the field at Salt Lake City when on graduation day at brunch Mr. [Herbert] Armstrong called me.

Of course, in those days it was a formal brunch, and nobody got paged during brunch. When I got paged I thought I'd really done something major. Then, when Mr. Armstrong was on the phone, he said was, "Do you know who this is?"

It wasn't hard to know who that was.

"Aaron, I want you to fly with me."

I said, "Well, okay. Uh, when?"

He said, "Well, we leave Monday morning at 8 o'clock."

I said, "But I was supposed to go for training in Salt Lake City, but if that's what you want me to do I'm sure that'll be okay."

And he said, "Yes, I'm sure that will be okay."

Serving from scratch

I was probably one of the last people that many expected to be working with him [as airplane steward], although I had learned to cook. I did all the special dinners for clubs, and the clubs always ate well.

Being the steward meant you cooked the food and served it. You served everything on china, and of course everything was cooked from scratch.

I also ended up doing some setup, hotel arrangements, customs-basically I was the embassy for the work. You could also say I was the gofer, because I was the one everybody always said go for this, go for that.

It was an interesting time in my life and provided me with a lot of stories, which I tell now because they tend to keep you people awake, which is something a minister always tries to do when he's speaking.

It was fascinating also to witness what happened during those years and to see why Mr. Armstrong made a lot of the decisions he did. I'd grown up in the church and known virtually all of the players during those years, from various aspects, some very well.

I'm going to be 44 next month, so look how old that makes them. But it's a matter of older is wiser.

As a child you're always told to tell the truth and be honest and God will work everything out. Then all of a sudden you tell the truth and you're honest and you get thrown out of the church.

Yes, I've probably been thrown out of the church more than anyone else and with just cause sometimes I suppose, if what Mr. Armstrong thought I did was true.

I have a kindred spirit with Mr. [Dave] Havir [pastor of United Church of God, Big Sandy] in that I'm not going to be the first one to stand up and raise my hand for persecution or stoning or martyrdom. I'm willing to take my share when it comes, but I'm not going to stand up and ask for it because it's no fun. I've always prayed, when I go through one of these trials, "God, please let this be my trial and not my preparation for one."

Because the trials get worse. They always get worse. Trial and testing builds faith, and faith has to be tried and tested a little harder and further, although it's nice to get a respite once in a while.

I feel like the last few years in some ways for me have been a respite, having traveled for 12 years while being married.

Seven-year honeymoon

Michelle and I were on honeymoon for seven years because I was home only a little of the time. We didn't have children during that time, even though we had always wanted children. People in the congregation were praying for my wife to get pregnant, and we were praying that she wouldn't. God heard us and not you, thankfully.

A lot of people thought we were barren, but, no, we were just very careful, and part of being careful is just never being there.

So now I have little kids, which makes people think I'm a lot younger than I am. I have friends with whom I went to college who themselves have kids in college.

After being the steward on the plane for a while and being there during the '70s when Mr. Armstrong was traveling quite extensively, we were kept overseas at times for various persons' reasons and agendas that weren't necessarily good reasons, but that wasn't my choice.

We also made a lot of visits [to many countries and government leaders] that were very good. We would spend as much as six or eight weeks overseas and then come home for a week and then leave again.

In 1975 the airplane was in the United States only 51 days. The rest of the time we were overseas. That's not any way to run a marriage, I can assure you. During that time we were allowed basically one 10-minute phone call home a week.

A 10-minute phone call a week to your wife isn't exactly the most pleasant thing. This was back in the old days. There was no Sprint. A 10-minute phone call could cost you $100.

If your wife was there, was she awake? And which one of you wants to be awake at 3 in the morning so the other can call in the daytime?

You'd call the operator and say, "I'd like to place a call."

And she'd say, "Yes, sir, that'll take about 10 hours."

Great. By then you've left, gone somewhere else.

I remember getting calls at 4 o'clock in the morning: "Sir, your call's ready."

And then by that time, of course, my wife had gone to work, and I didn't get to talk to her.

When you finally got through you had the problem of all the warbles and buzzes in the line as well as the delay because of the wiring and the satellites. Sometimes you'd say hello and hear yourself three times, and then you'd both talk at the same time and the echo would come back, and then you'd start screaming because you couldn't hear each other.

Usually I was mad after a 10-minute phone call. I actually was more in love with her before I started the call than I was afterwards.

God will help

I've always told people that, if God asks you to do something and calls you to it, He helps you through it.

People would ask me, "How do you get this job? How do you do this? How do you do that?"

I would say, "Well, don't ask for it. If God wants you to do it, He'll make you do it. And, if He makes you do it, He'll help you do it."

If He doesn't help you, you'll end up divorced. You'll end up with a broken family. You'll end up with children who raise themselves. You can do things that you choose to do for God that end up taking a toll on your family.

Seeing some of that at the time, one thing I could control was whether we had children, so my wife and I controlled that.

Michelle wanted me to quit a couple of times, but I couldn't. I had promised Mr. Armstrong I wouldn't quit, but there were times when it was very difficult.

I took a trip once and came back after 3 1/2 weeks, which was early for us, and left a note on the refrigerator, because two hours later I got a call and had to leave again.

Not in the market

After the receivership [imposed by a California court in 1979 on the WCG] and after Mr. [Stanley] Rader [a church attorney and treasurer and assistant to Mr. Armstrong] was gone and various things happened, I became Mr. Armstrong's aide.

I didn't want that job, either. Mr. Armstrong asked me to be his aide, but I told him I didn't want the job. I told him I'd seen the job, I knew what it was, and I didn't want it. I told him I wasn't sure it could be done.

So he let me off. He asked me a couple of weeks later to do it again.

So I turned him down the second time, and he let me off.

Then, finally, about a month after he asked me the first time, he said, "I want you to be my aide."

"Mr. Armstrong," I said, "you know I don't want the job. I'm already traveling anyway. I'm already the steward on the plane, I'll do whatever you want, but to be your aide as well is more than I want to do, and I'm not sure that's who God wants."

"Well, Aaron," he said, "you're going to have to do it anyway."

I said, "Mr. Armstrong, if you're going to order me to do it I will do it."

Then he said, "Well, I don't even know if you can do it."

I said, "Well, thanks a lot. Why do you keep asking me, then? But if you want me I'll do it."

I said I saw one advantage to my taking the job, because at this time I was only in my late 20s.

"At least people won't have to worry about who the second witness is," I told him.

He said, "What do you mean?"

"The problem with the church over the years has been that everybody's tried to come up with the second witness."

"Who's the first witness?" he said.

"Everybody thinks you are," I said.

"I've never said that. Who said that?"

"Well, Mr. Armstrong, you know it's in the Bible that there are two of them, and obviously you're doing the work, and it's kind of a logical assumption. Most of the time we've always made whoever happened to be your assistant or lead evangelist the second witness."

Actually, we were only trying to get Christ to come back because this is a mess down here. The way to get Christ back was to come up with the two witnesses and get the 31�2 years over with and get on with it.

But, Mr. Armstrong said, "God will point out who they are."

Didn't believe in vacations

I never had a vacation when I worked for Mr. Armstrong because he didn't believe in vacations, at least for himself, although he let other people have time off, and he knew there was a need for family. He would address the work in such urgent terms that it seemed like you should always be doing the work.

In fact, there were times when he asked, "Why isn't anyone working on Sundays?"

"Mr. Armstrong, when are people supposed to be with their families? You teach families?"

"Yes."

"When are they supposed to go camping. When are they supposed to go fishing? When are they supposed to take their kids out?"

"Well, okay. Well, you and I can work, though. You don't have any kids."

"Yeah. Thanks a lot. I do have a wife, you know."

When I became the aide I did not get another steward on the plane. I was still the gofer as well as his aide, which meant that I did all the work that everybody else did before plus mine.

"In the past people have had control of the money, control of the schedule, and they have been able to lie to you," I said to Mr. Armstrong, "but I'm not going to do any of those. So I'm not sure I can do the job."

I'd seen over the years a number of people who had lied to Mr. Armstrong and the actions he had taken based on some of that misinformation, which was unfortunate. He realized some of these things later on when he would find out the truth. But some things are hard to undo.

I was always trying to be honest with him, totally open. I just told him I could do only what God wants done. I said I'm not going to do some of the things the way they were done before, and he didn't even know how a lot of things had been done in the past.

I find this fascinating because people who write about him now talk about things he supposedly knew and did and said.

I've read so much stuff. I've received literature from every splinter group and from people for us, people against us, people whatever, because they send it to me for whatever reason.

But things didn't happen the way other people perceived them.

Now, like in every rumor, every story you read, there is a certain element of truth to them. It's just a matter of what is the truth?

Yacht in Monte Carlo

One of the stories that I was reading the other night was about the yacht in Monte Carlo. This was presented in the light that Mr. Armstrong was having this gay lifestyle, running around, enjoying life and partying and had this big yacht and was just spending all your tithe money irreverently.

I'm looking at this and I think: This is incredible. I was there and know exactly what happened and how it happened. In fact, I have a picture of the boat, the Jolly Roger.

We went down to Monte Carlo because we had to sit and wait for a meeting and because the hotel was actually cheaper there than it was in Paris.

Mr. Armstrong's wife [Ramona] was there; this was '77 or '78. The arrangements for the boat had been made by someone who had had my position formerly, who is no longer with any of the churches as far as I know. He made arrangements for the boat, and Mr. Armstrong didn't know anything about it.

Ramona [Mr. Armstrong's second wife, whom he married in 1976 and divorced in 1982] had taken her son with her on this trip. He was 16 at the time. This son was from her first marriage, the stepson of Mr. Armstrong. She wanted to go out on the water, because you sit in a hotel room, and hotel rooms are hotel rooms.

Hotel rooms are like prisons. It's not a game-show prize when you sit in a hotel room and work all day long. It's more comfortable than being in jail, but still you're pretty much locked up where you are.

The person wrote about this boat and all this stuff Mr. Armstrong supposedly knew about. I remember he [Mr. Armstrong] was sitting in the hotel room typing all the time and was asked every day, "Would you like to go out?"

