Well, Good Morning again every one! I trust you're having a good time here in Panama City. Mr. Railston mentioned in his introduction that we were all just discussing the other night that I was going to go parasailing this afternoon. Actually Mr. Gaetzman and I were planning on going together and we were all talking about this. I think it was Sunday or Monday evening all at dinner. And Mr. Lee commented that I couldn't go until after I spoke. And I told him that it was planned for this afternoon. And he said, "Oh, that'll be okay then." And then Mr. Gaetzman popped up. He said, "Well, you guys don't quite understand, we're just doing a test run for the resurrection." (Laughter!)
I'm sure many of you in the audience today, whether you're here in Panama City or you're off in the internet watching us at another location, a number of you over the last few years have had the opportunity to search for a job on the internet. Whether that's just because you were looking for a better opportunity or maybe you've been affected by the negative economy we've been experiencing and, as a result, you got forced to look for another opportunity. If you've had the opportunity to do that, as you search through a number of online postings, you've probably noticed that there's a kind of a standard format that a lot of descriptions go and help to tell you a number of things about a job. But there tends to be towards the bottom of the posting a list of what's they call "required skills." In other words, these particular skills are required for this position. And they're really trying to tell you that if you don't have these particular skills, you're really wasting your time applying for this position because we're only going to consider people who have these particular skills that we're listing.
I'm personally a corporate recruiter for a hospital system in Dallas, Texas where I'm from. So I work with job descriptions on a daily basis and so I do this type of thing all the time. And I got the opportunity in the last couple of months to work on actually several positions together.It was kind of a project we were doing and all the positions had kind of the same description. And we were placing a number of individuals in clinics throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And what they were doing—this was a position we called the "Diabetes Health Promoter." And as the name would imply these were individuals that would be working with people with diabetes. And what they would be doing is educating these individuals like in a group setting, in a seminar type education or even one-on-one teaching them how to better manage their disease and helping them to be able to cope with diabetes.
But there was a unique thing about these positions in that in the clinics we were placing them in, the patients that they would be dealing with a large percentage of them would be individuals whose first language was Spanish and they didn't necessarily speak a lot of English. So it was an absolute requirement for this position that the individual we choose for this was bilingual. They had to be fluent in Spanish and English as a result or otherwise we just couldn't use them. There was no way they could be effective with the population we needed them to work with.
So when I posted the position, I had this listed under the required skills, but in spite of that I got flooded with resumes of people who had in many ways very desirable backgrounds in all other areas, but they weren't bilingual. So I was really wasting my time in going through them and they were wasting their time applying because we could not use them in these positions. In fact, the vast majority of them were like this and some of them were even certified diabetes educators who had worked in very similar roles doing very similar positions, very desirable backgrounds, but not being bilingual I could not use them.
So I actually went back into the posting trying to save myself and the people applying some time. I offered the posting on our website and I put the words at the very top of the posting in a larger font in bold print with asterisks on each sides of it so they just absolutely could not miss it. I put the words: ***Fluency in Spanish and English are required for this position. Only candidates with this skill will be considered.*** Basically what I was telling them if you don't have this, you're really wasting your time applying for this because you're not going to get this job.
Well, Brethren, we're all here at the Feast Of Tabernacles this year, as we do every year, looking forward to a time when we're hoping to be fulfilling a role in the Kingdom of God. We're all hoping to fill a position, as we've heard earlier in this Feast, as kings and priests, serving with Jesus Christ, ruling over the rest of mankind and working with them. As we look forward to this position and try to prepare ourselves for it, we need to realize that similar to my Diabetes Health Promoter positions where you had to be bilingual and if you didn't have that skill, nothing else mattered, there's a particular skill that we need to be developing that if we don't have on our resumes, it does not matter what else we bring to the table. It doesn't matter anything else that's on our resume. If we don't have this particular skill or attribute on our resume, it's an absolute, drop-dead deal breaker and we go in the reject stack! There's no way we can be successful in this position and we will not be chosen for it and given the opportunity to do it.
