Christ could walk on water. He could suspend the Laws of Thermodynamics. He could cause a human being to walk on water—Peter. He could calm a storm. He had tremendous power over the weather. He could turn things from one substance to another—water into wine. He could take a few scraps of food and feed vast thousands—on the spot. He could cast out demons. There was not a single disease He couldn’t heal…We’re talking about when He was lower than the angels, not when He was made much better. He could heal every single kind of disease that ever came to Him. So much power in Him that if somebody grabbed His garment…and He was so close to God, He could feel power go out of Him and heal them…like the lady with the issue of blood.

He could read people’s thoughts on the spot…Bang! And knowing their thoughts, He said…He could disappear in crowds—BOOM! Where did He go? We have never understood that. How did He just get away? Maybe it is harder for somebody 6’ 7” to figure that out…[Laugher]. I’m trying to show you. He could do anything. He could cast demons out and throw them into pigs! He had the ability to move in and out. Unlimited power—that’s what it means to be “a little lower than the angels”—not where we are now.

Consider something that is at least good speculation. Let’s say you work in Moscow. You have five cities around Moscow and you live in Zion at night…Let’s have a little fun here—let’s talk a little science…and you think, “Well, I can just ride an angel up there—Phssst! Well, two problems: If you go real fast…think of the shuttle…you’ll burn up—BANG! You’ll never make it to Moscow. I don't care. If the angel is your pony, he’ll make it and you won’t. He will look up, and you’ll be gone. [laughter] No bones will be left—nothing! If he takes you high in the atmosphere and stops, you’ll instantly freeze to death. So, if he goes real high…Now, if he balances the amount of speed with the temperature around you that’s cold, he might be able to keep you at a point where you don’t freezeor cook.

If you are going to ride an angel, get a smart one. [laughter] Get one that travels with a computer and factors in your body weight and size and all kinds…how are you dressed…and everything. [laughter] I’m trying to have fun here. Because if you think, “Well, Wow! We’ll be able to travel on angels,” I would submit to you that those who travel on angels would be people and children and others.

If you want to go to Moscow, and you can suspend the Laws of Thermodynamics—Phssst!—You’re there. “Oh no, only God could do that.” Are you sure? Why? If it takes a miracle to get you there on an angel’s back, where the angel has to build a heat shield around you [laughter] and whatever else…and make sure it is the best tile…because we can’t lose a judge…The bench is empty in Moscow…Do you see my point? Brethren, have a little fun with this, but think practically. Christ just walked on water.

Brethren, if I came up here and I decided to change Scripture, you would reject me…but if I changed Scripture and it still was Scripture…you have a major problem on your hands. Do you understand? Therefore, God directed him—or you can take, at least, part of Hebrews right out of the Bible. God directed Paul to change Scripture and after he did it, it would still be Scripture. 

Angels cannot have faith. Christ said if you have faith you can throw a mountain in the sea. That’s what Christ said. You don’t think that’s power?! If you just have the faith—just a little bit of faith—goodbye Mount Everest, and it’s at the bottom of the ocean, in the Indian Ocean. You’ve got to understand…angels don’t have the faith of Jesus Christ. 

These all come from the Holy Spirit.

Angels cannot discern thoughts and intents of the heart the way Christ can, or the way the gift of discerning spirits can. I have been in situations where I am across the room, and I’m looking at a human being and I can tell at a certain point…I’ve had assistants with me and they couldn’t…I could tell, at a point, I’m not talking to a human, this is a demon. I knew exactly what to do to be absolutely sure. I would antagonize it. They have no character, and they usually respond like a scalded cat. I have actually seen them put their hands up like claws and start talking in another voice, if you call them an unclean or foul spirit…which Christ did…and I could just tell there was a spirit there. I am not godlike. I am way below angels and way below God, like all of you.

So God can give gifts. I have laid hands on people and wham!—there went a disease. I wasn’t godlike, or a little below angels. But I knew we would be given an enhanced ability at some greater level with all of those gifts, if under Christ. We are going to rule the world, and this means you ladies, by the way. I want to just stress—this includes the ladies. What I didn’t know was how far would God take that. Obviously, we are going to have greater judgment than angels, because we judge them. They don’t judge us. They minister for us.

Anonymous said...