"No, he said, "I'm busy. I'm working."

Finally he was told, "There's power on the boat. You can plug in your typewriter and type."

So finally he agreed to go have lunch on the boat.

He went out to have lunch, took his typewriter with him and worked, then came back and typed.

He had the boat for several days, that's true.

But later on when I talked to Mr. Armstrong I learned that he was told that this was a friend's boat and that the friends were letting us use it in their absence. When he found out we were paying for it, he hit the ceiling. He was very upset, but what do you do at that point?

What's always funny to me about some of these stories is that the man was at that time 84 or 85 years old. Some of you are that old. Now, how much do you go out and party? Do you go out and water-ski behind a boat? You just don't do things like that at that age.

Yet there's always some kind of truth behind some of it. Was there a boat? Yes, there was. Was it used? Yes, it was. Did he use it? He went out once for lunch and then typed part of an article on it and came back to the hotel. Did he know about it? He knew there was a boat; he didn't know he was paying for it.

When he found out he was paying for it, what did he think about it? He was disgusted. Did he write about it in The Worldwide News? No. Did he advertise it? No. Usually when something like that happens you don't go around trying to make a big scene about a problem. He just made sure it didn't happen again.

Did we ever have another yacht after that? No. You correct things as they come.

There are a lot of stories that have some basis in truth yet are totally wrong in the message they convey.

Certificates of deposit

Another story you read about is that Mr. Armstrong carried a couple of certificates of deposit-in the six figures, they always say. That's exactly what they were: They were $100,000 each. And he carried two of them.

The story says they were made out to him so that if the attorney general [of California] came after him he would be able to flee the country or whatever, and there's an element of truth to that.

When the receivership came in '79 and the state took over the church for a time, the church had a certain vulnerability. We set up an office in Tucson at that time, and it cost quite a bit.

Similarly, United right now is deciding whether to move headquarters. And what's the big concern? Dollars, the cost.

If you move a little way, it'll cost you half a million dollars. If you move to another state, it'll cost you a million dollars for all of the costs involved in the transfer.

Since then California has passed laws that make it a little harder for them to do what they did in '79, but Mr. Armstrong carried those CDs. They were an investment; they were making money; they belonged to the church; they didn't belong to him. Yet he could cash them. Yes, if the state came and tried to shut down the church he could go set up an office, and that's what they were for-not for him personally, not for his own use.

Mr. Armstrong's salary was separate from that, but a lot of things were done that people didn't understand the reasons for, and they'd write their own reasons for them.

Mr. Armstrong would no more take the money and use it for himself than anything because he was not a thief, and he was very careful with the money.

Now, there were times he spent money, and he had grown up in an era when if you paid more for something it was worth more. I'd talk about sales, but he always thought that at sales you were getting seconds or something, and I suppose that back in 1905 and 1910 if you bought something on sale it probably was a second. Some of the things that he went through with poverty in the Depression and 30 years of the church left certain marks on him.

I had his last years

He could buy crystalabra lanterns for the [Ambassador] Auditorium, yet when he wrote a note on a half sheet of paper he'd tear the other half off and put it in his pocket. He'd write on a corner of that, and he'd tear that in half, and he'd keep the quarter. So he had all these pieces of paper around. There were things that were unusual about him that others probably knew as well, although I knew a lot of them because I had the last years of his life.

I had more job security than others who had been fired before me because when I was with him I was his eyes and ears. When he fired me he couldn't read, and he couldn't see, and he couldn't hear. It doesn't take very long to realize, when you're sitting there twiddling your thumbs, that maybe that wasn't such a good idea firing the kid.

So I'd get asked back.

Then I'd get to talk to him and explain what had happened.

Oftentimes he would forget things a lot quicker than I would, and that's naturally the way it goes when you're the one on the other end of the knife. You tend to bleed a little more.

Everybody knows

People say, "Well, everybody knows Mr. Armstrong made mistakes."

What's so special about that statement? I don't like hearing it because it means something different to different people. Some people say it so they can talk about what his mistakes were. Other people say it so they can maybe appear better themselves. Others say it because they want to say that God wasn't leading him or whatever.

What I would say is that Mr. Armstrong wanted to do what God wanted. There were times when it was unclear, and all of you are a witness to that. There are times when it is unclear exactly what you're supposed to do. Why did some people leave [the Worldwide Church of God] early in this latest escapade? Why did some leave in the middle? Why are some leaving now? Why are some people still sitting where they're sitting?

Half and half

Because it's not always obvious what God wants you to do. There are choices that have to be made. Why and when do you make those choices? God leads each of us individually in that. It is difficult because we'd like for all of us to do it en masse, because there's comfort in numbers.

This leads us to judge other people in what they say and what they do, which is something we shouldn't do.

God is teaching us a lot of lessons right now. Mr. Armstrong always said, "Half you people don't get it."

Now we know which half.

I didn't know it; I didn't understand it; I heard him say it. I said, "Mr. Armstrong, when you die half the church is going to leave? Why? We have the truths. They're so solid. The Bible is so obvious."

Well, I was sitting next to some people to whom it wasn't so obvious. I made the assumption like many of you that the person I sat next to believed what I did when they didn't.

Each person meets their Waterloo-their time and their test-at different times.

When you see something's wrong, what are you supposed to do, and when are you supposed to do something about it?

The reason I'm telling some of these things now is that enough water's gone under the bridge.

Death-bed promises

I made a lot of promises to Mr. Armstrong on his death bed that I kept as faithfully as I could. There are others who made promises who didn't do so, which is unfortunate, unfortunate for them.

I've gotten calls from members for the last 10 years, hundreds of them from all different countries in different languages, with interpreters at times, asking questions about various things and telling people hold onto what's true, yet at the same time trying to be loyal, because we were taught loyalty in government for so many years.

When did it start for me? It started the day after Mr. Armstrong died [on Jan. 16, 1986]. One of the promises that was made [by someone else] to Mr. Armstrong was broken the day after he died. I fought a battle from that point on. My wife and I knew a lot of things and saw a lot of things that we had to live with, things that you felt like standing up and shouting and saying something about.

I did say a lot of things, but I said them to Mr. [Joseph] Tkach [Sr.].

I made the promise to Mr. Armstrong that I would help Mr. Tkach as much as I could, and I would tell him if I felt he was doing something wrong or something that would cause the work trouble.

So I did. I said them respectfully and positively as much as I could.

Mr. Tkach would get mad at me, but the points I would make would be logical, so he would calm down a little bit, but at the same time he didn't want to hear it.

Each time something like this would happen I would lose another one of the titles that had been given to me over the years, which I didn't care about. I have a whole stack of cards that say I'm everything from a gofer to a vice president and the vice president of different corporations.

Mr. Armstrong would joke with me, "What are you supposed to be today when we go on this visit?"

We'd pull out one of the cards and decide who I should be.

I ended up being on most of the boards worldwide. As I would bring things up to Mr. Tkach, I would find myself removed from the board and removed from the council of elders and removed as vice president of the foundation, and usually rather unceremoniously.

I found out I wasn't vice president of the foundation from a student on the elevator, which I thought was rather unusual, but things like that would happen.

Why Mr. Tkach?

A lot of you are probably asking: Why did Mr. Armstrong appoint Mr. Tkach, and how did it happen?

Mr. Armstrong and I had argued for a couple or three years about whether he could appoint his successor or not. It was a valid question.

I told Mr. Armstrong, "If God tells you who you should appoint, then I think yes. But, if He doesn't tell you who to appoint, then I don't think you can."

We didn't see Elijah's chariot coming down and the mantle falling off of it, and there was nothing really obvious to anyone concerning who or what should be done.

I would say, "Mr. Armstrong, God can keep you alive if He wants to, and if He doesn't He'll sort it out."

That went on until he finally, about the last six months of his life, became ill. He'd been ill for a long time, although we really didn't know it. His blood count had been going down; he'd quit producing red blood cells. At least he was losing more than he was gaining.

In fact, his doctors were amazed because in the last couple of months of his life he was operating at a level of red blood cells at which most people would be unconscious. Yet he was still writing and working.

Dr. Martin, the old gentlemen, was amazed at Mr. Armstrong's clarity of thought and what he could do. He'd come up and sit with him and watch the telecast on his medical visits.

Guinea pig for remedies

Mr. Armstrong's blood count was really low and had been dropping for some time. Part of the angina pain he had was actually a low blood count.

Of course, we had 20,000 home remedies from all the members in the church telling us what he could do, and I became the guinea pig for most of those remedies.

Some of those things do make you feel different. I had bee's pollen from the Arctic Circle, and I had all sorts of funny things. As long as it was natural, I wouldn't mind taking it.

Wanted to appoint someone

He felt the council of elders would have difficulty in choosing someone, that there would be lobbying by certain individuals and that there would be a lot of trouble, so he felt he had to appoint someone.

So he began looking at all the people around him, and he would pick somebody. But they'd do something that he didn't think was right, and then he'd change his mind.

Then he'd pick somebody else. Then they'd do something, and he'd think, no, they can't be it. And he'd pick somebody else.

Mr. Tkach was in the hat only because he was over church administration. Otherwise Mr. Armstrong realized he wasn't a very polished man. He was a kind man in a lot of ways. He liked people. It was legendary what he did with some of the widows and other people in Pasadena, and to his credit in that area he was very good.

But that didn't mean he was first choice or primary choice or the only choice. He wasn't trained for years and years like some people want to make it look like, only generically in the sense that all of you were trained by Mr. Armstrong. You had the booklets too, you got baptized, and we're all part of the fruits of his labor.

Request from Mr. Tkach

Mr. Tkach once asked me to give a sermon about his training. I said, "Mr. Tkach, I can't go up there and say that. That's a lie, because it didn't happen that way."

Now, Mr. Tkach had never traveled with us overseas. If you're training someone, you'd think you'd take him overseas.

We had all these special functions, [such as an official visit by Queen Sirikit of Thailand], but Mr. Tkach was not invited to any of them because it wasn't his job function.