So what I'd like to do today: Let's look in the Bible to see what this particular skill or attribute is; and more importantly why is it that it's so pivotal to our success in this job and for us to be considered for this position. So let's take a look at this.
Turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. I'm sure you can guess by mentioning that very chapter where we're going here. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. We're going to read the first couple of verses. It says:
1 Corinthians 13:1. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become [as] sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2) And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3) And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. (NKJ)
In other words, he's saying, "If you don't have agape love on your resume, it does not matter what else you have. Lot's of other skills are desirable, but without this one, it's an automatic denial. It's a drop-dead deal breaker. If you don't have this, you will not be considered by this position. There's no way you can be successful and you'll be automatically turned down."
See what he's saying is: If God were to place an online posting for the position of being a king and priest in the Kingdom of God, ruling with Jesus Christ, and working with the rest of mankind, at the top of that posting in bold print in a large font with asterisks on each side of it so we could absolutely not miss it, it would state:
*** Agape love is required for this position. And only candidates with this skill will be considered. ***
In other words, Brethren, he's saying: Only the loving need apply! Because all others are wasting their time because they will not be chosen for this position. There's no way they can be successful.
If you want a title for this sermon it's: Only the Loving Need Apply.
Well, now we know what that particular skill is, let's look at more importantly, why is it so pivotal? Why is it so important that we have this in our list of skills that we bring to the table to be successful in this position and to even be considered for it? (Take a drink here, quickly.)
Well, as I mentioned earlier, I work with job descriptions on a daily basis. I'm a corporate recruiter for a hospital system. And as a general rule, when I get a new position in—it's basically called a requisition in my world when there's a request to bring in a new person—there are a couple of things I like to get to really understand what it is I need to look for in a person to fill that opening. One of the things I like to get first of all is a written job description. In other words, list out for me what this person is going to be doing. But I like to go deeper than that. Once I get that, I like to get the hiring manager on the phone, discuss with him in detail. "Tell me exactly the environment they're working in. Let's flesh out some of the details of exactly what this person's going to face on a regular basis so we really understand what it takes to be successful in this role." That tells me what I need to look for and what I need to screen for. I not only just try to go out and source individuals, I do the initial screening for them to see that they have the basically skills we're looking for before I even present them to a hiring manager. Let's look at this from this kind of perspective.
Now we know from what we've heard earlier this Feast Of Tabernacles that the job title that we would have if we were chosen for these positions is going to be kings and priests. We're going to be kings and priest ruling with Jesus Christ over the rest of mankind. So what does a king and priest do? Let's look at a written job description for what the Bible tells us are the duties of a priest. This is going to give us some insight into this.
Turn with me to Ezekiel chapter 44. Ezekiel chapter 44 and we will start reading in verse 23. And we're going to skip over a number of things here. As you think of the job description for a priest, you probably think of the duties involving sacrifices and things of that nature, which is a lot of what a priest did. But we're going to focus on some of the more fundamental functions I think we'll actually be performing in this job in the future. Starting in verse 23 it says:
Ezekiel 44:23. "And they shall teach My people the difference between the holy and the unholy, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean. 24) "In controversy they shall stand as judges, and judge it according to My judgments. They shall keep My laws and My statutes in all My appointed meetings, and they shall hallow My Sabbaths. (NKJ)
Now if we break down what these two verses are telling us, they basically hit two major functions that we're going to be doing. And that's teaching and judging. Those are the main roles that we'll be fulfilling in this position serving with Jesus Christ.
Now to understand this more deeply the reality of the day-to-day environment we may work with, let's break this down a little farther. Let's take this role of being an educator or a teacher. Now you can be a teacher in very different environments that require very different skills to be successful in that role.
For example you can be a professor at an Ivy League university. Let's just say for example Harvard Law School, very prestigious organization and say the students that are there in this program are pursuing a juris doctorate degree to be attorneys. By virtue of the fact that they're in a graduate program at Harvard means in all probability they came from some of the top undergraduate programs in the country. It also means they're from probably some of the top performers in those undergraduate programs based toward some of the best on their graduate entrance exams and things of that nature. They were very educated, very well-prepared top performing students. And, as a result, what that turns into—the job of what this professor is doing is really working, you might say, with some of the best and the brightest, covering the finer points of the law. Let's just say that's one extreme.