Honest questions here: Are you all former Church of God members who have lost your faith in God, agnostics, or were you just bitter tares all along? Have you never figured life out and now seek to blame all of your problems on the former World Wide Church of God and its splinters and slivers, just as many of the liberal supporters of people like President Obama and Hillary Clinton seek to blame all of their problems on Whitey and Christians? How week and pathetic, if true. Tell me I'm wrong, say it ain't so. I'm waiting for some good answers.

November 25, 2016 at 10:05 AM 

Anonymous said...

Why don't you just change the name of this website to Bitter Atheists, Agnostics Anonymous, or Tyched In The Head Tares? At least that would be a bit more honest than, "Banned by HWA! Books, News and Observations About Armstrongism and the Churches of God." I feel sorry for you all, but life is not supposed to be perfect. People get sick, people are sometimes swindled, people die, but it is not all always someone else's fault. This is, after all, Satan's world, we have evil fallen human nature, and we are to overcome and grow, with God's help, not wallow in sorrow and anger. Leave the wallowing in sorrow and anger to the demons. 

“Then said I, What come these to do? And he [said] These are the horns which have scattered Judah, so that no man did lift up his head: but these are come to fray them…[So, these four “carpenters”…and there is no possibility—none—zero—that these are men, four men. I don’t care if they are super commandos, five-star…It could be Batman, Flash Gordon and whoever else you want…Green Lantern…Well, leave him out [laughter], he has domestic problems these days, if you know…or Superman, or anybody else. These have come to “fray.” That means “to shudder with terror.”]…to cast out the horns of the Gentiles, which lifted up their horn over the land of Judah to scatter it” (vs. 18-21). The Jews have been scattered for 2,000 years.

So here are these four, we’ll call them, personages, called “carpenters” who come to get rid of the “horns of the Gentiles.” There is no possible way men can do that. The context is—and this is fascinating—God is about to expand Zion…We know that…and He is about to expand Jerusalem. But the first thing that’s going to happen is Jerusalem is going to lose some space to a bigger Zion…So Jerusalem is going to have to expand further out like a concentric circle around Zion…but you have four carpenters, so let me just explain something…This is something we are going to have to address next week…Malachi 3:1. Christ is described as coming to His Temple and yet, there is absolutely not one stone there. I’m going to explain what that means next week. How do you explain coming to a temple where there isn’t a single stone poking up over the flat platform up there? That is a BIG problem…

Obviously, you have buildings up there that shouldn’t be there, and God has to build a temple, so let’s stay with the point here—this is a four-angel construction crew. Nowhere in the Bible are angels ever called carpenters except here, right after we read God is going to build a temple, and He is going to clear space and spread two cities to do it. You have to come to grips with that, and come to grips with the fact that…If you really want to be honest…Let me tell you a deception that the Jews follow. I have never talked about it, but let me just explain it, because it will be related next week to something that is fascinating.

Cut off three shepherds in one month…My soul loathed them; they loathed Me [verse 8]…And, then I said to all the rest of them, I’m done with you [verse 9]. Well, of course, they are—they’re bound into bundles to be burned. That’s what it says. Matthew 13:30, they’re ultimately bound into bundles to be burned…in a furnace of fire. It says that three different times in Matthew 13 alone, and this whole thing opens with a fire…

You can no more have the wicked on Earth working openly against Christ when He reigns at Zion…than you can have the devil and his angels on the earth. You can’t get anything done. You can’t get anything done in the Church, if people can divide and disagree, and just blow things off and do it with impunity—and they are viewed like everybody else. It tears everything up. You won’t get anywhere in the world—and you won’t get anywhere in the Church—if you don’t remove people……

When it says they are “ashes under our feet,” I have come to realize they are going to be ashes under our feet—or God is a liar—because He says it over and over and over again, and then expects us to believe He didn’t mean it. What’s coming on the Church is serious. I have come, clearly, to understand…I could take you to four places…the tares are taken out of the Church, they’re bundled, put under the foolish shepherd and they wait awhile, and then they are burnt—but not until later at the harvest, mentioned in Matthew 13:30……

I hope you can appreciate there are two great, awesome truths that have been shown to us over the last three and a half years. They are different, but connected; or you could say, they’re connected, yes, but they’re different. One is the unifying of the Church to do this awesome, great, marvelous work. A resurrection of the dead is involved—a mass healing is involved…Absolute unity…400 groups go away…The whole world is going to see this…and they come to two groups. People in some cases have to choose. Hopefully, they will choose the right one during this fire. Then a foolish shepherd is destroyed and there is a cursing……

“Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and…hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place…[“You cannot hide from me!” I showed you in Jeremiah 23, God is going to pursue them with whirlwinds of fire, no matter wherever they are in the world, when He comes to Zion. But first, we are going to warn, and we are going to talk—we are going to try to reason together and get them to understand, “I don’t care how scarlet your sins are. They can be white as snow. Wake up! You don’t have to die.” God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. But the leaders…Remember, in Matthew, Christ said, “You bind burdens grievous to be born on people, and you make your followers two fold more the child of hell than yourselves. You shut up the kingdom of God, Matthew 23, from others, and you don’t go in yourself.”