I told Mr. Tkach, "If you were being trained for all these years, then why weren't you invited to these things? I could say God did appoint you in the sense that you were the one appointed when Mr. Armstrong died."

Mr. Tkach was not the one on the list two or three months before Mr. Armstrong died.

Unpublicized stroke

Mr. Armstrong had a stroke, which wasn't publicized, that most of you don't know about. I thought he was going to die then. If he had, it would have been somebody else. It wouldn't have been Mr. Tkach.

I began to realize at this point in my life that God was going to appoint someone based on what He wanted to happen. So it came Mr. Tkach's turn, and Mr. Armstrong died during that appointment.

Now, he'd talked to a number of people-some of the men sitting in this room-about Mr. Tkach and about others. Most of them were like me: "I'm not going to tell you [Mr. Armstrong] who you should name, because I don't know."

Mr. McCullough didn't know. Mr. [Leon] Walker didn't know. None of us knew.

Who are we to say who God wants unless God tells us? God didn't tell me. Did He tell you? No, he didn't tell any of us.

So it happened that way.

Mr. Armstrong on the true church

Here is one of the things on Mr. Armstrong's mind more than anything else at the very end of his life. Every time Mr. [Ralph] Helge [a WCG lawyer] would talk about the Worldwide Church of God, Mr. Armstrong would pound his fist on the table and say, "The Worldwide Church of God, Inc., is not the church. The Worldwide Church of God, Inc., is a corporation made up of seven board members; the church is the spiritual organism. Get that straight."

I've not lost any faith in God over the things that have happened in the body known as His church, because God has been in charge the whole time, and He's done this because, frankly, when I look at it now, there was a complacency we had 10 years ago, 12 years ago.

We all knew what the truth was. We knew the Sabbath day. We knew the Holy Days. We knew the plan of God. We knew the basic things. A new booklet would come out, and we'd kind of read it: "Oh, yeah, I know that."

How many of you now have gone back through and can really prove why you are here today, as opposed to when you proved it when you first came into the church?

Endorsement by association

This is my first sermon in about three years, because I chose not to speak a couple of years ago because I said I cannot endorse what's being said, and I won't do so by coming up to the pulpit.

It was a matter of looking at what was being said and understanding that the church is a spiritual organism and that God does what He does for His purpose.

Mr. Armstrong's concern was that the bride make herself ready, because when you go to Revelation 19, about verse 7, 8, 9, somewhere in there, it talks about the bride being ready. Mr. Armstrong knew that Christ was going to come fairly soon. He thought He was going to come in his lifetime; he lived his life that way.

But the last few months he realized, and he'd tell me: "I thought I'd be alive when Christ returned. Obviously God's time frame is not the same as ours, and so I'm going to die, but Christ is still going to come."

I don't think the apostles-the early church-would have been quite as dynamic if they knew Christ wasn't coming for 2,000 years. Most of us need some kind of a prompt.

Satan knows what he's doing; he knows when to step in; he knows when to say things, when to do things, what to do and how to do it.

Yet God does help us; He promises us that. Satan's been masterful in the way he did what he did, unfortunately for us. But if God is behind something that's purifying you, that's making you better than you were before, how can you say unfortunately in that sense?

Korah and Phineas

We were taught government. We were taught this is the true Church of God. We were taught to be obedient. We were told about Korah.

But we were also told about Phineas. What's the difference? When are you supposed to be Korah and you're rebellious, and when are you supposed to be Phineas and stop the plague?

It's difficult to see the fine line between some of these things when you see things going wrong. With me I thought about saying things early on more publicly.

I could see back in 1986 that this was of God and that there's really nothing you can do, and, if you try to stand up and do something on your own, then you're shot down.

One of the things I saw in our past, with different people who had different problems at various times, wasn't that their motivation was wrong. It wasn't necessarily that their facts were wrong. Most of the time it was because their timing was wrong.

It's very, very hard to know when and what you're supposed to do. The one thing that Mr. Armstrong and I talked about was that God runs it His way, and we seek our own way.

Back to the Bible

You've proved the Bible for yourselves over the last couple of years. I'm no different; I've gone back through things I'd proved before.

I'm amazed at the number of papers that people have written. I'm astonished at how much research some of you in here and others scattered around the world have written.

Some have written to me because they want to see what I think of their writing. Others were writing to me because I'm still on the cc:Mail [private electronic-mail] list [as a faculty member at Ambassador University], and they assume I agree with all the things that the Worldwide Church believes.

Purification of the bride

Mr. Armstrong's thought was the purification of the bride. I firmly believe that that is exactly what is taking place right now, the purification, because you cannot purify a group; you've got to purify individuals. Each of us individually has to be tested; each of us individually has to say this is what I believe; this is what I am willing to die for.

When you decide what you're willing to die for, God knows where you stand. It takes patience, and it takes faith. God told Abraham he was going to father a multitude of nations.

What did he get? He got one son 25 years later.

Why would God do this?

You have to wonder why and what: Why did You do this, God? You're in control. Why did You appoint someone who would let others change the doctrines of the church?

It's difficult to see when you're going through pain. But it's not so difficult when you realize that God is purifying you; He's testing you.

We know about the patience of Job, yet he didn't want to go through his trial; he was a bit impatient at times too. Abraham was patient, yet he tried to do it his own way. Elijah called down fire from heaven, then he ran out into the desert and wanted to die.

There were times when, if I had done certain things differently, I wouldn't be here, because that's not the way that God intended for it to happen. It's a matter of believing God, trusting Him.

I told Mr. Tkach, "I get pretty tired when every time you quote Mr. Armstrong from the pulpit you misquote him. It's difficult for me when people come up and ask me: Did Mr. Armstrong say that? Did he do this?"

"I'm not going to lie," I said.

He said, "Why don't you just tell them you weren't there?"

That's a joke. I wasn't there?

I said, "I can't say that."

Mr. Tkach promised

Again, you've got to live and die by what you do and what you say and what you believe. I know what happened. I know what was said. I know that promises were made. I know what Mr. Armstrong expected of Mr. Tkach. I know what Mr. Tkach told Mr. Armstrong he would do and what he wouldn't do.

I know that Mr. Armstrong told him not to bring his staff with him when he moved into the office [after Mr. Armstrong's death].

The reason I know is because Mr. Armstrong told me I had to take the job as Mr. Tkach's assistant, and I told Mr. Armstrong I did not want that job.

I said, "Mr. Tkach has his own staff."

Mr. Armstrong said: "His staff has caused him problems. His staff is not coming into the job; he is. The council of elders will be there to help him, and you need to be there to help him. You're the only one who knows, because you're the only one that traveled."

I said, "Mr. Armstrong, if you make me do it I will do it, but I don't want to."

He said, "Well, you'll have to."

So that was one of the promises that was made.

Weeded away

One of the catch phrases of the day, after Mr. Armstrong died, was, "Mr. Armstrong was Mr. Armstrong, and you have to answer to God, not Mr. Armstrong."

So [the reasoning went] I have to answer to God, not Mr. Armstrong. Therefore I can do anything I want.

Things changed. A lot of things changed, some slowly, some quickly. But what do you say? What do you do?

I went and talked with Mr. Tkach.

I was one of many aides for a few months and then finally got weeded away. Frankly, I ended up exactly where I wanted to be. I wanted to be with my wife. I'd missed some of that marriage, so I wanted to be with her. I wanted to have kids.

When Michelle got pregnant, we were still trying not to have children, so I'm not really sure exactly how she got pregnant. I should have recognized then that Mr. Armstrong was going to die and that it was just a matter of time. God gave us something to replace him, because he'd been the center of our life for years.

History distorted

There wasn't anybody in the church during Mr. Armstrong's lifetime who didn't know that the mission of the church was to preach the gospel of the Kingdom of God, which was the soon-coming return of Jesus Christ to this earth and the setting up of the millennial reign and finally our being spirit beings and born into the God family.

However, there are those who wish to distort what he said and what he did. I read one of them in the latest coworker letter from a different church that said that our mission at that time was to preach that the beast was going to rise in Europe and attack the U.S.

I would hardly call that the mission of the church or what the gospel was.

I didn't buy any meetings, but those stories go around. There were meetings bought in the past, yes. Mr. Armstrong didn't know about them. When I later told him about some of them, he got very frustrated. He'd say, "Why?"

I said, "Well, there were people around you who wanted to aggrandize themselves, so they did things a certain way."

In fact, he almost quit traveling in 1981 when he found out some of the things, because, "if that's the way it was done, then I'm not going to do it."

I said, "Mr. Armstrong, for one thing it wasn't the way it was done all the time."

At one meeting in China, the ambassador from Zambia was there. He had been raised by missionaries, and he was telling me how he hated Christian missionaries.

After he'd finished saying that, he asked, "What's Mr. Armstrong going to talk about? He's a minister isn't he?"

"Well, yes, he's going to talk about peace and world government and-"

"Well, I don't know about that stuff."

We finished the meal, and Mr. Armstrong got up to talk, talked for about an hour, talked about the Kingdom of God that was coming, that God was going to bring peace to mankind and that we should try to do what we could now, but we wouldn't solve this world's problems, and talked about the way of give and get, some of the things you've seen in films in the past.

After Mr. Armstrong finished speaking, the ambassador leaned across the table to me and said: "I want Mr. Armstrong to visit my country. That's what they need."

We didn't buy any meetings after that, period. I said, "Mr. Armstrong, if God wants you to see [a certain government official], you'll see him. If He doesn't, you won't." I said, "I'll do the work. I'll call. I'll make the arrangements. I'll set things up. But," I said, "don't blame me if it doesn't happen. It's not my problem."

Now, he would blame me. I knew I'd probably get chewed out, but that was part of his nervousness.

Sometimes he was weak in that he would be nervous, although if you told him he was nervous he would get mad at you. I would just try to relax around him or pretend that everything was just wonderful, even though I was nervous too because I had no idea what was going on half the time.

Before a meeting he would ask me, "Is the meeting set up?"

I'd say, "Sure, if God wants it, it's going to happen."

I would have no idea because we wouldn't have confirmations yet.