You can be an educator in a very different environment. Say for example you're a high school teacher in south-central Los Angeles in a very notoriously underprivileged neighborhood with children that come from extreme poverty who live in violence, who deal with gang violence in their neighborhoods if not in their own homes and have to deal with all of the issues associated with this. Now obviously that brings these issues into the classroom by virtue of how they live and what they're facing. That means that the skills required to be in that position are very different than what it would be like to be the Harvard Law School professor.
And notice the main thing that made these jobs very different and requires the skills to be very different is the make-up of the students that they're working with. That's what really defines the major differences here.
So what we need to do is take a realistic look at some of the students we will be working with in our roles as teachers and judges to get a real grasp of what we will be dealing with and the skills required to be successful in that role. What we're going to do today is take a good look at what our first classroom may look like. When I say our first classroom, now realize when Christ comes back and we set up the thousand year reign of Christ and we're working with Him, the first group of students, you might say—when I say classroom and students, I'm kind of using an analogy, but you get the idea—these are the first people we'll be working with. They will be the survivors of the Day of the Lord. They will be the people that have lived over from the society we're in today through the Tribulation-Day of the Lord period and the beginning of the setting up of the thousand year reign of Christ. Those will be our first group of students. What we're going to do is take a look at the conditions they will be in when start that first class.
But before we do that, we need to grasp some larger, bigger picture issues. See oftentimes we tend to look at the establishment of the thousand year reign of Christ sometimes from an instantaneous transformation perspective. And what I mean by that is we kind of tend to look at it sometimes like: Christ is going to return. He's going to bind Satan. And then immediately instantaneously we get this utopian society where everybody's onboard and everybody's cooperating and obeying God. All these millennial prophecies that we read about are going to be immediately fulfilled. And that's not a realistic scenario.
See oftentimes we look at like this because one of the big things that we're all looking for as individuals, as firstfruits, is we're longing for, looking forward to the first resurrection. And 1 Corinthians 15 tells us once that seventh trumpet sounds we get changed in the twinkling of an eye. Instantaneously we go from physical to spirit and as a result all our physical problems instantaneously go away because we're not physical anymore. We're now spiritual God Beings. So that is an instantaneous transformation.
What we have to keep in mind is that the people that live through from today's society though the Tribulation-Day of the Lord and survive into the beginning of the thousand year reign of Christ, they're physical human beings through this whole process. They're not going to immediately respond like mature Christians. They're not mature Christians. They're just at the point where they're starting to have their mind open and beginning to understand the need for repentance and to come to God. Conversion is a process; it's not an event. Yes, the binding of Satan will have a very major positive impact on society—don't get me wrong. But my point is these people will not immediately fall in line and instantaneously have this utopian society. That will be a transformation that takes some time to do.
We also have to realize something else very important. These people will be survivors of the Day of the Lord. And I say survivors for a reason because the fast majority of mankind will not survive through that period. These people will have lived through the most traumatic and horrific events that have ever taken place in the history of mankind. They will have experienced them as physical human beings—we must not forget that—as normal physical human beings with normal emotions, normal frailties and weaknesses that they will have as they go through all these horrific events. As a result of that, they will be affected by these events as physical human beings are affected by extremely traumatic and horrific events and they will respond to them as physical human beings respond to extremely horrific and traumatic events. We have to keep that in mind to have a realistic picture of what this is going to be like.
So with all of that in mind, let's take a quick tour through the Day of the Lord and get an idea of what they will have gone through by the time they reach this first classroom to have realistic expectations of what this is going to be like.
So turn with me to Revelation chapter 8. That's Revelation chapter 8. Now the description of the trumpets actually starts in verse 7. For time's sake I'm actually not going to read through all of this, but I wanted to turn to these areas so as you get kind of an overview of this while you're hearing this or wanting even later to go back and verify a lot of this, you can read the exact Scriptures I'm going to summarize. But for time's sake what we're going to do is just kind of summarize a lot of these events to get a quick overview of what this will be like.