They block people, exactly like the splinter leaders do. Brethren want to be back together, but there is a certain group of scorners who hate government and truth, and don’t want to subordinate themselves to God’s government. So they go do their own works and never achieve anything, and they are where they were 20 years ago, unless they are smaller, and scattered, and shattered into more pieces; constantly fracturing. But it is the same in both places.] Part 14

If I were to ask you, are you to seek…At the resurrection of the dead, are you seeking to be someone who is immortal or someone who is eternal? What would you say? A mortal person is someone who has a beginning and an end. I have explained this before. Someone who is immortal has a beginning, but no end. So, one is like a stick with two ends. I have explained. The other is like a stick with one end and no end on the other end, just goes on into infinity. And someone who is eternal is like a stick with no ends—no beginning and no end. The closest you could get is Alpha and Omega to explain the beginning and the end…but God is eternal, so there is no beginning and there is no end…that, really, is just a human terminology that Christ chooses to help us.

So there is mortal, immortal, and there is eternal. If I asked you, are you seeking to be immortal or eternal, you would probably say…If you thought about it logically, you would say immortal. And I said, “Well, you’re going to be in the family of God. God says He inhabits eternity. That’s where He lives”…“Well, okay, I guess we are going to have eternity, too. We’ll be God…I guess I am seeking eternal life.” That’s what it says in many places, but curiously, Romans says we are seeking both immortality and eternal life. Glory, honor, immortality and eternal life—look up the Greek and you will see the difference, by the way, in terms that are much as I explained them, kind of a succinct difference. Now how is that? How could you seek both?

First of all, understand, the moment you are born into the Family of God, that is when you entered the Family of God…but what are you made of? You are made of eternal Holy Spirit. God changes the Spirit of God that is in you; changes your body, and you are made…we’ll use this term…you are made of eternal “stuff.” You’re not made of immortal stuff; you are made of a different kind of spirit than angels. You’re composed of something that is eternal. It has no beginning and no end, even though you did. Paul is telling the Romans…In a way, you are immortal, because you started like angels, but you immediately went to a spirit that is eternal. What does that mean? Why is that important? What does it have to do with a word of knowledge? Well…just about everything.

Once you are born into the family of God, you, literally, tap into eternal knowledge. Eternal knowledge—all that God has ever been. In other words, when you are changed, you’re not given…from a warehouse shelf…a spirit body, either similar to angels or just some other kind of spirit, to replace the physical one you have. The Holy Spirit in you is a down payment, an earnest, of a full body made of the Holy Spirit, which is eternal and brings with it everything that God is.

We won’t have the same authority that He does, but we will be children, like Him…As we have often explained; Mr. Armstrong used to say this in his own words…as much as your children are like you. They are not exactly you and they will never exceed you while you are still alive. They will always have to honor you; you will not honor them, as you are their parents. But they go on to be people who look pretty much like you, at least a combination of the parents, and so forth. You understand that. So we will be a little different in that way.

Immediately when Solomon was given wisdom, he could make a decision based on facts in front of him. That’s different. It’s as different as the gift of wisdom, the word of wisdom, which is interesting, and the word of knowledge, as opposed to the gift of wisdom and the gift of knowledge. So it is a gift that involves the word. Logos, by the way. It’s the exact same word, no pun intended. It’s the exact same word in the Greek…of what Christ is called. So it’s the “word”—the logos of knowledge, gnōsis. In effect, you will be given immediately an awesome—an awesome—amount of knowledge on the spot, or you won’t get one hour into your first day…No matter how godlike your power, no matter what miracles you have, no matter your decision-making where you have wisdom that blowsSolomon away, you can turn and heal somebody here, or turn and resurrect somebody over there, but if you don’t have the gift of the word of knowledge, you will get nowhere as a judge.