On our last trip we did nine countries in 24 days. Now, for someone who was at that time 91 or 92 years old, that's a lot of work. It was a lot of work for me, and I was only 32.

Because of his heart condition, we couldn't see anybody in the morning, and we couldn't see anybody at night. So basically we would call up the prime minister's office and say, "Hey, we need to come visit between 1 and 5 o'clock on Thursday."

I remember talking with the chairman of Union Oil, who visited different countries because he had a charity, and he would say: "How do you do that? We have to give them a month and wait until they call us."

I'd say, "Well, we've gone around the world on two hours' notice. We overflew Syria the day after another prop jet got forced down. We took off without permits. We got our permits while we were in the air. The other plane that got forced down had a permit. So we flew down the Red Sea with MiGs on one side and Phantoms on the other during the war."

We did a lot of stupid things. But it was just a matter if God wants you to do it you do it and it works. And, if He doesn't want you to do it, it doesn't work. That doesn't mean that you don't do your part. Sometimes you cry over it and ask why, and you think: I need some sleep once in a while.

I know I can

I remember one trip where I didn't do as much as I should have because I was just tired, and I prayed, "I'm tired. Why don't You do it for a while?"

But He didn't. So your realize if you don't do 100 percent He doesn't add to your efforts.

It's kind of like the story I tell about my son. This was a couple or three years ago when he was smaller. I'd cut some logs up, and he was trying to move a log. It was well beyond his capability; it weighed more than he did. He was pushing it because I'd taught him about the little train that thought it could, and so my son thought he could.

He believed he could move this log, and he couldn't.

I went down there just to help him; I helped him move it without his knowing it. "Boy, that was great. I did it."

He had skinny little arms, but he learned a valuable lesson, to keep trying, perseverance and diligence.

That was wonderful until later that day when I looked out the window and saw him out there trying to push it again. He was sweating and pushing, and his face was red, and he couldn't move this stupid thing.

"I knew I did it this morning, so I can move it again now."

He'd have sat there all day trying to move that crazy log.

So I realized that I'd better do something because he was going to get discouraged and think I can't rather than I can. So I went down there and did the same trick again.

And then I cut up the log.

That's kind of the way God works with us. We grow, we persevere, and we progress a little farther. And the next test we get is a bigger log.

Now we have the comfort of a group to meet with and fellowship with, and it is wonderful to have support. Yet each of us has had to decide ourselves.

I don't feel comfortable because I'm with United Church of God any more than I would with Global Church of God or Church of God International of Worldwide Church of God or the Baptists or anybody.

I feel comfortable only because I know what this book says. I've proved it for myself, and I know that I have to do what it says. And, if there are other people who want to, I thank God for them. If there are not, I'll do it alone. It doesn't mean I can't talk to others.

We never have been isolationists, as much as people like to say we've never helped anybody else. We've helped a lot of people in the past who were not members of the church, quote unquote. Everybody who Christ helped wasn't a member of the church, because there was no church when He was here.

The two trees

Where did we go wrong? Where did things happen?

I intended to start my sermon with this, but I didn't. Instead of beginning with this, I guess I'll end with it.

God planted a garden in Eden, and He put the man whom He had formed there. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, as was the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

The two trees: In some ways we got tired of them, and Mr. Armstrong would say we don't get it. What is there not to get about two trees?

There's the good tree and the bad tree, I think we saw it that way: the tree of life and the tree of death. One thing I have learned from those two trees is that the one tree is the tree of life. It's the tree of the knowledge of God; it's the tree of a lot of things.

But the other tree is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Part of the problem with what has happened with Mr. Tkach and others is that they began to look at the, quote unquote, good people and say, "Well, those people have to be Christians because they're good people."

You can be good only because of God. There's only one name you can be saved by: Jesus Christ. Therefore we can't be alone. Therefore we've got to be wrong about everything we thought before. And, yes, Mr. Armstrong was a wonderful person, but everything he believed was wrong-except for church government, of course.

I began to look at the two trees again from the standpoint of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because I have met some very, very, very good Buddhists and some very, very, very good Muslims and some very, very, very good Hindus and whatever religion you want to name.

Sawasdi Yingyuad, who worked for us, a Buddhist from Thailand, put flowers on Mr. Armstrong's grave every week without fail till he was killed in a car accident. He believed everything Mr. Armstrong said, even though he was still a Buddhist.

What did God do with those two trees? Did He desert mankind when He closed off the garden? God didn't desert man in the sense that mankind, with the human spirit, was able to give and develop a set of codes and ethics and laws that allowed for society.

Why is it that every religion, every people on earth, has somewhat of the same basic moral code? Because without God you could set up those codes, and if you live by those particular codes you are a good person; you're a good neighbor.

I'd love having a good Buddhist neighbor, because he's not going to steal from me, he's not going to kill me, he's not going to commit adultery with my wife, because that's the moral code you're allowed to create off the tree of the knowledge of good-and evil.

As I look at those trees, and I've thought a lot about them the last few years, I realize, yes, some of these people are very good.

But even mother love, as good as it is, is selfish. As I look at the two trees now, I see that the tree of life really is totally unselfish love: giving totally for the sake of giving, giving as Christ did. He gave everything, devoided Himself of His power that He had before with God, to come down and be human, to die for you and to die for me.

That's totally unselfish giving; that's the tree of life. Yes, if you live off the tree of life, you are very good in the way you act, in your moral codes.

Good and selfish

We tend to look at the second tree as the tree of evil, and in the long run it is evil because selfishness is an evil thing, but better than no love at all. But in reality what is selfish love? If I don't kill you, you don't kill me. If I don't steal from you, you don't steal from me.

I think the church got confused. Some people who were associated with us started to think people have to be Christian because they're good. No, I think you can be good off the knowledge of the tree of good and evil, good to a human extent.

Just as you can have some very, very evil people off of that tree, your Hitlers and your Genghis Khans and your people throughout history and your Cains, you can have people who are very good off that tree, but it's not eternal life. It's not the tree of life, and it's not unselfishly good.

When those people do have God's Spirit and do understand the truth, I think it will be very easy for them to change: the Mother Teresas of this world. At the same time, God is the one who decides; God is the one who judges; God didn't desert us in the Garden of Eden, and He still hasn't deserted His church and His people.

But He's tested us individually; He's making us understand what it is we have to believe; He's purifying His bride as only He can do it.

That is something we should be thankful for, something we should know and understand and be aware of, no matter what the test is in the future. You can pray as I do now that this has been your test and not your preparation for one, because it has been tough, and each of us has had to make difficult choices. Unfortunately, it probably won't get easier.

But the reward is worth it, and what we have to look forward to is very, very special. Each of us can be thankful for that.

The font of the Word

I never did get around to saying what these books were up here for. I guess I can close if you'll give me one more minute.

I brought these books up here because these were Mr. Armstrong's books. I went through 20 boxes that I had in the convention center for my move to Texas that I'd never opened, and I found some Bibles of his that have very big type. Some of you can probably read it from out there.

I don't need these yet. In fact, I hope that I'm a few years away from needing them.

But I'm going to give these to Mr. Havir so that he can give these to someone out there who needs the big type.

The last few months of his life I read incessantly to Mr. Armstrong in the dark; that's why I lost my eyesight. I went in that six months 20-20 and came out 20-400. I could hardly see.

He said the thing he missed more than anything was reading this book. So he'd make up excuses for me to read the book to him, such as, "Christ said something to someone somewhere. Can you find it for me?"

Well, you need a little more than that and a concordance to find it, so I read the whole of the Gospels. Then he said maybe Paul said it, so I read all of Paul's writings. Maybe Peter said it, so I read Peter and James. And while we were there we may as well finish the book, so we did the whole New Testament.

I appreciate being able to speak to you. I hope that we can encourage one another as we go through life and know that God is there and have that simple faith that's required to know that He is in charge. No matter what the trauma is, He's always there.



The Journal: News of the Churches of God
www.thejournal.org

The Conservative Voice questions Shimon Peres

The Conservative Voice questions:

Did Shimon Peres get away with murder?

Read Beyond Babylon yet?

Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall is destined to become a national debate and an international controversy because it dares to speak the plain truth in a world of lies!

Contents

Introduction

Beyond Babylon
Chapter One
Survival Guaranteed!

The DEVASTATION unleashed against America and her British allies was without precedent. Destruction was everywhere and a body count impossible. The catastrophe was beyond calculation.

Europe - gripped with a messianic furor - justified this mass destruction of the body to "save the soul." Besides, they had the blessing of the pope. His white robes were stained with the blood of many martyrs.

Beyond Babylon
Chapter 2
Why National Defeat?

Why are we in mortal danger? Why will the American, British and Jewish people SUFFER national defeat? How could Europe ever turn against us?

Beyond Babylon
Chapter 3
Truth or Consequences

As global tensions increase, and threats of confrontation escalate, we might very well wonder whether humanity will survive. Unless there’s a GOD to intervene, we have a bleak future indeed: a DEAD PLANET! Will earth become a nuclear fireball? Will charred bones - aftermath of unleashed atomic fires - and the smoldering ruins of a suicidal civilization be all that’s left?

Beyond Babylon
Chapter 4
Victims of Tradition

Whenever our behavior gets out of control, God lets us loose control! When we’re held hostage to bad habits, and refuse to let them go, we go into captivity! A national lack of discipline results in God sending corrective punishment! Then we wake up and get with it, and beg God to save us. The whole purpose is to bring us to our knees and senses.

Beyond Babylon
Chapter 5
Europe's Fate

What’s going to happen to Europe? We know what’s going to happen to the American and British peoples, as well as to our Jewish brethren. The coming WORLD CRISIS is prophesied to fall especially hard on them. Why?

Beyond Babylon
Chapter 6
Jesus and the Jews

Why don't the Jews accept Jesus?" I've been asked that so many times. My usual reply? "Why haven't the Christians?" At least the Jews are waiting for the proper imperial restoration. The Messiah's coming to sit on DAVID'S THRONE - not Caesar's or "St. Peter's." The Anointed One's going to rule from JERUSALEM - not Rome!