Now realize we're going to look at this from the perspective of physical human beings who live through all of these events. So therefore some of our focus is going to be upon the physical and psychological effects that all of this will have on normal physical human beings who live through the most horrific events that have ever taken place in the history of mankind.
Now realize we all know the Day of the Lord is made up of seven trumpets. That's why we have the Feast of Trumpets with an s on it because it refers to all seven of them. And it plays out a twelve month period. That's something also to keep in mind as we're going through this. Think about the speed at which all of this is going to play out. All of this happens over a twelve-month period. We're going to come back to this, but that's important to realize as you're getting a realistic grasp of how this plays out.
Now in our first four trumpets—again I'm going to summarize a great deal of this—what we have is basically about one-third of the food supply of the planet being wiped out. That's food and water. We wiped out fruit. We wiped out green grass. That wipes out not just our lawns, it wipes out grain crops. We wind up with the sea—one-third of it—turned to blood wiping out all seafood. One-third of fresh water being poisoned and even one-third of the sunlight being affected. So that's greatly going to affect plant life and again our ability to grow food.
Now we are on a planet today with approximately six billion people—actually over six billion. If you wipe out one-third of the food supply with that kind of a population, you're wiping out the food supply of over two billion people. Now it won't take very long before this is massive famine. This is going to cause massive starvation across the world from malnutrition. And we got areas of the world already where that's a major issue. Think about wiping out the food supply for one-third of the planet very quickly. This is going to result in a massive death toll. That means for people who have survived through this, they have watched many, many people—more than they can imagine or probably we can imagine even talking about this—starve to death. But they have watched them suffer through malnutrition. That they have watched loved ones, children, elderly go through experiences of starving to death.
And not only that, realize when you get major famine, you get disease epidemics. You get compromised immune systems and people's health being really worn down and this allows diseases to spread very rapidly. You get famine and pestilence. This is going to wipe out probably a good third of the planet—two billion people! Also realize we're not just talking about specific relationships that people today have lost. Think about the breadth and the magnitude of what they will have experienced—the death, the trauma, the horror that they have witnessed through all of this—and the effects that that will have on them afterwards. We're going to come back to some of this in some detail. Let's just take an overview of the actual events.
Now skipping down to the fifth trumpet—this starts in chapter 9 of Revelation. And again I'm going to summarize the way through this. You wake up with stinging pain and sores on people. It says it feels like scorpions have attacked. It doesn't really describe a death toll, it says more actually that people will be such agony for five months long that they wished they could die and death is not granted to them. That is psychologically grueling. Not only will individuals have gone through this, again they have watched loved ones suffer and agonize through this. And this is on top of everything else we've already discussed. Realize there's a cumulative effect as we go through this. This is all playing out over a twelve-month period.
Let's also jump down to the sixth trumpet. This is Revelation 9 verse 13 is where this starts. Now, here we have events described that basically is the death of one-third of mankind brought about by an army in events that take place basically in the course of an hour. Now you can certainly call this my speculation, but the only way that I know that an army can bring about the death of two billion people with events that take place in the course of an hour is through a nuclear attack. It's the only way I can fathom that can happen. If you get a nuclear attack of that magnitude, also realize, yes, that means lots and lots of people will instantaneously be vaporized as a result of that attack. But this will logically probably play out similar, but on a much grander scale, than the nuclear attacks of Japan at the end of World War II in the 1940's.
When the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, seventy-thousand people died instantaneously as a result of the initial blast. Another seventy-thousand people died in after effects of radiation poisoning and other side effects that played out from the result of that blast.Logically we should expect something similar, but just on a much grander scale. And also realize you drop a nuclear attack of this kind of magnitude, it doesn't just affect the areas that are hit. You've got weather currents like the jet stream that are going to pick that nuclear fallout up and rain it down on other areas that didn't get directly hit. This is a very global effect that will take place.