For instance, the destruction of the wicked. We have always talked about it—you’re not going to want to think about your children or your parents or your husband or your wife or your relatives if God had to destroy them. So you probably will have the ability over knowledge, even to eject from your mind…We have always believed and understood this…Remember God’s ability to forget sin. We will have to forget, certainly, our own sins; the sins of others if need be. You’re going to have to be able to forget other people’s sins once they have repented, and you will probably be able to forget the loss of loved ones who are not in the kingdom of God.

Who carries out enforcement of everything? What about the prison system? Okay, we found out certain kings are going to prison. Who else? Where are the prisons? Who builds the prisons? What kinds of prisons? How long do you stay in prison? Is it only for the kings?…But all the other things that are related to that.

Oh…While you are doing the judging, who is doing the pastoring? For that matter, is there a difference? If you are a priest and a minister, a godlike judge, are you all those things? Because now you have people coming along and want to be converted. Wow! This is great. You have other people that are compliant, and you have some other people that are not fit to live.

What about education, at all levels? We have already introduced that in a certain way—all levels. Good-bye evolution! WHAM—day 1. Of course, you really won’t have to worry about it too much in one regard, because the God of the Bible is here, and everybody who is an atheist will have figured out there is a God. Now, did He allow things to evolve or not, is a secondary question…but there is a God. As soon as this Great Work continues…this awesome, powerful Work continues in a big way…and I explained it last week…it will not be long before there will not be one atheist on Earth—waythis side of Zion. All you have to do is look at the things that are scheduled to happen to God’s Church, very soon, and you know the atheists are probably long gone by the time we are on Zion.

Education…When would the new system start? When do kids go to school? Do they go to school? How is education carried out? All the questions that you might have about that subject…Four-year-olds? Five-year-olds?…Is there college? What kind of college? Is there post-graduate work? By the way, where is that in the Old Testament? And if it is not in the Old Testament, does that mean you cannot do it? Wouldn’t happen. Is Ambassador College a blueprint for now, or now and later after some fashion?

How will language barriers be addressed, if they exist? My guess is they won’t exist—that Zephaniah 3:9 is really a picture of restoring the world to one language in the kingdom, starting at Zion. But boy, if you have language barriers…let me just sit down and talk about all of this, because you have to do it in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of languages. There are 850 languages…900 languages in some single African nations…And most of us probably didn’t know, unless we studied the subject, there are that many languages on Earth…where they can’t understand each other in a single country, or it’s as different as somebody who speaks Spanish trying to understand someone who speak English—who comes here, when neither can speak the other.

What size cities exist? How does the world get to the size cities that exist? How does God feel about cities? There are cities in the Bible. In 1776, five percent of all Americans lived in cities; 95 percent were rural. By the time James Garfield was president in 1881, it was 50/50. One hundred and five years passed—50/50. By 1976, it was flipped from 1776. Ninety-five percent of all people lived in cities, five percent outside. Then how will you relocate them? Anybody getting a migraine? Now relax and just realize…it is on you. [laughter] Get it right! Move fast and knock them all out at once, and then everything will be fine.

All these decisions…

FOOD…Local, regional or mass distribution? And what about its quality—and quality right away? Are water battles just to be thrown at people, and Cheetos and whatever else just to keep them satisfied? “I’m overwhelmed!…Here, have some Pringles”…[laughter] you know…“I’ll get to you tomorrow. I don’t care.” “Here’s ice cream for you”…“Here’s spinach for you…Sorry. [laughter] You didn’t pray this morning.” “But it is not even organic spinach.” You see? What happens to people who are desperate for food right now?

What other distribution systems will be used? Which leads you to energy, as well, but we will come to that. And shipping…the number of ships plying the ocean is tens of thousands of ships are moving through the oceans at any given moment in time—many tens of thousands of ships. How will shipping be handled? What kind of ships? And hygiene, and who works on them, and all kinds of other stuff. What stays within a nation? What needs to be moved to other nations? Which leads you to trading.

How is agriculture going to be carried out? Let’s just stay with a real simple plan—animals or machines? And if you are going back to 95/5 [country/city]…I don’t know that God will…then how are you going to get 90 percent of that 95 back into the country? Where are the houses waiting for them and so forth?

Oh, and every so often I need to remember to say this, don’t I? Day 1, there better be a plan, because…You go in and just blow up everything man does…You just stand back and throw the biggest hand grenade you can…it is going to blow it all up. They’ll be ready to follow you, but what are you going to do—right now—on all of this at the same time?