Beyond Babylon
Chapter 7
Elijah's Key Role

Israel's about to host the greatest showdown on earth! A spiritual conflict of interests will create such a scene in Jerusalem that the whole world will watch! Zion will be an arena of prophets and sorcerers, warriors and kings! The forces of good and evil are set to duel: the sons of light will battle the sons of darkness, and truth will confront error head-on!

Download Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall

British-Israelites and Jews in grave danger

The American, British and Jewish peoples are in serious trouble. Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall warns that due to our idolatry and immorality, our nations are prophesied to fall and fall hard if we don't turn from our ways and remember our Hebrew roots and biblical responsibilities (Malachi 4:4).

Our Great Creator God, the God of Jacob-Israel, is removing His protective shield from our borders and our lands will soon be ravaged by both the weather and men, but God in His mercy, in His patience, has permitted us a grace period that is about to end. We have been suffering the consequences of sin and such divine punishment will only intensify and escalate, as we demand, to drive the message home (Daniel 9:11).

Many will find themselves homeless due to famine and destruction, and if we remain proud and stubborn and refuse to hear and heed and save ourselves, we'll suffer greater destruction, leading to our defeat and deportation, conquered by the fascist EU under German-Jesuit influence. America will be homeless. The British Commonwealth will be homeless. Israel will be homeless. We'll have been exiled from our God-given Garden of Eden. The choice is ours. God help us to make the right choice and do the right thing and CHOOSE LIFE! (2 Chronicles 7:14).

Daniel 9:11

11 Yes, all Israel has transgressed Your law, and has departed so as not to obey Your voice; therefore the curse and the oath written in the Law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out on us, because we have sinned against Him.

Malachi 4:4

4 “ Remember the Law of Moses, My servant,
Which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel,
With the statutes and judgments.

2 Chronicles 7:14

14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Download Beyond Babylon

Read Beyond Babylon online

Israeli Jews must reclaim Holy Land occupied by Roman Catholics

The Vatican again exposes its inherent hostility towards Jews and Israel by railing against Christian Zionists.

In light of the Vatican's recent outburst, venomous against Israel and those who prefer it to an accursed "Palestine," Israel would be wise to reclaim those areas of the Holy Land of Israel that "Edom" presently occupies and restore them to proper Jewish hands. Why should the Israelis permit such sworn enemies to have a foothold in Jerusalem upon Mount Zion (or anywhere in the Jewish Homeland) with their evil eye upon the Temple Mount?

Israel must demand the return of the Temple treasures the Vatican holds hostage and investigate Shimon Peres' collaboration with the Germans and Jesuits against Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem.

David Ben-Ariel is a Christian-Zionist writer and author of Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall. With a focus on the Middle East and Jerusalem, his analytical articles help others improve their understanding of that troubled region. Check out the Beyond Babylon blog.

Christian Zionists, Jews, and Israel

For the record, I am a Bible-believer, a Christian-Zionist (one who believes the Prophets foretold the restoration of Jews first of all 12 Tribes of Israel to the Promised Land of Israel before the end of this world as we know it). I am not a Protestant or a "Jew for Jesus" and certainly not a member of the Roman Catholic Cult. I am a baptized member of the Sabbath-keeping Church of God (who believe the plain truth of the Bible that Herbert W. Armstrong taught).

It grieves me when I'm on various Jewish sites, pro-Israel sites, and some vainly try and pigeonhole my calls for Jews to follow Judaism to the Jewish Homeland to become better Jews and falsely accuse me of only "wanting Jews to die so Jesus can return." Nothing could be further from the truth! (Away with stereotypes! Are all Jews rich or liberal?). I share what Judaism teaches about aliyah (ascent, emigration to Eretz Yisrael - the Land of Israel). Did the Ramban want Jews to return to Zion and die so Jesus could return? Preposterous, eh? Indeed.

I also do not fall for the rapture myth, as some allege, striving to substantiate their theories as to why I have such a great love for Jews and Israel, failing to grasp that I truly believe in the Israelite origins of the West, especially the revelation of Joseph as the Anglo-Saxon peoples, as taught by Brit Am Israel and others, and am convinced the Jews are the ethnic brethren of British-Israelites (contrary to those groups who reject the Jews as illegitimate), and that the Land of Israel is also our ancient and future inheritance. This precious knowledge and love for klal Yisrael (all Israel, collective 12 Tribes) is my God-given motivation and why I yearn to return to Zion and stay attached to it while in exile (due to an unjust deportation I've suffered for highlighting the plight of the Temple Mount under illegal Nazi-Muslim occupation).

The Bible clearly teaches, recognized by both Jews and Christians, that the Jews would again be living in the Promised Land of Israel in preparation for the coming of King Messiah. Judaism teaches it "hastens the day of redemption" and Christians say "amen." We can agree on that point and permit time to tell who fulfills the prophecies completely, as all will be revealed and Israel and Judah will be reunited, reconciled, and Jerusalem saved from Gentile occupation. The Jews also believe that Elijah will herald the coming of the King to fulfill the Prophets and teach Torah, and Christians know the chief spokesman between the Two Witnesses will announce - in the spirit of Elijah (who is dead and buried) - the Kingdom of God.

I want Jews to return to Eretz Yisrael because it is loving obedience to God, as well as Israel's future construction of the Third Temple, the Temple of God (not just of the Jews as some slander) even though Israel must be warned not to trust Europe's lying guarantees of peace and security or their imminent Antiochus Epiphanes who will betray Israel and occupy Jerusalem and pollute the Temple of God, if they're not careful to hear and heed the Prophets.

Despite unwarranted hatred from some hypocritical Jews who treat all Christians shamefully, failing to distinguish between those who are honest friends of Jews and Israel and those who aren't, I want to express unconditional love to help save Jews from physical and spiritual harm. I want Jews to live and prosper and love and obey God and be blessed rather than to continue to suffer escalating divine punishments for sin that will only intensify (Dan. 9:11). I hope to help avert another holocaust, one that will target the British-Israelites (the "Lost Ten Tribes") and Jews, ignited by the German-dominated EU under Roman Catholic influence.

May all 12 Tribes of Israel remember our Hebrew roots and biblical responsibilities, turn from our national idolatry and immorality (2 Chron. 7:14), and be restored to world power and prosperity and ascend even greater heights of glory as a truly United Kingdom, One Nation Under God.


David Ben-Ariel is a Christian-Zionist writer and author of Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall. With a focus on the Middle East and Jerusalem, his analytical articles help others improve their understanding of that troubled region. Check out the Beyond Babylon blog.

Is Germany in Danger of Backsliding?

Germany's "conversion" from Nazism to democracy was forced on it by the victors of WWII.

We left it up to the Germans to "deNazify" their country! Now Germany appears to be backsliding as the Nazi German spirit is beginning to stir again, getting ready to...

Is Germany in Danger of Backsliding?

Pope John Paul II Was No Saint

Pope John Paul II Was No Saint
By David Ben-Ariel

Beware Roman wolves in sheep's clothing!

Lazarus and the Rich Man

LAZARUS AND THE RICH MAN
by Herbert W. Armstrong
1953, 1971, 1973 edition

Many have asked for the true explanation of the "rich man and Lazarus." Here is what the Bible really says!
--------------------

DO SAVED mothers up in heaven see the writhing and hear the shrieks of their own lost children down in hell?

Stop and think! Would you really want to spend eternity in a heaven where you would be forced to gaze constantly upon your own loved ones who were lost, hearing them frantically screaming to you for help you would be unable to give, watching incessantly their indescribable agony, as they are on fire -- burning to death -- yet never really burning up? Would you be happy?

Yet that is exactly the kind of "heaven" that is being pictured by many religionists. Many of them rely more on Jesus' account of Lazarus and the rich man than any other scripture to
support their teaching that the "saved" go instantly, at death, to heaven while the lost leave their bodies and are plunged into an ever burning inferno of eternal torture.

What the Bible Says

Those who deny that anyone goes to heaven or to hell at the instant of death maintain the account of Lazarus and the rich man is merely a parable. But the "immortal soul" advocates insist this is not a parable. Jesus was stating facts that had happened, they argue. So let's pretend this was not a parable. Let's take it literally. Jesus surely meant exactly what He said. But even then He did not say what is popularly believed!

Jesus said, "There was a certain rich man." He said that this particular rich man "was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day." He really lived in luxury and splendor! (Luke 16:19.)

Also, Jesus said, "There was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the
dogs came and licked his sores" (verses 20-21).

Yes, there were many such beggars in Judaea when Jesus lived there.

Next Jesus described what happened to them. "And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried" (verse 22). They both died! That is exactly what Jesus said. Now read that again.

Did Jesus say the beggar went to heaven? He certainly did not! He said the beggar "was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom."

Did the Beggar Go to Heaven?

Now what is a "bosom"? If you can find what a "bosom" is -- and in this case Abraham's bosom -- you will know where the beggar was taken. Look in your dictionary. A "bosom" is the breast of a human being, with the arms as an enclosure; a loving embrace by the arms of one person about another; an intimate relationship.

So Lazarus was carried into an intimate relationship with Abraham.

Lazarus here is pictured as a person, perhaps even a Gentile, who received salvation. Do Gentiles, upon being converted and becoming Christ's, enter into any intimate relationship to Abraham? They certainly do! To the Gentile born Galatians, the scriptures written by Paul say definitely: "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed [children], and heirs according to the promise" (Gal. 3:29).

Through Christ they become the children of Abraham. Through faith we all become "the children of Abraham" (Gal. 3:7). That is an intimate relationship with Abraham. That is being taken into
Abraham's bosom! Now Abraham is an heir of God. God gave Abraham a promise. Notice (Gal. 3:29), those who through Christ become Abraham's children are heirs -- but heirs according to the promise God made to Abraham.

The Promise Was Not Heaven

Now what did God promise Abraham? To what promise was this beggar now an heir? Did God promise Abraham and his children heaven?

Let's not put any interpretation upon the sacred Word of God. No scripture is of any private interpretation -- it is interpreted by other scriptures. It ought not to be interpreted by man.

To learn what God promised Abraham, we must turn back to Genesis 12.