Now to fathom some of the emotional impact of this, we all lived through 9-11 several years ago. We all watched on TV as the planes went into the buildings. We saw people wandering around looking lost in New York with dust all over them and crying, looking for their loved ones, and such. That was a tiny drop in the bucket to what this will be like. I just mention that example because it's something we can all relate to, we all lived through, to kind of get a mental picture of what this can be like.
But realize up to this point, we're talking about two-thirds of mankind being wiped out and we're not done yet!
Let's turn over to Revelation chapter 16. As we all know when the initial seventh trumpet sounds that when the first resurrection takes place. But there's also the seven last bowl plagues that come soon after that.
Now to just summarize through this and I won't cover every point. I'm just trying to get an overview of this. Realize at this point we have all of the water on the planet being turned into blood. Also as you think about the effects of all of this, if you think about the graphic detail—and I haven't covered all the details which as we go through this—but experiencing this is going to be like worse than any horror movie that anyone's ever seen or ever had in their worst nightmares. That's the trauma that they're going to have experienced going through all of this.
But realize if you wiped out all of the water on the entire planet and turn it to blood, first of all you've wiped out all the seafood. You wiped out all fresh water fish. They can't survive in blood. But human beings don't last very long without hydration. We can go without food. Well, we'll lose weight. It'll affect our health. But we can survive for a while like that. We won't last very long without water. Our bodies are made up primarily of water. Again, we're talking a massive death toll that will take place here.
I'm also going to skip over a couple of events here, but if you look at the seventh bowl, we get a natural disaster beyond our wildest nightmares. This is an earthquake so severe that it drowns islands and flattens mountains. And it says it does that to all islands. That isn't local—that's global! That's a global effect. That probably happens—again to speculate—by tsunamis from this. But I'm not an engineer, but I think it's safe to assume that an earthquake so severe that it drowns islands and flattens mountains, no physical human structure's going to survive through that. I seriously doubt we can build buildings that are going to survive through that. Basically everything will be flattened after that. Cities destroyed, leveled. Again we're talking massive death toll and destruction as we get through all of this. By the time this is done, the vast majority of mankind will be dead. In all probability what we're dealing with may be a few hundred million who survive through this whole event.
Realize the condition that these people are in. By the time we actually come down with Christ on the white horse to turn this all around, by the time they have gone through all of this devastation, they're hungry. They're thirsty. There's no water on the planet. They're homeless. If their home survived up to the point of the earthquake, that leveled them. Their possessions are gone. They probably have inadequate clothing. They're sick. They're health has been beaten up. They're in severe shape.
Realize—see sometimes we tend to look at it like we're going to come back down and once Satan is down, we're going to jump in and start educating everybody and teaching them all God's way and all that we know about doctrine. No way! There is no way that will happen! Initially what's going to take place, when you've got people who are hungry, who are thirsty, who are homeless, who are sick, you've got to address all of that up front before you can even begin to teach them. All of those physical needs have to be addressed up front because they don't care about anything else until this is addressed.
But also realize even after that, this is the easy part—just taking care of those physical needs—getting them food. And we have prophecies like Ezekiel 47—we won't take the time to go through that—that tell us how a lot of the planet's going to be healed, probably pretty quickly. We're going to have to get water and food available to these people pretty rapidly or they won't survive much longer. But that's the easy part. And when I say that's the easy part, realize that we can perform a miracle (fingers snap) and make a lot of that happen. These are normal physical human beings with normal physical emotions who have been affected by and who will respond to horrific and traumatic events as physical human beings respond to horrific and traumatic events.
Now think about this. If only a few hundred million people survive, just mathematically and logically that means that the average survivor—if not every one of them—will have lost most of the people that they know. Most of their family, their friends, their casual acquaintances, they're all gone! They're all dead. They're going to be going through a massive grieving process.