"And Abram took Sarai his wife ... and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came .... And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I
give this land" (Gen. 12:5-7).

The land of Canaan is on this earth, not up in heaven. This beggar through Christ became "Abraham's seed" -- in the intimate relationship of one of Abraham's children. Then God included this beggar when He said: "Unto thy seed will I give THIS LAND.

Again, later, God promised Abraham: "For all the LAND which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed FOREVER (Gen. 13:15).

Again, still later: "In the same day the Eternal made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates"
(Gen. 15:18). Here God wrote into the agreement, or the title to the property, the very boundary line of the property. Of course the expression "thy seed" refers in particular to Christ, but since this beggar was Christ's, he also was "Abraham's seed, and heir according to the promise."

The promise was not heaven. The promise was the land of Canaan, on this earth. It was forever, so the promise included eternal life, and eternal inheritance (Heb. 9:15). The promise, then, was eternal life on this earth!

Only an Heir!

Now notice an important point. The beggar was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom -- that is, by Bible explanation, he became one of Abraham's children, and therefore he became an heir to the land on this earth and eternal life.

The next question is, when was this beggar to inherit -- to come into possession of -- eternal life in the promised land? Jesus, in telling about Lazarus and the rich man, did not cover that point.
He only told what happened, not when. We must find the answer, not in human imagination or the false teaching of man, but in the Bible!

The son who is heir to his father's property cannot come into possession of it before his father inherits it. This beggar, carried into the intimate relationship of a son of Abraham, could not inherit either eternal life, or this land, prior to the time his father Abraham received these promises.

When, then, did Abraham actually receive these promises? The startling answer of Scripture is -- he didn't! He has not, even yet in our day, inherited these promises!

WHEN We Inherit the Promises

Scripture reveals the answer through the inspired speech of the very first Christian martyr, Stephen, who was stoned to death for these very words. "And he said, Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham ... and said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee. Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans ... into this land, wherein ye now dwell. And he gave him none inheritance in it ... yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him" (Acts 7:2-5).

Again this amazing fact is stated in the faith chapter Hebrews 11: "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed .... By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise .... These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth" (Heb. 11:8-13).

Abraham died, but has not to this day inherited the promises! Abraham died, and was still dead, at the time of Christ's earthly ministry. We read in John 8:52, "Abraham is dead." At that
time -- centuries after he died -- Abraham was not living on earth or in heaven or anywhere! He is still dead today.

When, then, is he to inherit the promises? At the time of the resurrection of the just, of course! The Kingdom of God is the government to be set up at Jerusalem to rule all nations after the second coming of Christ.

"For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven ... and the dead in Christ shall rise first" (I Thes. 4:16). Human mortals, in Christ, living and dead, receive eternal life-immortality -- the
promises God made to Abraham -- at Christ's second coming. That is when they shall put on immortality. "Flesh and blood [human mortals] cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither death corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead [including Abraham and the beggar] shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality" (I Cor. 15:50-53).

Again, notice when Abraham and all his children co-heirs are finally to inherit the promises -- the Kingdom of God, on this earth: "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy
angels with him" -- notice, this is the second coming of Christ -- "then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory .... Then" -- and not until then -- "shall the King say unto them on his
right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matt. 25:31-34).

Jesus said Abraham would receive the promises, including eternal life, through the resurrection: "But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by (God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (Matt. 22:31-32). Jesus did not say Abraham was then
living. Yet the things God has promised are so certain they may be counted as if already accomplished. Abraham, as shown above by Scripture, was and still is dead. But Jesus spoke this about Abraham "as touching the resurrection of the dead." Abraham will be resurrected.

Jesus told one particular group they would see Abraham in the Kingdom (Luke 13:28), because Abraham, now dead, will then be resurrected.

Carried by Angels

Now again let's get back to what Jesus said about Lazarus in Luke.

Jesus said this beggar died. So, like Abraham, he is still dead.

But after Lazarus died, Jesus said he "was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom." We now know that where he was carried was not up to heaven, but into the status of a son and heir of
Abraham, to inherit the land on this earth and eternal life upon it at the time his father Abraham comes into his inheritance -- at the time of the resurrection.

But notice, Lazarus is to be carried there by the angels!

When do the angels come down from heaven? In Matthew 25:31, quoted above, we saw that it was at the second coming of Christ -- at the time of the resurrection.

Again, Scripture reveals: Christ shall "send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds" out of their graves in a resurrection (Matt. 24:31). The time when the angels carry Lazarus and the saints into sharing the inheritance with Abraham -- into Abraham's bosom -- is the time of the resurrection. Lazarus is to be resurrected and carried by the angels through the air to meet Christ at His return, and to be with Abraham in the intimate relationship of father and son! Yes, how plain! Lazarus will then
enjoy the fond embrace of his father through Christ, Abraham -- both then resurrected and living forevermore in the promised land, then inherited!

There is no doubt as to how the Bible uses the word "bosom." Turn to Isaiah 40:11. Here we find God will care for His people as a shepherd does his sheep, carrying them "in His bosom" Jesus was "in the bosom" of the Father (John 1:18), enjoying the Father's blessings and close relationship. Moses carried the children of Israel in his bosom (Num. 11:12). To be in one's bosom is to have that one's love and protection, and share his blessings and inheritance. So it will be at the resurrection.

The Fate of the Rich Man

Now let's see what happened to the rich man -- and when.

Jesus said of him: "... The rich man also died, and was buried" (Luke 16:22). Jesus did not say the rich man was taken immediately at that time to an eternally burning hell. He did not
say the body was buried but that the rich man himself was plunged immediately into a burning hell. He said the rich man died -- and the rich man, himself, was buried.

Now one would hardly say that the act of throwing a person into that imaginary burning cauldron luridly described as hell was a burying of the person, would he? One is not buried unless he is covered up.

People are buried in a grave, and covered with earth. But the imaginary hell invented by some is never pictured as a place of burial. This rich man died and was buried. He himself was buried -- not a "house" he had lived in. Jesus said so -- read it in your Bible.

What Kind of Hell?

In the next verse, Jesus said: "And in hell he lift up his eyes" (verse 23).

So the rich man was in a place called "hell" after all, wasn't he? And in this hell he "lifted up his eyes." His eyes had been closed in death, and now there came a time when they opened -- he
"lifted up his eyes."

What kind of "hell" is this?

Startling though it may be, the rich man was buried in the same kind of "hell" Jesus was buried in! Yes, Jesus died and was buried -- and in "hell"!

In the first inspired sermon preached by Peter on the day the New Testament Church started, Peter said: "He [David] seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left IN HELL, neither his flesh did see corruption" (Acts 2:31).

Jesus too died and was buried. And in "hell" He too lifted up His eyes -- when He was resurrected!

Now let me explain that, and make it plain!

The New Testament was written in the Greek language. Your Bible is a translation in the English language. The King James Version reads: "And in hell he lift up his eyes." However, in the
original Greek in which the New Testament was written there are three different Greek words, each having a totally different meaning, but all three of which were translated into the King James Version by the English word "hell."

One of the Greek words is tartaros, which refers only to the present condition of darkness or perversion and of restraint of the fallen angels or demons. Another is gehenna, a place at the bottom of a high ledge at the south end of Jerusalem where garbage, refuse, and bodies of dead animals and the worst criminals were dumped over the ledge to be burned up. Down below, the fires were kept continually burning. They burned up, or consumed -- totally destroyed the bodies and refuse dumped there. This is the word Jesus used when He spoke of being finally destroyed in "hellfire."

But this rich man was not buried in that "hell." He was not in gehenna. The third, and most commonly used Greek word, was written here by Luke -- hades. And hades means "the grave" -- a place of burial in the ground!

When the King James translation of the Bible was made, Englishmen spoke commonly of "putting their potatoes in hell for the winter." They buried them in the ground!

This is the "hell" Jesus was buried in -- the "hell" His soul was not left in -- the grave, or tomb, from which He was resurrected! And this hades was also the "hell" in which the rich man was
buried.

WHEN Did He Open His Eyes?

Now once again, Jesus did not say when this rich man, "in hell," lifted up his eyes. Jesus pictured him as one of the wicked, or lost. We must look to other scriptures to tell us when the unjust
will lift up their eyes in their graves.

Daniel speaks of the resurrection of the just, and of the unjust: "And many of them that sleep [their eyes closed] in the dust of the earth [their graves -- buried -- in hades shall awake [lift
up their eyes], some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Dan. 12:2).

Jesus said: "... The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil [including the rich man], unto the resurrection of damnation [judgment]" (John 5:28-29).

Here Jesus speaks of two different, separate resurrections. Quoted above are scriptures showing that the "dead in Christ" are to be resurrected at His second coming. In I Corinthians 15:22-24,
we read that all are to be resurrected -- but in an order of different resurrections -- -Christ Himself, 1900 years ago; afterward, in a different resurrection, "they that are Christ's at
his coming," and then "cometh the end" -- indicating the resurrection of the unjust later.

In Revelation 20:4 we read of the resurrection of those in Christ at His coming. But Revelation 20:5 says: "But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished."
So the resurrection of the rich man and all the unjust or unsaved will take place after the Millennium! It is pictured and described in Revelation 20:11-13.

So, while Jesus in speaking about the rich man and Lazarus did not say when the rich man will open his eyes and be resurrected out of his grave, other scriptures do reveal that it will be after the Millennium.

Are the Dead Conscious?

Notice now, Lazarus, with Abraham and all the saints who are Abraham's children, is to be resurrected at the time of Christ's coming. They shall live through the Millennium. But the rest of the dead shall not live until the thousand years are past. The rich man, then, will not come back to life until a thousand years after Abraham, Lazarus, and all who are Christ's have been made alive.

Will this rich man be conscious of the great lapse of time?

Your Bible says, if you will believe it: "For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything ... for the memory of them is forgotten" (Eccl. 9:5) -- that is, they have no
consciousness while dead. They are totally unconscious! Job speaks of a dead man and says: "His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them" (Job 14:21). Isaiah says our father Abraham knows nothing of us, today (Isa. 63:16). David was inspired to write: "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish" (Psalm 146:4).

The rich man, then, at the time of his resurrection after the Millennium will come to consciousness, open and lift up his eyes, knowing absolutely nothing of the hours, days, and years since he died. To him it will be the next fraction of a second from the time he died. It will seem to him as if he had gone immediately to this state or condition in which he finds himself rising up out of the grave.

What Is This Flame?

But when he is resurrected, he sees a flame which torments him.

What is this?

Now Jesus did, on other occasions, speak of perishing and being destroyed in gehenna fire. What is this? It is described in Revelation 20:14-15 as a lake of fire. Scripture everywhere describes the final fate of the wicked as being burned up. Their punishment is death by fire! It is this
"lake of fire" which is "the second death," from which there shall be no resurrection! They remain forever dead! This death is for all eternity -- eternal punishment -- but not eternal punishing!

Now, opening his eyes in his grave, this rich man sees Abraham, and Lazarus in his "bosom" -- his embrace! He also sees this awful flame of fire -- this lake of fire which is about to destroy
him forever! He is terrified!

What happens when one is suddenly so paralyzed with fear? His mouth goes dry. His tongue sticks to his mouth and throat!

The rich man cries out in this mental agony: "Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame."

Now if the rich man were in the kind of "hell" most people seem to believe, his whole body would be on fire. You would think he would have called for at least a bucket of water to put out the
fire, wouldn't you?

Look at this!

How much water did he call for? He said to Abraham: "... Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water." Just a couple of drops that's all the water he requested! Doesn't that
strike you as strange?

Why did he call for water? To put out the fires of all "hell"? the kind of hell people would have you believe he was in? Ah, no! He only wanted a mere couple of drops of water on Lazarus' finger. Why? -- "to cool my tongue!" That's what the rich man said! Open your own Bible again, and read it!

The flame, he said, was "tormenting" him. This word "tormented," used in verses 24 and 25, is translated from the Greek word odunomai. This is defined in any Greek-English lexicon as "to
cause pain, to pain, distress; pain of body, but also, pain of mind; grief, distress."

Why of course! This rich man opens his eyes in his grave in a resurrection. He is resurrected mortal, just as he was before he died -- not immortal like Lazarus. He sees this lake of fire. Now
he knows the frightful, the awful doom he is to be thrust into -- to be burned up -- destroyed! He is suffering mental anguish such as he never experienced in his lifetime. His tongue is dry. He
breaks out in cold sweat. He cries for a little water on the tip of Lazarus' finger to cool his tongue! He is in a condition of weeping.

The Final Hellfire

Now once again read this in your Bible. Read exactly what Jesus said, not what the "hellfire" preachers say He said! Did Jesus say this rich man was going to suffer endlessly and forever -- always burning -- being on fire -- yet never burning up? Did He? Of course not!

There is not one word here about how long his anguish is to last.

Jesus was saying these things to those who would not repent. What did He want to make them understand, when He gave this account about Lazarus and the rich man? Jesus answers this question for us in Luke 13:27, 28 when He said: "Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out." Yes, they are
going to be in exactly the same position as this rich man! Jesus is using him as an illustration to show these individuals what is to befall them. They are to be thrust out -- into the lake of fire which shall consume them, leaving them neither root nor branch, as the Scriptures say.

The wicked are going to be cast into the lake of fire. When they lift up their eyes in their resurrection, they shall know that they are doomed, now to be cast into the lake of fire to be burned up.

This rich man cried out for help because of his mental and physical anguish -- knowing what was now to befall him! He knew he was guilty! When a man realizes he is guilty, and faces his just
and terrible retribution, the very first part of the body to be affected is the tongue, which dries out -- seems to be on fire.

What Is the Great Gulf?

But Abraham and Lazarus were afar off and no water was brought. The rich man had to suffer mentally for his sins. He had had his reward, in the material things he sought, craved and acquired during his mortal lifetime.

There is a great gulf fixed between this doomed sinner and all the glorified saints in God's Kingdom.

What is that great gulf?

The gulf mentioned by Abraham which prevents the wicked from escaping death by hellfire, and which also keeps the righteous from being burned up, is immortality. Those who are immortal shall never die because they are born of God (Rev. 20:6). But human beings who have not been begotten and born of the Spirit of God are still flesh, subject to corruption and death. They can be burned by fire.

Don't forget, this is a literal fire and the rich man is a human being composed of flesh and blood. Only the saved possess immortality as the gift of God (Rom. 2:7), but the wicked reap anguish and wrath that shall devour the adversary -- fiery indignation (Heb. 10:27). What happens when a human body is being burned by a flame?

There is a period of torture during which the fire consumes the body before the person dies. Then what about this rich man? Jesus didn't say he was immortal, for if he were, he would be
spirit and flames do not burn spirit. Fire is a physical process. It is combustion of matter.

The rich man is a physical person just as you are.

Not Completed

And Jesus leaves us, in this account, with the rich man hearing the words of Abraham in his mind or conscience and tormented by the flames that are closing in around his body.

A human body doesn't burn forever. It finally turns to ashes in a fire. Therefore we must go to other verses of the Bible to find out exactly what did happen after the short conversation
recorded.

Matthew 13:30 speaks symbolically of the wicked being gathered into bundles to be burned. What happens to tares (weeds) when in fire? They burn up!

Again in Matthew 3:12, John warned the Pharisees that they would be burned up as chaff if they didn't repent. They are to be burned with unquenchable fire -- a fire so hot that no amount of
water could put it out, because the flames would turn the water to steam.

When God punishes the wicked the fire will be unquenchable! But that doesn't say it won't burn itself out when it has nothing more to burn. An unquenchable fire can't be put out, but it can
burn itself out when it has consumed everything.

Malachi 4:1, 3 speaks of this fire that will burn the rich man: "For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and
the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch .... And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of
your feet in the day that I shall do this."

That is the end of the wicked! They shall perish and not he any more. "Into smoke shall they consume away" (Psalm 37:20).

The rich man then, being mortal flesh, is going to burn up after being tormented in the flame. He is going to die the second death (Rev. 20:14). The wages of sin is death, not endless torment
(Rom. 6:23).

The Rich Man's Brothers

The rich man at last realized he was doomed! He now comprehended the gulf that existed between him and those who had been made immortal. Abraham had made clear the utter impossibility of the rich man crossing that gulf into immortality. He had had his chance
during his lifetime. He had passed it up for this world's material riches and pleasures. There was no hope for him. He was now doomed to perish in this lake of fire.

His last thought flashed finally to his five brothers. He gave one last cry to Abraham, begging him to send Lazarus to his father's house to plead with his brothers, lest they come to his
terrible fate. Abraham replied they had the writings of Moses and the prophets. But the rich man realized they would not hear these Scriptures.

"Nay, father Abraham," he screamed, "but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent"! (Verse 30.)

The rich man knew Lazarus was raised from the dead! This one statement indicates that the whole experience of Lazarus and the rich man was given by Jesus to show the truth of the
resurrection -- not to teach any immediate going to "heaven" or "hell" at the instant of death. (Incidentally, many Bible scholars also believe that the story of Lazarus and the rich man teaches nothing about the state of the dead. Says The New Bible Dictionary: "Probably the story of Dives and Lazarus (Lk. xvi), like the story of the unjust steward (Lk. xvi. 1-9), is a parable which made use of certain Jewish thinking and is not intended to teach anything
about the state of the dead" [p. 388].)

Abraham replied: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one ROSE from the dead" (verse 31).

There it is! In plain language! The experience of Lazarus and the rich man shows the resurrection from the dead -- not an instantaneous going to "heaven" or "hell." It is a resurrection from the dead -- not from life. It shows mortality which dies, and is dead -- not immortality which never loses consciousness and lives forever in an eternal punishing of the imaginary "hell." Jesus was showing a resurrection -- or bringing back to life of one who was
dead of one who had no consciousness whatever of the lapse of centuries and millennia since his death.

Far from illustrating immortality of the soul and the lurid eternally burning torture of "hell," Jesus illustrates death -- total unconsciousness through the centuries -- and the resurrection from death and restoration of consciousness. Secondly, He illustrates the second death in the lake of fire that shall totally destroy the wicked, in which they perish and become ashes under the soles of the feet of the saved -- the eternal punishment of death, eternal death, the SECOND death!

The Warning for YOU!

Finally, what is the real lesson?

Jesus was preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God -- the New Testament gospel. He was showing salvation, the resurrection to eternal life as the gift of God -- inheritance of the Kingdom of God on this earth.

The apostle Paul plainly tells us that the New Testament Church of God is built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone (Eph. 2:20). Jesus said: "I will build my church." Paul reveals it was built on the foundation of the prophets as well as the apostles!

Jesus here teaches you that if you refuse to hear Moses and the prophets -- and Moses was one of the prophets -- you have no hope of salvation! The Scriptures (Old Testament as well as New), according to II Timothy 3:15, are able to make us wise unto salvation. We are to take the whole Bible, not the New Testament only.

Those who teach that the commandments of God are done away teach a message of doom! Those who teach the pagan doctrine of the immortality of the soul -- going off to "heaven" at death, or eternal punishing -- teach contrary to what Jesus said!

May you take heed, and hear all the Word of God!

Born Again and Heaven and Hell

If you're not born again before you die, you'll spend eternity in hell.

Who hasn't heard that "sermon" or something like it before? That one statement contains four religious lies and proves such a preacher apparently doesn't know God, Jesus Christ or the Bible well enough to know differently! Nothing wrong with that, of and by itself, except an error becomes a lie when folks persist in it after it's been exposed (Matt. 3:19-21).

First, Yeshua said that which is born of the flesh is flesh (like we are now in this life), but that which is born of the Spirit IS SPIRIT. He also said you can't even see or enter into that Kingdom of God unless you're born again, which nobody has been but Yeshua by a resurrection from the dead and transformation from human to divine, from flesh and blood to SPIRIT. Those who are born again have SPIRIT BODIES.

Paul confirms and clarifies this awesome truth:

1 Corinthians 15:45-57

45So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being" [flesh]; the last Adam, a life-giving SPIRIT...