Not only that, look at the change issues that they have dealt with. When I say change issues have you ever seen one of those assessments that kind of score for you the amount of stress that you're under? And the last few questions about: Have you gotten married or gotten divorced, or got a job or lost a job, or bought a home or sold a home and various things of that nature. And then they'll give numerical scores to all those things and then you add it up down at the bottom. And it kind of tells you, "Well, if you're above this score, you might be in danger of a health problem as a result of it." You know what the major thing that they're measure there is? It's change. Ever noticed on there that even they mention things we normally thing of as very positive, like getting married, getting a promotion, buying a new home? Stuff that we really look forward to, but those are major changes in life. But they can also be stressful because change tends to equal stress.
Now look at that from the perspective of these people. They have lost most of the people in their lives. Not only that, they have lost everything familiar in their world. Their homes are gone. Their jobs are gone. Most of their friends and family are gone. The whole society that they were familiar with is gone. They don't even speak the same language when this is done. There is nothing familiar in their world!
And also realize they aren't mature Christians when this starts. They have not been coming to the Feast Of Tabernacles for twenty-thirty-forty years looking forward to all of these events taking place with great anticipation. I mean not the horror but the ultimate fulfilling of the Kingdom. They were going along as deceived individuals not capable of understanding any of this when sudden their world got turned upside down and inside out and dribbled like a basketball! And they didn't have their minds open to understand all that's happening.
And even when we get to the point where their minds are open, Satan is bound, and now that veil is removed, think about what condition they're in. As I mentioned, most all of them have lost everyone in their life that is familiar to them. They've lost friends. They've lost family. They've lost acquaintances. Think about the process of what they're going through and also how fast this all played out.
Now I know many of you are aware I know a little bit about the subject of grief and loss. And the reason I say that is on June 26 of 2008, my wife Linda at the age of thirty-nine received the news that she had stage four colon cancer and had months left to live. Ten weeks and two days later, she died. Now the symptoms, as far as I can remember, of any severity that really alarmed us really started like in April or May. That's how fast it all played out. It's kind of like a free fall without a parachute.
As I went through all of that there were numerous times when friends kind of asked me how this is playing out. "What is this like for you? What are you going through this process?" At first I didn't even know how to put it into words. I didn't even know how to explain it. Then I thought of an analogy of how to explain it and I think it ties into what these people will go through.
What I would say to friends was:
It's like I'm standing in the middle of a multilane freeway. And cars are bailing down at me at ninety miles an hour. And I don't have time to really respond to process what's taking place or to deal with it. I'm just dodging the next car that's barreling down on me and trying to get out of the way.
Because it was all coming so fast!
That's exactly what the Day of the Lord is going to be like for these people. These events are coming so quickly and so fast at them they don't have time to respond and process it all. In fact, they're in such survival mode as they're going through all of this, they don't have time to grieve.They don't have time to process how any of this feels. They're just trying to survive and make it through tomorrow. What that means is by the time we set up the thousand year reign of Christ and get started, they're starting a grieving process that's off the charts!
There's absolutely no way that we will start with these people jumping in and teaching them all we know about doctrine. They will not be physically capable of dealing with it. They'll be too overwhelmed. They've been through too much change. They've been through too many issues in their lives. They won't be able to cope with that.
And we also have to realize, they're going through a grieving process. One of the major stages of it is anger. And they have just lived through a year where all this was happening to them and there were two individuals announcing to them that this was the wrath of God. And they were not mature Christians to understand the big picture of all of this. They just saw their whole world coming apart and they're being told that God's responsible for this—again not understanding the big picture behind it and the ultimate end that's good. But you know who we will be? The Family of God! Think what their reaction to that!
You see the first thing we have to do before we can even begin to teach these people is to work with them to stabilize their world, to take care of their physical needs. And more than that to be there for them to build trust with them, to help them through this process before it's even relevant to teach them anything. Because see they're not going to care how much we know until we prove to them how much we care and how we're there for them through this process.
Trust me—when you're dealing with people grieving like that, don't preach at them. They can't handle it. They don't want to hear it. The best thing I can tell you—and this is blunt, but I'm just giving you straight advice—the best thing I can tell you, "Shut up and listen. Just shut up and listen." Don't put your expectations on them. Don't preach to them yet. Just let them feel what they're going to feel.