47The first man was of the dust of the earth [flesh], the second man from Heaven [SPIRIT].

48As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth [that which is born of flesh is flesh]; and as is the man from heaven[Spirit], so also are those who are of [not in] heaven [that which is born of SPIRIT IS SPIRIT].

49And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man [flesh], so SHALL we bear the likeness of the man from heaven [SPIRIT].

50I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God [just like Yeshua clearly stated that unless you're born again, a SPIRIT BEING, you can see or enter the Kingdom-Family of God], nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable [yet those who bleat they're already born again say they can - let God be true and every man a liar].

51Listen, I tell you a mystery [remains a mystery to most]: We will not all sleep [not go to "Heaven or Hell" at death], but we will all be changed--

52in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, AT THE LAST TRUMP. (not in this life or at death) For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed [born again].

53For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality [YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN].

54When the perishable has been clothed [with our heavenly bodies - not bodies in heaven] with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."

55"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

This clearly shows Adam was flesh and blood, mortal, corruptible and we're just like him - but the good news is we can become exactly like the Second Adam and be transformed - BORN AGAIN - at the resurrection into brilliant God-beings, composed of divine nature and holy composition: BORN AGAIN SPIRIT BEINGS!

Further proof nobody is born again is Yeshua is yet to return and establish the Kingdom of God on Earth, and the glorified saints are yet to rule with but under Him as divine Priest-Kings, SPIRIT-BEINGS (having truly been born again).

Those who understood what it means to be born again, and just what the Kingdom of God really constitutes, agree with these very clear Scriptures:

Daniel 2:44

44 And in the days of these [10 kings/EU nations] kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.

Daniel 7:27

27 Then the kingdom and dominion,
And the greatness of the kingdoms UNDER the whole heaven [not in Heaven],
Shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High [then born again].
His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
And all dominions shall serve and obey Him.'

Revelation 20:6

6 Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.

The King of the Jews, the King of Israel, is yet to return and establish the Kingdom of God on Earth, smashing all opposition. The faithful still pray, "Thy Kingdom Come" and it certainly will in God's good time!

This is the Kingdom-Family of God that will administer the one world government of God that you can't even enter UNTIL you've become born again as a divine SPIRIT-BEING, just like Yeshua said and Paul taught: two witnesses to this truth.

This is the Kingdom of God (not some pretty platitude, sanctimonious feeling or spiritualized stupor or experience), the GOOD NEWS Yeshua preached and the true Church of God announces is coming soon! May all REPENT and believe the gospel, so help us God.

The Church of God is the Kingdom of God in embryo, as Herbert W. Armstrong taught. We're begotten now, are converted and being converted, but we'll be born again at the return of Christ and first resurrection. We can celebrate that the Kingdom of God is coming soon in power and great glory: the Lord Yeshua with all the glorified, transformed saints then divine SPIRIT-BEINGS.

The righteous are not in Heaven and sinners are not in "Hell."

Scriptures clearly reveal all the saints are dead and buried, asleep, awaiting their resurrection at the return and reign of Yeshua. The dead in Christ (they're dead - not alive in Heaven) haven't received their inheritance YET and won't until we all do so together:

Hebrews 11:39-40

39These [all those listed in the chapter of Faith] were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised [which was never Heaven anyway]. 40God had planned something better for us so that only TOGETHER WITH US would they be made perfect [at the seventh trumpet, at the return of Christ, at our resurrection and transformation].

The Scriptures cannot be broken and are consistent - something idolatrous traditions clearly aren't.
Remember, immortality, eternal life is a GIFT from God, but the wages of sin is death. Eternal life or eternal death, plain and simple, thus said the Lord (yet some insist on twisting parables out of context, rejecting the clear black and white Scriptures).

God is not the sadist that traditional Christianity misrepresents Him to be. Those who submit to the Word of God rather than fall for Roman wolves in sheep's clothing (with their Babylonish beliefs and pagan myths), know the unrepentant will be put out of their misery, destroyed in the Lake of Fire, having suffered the second death.

The meek shall inherit the Earth and the wicked will be history! So says YOUR Bible. Why not believe it over idolatrous traditions of men?

"For evildoers shall be cut off; but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be; yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth. But the wicked shall perish [John 3:16], and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away. For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off! The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever" (Ps. 37:9-12,20,22,29).<

And notice Psalm 104:35: "Let the sinners he consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more.

Notice the great contrast: eternal life or eternal death; inherit the Earth or be destroyed from off the face of the Earth.

Isaiah 66:22-24

22 For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain. [But the wicked will be history, although during the Millennium...]
23 And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath [the Sabbath wasn't done away with!] to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD.
24 And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.

Do you believe in immortal worms? Realize this speaks of the far future - the new heavens and the new earth, and then goes back to the initial thousand year reign of Yeshua when just outside of Jerusalem the Valley of Hinnom will be kept burning as a warning to all of what happens to the wicked - they're burnt up, but their maggots turn into flies and continue to live. Time setting is everything as well as rightly dividing the Scriptures - not falling into the traditional ditch of darkness.

Revelation 22:12-15

12 "And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me [it was reserved in Heaven, but it's not Heaven!], to give to every one according to his work. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last."
14 Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city [New Jerusalem, a building/city eternal]. 15 But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie.

ASHES OUTSIDE THE GATES OF JERUSALEM. Eternal life vs. eternal death.

Revelation 21:8

8 But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second DEATH."

Malachi 4:1-3

1 "For behold, the day is coming [yet future],
Burning like an oven,
And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble.
And the day which is coming shall burn them up,"
Says the LORD of hosts,

" That will leave them neither root nor branch [eternal DEATH].
2 But to you who fear My name
The Sun of Righteousness shall arise
With healing in His wings [eternal LIFE];
And you shall go out
And grow fat like stall-fed calves.
3 You shall trample the wicked,
For they shall be ASHES under the soles of your feet [outside Jerusalem]
On the day that I do this,"
Says the LORD of hosts.

That's what happens to something that gets burnt up: nothing is left but ashes. How plain. How logical. How merciful!

Jude 1:5

5Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. [God didn't torture them].

Why do folks refuse to believe God for vain traditions? The wicked will be completely destroyed, nothing left of them, ashes, but the meek shall inherit the Earth, even as the wicked are cut off forever. Eternal life or eternal death.

The real Hell fire doesn't even exist yet!

Traditional Christianity doesn't believe Yeshua when He said God is able to destroy both body and soul in Gehenna fire; that God so loved the world that whosoever believes in Him should not PERISH but have everlasting LIFE; that immortality alone belongs to God and those whom He offers it as a GIFT; that the wicked will be utterly destroyed and become ashes under the soles of the feet of those who inherit the Earth; that we know no murderer has eternal life in him.

Regardless of traditional disbelief or religious rebellion, the Bible clearly teaches that after God has purified this Earth by fire, making it new, renewing the surface of the Earth as He once did with water, the wicked will be history and ashes under the soles of the feet of those given the gift of immortality - you're not an immortal soul - and all suffering will be a thing of the past. The new heavens and Earth will be filled with righteousness - there won't be any room for evil, no polluted part, no forbidden zone or mythological "hell" to taint the new heavens and the new Earth - if you believe the Bible over idolatrous traditions (Rev. 20:14).

The real Hell fire doesn't even exist yet! So how can anybody be in it? The Lake of Fire that will engulf the entire surface of the Earth is future. Read it for yourself and believe it over misguided men:

2 Peter 3:5-7, 10-12

5 For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, 6 by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water [Earth was purified by water]. 7 But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men [even as water once purified the Earth of wicked men, soon fire will do the same - in the future!]...

10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up [this is the real "hell" fire the Bible teaches - much hotter than the pagan myths teach - and it's yet future, not "down there" or any other place in men's twisted imaginations, but the whole surface of the Earth will be consumed and purified by fire]. 11 Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? 13 Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Revelation 21:1-4

1 Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea [the fire that purified the earth evaporated it]. 2 Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, COMING DOWN OUT OF HEAVEN from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. 4 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away." [This alone proves the Bible teaches eternal punishment - not eternal punishing].

I encourage all to read the rest of the chapter without traditional blinders and be amazed to discover that the pearly gates and streets of gold are going to be right here ON EARTH!

Heaven isn't the Reward of the Saved!

2 Corinthians 5:1

1 For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Yeshua clearly said: "THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH". The Scripture above nowhere says we're to "go to Heaven" - in fact, it speaks of the heavenS, the universe (which ultimately we'll inherit but remain based on Earth with the New Jerusalem that will come down from Heaven to be established on Earth: "Heaven on Earth").

When properly understood, we know that our heavenly bodies, our new spirit-composed bodies that we'll receive (when we're born again) occurs at the return of Yeshua and our resurrection. Yeshua promises to bring our reward with Him from Heaven - He doesn't take us to receive it in Heaven! There's a big difference.

Verse 3 that clearly proves we'll be clothed with our new "house" FROM Heaven. Those born again will have SPIRIT BODIES.

2 Corinthians 5:2

2 For in this we groan [why groan if we're already born again? - if we're already delivered?], earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is FROM heaven [not in it!].

Revelation 22:12

12 "And behold, I am coming quickly [the Second Coming of Christ TO EARTH], and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work.

Remember Yeshua said in His Father's House [Temple] are many mansions/rooms/offices/positions? Those positions will be filled in His Kingdom-Family that is established when He returns! We're to help administer the government of God.

What about 2 Corinthians 5:8?

8 We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

Nowhere does that Scripture mention Heaven. However, when Yeshua returns, bringing our reward with Him from Heaven - having been reserved in Heaven - (and later the New Jerusalem itself comes down from Heaven with the Father), we will be absent from these bodies of flesh when we're transformed, when we receive our heavenly bodies, our SPIRIT BODIES as those who are truly born again, but it all takes place right here on God's good Earth.


David Ben-Ariel is a Christian-Zionist writer and author of Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall. With a focus on the Middle East and Jerusalem, his analytical articles help others improve their understanding of that troubled region. Check out the Beyond Babylon blog.