Be there with them for this process because realize people who have been severely traumatized, they have issues with trust. The first thing we're going to have to do is earn their trust. You cannot demand trust. It has to be earned and that takes time. See what we're going to have to do is first and foremost show them love and patience and kindness and gentleness and even self-control because many of them are going to have the trouble going through this process.
And we're going to have to be there with them and all this is going to have to happen before it's even relevant to try to teach them anything, to try to teach them doctrine. Yes, well, we'll have to do that—don't get me wrong. We need to know the ins and outs of this Book. Our job will be to teach them. But understand that's going to come later. That won't even be relevant until we get through this process and handle a lot of these issues because we've got to earn their trust, build that relationship, stabilize their world. Then we can look at teaching them the plan of salvation, teaching them doctrine, teaching them which day to worship on and all of those types of issues that, yes, we will get to, but this is the front end of the position.
So if you look at it like this, it becomes very obvious why he (Paul) says, "If you don't have love, you got nothing," because we're going to have to do this long before we can teach them all the knowledge. Yeah, we can understand everything about the Bible, have all the details down, and understand prophecy, be able to foretell the future, and none of it's relevant in a position like this until you've dealt with all the other issues, until you've shown them love, until you have demonstrated that you care for them, you're willing to be patient, you've taken care of their physical needs, you've comforted them through this process. Then it becomes relevant how much you know, because they really don't care how much you know until you've shown how much you care.
And see that tells us very much what we need to be doing to prepare ourselves for this role, to be serving in this position. Yes, is it important that we study this Book and know the ins and outs of it? Absolutely! That’s the Textbook we're going to teach from, but you see we're going through a big interview process. As I like to look at it, we're hoping to be hired fulltime at a company called Kingdom of God, Inc. And we're currently going through a screening interviewing process determining whether we're going to be chosen for that position.
See God is a good behavioral interviewer. You may not be familiar with that term where it's a philosophy of interviewing people. It's based on a very common sense principle that says, "The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior." In other words, how a person has performed previously, their actual behavior, how they interact, how they work, and such is the best indicator of what they will do in the future if you're working with them. Well, that's exactly how Jesus Christ is screening us. That's why He says He separates the sheep from the goats based on the issue of "When I was hungry, you fed Me. When I was thirsty, you gave Me drink. When I was sick, you took care of Me", because He's screening directly to the requirements of a job.
He realizes that's the very first thing we're going to have to do, but He's also looking for the people who are demonstrating the behavior in their lives today—that this is how they think, how they function, how they treat others—because again, "The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior." And the past behavior we're talking about is how we're living today, right now, the track record that we're establishing. Because He can't use a bunch of people who just know the facts of this Book but aren't willing to do all of this and aren't demonstrating that in their behavior today. It would be the logical equivalent of sending a Diabetes Health Educator into a clinic full of people who only speak Spanish. What are they going to do—stand there and look at them? They can't work with them.
That's exactly the kind of position that we will be in if we don't have agape love, if we haven't developed that in our lives and demonstrated that in our own behavior, showing that that's how we'll behave if we're given this position. That's how we'll go about fulfilling this role. That's exactly what Jesus Christ wants to see in all of us is that we will fulfill this role as is required.
Brethren, to be successful in this role, yes, it's important that we understand the Bible. It's important that we study this. This is the Textbook we're going to teach from. But it's more important, quite frankly, that we're living in, that we're demonstrating this in our lives, in our daily behavior because we can see how fundamentally important this is going to be specifically to actually what we're doing in a realized setting.
Brethren, if God were to place an online posting for the position of being a king and priest in the Kingdom of God, serving with Jesus Christ, working with the rest of mankind, at the top of that posting in big bold letters in a large font with asterisks on each side so that it cannot be missed, it would state:
*** Agape love is required for this position. And only candidates with this skill will be considered. ***
In other words, He's saying, "Only the loving need apply because all others are wasting their time."
Transcribed by kb January 27, 2010